May 2016 - Oh What a State of Affairs!

NOTE: The heading for this thread should read, May 2017 - Oh What a State of Affairs!. "2016" was a typo.

Mainly Maine....



But maybe you'd rather go with Hawthorne for Massachusetts?
Or with Faulkner for Mississippi?
Or with Steinbeck for California?
Or with Hurston for Florida?
Or with Franklin for Pennsylvania or Jefferson for Virginia?
Or with Michener for ... erm, Hawaii? Alaska? Texas? (Did I miss any?)

Take your pick! Pick a state – any state – and choose a writer (or a work) representative of that state. For example, Harriet Beecher Stowe, though she actually lived in Brunswick, Maine, when she wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, isn't herself otherwise particularly representative of Maine except for her novel The Pearl of Orr's Island, which is set in Casco Bay and was the single most important influence on Sarah Orne Jewett through its use of Maine regional dialect.

And for all you Bostonians (or Concordians, or whoever) out there, Longfellow was born in the City of Portland, District of MAINE, State of Massachusetts, in 1807, thirteen years before Maine finally had the good sense to break free of foreign rule. So there! Nyah-nyah.

And Portland's where LT's got its home office.

And yeah, I figgered I might get a scolding from someone if I omitted Stephen King (though perhaps Joe Hill should have been included also?).

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Coast of Maine (YouTube), a folk song by Emma's Revolution:

I set the pots in early morning
The work is hard, the air is cold
The sea can change without a warning
This life can make a young man old
I take my catch down to the market
I take my wages home each night
While up the river sits a fortune
In stone and lumber out of sight

I do this work my mother taught me
I cannot read but I can sew
I make these pieces for the tourists
A souvenir before they go
The months are short, the needs are many
And summer's sales must last the year
While up the river sits a fortune
Hungry silence lingers here

This second home will be their haven
They have the means to build their dream
I am the one who pours the concrete
Who lays each joist and fills each seam
But at my home the stairs are open
There isn't time or cash to spare
While up the river sits a fortune
And there's nobody living there

The eagles nest beyond the reaches
Of city light and human hand
They struggle here beside the people
Who fish the sea and farm the land
But once the eagle nearly vanished
From poisoned oceans, soil and rain
A human and a bird's returning
Surviving on the coast of Maine

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If you're not from the U.S. and aren't particularly interested in picking an American state, feel free to pick a country instead.

I am going to visit Mark Twain's home state of Missouri with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Mmmm - Edward Abbey is the first author who comes to mind in regards to my native Arizona. Lets see - Monkey Wrench Gang? Desert Solitaire? Fire on the Mountain? mmmm lots to choose from.

Chicken Every Sunday is a memoir about growing up in a boarding house owned by her parents in the early 1900s near the beginnings of Tucson, Arizona. Along with being a very funny tale of the goings on of the time and in the family, it was great fun to learn about the people who founded and created Tucson. I went to college there, recognized all the names from street signs but never knew much about them May ust have to reread it - a lot lighter then Abbey!

>3 cindydavid4: Also from Arizona (I think?), Tony Hillerman's Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee.

Yes, Im not a big mystery fan so don't read him but he is from here.

Thanks for the reminder, CurrerBell. Hillerman's Wailing Wind is up for May in the Western Reading Challenge. So I'll pick that one. And if it fits, I'll also read a Willa Cather who represents my home state of Nebraska so well. (I LOVED her My Antonia.)

>6 countrylife: Cather could also represent New Mexico with Death Comes for the Archbishop.

I have to give My Antonia a reread now that the Norton Critical Edition is available, to include the supplementary materials. I think it can be a difficult novel to "get" because you have to take into account the character of the unreliable and slightly dim-witted narrator (who reminds me of Lockwood in Wuthering Heights).

Hmm, I'm not from the US so nothing state-centric immediately springs to mind. I'll have to peruse the stacks and see if anything fits the bill.

>8 Familyhistorian: : Meg, this was in the opening post: "If you're not from the U.S. and aren't particularly interested in picking an American state, feel free to pick a country instead." So you aren't stuck with the U.S.

