Fevre Dream by George R. R. Martin

This book was a vampire story with a difference: it does not center on a romantic relationship between a vampire and a human, but on a decidedly non-romantic partnership. If anything, the beautiful lady in this story is the riverboat they build together. I enjoyed the adventure, I enjoyed the friendship between Joshua York and Abner Marsh, and I loved the historical side of things (mostly set on steamboats plying the Mississippi river before the Civil War). Martin's writing feels fresh in the face of the way a lot of vampire stories go.

Dead Ever After by Charlaine Harris

This book has received a lot of criticism from fans ever since a copy appeared in Germany before its official publication date. I saw the writing on the wall in the last few books: Sookie was not going to end up with Eric. I can almost see Sookie falling for Sam. But I thought the plot was weak--it was more about bringing back everyone for one last hurrah than developing a coherent mystery or an exciting romance. I also thought Eric deserved a better send off; it makes sense to me that he and Sookie would not be together forever because she doesn't want to be a vampire (a thoroughly refreshing view, in my opinion), but not that they would break up as casually as they did. This is a series that was strongest in its middle books.

The New Mind of the South by Tracy Thompson

This book reminds me of both Bill Bryson and Tony Horwitz. There's the personal aspect--as if it's a memoir, but there's also the observer aspect--like many other books about the South, it's author has one foot in and one foot out. I found the writing clear and the thinking on questions Southern (such as: what does history mean? what are the costs of maintaining certain kinds of memory? what things do we falsely assume about the South?) engaging.

Grit Lit: A Rough South Reader edited by Brian Carpenter and Tom Franklin

This anthology collects short stories, excerpts of novels, and excerpts of autobiographical writing from what the editors describe as the rough south or grit lit genre. Indeed, the anthology shines in its generic formulation: the introduction and headnotes to each story help clarify what rough south means. In this case, it's contemporary (so Faulkner and O'Connor aren't here), it tends to be white and poor and created by outrageous autobiographical stories instead of academic training (although some of the later writers have participated in various MFA programs and other forms of higher education--and this experience raises ambivalent feelings in them), and it often features a kind of toughness or grit. I enjoyed the stories; some were better than others, but it was a fairly engaging collection all in all. Harry Crews's and Dorothy Allison's writings stand out as gems.

Vernon God Little by D.B.C. Pierre

This book is a send-up of US media culture. In the wake of a school shooting, the shooter's best friend--and the book's narrator and protagonist--is suspected of being involved with the plot. As the aftermath unfolds, however, we see the incompetent police, news media, and legal system, unfairly target Vernon Little. Although many descriptions of the book describe it as humorous, I was more horrified than amused. Winner of the 2003 Booker Prize.

A Visitation of Spirits by Randall Kenan

This novel explores Horace Cross's struggle to find his place in a small, tightly-knit, religious town in North Carolina while accepting his identity; he attempts to reconcile his family's expectations and the religious truths with which he's been raised with his growing awareness of his homosexuality. Although Horace cannot come up with a workable solution (he turns to magic and demons, which ultimately betray him), the book uses its beautiful style and complex structure to give depth to Horace's experience and to the spirits of his family which haunt him and which have their own secrets.

Bloodline by Ernest Gaines

This volume collects five stories by Ernest Gaines that mostly focus on the problem of becoming a man or asserting your position in a society that is designed to tear you down because of your race. Gaines's characters don't just turn to violence or protest, however: living or working within the society while calmly refusing to accept indignities or charity seems to be more of the model his characters work with.

The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty by Eudora Welty

This book collects forty-one of Welty's stories including the collections A Curtain of Green, The Wide Net, The Golden Apples, and The Bride of Innisfallen and two previously uncollected stories. The Golden Apples hung together the best for me--they're almost all set in or around Morgana, Mississippi and feature the same characters at various points in their lives. I also enjoyed the stories that revisited historical events like the Burr plot and the Medgar Evers assassination. The stories are dense--there's a lot of meaning compressed into small actions, but the prose and the characters are both beautifully realized.

