Today’s treble T is top ten books with ____________ in the title, so I chose to go with South, or Southern. Given that I’m a librarian in a southern river town, I really should read more southern literature…
But first, the tease!
“See what happens when good people spend too much time around you? They kidnap their local sheriff.” (Battle Mountain, CJ Box)
The Square Deal Diner, in Sennebec Center, was owned by a plump and hyperactive widow named Dot Libby who also ran a motel and gift shop out on the highway, served as chair of the school board, organized the municipal Fourth of July picnic, and played the organ every Sunday morning at the Congregational Church. She was the mother of six (four living) and grandmother of twenty-two. I knew all this within five minutes of meeting her. Dot liked to talk. (The Poacher’s Son, Adam Doiron)
Modern societies exacted a far crueller toll on those who judged themselves to have failed. No longer could these unfortunates blame bad luck; no longer could they hope for redemption in a next world. It seemed as if there was only one person responsible and only one fitting response. As Durkheim showed, in perhaps the largest single indictment of modernity, suicide rates of advanced societies are up to ten times as high as those in traditional ones. Moderns aren’t only more in love with success, they are far more likely to kill themselves when they fail. (How to Survive the Modern World, Alain de Botton)
To be modern is to be robbed of any sustained capacity for calm. It is to be assailed at all times with news of every latest beheading, bank run, government fiasco, film premiere, mass shooting, guerrilla movement, nuclear mishap and sexual indiscretion to have occurred anywhere on the planet in the preceding minutes. We are always connected and always aware. The average twelve-year-old has access to 200 million more books than Shakespeare had. The last person who could theoretically have read everything died in around 1450. We know so much and understand so little. (Ibid)
Ten Books With “South/Southern” in the Title
(1) Away down South: A History of Southern Identity, James C Cobb
(2) The Burden of Southern History, C. Vann Woodward
(3) Don’t Get Above Your Raisin’: Country Music and the Southern Working Class, Bill Malone
(4) Drivin’ with the Devil: Southern Moonshine, Detroit Wheels, and the birth of NASCAR, Neil Thompson
(5) Travels with Foxfire: Peoples, Passions, and Practices from Southern Appalachia, Phil Hudgins
(6) Dixie’s Forgotten People: the South’s Poor Whites, Wayne Flynt
(7) The South Since the War, Sidney Andrews
That’s it for reviewed titles: now for a few I’ve not read:
(8) Deep South, Paul Theroux
(9) South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon Line to Discover the Soul of a Nation, Imani Perry
(10) Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide, Tony Horwitz
Reading Freely 
I haven’t read any of these, but they do sound interesting. I lived in the South for a year when I was a kid.
Thanks for stopping by earlier.
Interesting! Which part?
I just read Memorial Day by Geraldine Brooks, wife of Tony Horwitz, where she writes about his death and her grief. Did you enjoy his book? Oh wait, I see you haven’t read it yet. He was on his book tour for that book when he collapsed and died. Thank for visiting my blog.
I read his “Confederates in the Attic” a few years ago and liked it, so I imagine I’ll get something out of his other ones as well. 🙂
Good to know. I think his writing has been highly regarded. Are you a Southerner or just a reader of history?
Both a Southerner and an avid reader of history. I work as a local history librarian, in fact, in Alabama. 🙂
Wow. Very cool job! What’s the favorite history book you’ve read so far this year?
“Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin”. Grim, grim stuff — but eye-opening.
I’m afraid I’ll have to skip that one. I’m too worried about the politics on our day here in the US right now to enjoy reading a book about two dictators.
I don’t blame you! It was not happy reading.
These do sound like good reads!
Here is our <a href=”https://www.longandshortreviews.com/miscellaneous-musings/top-ten-tuesday-books-with-the-word-triangle-in-the-title/“>Top Ten Tuesday.</a>
I haven’t read these, but it’s a great topic. Interesting looking books.
I’ve had Spying on the South sitting on my shelf for months. It’s a book I really want to read. I think I’ve been so sad about the loss of the author that I couldn’t make myself get to it.