Contest Ends 12AM...

Just a quick reminder, the Sense of Place Contest ends tomorrow night at the stroke of twelve. I currently have seven participants providing a 1 in 7 chance someone will win the Autographed Copy of Martin Clark's Plain Heathen Mischief! See the side bar for details...

Long before I knew that Tobacco Road was a work of fiction, it existed for me as a scrap of fictional geography, vague but real, and I shuddered to imagine its inhabitants.

~ Lewis Nordan

Fiction:
Music of the Swamp (1991)
Wolf Whistle (1993)
The Sharpshooter Blues (1995)
Lightning Song (1997)

Nonfiction:
Boy with Loaded Gun: A Memoir (2000)

Contest Ends 12AM...

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2007/07/contest-ends-12am.html

Drum Roll Please...

Rebecca from Fond of Books is this week's pecan winner!

I had to go through three other past-winners before we found a neo-winner.

Congratulations, Rebecca!!!

Drum Roll Please...

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2007/07/drum-roll-please.html

Rats (copy)

One of my favorite things to do as a reader on vacation is read a book with local flair. You may have noticed my lead to books: The Big Bam by Montville and Pigeons by Blechman. This trip I brought along, Rats: Observations on the History & Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan, as our 2007 guidebook.

Robert Sullivan, author of The Meadowlands and A Whale Hunt, is currently a contributing editor to Vogue and constant contributor to the New Yorker. In 2004, the year Rats was published, I heard Sullivan on NPR and as a guest of David Letterman.

I remember thinking he sounds sane and looks normal, but what is wrong with this man. No one, in his right mind, willingly gives up a year of their life to observe rats in their natural habitat. I am happy to say, after reading Rats, author Sullivan is like most Americans. He still gets a little freaked-out working around and in proximity to rats, even after a year of “observing.”

Let us start with the whys. Sullivan thought the rats of New York City, although a quarter to half a million strong, were mostly ignored by nature writers. If they appeared in print it was to shock newspaper buyers into full subscriptions. Yet, for all the potential diseases they carry, they have had little consequence on humans in the last eighty years.

Throughout history, where humans created community, so too did rats. As our fictitious Hansel and Gretel skipped into the woods, it wasn’t song birds but rather hungry rats that ate their bread crumbs. For America, it was the rattus norvegicus or Norway Rat, who arrived, “in the first year of the Revolution.” From which they ambled after the settlers into the country, as Sullivan quips, “a manifest infestation.”

In the summer of 2001, Sullivan set up camp outside the entrance to Eden’s Alley. In an L-shaped corridor connecting Gold Street and Fulton, the oldest section of Manhattan, he began his shift at five in the evening where he observed through a night-vision monocular until morning broke. The yearlong experiment included the tragic September 11th loss that fall, when volunteers worked to contain the rats and the pestilence they harbor from Americans.

This is a fascinating read about a disgusting animal many humans would rather ignore. Would it surprise you, John James Audubon spent his later years walking the streets of lower Manhattan, similar to our neo-naturalist Sullivan, looking for rats.

Rats (copy)

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2007/07/rats-copy.html

This Week's Winner is...

One eye on the Yankees game and the other in REM, the hub responded to this week's number question with.

"Sebenteen!"

That means Debi from Nothing of Importance won this week's Southern treat! Back up girl, you're 'bout to get 'khaned!

Note: The cute poster is a creation from the mind of Cedric Smith. He has done a series of kids and food. Check out his work...

This Week's Winner is...

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2007/07/this-weeks-winner-is.html

Modern Day Mockingbird Cast

Booklogged over at A Reader's Journal had a lovely discussion with a Canadian youth this past week. Apparently she was reading To Kill a Mockingbird when a teen told her Peck was wrong for the part of Atticus. I like his reasoning, but I still prefer Gregory Peck!

This got me thinking, which actors might pull off a modern day version. Below are 12 cast members and the characters they portrayed in the 1962 cast. If you were ahead of production, money no object, who would you place in the roles of Atticus, Scout, and Boo? This might make a fun meme, but please, no pressure. Have fun...

