Please welcome Taylor M. Polites, author of The Rebel Wife, which was just released on Tuesday! One piece of Huntsville, Alabama that I have always carried with me is the beautiful, antebellum [...]
I was fortunate to see Olivia deBelle Byrd speak at the Decatur Book Festival in 2010 and I just loved listening to her stories. She is very charming and funny and she graciously agreed to guest post on the blog today! Please welcome her! SOUTHERN FUNERALS OR HE JUST WOKE UP DEAD Funerals in the South are a serious business. They entail prodigious amounts of food, flowers, and family and no shortage of humorous tales. My friend from the charming town of Eufaula, Alabama, tells of going to visit her elderly mother each morning, where the first thing her mother does is peruse the obituaries. Her mother mentioned an acquaintance that had died with the explanation, “He just woke up dead.” It reminded me of the time I called my niece, who also resides in a small Alabama town. When I inquired how things were she replied, “I’ve never seen anything like it, Aunt Olivia. People are dying who have never died before!” As Southern women we do tend to obsess about our own funerals no matter how hale and hearty we are. We are just sure our children are not going to get it right. My friend, Louise, was telling me about a conversation she had with her daughter who lives up North. Apparently this daughter has lived up North too long. Louise was reminding her about some funeral detail she desired when her daughter said, “Mother, why don’t you just get cremated? It is very common up North.” “Honey,” Louise exclaimed, “have you lost your mind? This is the one time in my life when I will be all laid out and every friend I have will come to see me. Each hair will be in place, it won’t matter whether my dress will zip, and there won’t…
Today, please welcome author Susan Kelly to The Introverted Reader. She's a fellow North Carolinian! As a senior in boarding school, in the very Southern city of Richmond, Virginia, I took a course titled “Southern Fiction,” and, as my teacher later described it, “fell into a hole,” which she intended as a high compliment. The hole wasn’t The Confessions of Nat Turner, but Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! I can still quote chunks of it. Two decades later, my own Southern fiction was being published. What makes fiction Southern? Is it references to grits and K-Marts and “mama’n’em,” what I like to term red clay realism? Am I a Southern author because I wrote in How Close We Come, that “the discarded Christmas trees in the curb look like tipped over Southern belles, upended, with their underwear and petticoats showing”? An audience member once told me she was certain I was Midwestern, because my characters are candid, if not downright blunt. (If Midwesterners are blunt, that was news to me.) Al Hirschfield, the pen-and-ink illustrator, famously includes his daughter’s name, Nina, in every drawing he creates. You have to search for it within his strokes. In each of my novels, I’ve included the phrase “necessary sadness,” and for me, that’s the essence of Southern fiction. How to define “necessary sadness”? Well, it’s a bit like looking for new wallpaper: you might not be able to describe it, but you’ll know it when you see it. Necessary sadness is the current of bittersweet, of rue, if you will, that runs through our lives. It’s about letting go while holding fast. Knowing what to keep from something—a memory, a death, a way of life, a loss of innocence – and knowing what must be yielded to, or discarded. Think of To Kill A Mockingbird,…
I've decided to host one more challenge, the Books in Translation Reading Challenge. I think this one's pretty self-explanatory. The goal is to read translations of books. They don't have to be in English; whatever language(s) you're comfortable reading in is good. You can read any genre and any age range. Crossovers with other challenges are fine. Any format that you choose is also acceptable. The challenge will run from today, January 7, through December 31, 2012. Looking for suggestions? I have a shelf on GoodReads you can check out. There's also a Listopia list on GoodReads. I am not limiting the challenge to bloggers. You can also link to a review you wrote on another site, such as GoodReads or LibraryThing. Levels:Beginner: Read 1-3 books in translationConversationalist: 4-6Bilingual: 7-9Linguist: 10-12 I'm committing to the Conversationalist level at 4-6 books. I'll track my progress here. The Bookseller of Kabul by Åsne Seierstad, translated by Ingrid ChristophersonThe Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, translated by Lucia GravesThe Rose of Fire by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, translated by Lucia Graves I hope you'll join me! Sign up anytime throughout the year by linking below! Post your reviews here as well. Enter your name or your blog name and the title of the book in parentheses. Example: The Introverted Reader (The Bookseller of Kabul) 1. Fiona2. Kathy aka Ruby3. Agata4. Meg5. Emma @ Words And Peace 6. Layers of Thought7. Mona8. JLS Hall @A Little Reading9. Dusky Literati10. Unabridged Chick11. a hot cup of pleasure12. Lizzy Siddal13. Debbie @ Exurbanis14. Ruby @ Year of reading my books (Winston, A Thousand Peaceful Cities)15. The Book Coop (Esther's Inheritance)16. Emma @ Words And Peace (St Gregory Palamas As a Hagiorite - Greece)17. Emma @ Words And Peace (Exploring the Inner Universe - Romanian)18. kpss19. Emma…
Today I welcome Kathryn Lively, author of Little Flowers, to the blog for the first post in my new Saturdays in the South feature! Hello, and thank you for joining me today. My name is Kathryn Lively and I guess you can say I am a Southerner. I have lived in the South all of my life - born in Florida, present in Virginia after several years in Georgia. As an English major in college and assistant librarian in Georgia, I became exposed to some of the best Southern literature written. While I read pretty much everything, there is a special place in my heart for the classics: McCullers, Welty, Faulkner, Harper Lee, etc. My first love genre, however, is mystery, and I've spent many years tearing through all manner of Southern stories, from the gothic to the genteel to the downright bizarre. Anne Rice and Carl Hiaasen were two early favorites, and one would think I'd end up emulating the styles of some of these writers. In truth, when I sat down to write my first novel, Little Flowers, I decided to work on my own voice rather than attempt a poor imitation of another's. I feel when an author is able to do that, the actual writing comes easier, and the passion for the story is evident in the final product. I've been flattered over the years to receive notes from aspiring authors requesting tips. Bottom line, if you want to write, you simply do it. If you have time to cook dinner, exercise, work, etc., you have the time to write. You don't have to complete the entire novel in a day, but even a thousand words a day puts you a step closer to your goals. Getting back to Little Flowers, this was a project I…
I wasn't sure if I was going to host this challenge again. I just don't feel that I read enough non-fiction to be hosting it, but since I still don't see anyone hosting a general non-fiction challenge, it's once more into the breach for me! The levels last year seemed to be entirely too easy for some of you, so I've revamped [...]
