The Southern Challenge

Good things come in threes, right? I loved last year’s Southern Challenge (and I’d recommend all three of my reads, for different reasons: if you’re curious, use the little ‘categories’ tab on your right to select “Southern Reading Challenge”), so I was hoping Maggie would decide to host it again. And guess what, she has! It begins on the 15th and ends August 15th: participants choose three books by southern writers set in the south. Last year, Maggie did a ton of posts in April to provide resources, so if you’re not sure where to start, go check out her blog archives!

As for me, I have a bit more than three….so I think I’m going to list my possibilities by category and read at least one book from each category.
Those Southern Classics: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee would be a reread for me, but I’ve been missing Scout and Jem and Dill lately, so I can’t leave them off (P.S.: if anyone hasn’t read this book, they should join this challenge just to read it. Seriously.). Then there’s William Faulkner…I’ve enjoyed the couple of short stories I’ve read by him, but I tried reading The Sound and the Fury when I was 14 and only made it about twenty pages in. This year, I might try out The Wild Palms (alt. titled If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem), or if I go the wimpy route I’ll grab one of his short story collections. I’ve had my eye on Flannery O’Connor, but it’s her letters that are calling to me more than her fiction! Last year, Jenclair read The Habit of Being: Letters, and I just found out my library has it. I doubt I’ll be able to resist, even if it does weigh in at over 500 pages. I mooched Eudora Welty’s Collected Short Stories after loving Delta Wedding, so you can expect a few of those to show up during Short Story Sundays. Finally, a Texan/Southern author I hadn’t heard of, but considering her birth year (1890), I think she counts as a classic: Katherine Anne Porter. She wrote Ship of Fools, which I have heard of, but it isn’t set in the south. However, Pale Horse, Pale Rider (a collection of three ‘novellas,’ even though Porter didn’t like that word) and her Collected Short Stories are both sitting on my library’s shelves, just tempting me.

The African American Southern Experience: I considered not including this category, because I’m not positive it’s PC, but since I specifically researched some African American lit, it seems a bit dishonest to pretend otherwise. So, that being said, I’m looking at two classics that I ought to have read but haven’t: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (set in Florida, which is a fringe Southern state) and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (an “autobiography as literature”). Then there’s The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, actually a novel by Ernest Gaines (confused yet?). A 110-year-old African American woman tells stories of her life in rural Louisana, and in so doing covers American Southern history from the early 1860s to the early 1960s.

Finally, Contemporary Southern Books: The Mercy of Thin Air by Ronlyn Domingue: I’ve been coveting this book since I heard about it, since it combines so many of my favourite things: New Orleans, the 1920s, and ghosts. So when I scored it on bookmooch yesterday, I almost whooped with delight. :D Between Georgia by Joshilyn Jackson: I enjoyed her first book, Gods in Alabama, and my library as this on CD, which could be fun. Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen: I’ve heard lots of great things around the blogsophere about this magical realist Southern novel, and my library has quite a few copies, so I just might have to check it out. :) Don’t worry-I have a couple contemporary male authors as well! First there’s Peter Taylor: his novel A Summons to Memphis sounds really good (I read a review comparing him to Henry James! I love James in novel form! And I’ve been to Memphis twice!), as does his short story collection The Old Forest. Then there’s Walker Percy: my library has The Moviegoer on CD and Nymeth recommended it. And I pretty much listen to Nymeth in everything she says. :)

I’ll also be reading a couple Southern books for other challenges: Summer Crossing by Truman Capote and “The Ballad and the Sad Cafe” by Carson McCuller.

Now you know all of my possibilities! If people are looking for recommendations, in addition to Cane River, Delta Wedding, and The Secret Life of Bees (those were my three reads last year), I’d throw in a good word for To Kill A Mockingbird (um, have you caught on to the fact that you need to read this?), any of Tennessee Williams’ plays (and definitely check out the movies, especially the ones with Paul Newman, especially Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), The Watermelon King by Daniel Wallace (Nymeth recommended this one too, and I completely second it-just an awesome, awesome-and short-book), Looking for Alaska (a YA coming-of-age boarding school story set in Alabama), Lost Souls by Lisa Jackson (this one was a fun, escapist thriller set at a Catholic college in Baton Rouge involving wanna-be vampires…not the soul-shattering literature that Harper Lee and Daniel Wallace offer, but an entertaining way to spend a few hours), and The Witching Hour by Anne Rice (ok, this one isn’t so fluffy, and is set in large part in New Orleans and deals with witches…it has some steamy scenes in it, just in case you’ve never heard of Anne Rice, lol).