Let the Dead Bury Their Dead by Randall Kenan

This collection of short stories, mostly set in the fictional neighborhood of Tims Creek, North Carolina, delights with its beauty, humor, and meta-fictional commentary. The stories feature a wide range of protagonists, and gradually set out a depiction of a community with memorable characters. I particularly loved "Clarence and the Dead (and What do they tell you, Clarene? and The Dead Speak to Clarence)," "Things of This World ; or, Angels Unawares," and "Let the Dead Bury Their Dead; Being the Annotated Oral History of the Former Maroon Society called Snatchit and then Tearshirt and later the Town of Tims Creek, North Carolina [circa 1854-1985]." The stories show the magic inherent in everyday life and satirize academic attempts to interpret or explain the community.

Beautiful Redemption by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

This book still suffers from some of the problems that plague earlier books in the series: clunky Southern accents, fake-sounding Latin, a magic system that is difficult to parse, and (although this might be new I can't remember) bad poetry supposedly written by one of the protagonists. However, I thought the plot worked really well--it had a nice shape and I finally understood what was at stake in the Caster world. I wish we had seen more of the power structure and understood more of what goes on in the Far Keep earlier. I found starting with Ethan in a between-place after death refreshing, and I liked that the story forced its characters to make sacrifices and suffer the consequences of their choices. I think I would have liked this series better if I could have read the books one right after the other instead of each as they were being published, so the fact that they're all out now should be a boon for future readers.

The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor

This volume gathers all of Flannery O'Connor's published short stories. They are nothing short of brilliant. Every time I read "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," I see new details to admire and enhance my reading of the story. I think one of the reasons I admire these stories so much, is that O'Connor is so good at getting inside a person's head and exploding all his or her prejudices, bigotries, and limitations for the reader. It's not like she has a great deal of sympathy for these characters: she really doesn't hold back on her criticism, but on the other hand, she knows them so well that you have to think that she must like some part of them at least a little bit. Really magnificent: these stories are the work of a master of the form and the human condition.

The Moviegoer by Walker Percy

This book deals with the challenges of living in a postmodern, movie-going world, where we're confronted with simulacra (for Binx Bolling, the protagonist, surroundings are certified by the movies he sees, instead of the other way around), where long-held truths and narratives of historical progress are meaningless, replaced by the experience of repetition--seeing the same thing after a period of time has passed, and where our identities are constructed by mass culture (in Binx's terminology: rotation). There's no easy answer here, as Binx enters on a search to transcend the everydayness (a search prompted by his wartime experiences). But the book does suggest that the South has something to teach the nation: while the 1960s may have brought this cultural dissatisfaction to the forefront, Southerners have seen these problems before: they were defeated in the Civil War--and even more importantly--certain Southern ideas about racial hierarchy and white supremacy had already been exposed as false: so white Southerners have already had to face the loss of a sense of absolute truth. A really wonderful book.

One Writer's Beginnings by Eudora Welty

In this autobiography Eudora Welty writes, obliquely about her growth as a writer. She gives a lot of background--both about her childhood and her family, and writes about what it was like to grow up in the South with parents who were not Southerners. This book was an enjoyable read; it felt personal but not crafted or calculated to evoke a particular literary response.

Black Boy by Richard Wright

This autobiography chronicles Richard Wright's development as a writer--it starts in early childhood, when his only way of shaping and constructing his environment is through action and he vents his frustration and boredom by playing with fire (and setting the family home ablaze). Despite his frustration with his family life and with race relations in the South, and a very haphazard education (he only completes the ninth grade, and most years he only attends part of his classes), he discovers that writing and books offer him a way out of the tension he feels living as an African American man in the U.S. South. In the second half of the book, he moves to Chicago and becomes involved with the Communist Party. The book chronicles both the hope (for racial unity) and disillusion he feels as a result of his involvement with the Party. The story Wright tells is at times moving, and at other times horrific (for example, he lynches a kitten)--and this horror is necessary to his story. Wright's careful attention to the power of language--both at its most lyrical (he uses anaphora to show his childhood self confronting and moving beyond barriers to perception) and most violent (the power of words to threaten and cause violence) make this book essential for any writer, beyond its sociological importance.

The Complete Stories by Zora Neale Hurston

This collection of stories spans a wide range of time (from Hurston's early 30s to just before her death) and includes all her published short fiction and a number of unpublished stories as well (including one, "A Woman in Gaul" which was almost burned after Hurston's death). It also covers a wide range of subjects and genres: some stories draw heavily on the Southern, African-American folklore that Hurston collected professionally, some are set in Harlem, some are fantastical--bordering on magical realism, and some are non-fictional, anthropological pieces. One of the themes that carries throughout the stories is the question of understanding (and language's role in that understanding)--can we really understand each other? how can we use language (or laughter) to both reveal and hide parts of ourselves to protect ourselves from the world? The figure of John (the trickster who came from Africa and outwits Massa despite being enslaved) is key to many of the stories. This collection contains some real gems and demonstrates the range and skill of Hurston's career.

