It’s AUGUST, which means we are officially in count down mode as we
prepare for the 2018 Mississippi Book Festival. Like last year, we asked our
authors to answer a few questions about our state’s literary and cultural
legacy. This is the first of three blogs posts in which we share their
responses. Read below to find out their book recommendations, organizational
tips, and which books they think should be required by every citizen in the
state. For a full list of panelists attending the Festival and the schedule of
events, click here.
What
are you reading right now?
Pearl Amelia McHaney, editor of Occasions:
Selected Writings, Eudora Welty as Photographer, and A Writer's Eye: Collected Book Reviews, and
author of A Tyrannous Eye: Eudora Welty's Nonfiction and Photographs: “I’m reading Ernest Hemingway’s
letters (volumes 1–4 of a projected 17!), Baracoon: The
Story of the Last ‘Black Cargo’ by
Zora Neale Hurston and Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Pafford
Miller. The Darkest Child by Delores Phillips, The Opposite of Everyone
by Joshilyn Jackson, and American Sonnets for My Past and Future
Assassin by Terrance Hayes are waiting impatiently on the table to be
read next. (It’s summer when I try to read three books a week! I have
grandchildren and teach Children’s and Young Adult Literature, so I can sneak
in a YA or picture book to meet my quota—Reminds me, I am eager to meet Kenneth and Sarah Jane Wright—Lola Dutch
is a HUGE favorite of my grands!)”
William
Dunlap, author of Dunlap: “On my nightstand are an
amalgam of things—High Cotton: Four Seasons in the Mississippi Delta by Gerard
Helferich, a University Press of Mississippi publication; a first-edition
Random house copy of William Faulkner‘s The Reivers; Just Kids by Patti Smith;
and a gift from the late Ron Bourn, Harry G. Frankfurt’s slim little volume
called On Bullshit.
And in the studio I am listening to Neil
Sheehan’s A Bright and Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam.”
Malcolm White,
author of The Artful Evolution of Hal & Mal’s: “Country Dark and The
Best Cook in the World: Tales from My Momma's Table.”
Ginger Williams Cook,
illustrator of The Artful Evolution of Hal & Mal’s: “I have really been delving into the Graphic Novel
section of the Mississippi Library Commission. Particularly Malcolm
X: A Graphic Biography, A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge
by Josh Neufeld, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, and A Year Without Mom by
Dasha Tolstikova.”
Lisa Corrigan, author of Prison Power: How Prison Influenced the Movement for Black Liberation: “Right now I'm reading Calvin L.
Warren's book, Ontological
Terror: Blackness, Nihilism and Emancipation. It's WONDERFUL for those
who like to read philosophy. He examines the paradoxical notion of the ‘free
Negro’ after emancipation to understand how public culture is organized around
white Being.”
Timothy T. Isbell, author of The Mississippi Gulf Coast, Gettysburg: Sentinels of Stone, Shiloh and Corinth: Sentinels of Stone,
and Vicksburg: Sentinels of Stone: “I’m usually a multi-book reader. I am currently reading Delta Epiphany: Robert F. Kennedy in Mississippi by Ellen Meacham and Medgar Evers: Mississippi Martyr by Michael Vinson Williams. My wife
and son gave me a first edition of All the
President’s Men for Father’s Day. That is next on my need to read list.”
Richard D. deShazo, MD, MACP, editor of The Racial Divide in American Medicine: Black Physicians and the Struggle for Justice in Health Care: “The Pope Who Would Be King: The
Exile of Pius IX and the Emergence of Modern Europe.”
Ellen B. Meacham, author of Delta Epiphany: Robert F. Kennedy in Mississippi: “Anna Karenina. It’s interesting how
one’s perspective changes at different times of life. When I first read it in
my early twenties, my heart practically throbbed in sympathy with poor Anna.
Now I just want to tell her to snap out of it. Levin’s story interests me much
more now. Still an amazing piece of literature, though.”
David G. Sansing, author of A History of the Mississippi Governor's Mansion, Making Haste Slowly: The Troubled History of Higher Education in Mississippi, and The University of Mississippi: A Sesquicentennial History: “When William Faulkner was asked what he was
reading, he answered by saying, ‘I don’t have time to read books, I’m too busy
writing books.’ My answer is that I am taking it easy and waiting for Ole Miss
football season to start.”
