Red Stick Writer Book Club?

As I mentioned in my last post, I thought it would be interesting to make some comments here about books I’ve read or reviewed or am thinking about reading. I’d love to have some readers of this blog leave comments about books that are important to them. Of course, you understand that when I say readers it means you, right?

I’ve cut and pasted some information from my profile at "Smith Magazine," the home of the addictive six-word memoir. Two of the questions relate to the book discussions I hope we can have over time. The third one will give me the opportunity to expound on something I recently learned about my home state of Louisiana… the place I lived for my first 42 years. So, here are the questions and answers.

My favorite story of all time is:

Choosing one is impossible for me. To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee) has been with me the longest, but these books, each for a reason of its own, are equally loved: South of Broad (Pat Conroy), The Help (Kathryn Stockett), A Time to Kill (John Grisham), The Quiet Game and The Devil's Punchbowl (Greg Iles), and The Stand (Stephen King). Notice that the first six are very Southern. Come to think of it, the whole damn world went south in the seventh one.

Right now, I'm reading:

Right as Rain by Bev Marshall (Ms. Marshall is the author-in-residence at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond.)

If you were to throw up your hands in exasperation and yell "it's the story of my life," what would you be talking about?

I am a Kansan by residence, a Missourian by employment, a Louisianan by birth, a Southerner by the grace of God, and a Tybee Islander at heart. The exasperation... not enough hours livin' on Tybee time.

Okay, a lot of these writing or publishing sites where I have established a presence will include a cheesy question like that as a part of their profile questionnaire. Most of the time I sort of ignore them, but I decided in this case to mold a version of my own cheesy, though factual, description of myself into an answer to their question. Even though it does not relate to books or publishing, I included it to discuss my use Louisianan to describe myself as a person from Louisiana. Now that I have a book at Amazon and hold myself out as an author, I find that I am more conscientious about checking on the spelling of words when I am composing for public consumption. When I put this description of myself together, I was surprised when the spell check in Word said that Louisianian was a misspelling. So I went to Merriam-Webster to check it out. They were a little more forgiving in that they recognize Louisianian as a word but only as a secondary alternative to Louisianan. I clipped it out of their site for you to see:

Definition of LOUISIANA

Lou•i•si•an•an \-ˈa-nən\ adjective or noun

Lou•i•si•an•i•an \-ˈa-nē-ən, -ˈa-nyən\ adjective or noun

It just goes to show that you learn new stuff every damn day… even things about which you think you are already knowledgeable.

So now we get to see if you, my readers, are willing to spill some beans about what books you like, new books you think might be worthy reads, or whatever. I’m hoping to learn about some good reads in our exchange. And, if everyone is too shy to speak up, well I’ll just keep my monologue going. Come on, give it a try.