A premier source for southern literature.

This month featuring
Truman Capote.
 

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j.c. robertson

reflections | updates | featured state

 -  A lot of exciting things happening in southern literature these days.  Too many good books to possibly read them all, so SLR has tried to narrow the selection with a few great recommendations and some reviews to help you decide for yourself. 

This month our reviewer Heather Leatherbury reviews a southern eccentric published by NewSouth Books called Deep Family  and we are excited about the work biographer Charles Shields has completed in his new biography of the ever-elusive Harper Lee. In this book, he addresses the questions that have we have all asked about the mysterious author and the making of her one great novel. 

Reading his book, got me thinking about the impact To Kill a Mockingbird had on me and then I began thinking about other books that had a strong impact on me. Books that somehow carved a special place in my heart and whose characters have stayed clear in my mind even as they years have passed.  Faulkner's As I Lay Dying  comes to mind first, then Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces  (I still can't look at a hotdog stand without thinking of that book). Joyce Carol Oates Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart is another novel that has stayed with me. 

I'm curious as to what books, southern or otherwise, have had the greatest impact on you, and/or how To Kill a Mockingbird impacted you.  Let me know, by e-mailing me at:
.

I look forward to your responses.

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New On the Site!        
 

• Interview with biographer, Charles Shields, author of Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee.
   

• Review of Deep Family: Four Centuries of American Originals and Southern Eccentrics, by Nicholas Read and Dallas Read.  Review written by Hannah Leatherbury
   

• Review of Carolyn Haines's southern novel, Penumbra.  Review written by Harriett Klausner
   

• Profile on Kentucky author, Bobbie Ann Mason
   

• Profile on up and coming southern writer, Darnell Arnoult

• Profile on southern writer,
  Dorothy Allison
   

• New selections in the Southern Breeze Bookstore and gift ideas
   

• New Selections on Culture and Cuisine, and Southern Travel in the Southern Breeze Bookstore
   

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State-of-the-Month ~ Alabama

Did you know? 

• Alabama introduced the Mardi Gras to the western world. The celebration is held on Shrove Tuesday, the day before Lent begins.
   

• Alabama workers built the first rocket to put humans on the moon.
   

• The word Alabama means tribal town in the Creek Indian language.
   

• The world's first Electric Trolley System was introduced in Montgomery in 1886.
   

• In 1902 Dr. Luther Leonidas Hill performed the first open heart surgery in the Western Hemisphere by suturing a stab wound in a young boy's heart. The surgery occurred in Montgomery.

Next issue, Georgia!  Thank you to everyone who voted. 

Editor’s Picks


by Charles Shields



 

Click to Read Review

Click to Read Review

Alabama Literature

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