Anne Farris Rosen, editor of Deep South Dispatch: Memoir of a Civil Rights Journalist: “Beneath a Ruthless Sun: A True Story
of Violence, Race, and Justice Lost and Found by Gilbert King and Terrains
of the Heart and Other Essays on Home by Willie Morris, which I can't
believe I have not read until now.”
Susan Cushman,
editor of Southern Writers on Writing: “A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles and Little Fires Everywhere by
Celeste Ng. (I often read more than one book at a time.)”
John Floyd, contributor to Southern Writers on Writing: “The Outsider by Stephen King.”
Catherine Egley Waggoner, coauthor
of Realizing Our Place: Real Southern Women in a Mythologized Land: “Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward,
now, and then her Sing, Unburied, Sing before arriving in Mississippi. I'm
hoping to get both signed.”
How do you organize your bookshelf?
Pearl Amelia McHaney: “Alphabetically
in the study and in unfortunately random stacks and on shelves throughout the
house. My son-in-law once blew a horn to
announce that he had found an empty shelf in one of the dozens of bookcases.”
Malcolm White: “Fiction and non-,
alphabetically, mostly. Then I have a special area for signed first and signed
friends.”
Ginger Williams Cook: “My
collection of art books and graphic novels are visual inspiration for me and my
bookshelves are the first thing I see when I walk into my studio. The books are
aesthetically arranged in smaller stacks on two shelves with my larger art
history books on the bottom shelves. I spend a lot of time looking through my
books so it changes up monthly.”
Timothy T. Isbell: “I probably have more than 350 books in my house. They are
usually organized by subject such as photography, civil rights, Civil War, past
presidents, history and historic novels. When I need a break from all my
history reading, I usually read the novels of Dan Brown, Jeff Shaara, John
Grisham, Tom Clancy and others.”
Richard D. deShazo: “By
topic. For instance, biographies, novels, etc., and then alphabetical by author
or subject.”
Ellen B. Meacham: “Sigh. I
am perpetually book-rich and bookshelf-poor, so I just add them carefully while
hoping they won’t be the tome that finally breaks the shelf’s back.”
David G. Sansing: “I organize
my book shelf the best I can, which is not very good.”
Susan Cushman: “I have 7
bookcases, with 4 – 8 shelves on each. Some of them are organized by genre
(poetry, memoir, fiction, etc.). Others are organized by ‘to be read’ and ‘recently
read.’”
What book should be required reading for everyone in the state of Mississippi?
Pearl Amelia McHaney: “Can I
name two? White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol
Anderson (non-fiction) and The Vain Conversation by Anthony
Grooms (fiction). Neither is specifically Mississippi, but I believe both are
essential for learning to ask questions that can help us to accept the past as
we endeavor to be better human beings.”
William Dunlap: “It’s hard
to imagine anyone in Mississippi not reading Malcolm Cowley’s Portable
Faulkner and Willie Morris’s North Toward Home, but that’s just
me. I don’t care what they read just so they read something.”
Timothy T. Isbell: “I could suggest
so many. If I could only have one, it would probably be Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil
War Era by James McPherson.”
Richard D. deShazo: “Mine.
(HA!)”
Ellen B. Meacham: “I can’t
choose one, but Coming of Age in Mississippi, North Toward Home, and Men
We Reaped, would be a great trilogy of books that would go a long way
toward better understanding.”
David G. Sansing: “I wish every
Mississippian would read Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! at least two or
three times, in no more than one of two sittings. Faulkner can’t be read in
spurts.”
Susan Cushman: “I can't
choose just one! A few ideas: Southern Writers on Writing, To Kill a
Mockingbird, A Time to Kill.”
John Floyd: “To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper
Lee (and yes, I realize it’s not set in Mississippi).”
Catherine Egley Waggoner: “Oh,
there are so many to be named, but one has really stood out in terms of
shaping my thinking about women in the South: Killers of the Dream by
Lillian Smith (1949).”
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