Note: I thought the "Not Suitable For Children" was a nice touch on the movie poster.

Gregory Peck........................................Atticus Finch

John Megna......................Charles Baker 'Dill' Harris

Frank Overton..............................Sheriff Heck Tate

Brock Peters.......................................Tom Robinson

Estelle Evans...............................................Calpurnia

Paul Fix..................................................Judge Taylor

Collin Wilcox Paxton.................Mayella Violet Ewell

James Anderson...............Robert E. Lee 'Bob' Ewell

Robert Duvall.............................Arthur 'Boo' Radley

William Windom...................Mr. Gilmer, Prosecutor

Mary Badham....................................................Scout

Phillip Alford........................................................Jem

Modern Day Mockingbird Cast

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2007/07/modern-day-mockingbird-cast.html

See...JenClair!

Which Author's Fiction are You?

Flannery O'Connor wrote your book. Not much escapes your notice.
Take this quiz!



Quizilla
Join
Make A Quiz More Quizzes Grab Code

See...JenClair!

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2007/07/seejenclair.html

I Ramble When Sleepy...(copy)

I am a little groggy. I spent half of last night reading a book just for fun. No, it wasn’t the new Harry Potter. It was something a little more adult. I read Lean Mean Thirteen by Janet Evanovich and loved it!

I don’t feel at all guilty, either. Why should I? I know, I didn’t learn anything and lost valuable beauty sleep, but boy did I have fun. At times, I was having so much fun, my laughter echoed down the hall. Come to think of it, my husband is probably groggy, too.

What is wrong with having fun? Isn’t reading supposed to fun? Why do we feel we must learn something in the process? I admit, I read Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find earlier in the week. Okay, in essence, I lied. I did the self-assigned hard stuff first, because I felt guilty, before playing. Even I couldn’t let myself have fun.

I should be able to pick up a book for the pure escapism it provides. Not only that, I should consider O’Connor’s writings as much fun as the Stephanie Plum series. Yes, her writings are full of racism, classism, and ageism, but they are meant to be escapism, too. I think Flannery would have used a road-killed, stuffed, exploding armadillo created by the local taxidermist as performance art, had she thought of it like Evanovich.

Come to think of it, I had as much fun reading O’Connor. I do remember laughing out loud while reading her last story titled, The Displaced Person. It was a different type of fun though, a cerebral type filled with subtle ironic twists. For example, in the last few sentences of the short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find, our main character is described by her killer with, “She would of been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”

We see ourselves in her characters, hear ourselves in their voices, and move within their world which makes the book fun. Also, I found with O'Connor's characters, it is just as much fun knowing we aren’t like some of them.

Who is to say I didn’t learn something through Evanovich’s character Stephanie Plum. Before reading the book, I would have been skeptical if someone said they totaled a car, burnt down two buildings, stapled a man’s jewels, and receive 16 stitches in their leg in less than 24 hours. Humph?

I Ramble When Sleepy...(copy)

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2007/07/i-ramble-when-sleepycopy.html

The Mis-Education of Maggie

I so wanted to like her, and I may be warming to her as I reflect on her short stories, but the casual use of the N word stupefies me. Of course, it isn’t her fault, she is merely reflecting the times as they were; therefore, I should be mad at those times, but it is O’Connor in my hands and in my head.

Was it Flannery O’Connor’s grandmother in A Good Man is Hard to Find or Sweetheart who said, “Oh look at the cute little pickaninny.” O’Connor may have written the words in the early 50s, but I heard them in the 70s from my own grandmother. Sweetheart had a habit of using the N word which was never watered down such as negro or colored. I loved her but had trouble figuring out why the obvious character flaw in her otherwise pleasant self.

All my grandparents were openly racist, yet my mother and father rejected their beliefs by buying music by Fats Domino. Sounds silly, but this was a major deal. White people were supposed to buy white music and black people were supposed to buy black music. Or, at least that is how the world turned in the South.