>9 countrylife: Yes, I read that but I may find something on the shelves for a state rather than figuring out which country to read about.

A book that I read a few years ago, These Is My Words by Nancy E. Turner really gives one a sense of place, and that place is Arizona. It is a memoir of a woman pioneer to southern Arizona and was a wonderful read.

>11 DeltaQueen50: : I loved that one! Although, I don't think it's a memoir, it's historical fiction written like a diary. I remember thinking the author did a great job with the diary, starting with the entries of an uneducated young girl and ending with the writings of a mature woman who'd done all in her power to educate herself. The shift from beginning to end of the diary entries was subtle and felt real. I always meant to get to the next one in the series.

Letters of a Woman Homesteader by Elinore Pruitt Stewart are the real letters of the author from her homesteading days in Wyoming. I liked that one, too.

>11 DeltaQueen50: I tried reading that book, but couldn't get passed the dialect. Pity because so many readers thought it was splendid, the story it self was. But there are some author dialects I can read, this wasn't one if them

>12 countrylife: You're right, Cindy, These Is My Words is fictional. I loved it and I did read the next book which was good, but didn't grab me the way the first one did. I liked Letters of a Woman Homesteader as well.

>13 cindydavid4: Oh that's too bad, but I know about dialects. I tried to read Trainspotting and had to give up as I just couldn't read it, I did however, try a audio version, and that worked. Somehow hearing the words spoken as they were meant to sound brought the book to life for me.

Im not normaly a fan of audio books (nothing against them, my mind just tends to wander if I don't have a bookin front of me) but you might be right this could be the perfect way to read this. thx for the idea

At the moment I'm leaning toward Florida with Zora Neale Hurston's Jonah's Gourd Vine.

>16 cbl_tn: I ought to give that one a reread. I just reread Their Eyes Were Watching God not too long ago and got a lot more out of it than I did on the first read. I've also got both volumes of Hurston in the Library of America and might do some heavy-duty Hurston reading later this year. (I'm trying to make some headway through my LoA backlog, both for the ROOTs and the Big Fat Books challenges.)

I was thinking about reading a book about a state but, as I have already started it, I will read Neil Oliver's A History of Scotland: Look Behind the Mist and Myth of Scottish History.

I'm sure it was posted somewhere, but I can't find it...The heading of this is May 2016. Should that be 2017 or is this an old thread?

I am pretty sure that this should be titled May 2017, so I think just a typo. Of What A State of Affairs is the thread for May 2017.

>19 Tess_W: >20 DeltaQueen50: Oh, darn, yes, that's a typo. And I tried correcting it but it seems you can't edit a heading (at least once someone's responded to the first post).

But I just made a note of the correction at the top of the first post.

ETA: I also added an explanatory thread for May 2017 but asked that no follow-up posts be made to it.

>19 Tess_W: I didn't even notice the date, Tess. Good eye.

Being from Ohio, I think I will read hometown Louis Bromfield, whom I've never read before. Bromfield was from Mansfield Ohio and I have visited his Malabar Farm twice. (This is where Bogey and Bacall were married.) I will read his first novel, The Green Bay Tree which takes place in an unamed midwestern town in which steel mills have sprung up.

Hooray, Hooray, it's the 1st of May! I got an early start on my read of Huckleberry Finn and finished the book this morning. This was a re-read for me, but I both enjoyed it more and got more out of it this second time. Although I read this book as a tribute to the state of Missouri, it is really the Mississippi River that is the star of this book.

My first, The Maine Reader: The Down East Experience, 1614 to the Present (4**** and I've posted an extensive review). A wonderful anthology (published in 1991, so some more recent writers, most notably Elizabeth Strout, aren't included), but some of the editorial content leaves a bit to be desired.

Mary Ellen Chase, A Goodly Fellowship (3½*** review, but only because of my personal interest in Chase and most readers will probably rate it less favorably).

Chase was the successor among Maine novelists to Sarah Orne Jewett, whom Chase met when Chase was a young girl. This second volume of Chase's memoirs is devoted to her experiences as a teacher (English, eventually department chair at Smith College), but its predecessor, A Goodly Heritage, in its portrayal of a Maine childhood, is probably more interesting.

