Time to talk about Xmas present books. For my sister I got Jen Lancaster's two semi-memoirs, Bitter is the New Black, and Bright Lights Big Ass. Funny! She is working on a new book about losing weight which I will buy as soon as it comes out. Jen's website is "Jennsylvania".

Also, if you haven't gotten it yet "Being Dead is No Excuse" a nonfiction book on throwing the proper Southern funeral. Chapter 3 or so is 'The Methodist Ladies vs. the Episcopal Ladies'.

Also, now that I'm reminded of Southern ladies; anything by Florence King.

Fine First Novel: "Petropolis" by Anya Ulinich. Russian teenager goes to art school, gives up baby for adoption, lands in Phoenix Arizona as mail-order bride.

Also; Mystery novels from modern China, Xiaolong Qiu's "Case of Two Cities" and "When Red Is Black". A guy I work with who lived in China for a while recommended these; as he pointed out, if you really want the flavor of a country, read its mystery novels.

On a similar note; Passport to Crime, from Ellery Queen magazine. A collection of mystery stories from around the world.

Re Modern Southern Gothic; George Saunders, George Singleton, Daniel Woodrell. Big three online mags (IMHO) are Mississippi Review, StorySouth and Dead Mule.

Just finished "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Diaz ; it lives up to its publicity. Didn't know all that stuff about Porfirio Robirosa!! thought he was just a playboy/gigolo. Made his relationship with Zsa Zsa look clean by comparison.

Another, possibly better America-is-the-melting-pot author; Sigrid Nunez, author of "The Last of Her Kind" (title is taken from the author's introduction to Middlemarch); the autobiographical "A Feather on the Breath of God"; and "for Rouenna", about the army nurses in Vietnam.

A new policy here says we have to charge two dollars for each ILL now, starting October 1; so naturally I gave our ILL dept a stack of requests dated 9/30/07. There was a list on Listmania Amazon titled Funniest Books by Brits, must be a good bet. Actually $2.00 doesn't nearly cover our cost, it's actually more like $12.00 - 18.00 every time.

The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy, also anything by Dawn Powell. Pre-feminist but still after WWII, still good.

Another couple of small non-fiction books that are rather similar to each other: Acquainted with the Night, by Christopher Dewdney, about night-time; and Latitude Zero, by Gianni Guadalupi, which follows the equator around the world and through history. Both good for small-dose history and anecdotes.

Another one a little heavier; The Island of the Color-Blind by Oliver Sacks. Offbeat and interesting.

Birdwatching books have had a rise in popularity recently, or at least books about birdwatching. "Two Redtails in Love" got a lot of attention, so did "Club George", both New York-centric. A better one is "The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature and Fowl Obsession", by Mark Obmascik, about a man trying to see every species of bird on the North American continent in one year. Birders can do a big year for almost any size area, township, county, state, etc., but this is the American Birding Assn's big contest. This story reads like what a friend of mine would call " a regular book", meaning a thriller, I guess.

Jack Pendarvis, mentioned earlier in this blog as the author of "The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure", has a new book of short stories coming out, "Your Body is Changing". Put it on the list.

David Mamet, the playwright, wrote a book I am really enjoying called "Bambi vs. Godzilla; on the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business". Doesn't have the slow-dialogue quality of his plays, moves right along.

In non-fiction: am reading a book now strongly recommended to me by an artist called "The Judgement of Paris; the revolutionary decade that gave the world Impressionism." Read this one book and be culturally literate. Seriously it is a good, well written and well-paced, interesting book.

Ben May Main Library has been open for 6 weeks now -- Summer Library Program ended last Saturday. Expect more postings from now on. Yaaay!

Been moving back to Old Main Library, now renovated expanded and named Ben May Main, so havent had a lot of time to post. Will be back soon with posts about nonfiction.

To add my two cent's worth to the Tuscaloosa Knights thing - even if it were true, You Can't Copyright A Plot!! Daphne du Maurier got dragged into court several times many years ago over 'Rebecca'. Also, doesn't anybody remember 'Roots', and how that turned out?

New title in Southern/Ozark Gothic; Twilight, by William Gay, author of Provinces of the Night and the short story collection I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down.

Also new, very good though unfinished; "A Miracle of Catfish: a novel in progress" by Larry Brown. The 2/3 he finished before he died are very very good. His notes & outline for the rest of the book make you wish he'd stayed with us longer even more.

Excellent new horror title: Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill. First novel, many previous short stories. Joe Hill is the son of horrormeister Stephen King; as is not often the case, the son seems to have inherited his father's talent.

Another blast from the past - a 1950's book with a contemporary tone - Hamilton Basso's "The View from Pompey's Head."

Also, two books recently out-- Margaret Atwoods "Moral Disorders", (short stories), and "Him, Her, Him Again, The End of Him" by Patricia Marx, which I have to keep checking to make sure it's not (early) Margaret Atwood, or even Margaret Drabble. Find and read.

How could I forget? On my list of Funniest Books, Chip Kidd's "Cheese Monkeys" - actually owned by MPL too. Another contender - Judith Martin, who writes the Miss Manners books, wrote a novel called "Gilbert", about the eighties and the Reagan administration.