I approached the situation a little differently, I merely listened. Ns are dumb. Ns are lazy. Ns are dirty. As I became older, each one of the statements was debunked by my friend, Kenneth Moore. Our dads played tennis together, so we learned early, get lost. (Can you say ball girl?) Kenneth and I were the same age and went to the same schools. He always made better grades than me, was early to all classes, and looked like a model from the Sears catalog. I may have been white, but I was the N my grandparents warned me about, not him.

In O’Connor’s time, N occurred in everyday conversation. In present times it is a dirty word. Sweetheart, if you are reading this, I love you! But, say that word again and I’m gettin’ the soap.




Note: Fats Domino's mixed media portrait by Tami Ellis.

The Mis-Education of Maggie

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2007/07/mis-education-of-maggie.html

RIP Mr. Marlette

Doug Marlette

1949-2007

Pulitzer Prize Winner (1988)

Non-Fiction

In Your Face: A Cartoonist at Work (1991)

Fiction

The Bridge (2001)

The Magic Time (2006)

Sage from Musings had some very nice things to say, plus a review.

RIP Mr. Marlette

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2007/07/rip-mr-marlette.html

Lucky Number 13!

Friday the 13th was a lucky day for one Southern Reading Challenge participant.

My husband was quick with the number this time.

And the winner is Tiffany!

She has read one book so far for the challenge, taking on Deliverance by James Dickey. She begins, "'The whole land was very tense.' An appropriate first sentence for a very tense book." Read more...

Congratulations Tiffany and look for those khans in the mail!

Lucky Number 13!

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2007/07/lucky-number-13.html

I'm a Rockin' Thinker!

You Love Me!

You Really Do!

Thank YEW Nancy at Bookfoolery and Babble, Iliana at Bookgirl's Nightstand, and Gentle Reader at Shelf Life for the Rockin' Girl Blogger Award!

Thank YEW Terry at Hill Country of Monroe County, MS, and Lisa at Books. Lists. Life. for the Thinking Blogger Award!

I'm a Rockin' Thinker!

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2007/07/im-rockin-thinker.html

The God-Haunted South

Bookpage calls him the author of, "God-Haunted Southern Literature." Wow, that's pretty amazing praise, and why haven't I heard of him?!? Who? Haven't heard of whom? Charles Martin!

Literary Feline had this to say about When Crickets Cry, "I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. I love the title itself, and the story is not only heartbreaking but also heartwarming. It is a novel most of all of love and friendship, but also of letting go, making sacrifices, redemption, and of having hope." Read more...

Other books by Christian author Charles Martin include:

Chasing Fireflies

Maggie

Wrapped in Rain

The Dead Don't Dance

The God-Haunted South

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2007/07/god-haunted-south.html

Three Perils of Reading!

In the library world, there are individuals who we consider “rock stars” of the profession. One such “rock star” is a petite librarian named Nancy Pearl. Mrs. Pearl is the model for the librarian action figure, “with the amazing push-button shushing action.” In person, she looks exactly like the Barbie size doll, complete with loafers and glasses.

At a recent conference, I was lucky enough to hear her speak on reading. She surprised us by giving three perils of reading. Yes, my friends, there are three dangers that occur to people who read too much. And, you thought reading was all good.

First peril occurs when one encounters vocabulary he may not know how to pronounce. She admitted for years she pronounced misled as missile-d. Other examples include the words awry and segue. I myself tried to use segway in an article. The spell-check underlined it quick, thus I used transition instead. It wasn’t until writing this that the light bulb came on.

Second peril occurs when one is too lazy to define a word so they surmise the meaning from context. Pearl recalled her younger days spent reading the Anne of Green Gables series. At her tender age, the dying of little Ruby was extremely traumatic, for she couldn’t figure out who or what ate her or how she ate herself. You see little Ruby died of “consumption.”

The last peril is the most dangerous of all. It occurs when one confuses stories they have read with their actual life. It happened to Pearl a few months earlier. While on the phone with her daughter, she started telling her about a yellow prom dress she wore to the dance. She went into elaborate detail recounting the high collar, lace arms, and fancy petticoat. As she continued describing her date, Mike, he daughter stopped her. “Mom, you didn’t go to the prom!” With worry in her voice, she told her mom she sounded like a chapter in Double Date by Rosamond Du Jardin.