The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter by Katherine Anne Porter

These stories are like icebergs: they're deeper than they first appear on the surface. For example, "Old Mortality" seems like a bildungsroman about Miranda growing up, but as we look deeper at the stories she's told, we see the destructive way the family has used romance and fiction to replace history and lived experience: stories about Aunt Amy (a tragic belle figure who died young) crowd out memories of the Civil War. I also really enjoyed "Noon Wine"--when the mysterious hired hand's past catches up with him, Mr. Thompson realizes both the extent to which he can be moved to act and the extent to which his motivations may be mistrusted by his community. Many of the stories feature great character development--a strong collection.

Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell

This book portrays the extreme poverty of the Lester family in a story that might be compared to a train wreck: you know you shouldn't be looking (and in this case laughing), but you can't look away either. The book relies neither on sentimentality nor on a proletarian call to action, but rather by turning the readers' reactions back on them: instead of a moral or a plan, Caldwell interrogates why we respond to this family with humor, contempt, and perhaps pity. The failure of the land to produce crops is equated with the family's inability to reproduce within social norms (the Lesters have had seventeen children, but only two still live at home, for example, and the ones who have left want nothing to do with the family). While Jeeter Lester (the head of the family) instinctively knows that his fate is tied to the land and that he wants no part of industrialization (symbolized by the possibility of a mill job in Augusta), the family is completely unable to cope with modernity: they treat their new car as if it were almost human--and in so doing manage to almost destroy it in a few short days. Finally, this book is about rural poverty in the South in the same way that Moby Dick is about whales--certainly it's a relevant topic, but Tobacco Road raises bigger and more pressing questions: What does it mean to be human? and What are the costs of living in a society that allows some of its members to become so abject?

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

This book is about the Fall of the House of Compson, as told through the points of view of its last three sons--Benjy, who is mentally retarded, Quentin, who is suicidally insane, and Jason, who is morally bankrupt--and a third-person, omniscient narrator. Although the majority of the narration technically happens during Easter weekend 1928, the story is continually haunted by its past traumas, which keep slipping in and out, along with Faulkner's cruel golf jokes. This book is a hauntingly beautiful warning about the dangers of getting caught up in the past and about the dangers of settling for a flawed modernity.

Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings by Joel Chandler Harris

This book presents a nostalgic version of plantation life in the slave South. Uncle Remus, a formerly enslaved man who still lives with the white family that owned him before the Civil War, tells the family's young son a series of stories about animals--Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, Brer Bear, and Brer Tarrypin and their friends. In many of these stories, although Brer Fox or Brer Bear is stronger and a natural predator, they fail to catch and eat Brer Rabbit, who is clever enough to escape their plans and to live to torment them another day. The stories preserve Georgia folklore, but the frame narrative tends to reinforce the nostalgic and misleading idea that life was better in the Old South. These stories are the basis for the Disney movie Song of the South, the first movie to combine live action film and animation--and a movie which Disney executives now refuse to sell on the basis of its racist nostalgia for the Old South. These same executives don't mind making money off the franchise however: as the popular Splash Mountain ride in both Walt Disney World and Disneyland is based on one of the Brer Rabbit stories.

Cane by Jean Toomer

This book crosses all sorts of lines, both generic and social. It's a collection of short stories, dramatic pieces, and poetry that explores the conditions of culture in the United States. The first section is about life in the South and has a feminine feel; the second section is about life in the North and is masculine and sterile, and the third section is about a Northerner coming South, and has a synthesis. The book tries to rewrite our ur-myths from the rape fantasies that spurred lynching (instead of Southern white men needing to protect white womanhood, the real sin, according to the story, is hiding the root story, that of desire between a white man and a black woman), to Genesis itself (refigured in "Blood Burning Moon."). The book imagines that a Messiah figure could be replaced by an artist who might offer absolution for all the violence that marks US culture. Cane never fully gives us this healing, restorative art, however. Instead, we get the fragments. The poet can gather the fragments, but the collection implies that we need a community to assemble them into a whole. A beautiful, troubling, and ultimately moving meditation on race, culture, and the United States.