Much of A Goodly Fellowship occurs outside of Maine, primarily in the Midwest, but I consider this appropriate to Maine because of Chase's literary relationship to that state.

I enjoyed Chase's Windswept some while ago. Haven't read any of her other works.

>27 countrylife: My favorite (and I think her own) is The Edge of Darkness. It resembles The Country of the Pointed Firs (and also Olive Kitteridge) in being a collection of short stories united around a central character – Almira Todd, Olive, or in the case of Chase, an elderly woman (Maine?) who has died and is being buried later that day.

I was debating about reading about the State of New York at the time of the revolutionary war but instead opted for a book about Scotland. A History of Scotland: A look behind the mist and myth of Scottish history is a very comprehensive look at the history of that country, from when it was created to the recent past. I enjoy Neil Oliver's style as a presenter so I was willing to see if I liked his writing style as well and I do.

MAINE: I just finished Paula Blanchard's 5***** Sarah Orne Jewett: Her World and Her Work. I really should get around to a reread of The Country of the Pointed Firs, and Blanchard's motivated me to read Deephaven, which I've passed over in the past.

MAINE: Lura Beam, A Maine Hamlet (4½****). An excellent sociological study written in 1957 of a small hamlet outside of and associated with the town of Machias, centering on the decade 1894 to 1904. It's sociological, with some use of statistics, but it includes culture, history, and other subjects in a wonderfully written narrative. I picked up on this one from reading the Shains' The Maine Reader.

MAINE: I finally got around to reading Deephaven (in Sarah Orne Jewett: Novels and Stories) and it was a bit of a disappointment. Generously – because of my love for Jewett, because of its importance in the Jewett canon, and its early status among Jewett's works – I guess I'll give it 3½*** but that may be a but high by about ½*.

The regional voices of the Maine characters are admirably portrayed by Jewett; but Kate and Helen, the two young women from Boston who summer in Deephaven, have voices that are stilted, not realistic. At times, too, Jewett succumbs to her biggest fault, preachiness. And I would have liked more attention paid to Mrs. Kew, the predecessor to Pointed Firs's Almira Todd.

My reads for this month's challenge to read a writer representative of a particular state :

The Country of the Pointed Firs - Sarah Orne Jewett (Maine)
O Pioneers! - Willa Cather (Nebraska)
The Wailing Wind - Tony Hillerman (New Mexico)

Also:
The Lewis Man - Peter May (Scotland, Hebrides)
The Snowman - Jo Nesbo (Norway)

Finished this a lil late, but tis done! I immensely enjoyed this month's read.

Bromfield wrote during the 1920-50's, much like Hemmingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald; although his style is much different. The book, The Green Bay Tree ,is the story of deep, evocative change during the time period of 1880-WWI. One could read this story today and believe it was written about today's society; it's timeless. It's the story of an unnamed steel mill town (ostensibly Pittsburgh), the matron of Cypress Hill and her 2 daughters, one a societal flirt and the other a wanna be nun. Throw into the mix a Russian union agitator, the Governor of the State, a child born out of wedlock, and you have the makings of a great story and imho Bromfield serves it up well. The book does not even hint at the title, but other critics claim it was taken from Psalm 37:35 "I have seen a wicked and ruthless man flourishing like a luxuriant native tree."

More on the author, he was one of the first environmentalists and wrote many agriculture books on farming and saving the soil. Both Hemmingway and Fitzgerald called him "Brommie" and said he wrote stories for their grandmothers.

Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart were married on Bromfield's farm, Malabar, in front of the piano. Today the house is a museum and the piano is still there.

This was a timelessly-themed classic and a work of superior prose. I'm only giving it 4 1/2 stars because I could not figure out the reason for the title! 352 pages

I'm another late one. For this theme, I read Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns. Ms. Burns presented a picture of small town Georgia life as seen through the eyes of Will Tweedy, a young teenager in 1906. Her story was based on stories told to her by her father about his youth and gave the reader quite a sense of time and place. Enjoyed it very much.