Aagh! This is my fate for sure. I can see myself telling tales to the nursing home staff and them thinking, “Ah, she just read it in a book.” How will they know the real me from the written me? I really skipped a Starduster on the calm waters of Old Hickory Lake thanks to Michael Torraca. I didn’t really land a DC3 in the mountains during icing conditions with only car lights as my guide thanks to Ernest K. Ganns. Such is life, and such is life in books.

Three Perils of Reading!

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2007/07/three-perils-of-reading.html

How Do You Pronounce Cairo?

Karo Pecan Pie

3 large eggs

1/2 cup sugar

1 cup Karo (dark OR light)

1/4 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons oleo

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup pecans, chopped

Beat eggs throughly, add sugar, Karo, melted oleo, salt, and vanillia. Mix well. In unbaked 9 inch pie shell, spread pecans on bottom and poor mixture over them. Bake at 350 degrees until firm - 30 minutes.

~From the ladies of Como, Mississippi

How Do You Pronounce Cairo?

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2007/07/how-do-you-pronounce-cairo.html

How Do You Pronounce Pecan?

Hi Mike!

Congratulations Ellamac at McCallaCamellia!
You're our new weekly winner!

How Do You Pronounce Pecan?

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2007/07/how-do-you-pronounce-pecan.html

Born Today in 1951...

A bouncing "rough south" boy, Larry Brown, in Oxford, Mississippi!

Fiction:
Facing the Music (Short stories, 1988)
Dirty Work (1989)
Big Bad Love (Short stories, 1990)
Joe (1991)
Father and Son (1996)
Fay (2000)
The Rabbit Factory (2003)
A Miracle of Catfish (2007)

Nonfiction:
On Fire (1993)
Billy Ray’s Farm: Essays (2001)

Born Today in 1951...

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2007/07/born-today-in-1951.html

Make Mine a Pulitzer

As a librarian, it is important to keep reading. Sounds silly to have to write that, but a lot of people in my profession do not keep reading. They settle into their professional magazines or read just their favorite authors and call it, ENOUGH.

But, what if said librarian is cornered by a patron that wants to discuss books? EGADs!

Did you know, in our area, librarians are hiring more managers than actual certified librarians. As a matter of fact, when I started working as a librarian I was hired with a BS in aerospace. I went back to school in the fall of 2002 to get that coveted Masters in Library and Information Science; otherwise, I would have been just another manager, too.

I have a little story that illustrates the need to keep reading. One of my librarian friends was forcibly removed from her beloved job. The old toss the fat money maker and replace with a cheaper younger version scenario, was this person's fate. Well, the younger version wasn't a reader, um, at all.

The local book club found out by asking two little questions. "Did you enjoy this month's book?"

"No ma'am. Sorry. I didn't have time to read it."

"Okay, tell us what was the last book you read."

She was fishing for types of books their new librarian might enjoy, when he replied, "Um, I haven't read anything lately, but I did listen to Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil a couple of years ago."

How embarrassing for this young man, to lose all credibility and in front of key library users in the community.

I don't want to ever be that Yahoo! This is why I join challenges. Yes, I read the pro-mags and favorite authors, too, but challenges keep me reading different books. Books I know I will enjoy, but just haven't read yet, and isn't that the key-keep reading.

This is a list of Pulitzer Prize Winners I haven't read yet, but will be reading in the next 12 months for the Book Awards Reading Challenge.

2006 - March - Geraldine Brooks

2005 - Gilead - Marilynne Robinson

2004 - The Known World

- Edward P. Jones

2003 - Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides

2001 - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

- Michael Chabon

1995 - The Stone Diaries

- Carol Shields

1990 - The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love - Oscar Hijuelos

1988 - Beloved - Toni Morrison

1987 - A Summons to Memphis

- Peter Taylor

1986 - Lonesome Dove

- Larry McMurtry

1983 - The Color Purple

- Alice Walker

1980 - The Executioner's Song - Norman Mailer

1968 - The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron

1958 - A Death in the Family - James Agee

1952 - The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk

1947 - All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren

1942 - In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow

1940 - The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

1939 - The Yearling - Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

1932 - The Good Earth - Pearl S. Buck

1928 - The Bridge of San Luis Rey - Thornton Wilder

1925 - So Big - Edna Ferber

Make Mine a Pulitzer

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2007/07/make-mine-pulitzer.html

Happy Fourth!

