CHALLENGE: Southern Reading Challenge 2008 Wrapup

Goal: 3 books set in southern states, May 15 - August 15, 2008

The books I read:

Miss Julia Throws a Wedding by Ann B Ross (North Carolina)
Mudbound by Hillary Jordan (Mississippi)
Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (South Carolina)
Mama Makes Up Her Mind by Bailey White (Georgia)
The Awakening by Kate Chopin (Louisiana)
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines (Louisiana)

I had hope, but didn't get to:
Beach Music by Pat Conroy (South Carolina)
something by Mark Twain

I won the copy of Mudbound with my haiku from The Secret Life of Bees. Maggie had a couple other contests as well. Thanks for everything Maggie, it's been a blast.

BOOK: Mama Makes Up Her Mind by Bailey White

Mama Makes Up Her Mind by Bailey White

southern reading challenge 2008

I read Quite a Year for Plums by White last year, so when I saw this book at a used book sale I snapped it up. I've been picking at it slowly for the whole challenge. White is a grade one teacher who lives with her mother and she has written a series of essays about her life, some from when she was young, some about her mother (a real character!) and her colorful family. My favorite ones were about her grade one classroom, but the whole book is sweet and amusing. The lady who tamed the alligator, her mother who baths and sleeps on the front porch, the taxidermist who learns to cook. White has a pleasant and southern style, perfect for steamy afternoons reading on the front porch.

BOOK: Miss Julia Throws a Wedding by Ann B Ross

Miss Julia Throws a Wedding by Ann B Ross

Southern Reading Challenge, in a series

I hate giving much of a review for a book in a series because if you haven't read the first books, it makes no sense, and if you are in the series, finding out about a book too far ahead and ruin the plot of earlier books. So, for people who haven't read Miss Julia, I would say that the books get better as you go. The other characters around Julia, a southern widow whose life was turned up side down after her husband died, are more developed and their relationships with Julia more interesting. Julia continues to be torn between her Southern deportment and her need to control everyone and everything around her. I am enjoying this series, and look forward to the next one. They are the perfect summer fluff to start my summer vacation.

BOOK: Mudbound by Hillary Jordan

Mudbound by Hillary Jordan

Southern Reading Challenge; pub in '08

My son just said to me, "Didn't you just start that book yesterday?" Always the sign of a good book, one that I just race through. I've been reading some good reviews of this one in the Southern Reading Challenge. It's a classic southern novel, tackling racist life in Mississippi just after the second world war. Told from several different points of view, two families - one black and one white, living on the same farm, deal with a terrible tragedy. Several characters, all likable in their own ways, narrate the action.

There's Laura. A city woman who married late, she loves her older husband, but with the return of Henry's younger charming brother from the war, she is forced to examine the decisions she has made.

Henry has a strong sense of family obligation. He tries to do the right thing, but living in the Mississippi Delta, racist behaviour is ingrained. He takes his hateful father in to live with his wife and children, even though Pappy makes everyone miserable. Henry just wants to own land, and be a farmer, but loyalty and proper behaviour is important too.

Florence is the wife of Hap, the black tenant farmer. She's a midwife who comes to help out Laura in the cabin. Her son Ronsel has just returned from the war, and he isn't fitting in on the farm.

Ronsel was a decorated soldier in an all black battalion and is having a hard time adjusting to his subservient role in town after the freeing life he was able to live in Europe. He and Jamie bond over their war memories and are able to forget the race differences, much to the consternation of all the families.

And Jamie. He is really the catalyst for much of the tension - with his father, his brother, his sister-in-law, and with Ronsel. Pappy never narrates, but the level of hatred I felt as I read about him made him a character unable to narrate.

There is much tackled in this novel, but it all flows so seamlessly, that it wasn't until I tried to write a summary that I realized how complex this was. Life in Mississippi before Dr King and the civil rights movement, the returning soldiers from war who are unable to fit back into their former life, and the different types of love within a family are the main ideas I noticed.

Thanks to Maggie for sending me the book! I won it in the Haiku contest of the Southern Reading Challenge for my haiku from The Secret Life of Bees. And it's autographed.

CHALLENGE: Southern Reading Challenge Haiku

Maggie is having another contest over at the Southern Reading Challenge for an autographed copy of Mudbound by Hillary Jordan. Make up a haiku to go with a southern book you're reading for the summer challenge. Haikus are great poems with such solid rules, for science people like me who try to get creative.

from The Secret Life of Bees


run away, bees buzz
girl needs a momma, and love,
worship Black Mary

BOOK: The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Southern Reading Challenge, Herding Cats

I've seen this book listed on every list of books where people get to nominate their favorite books, and now I know why. Set in South Carolina in 1964, against the civil rights backdrop, it is the story of a young girl trying to find someone to care about her, a mother to love her. Lily runs away from her widowed father, T Ray, with her black housekeeper, as Lily is looking for some connection to her mother. She ends up at a pink house with three black bee keeping sisters in a neighbouring community. There she learns about bees, love, forgiveness, and mothers.

I would put this one on the short list of books worth reading again. The spiritual level of looking for forgiveness and finding love within yourself, as exemplified with the Black Madonna Mary was beautiful. The writing of Kidd to set the scene of South Carolina in the summer was breath taking, and I couldn't wait to immerse myself in her world every time I picked up the book. The voice of the narrator was wise and yet oh so human, with emotions of love and jealousy and anger. But the overall strength of the women was my favorite part, and an antidote after the past few books I've read. It made me proud to be a woman and see some amazing girl power.

Having said that about girl power, T Ray and his cranky foul moods and his behavior at the end made me really wonder about him. What was he like when Lily's mom met him? How did he deal with her abandonment and then death? What were his thoughts about Lily? He is a character that I would like to read this story of from his perspective. Did he analyze his actions and their ramifications afterward? I just feel there was a lot more to T Ray, and he could star in his own novel.

If you've written a review of this book, leave me a link in the comments.

CHALLENGE: Southern Reading Challenge 2008

3 Months, 3 Southern Authors, 3 Books

possible books:
Miss Julia Throws a Wedding by Ann B Ross

Beach Music by Pat Conroy (South Carolina)

Mudbound by Hillary Jordan (Mississippi)

Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (South Carolina)

something by Mark Twain

Mama Makes Up Her Mind by Bailey White

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines

Maggie hosts for the second year in a row. This was a very fun challenge last year, and I quite enjoyed it.