46. Open Season by Linda Howard

listened to Audio - Chirp
read by Deborah Hazlett
Unabridged audio (8:47)
2001 Pocket Books
320 pgs.
Adult romance with a bit of mystery....fun!
Finished 5/17/2019
Goodreads rating:  4.01 - 17,200
My rating: 4
Setting: 2001 Alabama

First line/s:  from prologue:  "Carmela nervously clutched the burlap bag that heeld her other dress, some water, and a small package of food she had been able to save for the trip north, across the border."
from Chapter 1:  " 'Daisy, breakfast is ready!' "

My comments:  This book was a riot!  I snickered and guffawed all the way through it.  It was a mystery and it was a romance (quite sexy, actually, for its 2001 copyright) and it was a makeover story, all rolled into one...and it was loads of fun.  The narrator, Deborah Hazlett, used just the right touch of southern/Alabaman accent to really pull the whole thing off.  Greatly enjoyed it!

Goodreads synopsis:  On her thirty-fourth birthday, Daisy Minor decides to make over her entire life. The small-town librarian has had it with her boring clothes, her ordinary looks, and nearly a decade without so much as a date. It's time to get a life—and a sex life. The perennial good girl, Daisy transforms herself into a party girl extraordinaire—dancing the night away at clubs, laughing and flirting with abandon—and she's declared open season for manhunting. But her free-spirited fun turns to shattering danger when she witnesses something she shouldn't—and becomes the target of a killer. Now, before she can meet the one man who can share her life, first she may need him to save it.     
          Seamlessly blending heart-pounding romance and breathless intrigue, Linda Howard delivers a stylish and provocative novel that absolutely defies readers to put it down.

27. The Almost Sisters by Joshilyn Jackson

listened to on Audible
read by the author, and boy do I love to hear her read her work!
2017 William Morris
342 pgs.
Adult CRF
Finished 3/24/18
Goodreads rating:  4.02 - 9552 ratings
My rating: 5 !!!
Contemporary small-town Alabama

First line/s:  "Superheroes have always been Leia Burch Briggs's weakness.  One tequila-soaked at a comic-book convention, the usually level-headed graphic novel artist is swept off her barstool by a handsome and anonymous Batman.  She remembers that he was tall, black, and an excellent French kisser - but not much else."

My comments:  This was a fabulous book.  Beautiful, fluent, often comical writing.  One heckuva story.  I listened to the author reading this herself and it was like a special gift.  I've read a lot of good books recently, but this one will go down as the best I've read in a long time.

Goodreads synopsis: With empathy, grace, humor, and piercing insight, the author of Gods in Alabama pens a powerful, emotionally resonant novel of the South that confronts the truth about privilege, family, and the distinctions between perception and reality - the stories we tell ourselves about our origins and who we really are.
          Superheroes have always been Leia Birch Briggs' weakness. One tequila-soaked night at a comics convention, the usually level-headed graphic novelist is swept off her barstool by a handsome and anonymous Batman. 
          It turns out the caped crusader has left her with more than just a nice, fuzzy memory. She's having a baby boy - an unexpected but not unhappy development in the thirty-eight year-old's life. But before Leia can break the news of her impending single-motherhood (including the fact that her baby is biracial) to her conventional, Southern family, her step-sister Rachel's marriage implodes. Worse, she learns her beloved ninety-year-old grandmother, Birchie, is losing her mind, and she's been hiding her dementia with the help of Wattie, her best friend since girlhood.
          Leia returns to Alabama to put her grandmother's affairs in order, clean out the big Victorian that has been in the Birch family for generations, and tell her family that she's pregnant. Yet just when Leia thinks she's got it all under control, she learns that illness is not the only thing Birchie's been hiding. Tucked in the attic is a dangerous secret with roots that reach all the way back to the Civil War. Its exposure threatens the family's freedom and future, and it will change everything about how Leia sees herself and her sister, her son and his missing father, and the world she thinks she knows.

MOVIE - Selma

PG-13 (2:07)

Wide release 1/9/2015

Monday 1/12/15 at El Con with Sheila and Gwen

RT Critic:  99  Audience:  87

Cag:  5/Liked it more-than a lot, and it was beautifully crafted

Directed by Ava DuVernay

Paramount Pictures

Based on a true event

David Oyelowo, Tom Wilkinson, 

My comments:  Wow.  This is not just any old story...this is an incredibly important piece of history.  This happened when I was a freshman in high school in a suburb of Boston, and I don't recall knowing about it at the time.  Imagine!  What a wonderful way to learn about the details of Martin Luther King's brilliance, determination, and sensitivity. The acting, particularly by David Oyelowo, was amazing.  His portrayal of MLK was ... mesmerizing.  (And to think I probably wouldn't have gone to see this if it hadn't been chosen by Sheila as our monthly fare!)