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

~Mark Twain
Following the Equator (1897)

Happy Fourth!

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2007/07/happy-fourth.html

The Big Bam (copy)

Serendipity is the art of finding something meaningful amid looking for something else; or at least, that is how I define it. It happened last week while perusing the Atlanta airport books. I was in the mood for Flannery O’Connor, a native Georgian, when I ran across his face. Who? None other than, "the Sultan of Swat, The Caliph of Clout, The Wizard of Whack, the Rajah of Rap, the Wazir of Wham, the Mammoth of Maul, the Maharajah of Mash, the Bambino. The Bam. The Big Bam." Yes, staring me in the face was The Big Bam by Leigh Montville.

Skipping down the concourse and plopping into a seat next to hubby, I smile as I reveal my manly book. Ah, I can see in his eyes, he is impressed with my decision. He then tells me he has tickets to watch the Yankees at Yankee Stadium while in New York. He wants to see a game in the "House that Ruth Built" before they move across the street.

"Babe Ruth played for the Yankees and they built a stadium for him?"

Yes, yes. Laugh away. It is a good thing this book called out to me! I obviously know nothing of the game of baseball. Maybe Babe’s ghost placed it in my ignorant hands to keep me from further embarrassing myself.

The Babe’s early life is a mystery and author Montville calls it the fog. The book opens with father, George Herman Ruth, escorting his seven year old son to St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys. The school housed orphans, truants, and delinquents; for some reason, a place Mr. Ruth thought better than his home above the family bar. Reasons are in the fog.

It is at school Ruth learned how to pitch, hit, and field a baseball. At the age of 18, a scout for the Baltimore Orioles, Jack Dunn, stopped in for a look-see. He noticed as the large boy came to bat, "the right fielder moved so far back that he left the playing field, crossed a path, and stood in the next field, where another game was taking place." Next thing, the ball careened over the same fielder’s head.

In the early 1900s, a home run was seen as a fluke, as unexpected as an ace in golf. The book states, "The balls were not made for home runs...scuffed up, roughed up, spit upon, and used for as many as 100 pitches in a game. The bats, heavy and thick through the handle, were not made for home runs. The mind was not made for home runs." Here, standing in front of Jack Dunn, was a miracle.

For what ever reason, I’m glad I finally met Babe Ruth. Montville summed it up nicely, "He will be crude and rude and kind and approachable, sometimes all in the same ten minutes, and it all will be fine. He will be credited with miracles. Fine."

The Big Bam (copy)

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2007/07/big-bam-copy.html

Today in History

"on July 2, 1964, President Johnson signed it (Civil Rights Act) into law."

What a coincidence that Eva from A Striped Armchair posted a review for the Southern Reading Challenge on a book set in 1964's South Carolina which uses the Civil Rights passage as a catalyst for change. One blogger posted that the present date coincides with the passage of that law! Eva claims Secret Life of Bees left her with "that satisfied reader's glow." Read more...

Debi from Nothing of Importance stated, "It's not often that I stumble upon a book that I fall so deeply in love with...". Read more...

Nymeth from Things Mean a Lot says, "There are many reasons why I loved this book. The writing itself, for starters, is both simple and beautiful, and, above all, it feels very genuine." Read more...

Today in History

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2007/07/today-in-history-work-in-progress.html

Congratulations, Carol!

You are our new Pecan Winner!

(That's Carol without Blog!)

Yippee!

Normally, I ask my husband for a number between 1-53, which he hollars with great exuberance; alas, he is at work and I am alone to do the deed. I'm watching cable and decided it would be fair to use the channel as my number. I'm watching WKNO's What's Killing Stellar Sea Lions on channel 10 and am very sad. So, through bittersweet tears I congratulate Carol! :D

Congratulations, Carol!

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2007/07/congratulations-carol.html