I was pleasantly surprised by how much I loved Major Pettigrew from the book by Helen Simonson. I don't always do well with military types. I look all meek and mild, but the minute I'm given anything that even remotely resembles an order, I dig in my heels. That's not really the best way to get on with men who are used to having their orders obeyed. But Major Pettigrew is a little different. Well, a lot different once you get to know him. From my review: "There was so much more to the Major than I expected. I expected some sort of repressed "Right-o, carry on then" kind of bore. To paraphrase another character, the Major isn't bad for an old git. I laughed so many times at his dry one-liners. They were made all the funnier because he mostly said them around people who completely missed them. One wouldn't want to seem impolite, now would one? He has definite ideas about Proper Behavior and the Right Thing to Do, but he's also flexible enough to pursue a relationship with a Pakistani woman. He sees past their obvious differences, ignores all the idiots blabbing on tv about relations with the Middle East, and sees through to the beautiful kindred spirit within. He's also got a big streak of the Knight in Shining Armor." There are a few things that saved him. First of all, I think he just fell into the military more because it was expected of him as the eldest son of a soldier. I don't think he was truly temperamentally suited to the army life. After he left the army, he became an English teacher at a boys' school. A reader. Don't we all love men who read? I pictured the Major as Peter O'Toole The…
Deryn Sharp is one of the main characters in the Leviathan series by Scott Westerfeld. I've only read the first two. She's about 15 or 16 and she's one of those characters who are perennial favorites among female readers--a girl disguised as a boy. I wonder why we do like them so much? But that's a post for another day. Deryn is intelligent and brave. She loves the Darwinist creatures that her father worked around before his death. She decides that she is going to follow in his footsteps and join the British Air Service as a ship's boy on board a flying ship. In their world, this amounts to a flying whale. I know. But it's really cool and makes sense in the context of the story. She of course manages to land herself in all kinds of trouble. She's not really a troublemaker, she just reacts so quickly to situations that she's in the middle of them before anyone else has time to blink. She never hesitates to do the right thing or the brave thing. The one thing that bothers me a little about her is that she can follow orders a little too blindly. She's so intelligent, I have a hard time believing she wouldn't question some orders. I guess she wants so badly to stay in the Air Service that she does what she can to stay in the officers' good graces. As she's getting a little older in the books, I enjoy watching her struggling with her femininity. She definitely has some feelings for one guy in particular, but he has no idea she's a girl. True, that's a standard complication in these kinds of books. It doesn't make it any less entertaining for me though. Who did you connect with this week? Link…
Marianne Engel is the main character from The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson. It's been a while since I read this, so my details might be off, but I'll definitely be true to the spirit of Marianne. Marianne at first comes across as a crazy lady. Not in any kind of a dangerous way, but in a whoa-let's-take-a-step-back-here-cuz-what-the-heck-is-this-chick-talking-about kind of way. The narrator, who is never named, has been horribly burned in a car crash. Marianne, whom he has never met before in his life, suddenly shows up in his hospital room claiming that they were lovers in a past life. Now, the narrator at this point is not a nice person. At all. He admits it himself from the beginning. But Marianne comes in and starts caring for him. She sits with him and tells him stories and does whatever she can to make him comfortable and help him pass the time. She even cares for the nurses who are taking care of him. She listens to them and brings them gifts and treats. Her stories are amazing. They cover vastly different times and cultures, and she talks about the characters as if they're people she's been friends with. They are all beautiful, timeless love stories. And that is how she starts to crack the narrator's tough shell and make him a better man. She's also a talented carver of gargoyles. I don't remember if she actually says anything like this, but I at least got the impression that she agreed with Michelangelo; she isn't carving a form, she's setting it free. Her other...eccentricities...fade when compared with her carving. So what if she's a little kooky in day to day life? She's spreading love and beauty and compassion in a world that desperately needs it. But when she's carving, she…
Who did you connect with this week? Link your post on Mr. Linky, then be sure to go check out the other Character Connections! Who do ya love? Or love to hate? You know you've got a lot to say about some larger-than-life characters, and this is the place to say it. Write a straightforward post. Draw a picture. Vlog, write poetry, write fiction, cast the role, be as creative as you want! Be sure to post the book's title and author, and be very careful not to give away spoilers while talking about how much you love your characters. Mr. Linky will be posted here on The Introverted Reader every Thursday. I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop's, my local independent bookstore located in downtown Asheville, NC; and Better World Books. I will receive a small commission at no cost to you if you purchase books through links on my site.