RT Summary:  SELMA is the story of a movement. The film chronicles the tumultuous three-month period in 1965, when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led a dangerous campaign to secure equal voting rights in the face of violent opposition. The epic march from Selma to Montgomery culminated in President Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one of the most significant victories for the civil rights movement. Director Ava DuVernays SELMA tells the real story of how the revered leader and visionary Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (David Oyelowo) and his brothers and sisters in the movement prompted change that forever altered history,

Movie - Joyful Noise

Lots of laughs, with every subplot having a happy ending
Released 1-13-12
1-14-12 at ElCon with Dede
PG-13 (1:57)
RT Critic: 38% RT Audience: 76%
Liked it
Directed by Todd Graff
Warner Brothers Pictures
Queen Latifah, Dolly Parton

The young, male lead, Jeremy Jordan, just stole the show.  He was adorable, comfortable, and a wonderful singer.  Great music.  lots of fun.  Hairstyles galore...they must have had a huge budget for hairstylistss alone.  Every subplot had a happy ending, the entire movie ended with a "one year later" big bang.  A poignant scene (one of my favorite) with a minor tear shed, and lots of great musical entertainment.

Dolly Parton and Queen Latifah live in a tiny town in Alabama, and have always sung in the church choir together.  The choir competes in an area competition, but there's a choir from Detroit that always beats them.  Once again they are on their way to compete against them, when their director dies and Queen Latifah is named as the new choir director.  She and Parton have always been at odds, and since Parton had been married to the previous director, they are even more at odds now.

Parton's grandson, Randy, arrives and shakes things up...not only with Queen Latifah's 16-year old daughter, but with the choir.  He relates really well to Queen Latifah's autistic son, too.  Ups an downs (have to have conflict in a flic, right?) mixed in with some really nice music and you have two hours of excellent entertainment.

15. Gods in Alabama - Joshilyn Jackson

Audio read by Catherine Taber
Hachette Audio, 2005
7 unabridged cds
320 pgs.
Rating: 4.5

I love the reader of this audio book. Her southern accent is soft and lovely...a great pleasure to listen to, helping create the setting and the protagonist solidly.

Arlene Fleet left Possett, Alabama the minute she graduated from high school, vowing to never return. Actually, she'd made a deal with God that she would never again lie, fornicate, or return to Possett Alabama, if he would help her out by keeping the body of the guy she killed hidden forever. (!!) Ten years have passed, she's a doctoral candidate in Chicago with an African American boyfriend who's pretty special. She's kept in close touch with her family by phone, but whe hasn't seen them in those ten years. But now, she feels she must break all her promises and return home.

Filled with humor and great storytelling, this book was a gem. Arlene tells the story of the murder and its surrounding in flashbacks throughout the story, beautifully woven in. This was Joshilyn Jackson's first book, she's written three since: Between, Georgia; Backseat Saints, and the Girl Who Stopped Swimming. I've orderd Between, Georgia to see if it's even half as good as this one.

15. Leaving Gee's Bend - Irene Latham

For: Middle grades
G. P. Putnams, 2010
HC, $16.95
230 pages
Rating: 4

This is the story of three days in the life of 10-year old sharecropper Ludelphia Bennett in 1932. Ludelphia lives in Gee's Bend, Alabama, a tiny, extremely poor black community on the banks of the Alabama River, 40 miles by road from the closest town. Gee's Bend is now famous for the quilts that have been produced by the hands of the women who lived there through the depression and afterwards. I was lucky enough to see the exhibition of these quilts a year or two ago in a huge exhibition in San Francisco. The quilts and their stories have traveled - and are still traveling - all around the country. What incredible stories! I've thought many times of these people, of these quilts, of the lives in that community, even researching quilt shops and museums in Alabama for a future summer trip. So when this book came out, I reserved it at the library immediately.

Ludelphia has had nothing but rotten luck for much of her life, and it certainly continues in this story. One bad thing after another happens to her - but I can attest, this is the reality of our lives sometimes. For the first time in many years, Ludelphia's mother has delivered a healthy baby. However, she herself is dying from pneumonia and influenza. There's nothing that can be done. So Ludelphia sets off across the river to try and find a doctor. Along the way she bumps into one adventure after another. And along the way, she has the tangible comfort of stitching together used, torn-up pieces of cloth into a story quilt for her mother.

When the author, Irene Latham, first saw the quilts of Gee's Bend, she was as entranced by them and their stories as I was. But she had the gumption to research and travel and visit and talk to people and create this story. A story based on incidents that she researched. She has given the world - and the children of the world who have no idea about this section of our country in more segregated times than now - a glimpse into a sharecropper's life. I get it. The kid's will get it. There's good story telling going on here. I thank Irene Latham for writing this book.

View the book trailer on YouTube.

Here's a review of a reader that didn't like the book. If you read the reviews, make sure you read the comments after. There was much more bias on the reviewer's side than on the author's side (in my humble opinion). When a reviewer really bashes a book - a lengthy bashing - it's always interesting to see that reviewer's background - gives a little insight into where the left-field comments (or what appear to be left-field comments) are coming from. Talk about picking apart a book! She sure reads for a different reason than I do!

This was a good historical fiction which I will recommend to my students. However, I'm not sure the title is apt. I would ask my students to create a new title and tell me why they chose what they did. Takers, anyone?