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Novels set in the South, Generational stories, Series!!!

I like to read novels in series or that span generations, or to read several books in a row by one author. I enjoy novels about the American South or about Southerners who've left the South, stories about "Old America", stories centered around food, and those featuring gypsies, witches, magic, and the occult. I like strong female leads, underdogs, rebels, sentimentality, and drunks. I also love books that make me laugh out loud.

What I've read and loved: all of B. Kingsolver, Kate Chopin, David Sedaris, and Bukowski; Chocolat and The Girl Who Cast no Shadow; Like Water for Chocolate; Fried Green Tomatoes; Saratoga Trunk; On Agate Hill; Cold Mountain; Shanghai Girls. I read Chuck Palahnuk for a while but he got too graphic for me (damn swimming pool story). I even read the "Dragon Tatoo" series (okay), Twilight (why not, it's a series), and Harry Potter (was surprised to love it so). Alice Hoffman gets a little too "romance novel" for my taste, but I loved Anne Rice's "The Witching Hour".

I read a longish novel in about 6 hours, and will happily devour a book a day for weeks on end. I'm looking for lots of new books and series to dig into during all my time off this December! Ideas?

heatherly asked in Book Recommendations about 1 year ago | Report

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    hayden

    Thanks for your question--this is a fun one.

    Southern drunks and outlaws

    As an exiled Southerner myself, I also have a soft spot for these books.

    Carson McCullers is a master of Southern gothic writing.  I think The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is probably her best book, but The Member of the Wedding is also wonderful.

    Eudora Welty is also an amazing crafter of memorable characters, though she writes with a lighter touch and more humor.  I particularly love The Optimist's Daughter and The Ponder Heart, and strongly recommend her short stories as well.

    Cormac McCarthy has plenty of books about no-good Southerners, but probably his funniest (and winner in the category of Biggest Drunk) is Suttree.  Like all of his work, this one isn't really light reading, and it's wordier than some of his western-set novels.  But it's full of amazing characters and even some laugh out loud moments.

    If you haven't already read it, I think you'd like The Help, by Kathryn Stockett.  I was skeptical of a contemporary young white author writing in the voice of African American maids during the Civil Rights era, but I was impressed by how well Stockett walks that line.

    Generational fiction

    Since you're open to books with a little magic, how about magical realism?  One Hundred Years of Solitude is Gabriel Garcia Marquez's ultimate generational novel (I always have trouble keeping the generations straight).  And if you like that, I personally think Love in the Time of Cholera is even better.

    The Years of Rice and Salt isn't exactly a generational book in the traditional sense--it follows a small group of souls who are reincarnated together over and over again in an alternate history in which it is the East--China, India, and the nations of Islam--who become the dominant world powers.

    Darkish stuff:  witches, the occult, etc.

    Have you read any Shirley Jackson?  I'd start with The Haunting of Hill House--creepy and fun. (Or for something completely different, check out her memoirs about her family:  Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons.  Talk about laugh out loud funny.)

    Lonely Werewolf Girl by Martin Millar is a funny, dark, character-driven book that sits at the point in the universe where Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and Dynasty (hit television show of the 80's) collide.

    Teen literature is full of witches, ghosts, magic, vampires, etc.  If you've read Wuthering Heights (which you might enjoy if you haven't), The House of Dead Maids: A Prelude to Wuthering Heights is fun and creepy.

    The Prince of Mist is an atmospheric ghost story set during WWII.  The Lost Conspiracy is the best fantasy I read last year--meditations on colonialism, superstition, racism, loyalty, revenge, and identity, while never slowing down the action.  Our library has it in the children's section, but I think it's really more suited to older readers.

    I could go on and on, but I'll stop there.  I hope one or two of these sound interesting.  Let me know if you have questions about any of them, and happy reading!

    Cheers,

    Hayden 

    hayden answered in Book Recommendations about 1 year ago | Report
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    mishalibrarian

    Here are some thoughts about other books set in the South you might also enjoy:

    If you like drunks, unhinged folks and strong women and want to read about the South, a good place to start is Flannery O'Connor's stories. They are powerful, mesmerizing, darkly humorous and often unsettling.

    For an off-beat look at the South, featuring Ignatious Reilly, the most underdog of underdogs, try John Kennedy Toole's underground classic A Confederacy of Dunces.

    Meely LaBauve by Ken Wells is supposed to be a fantastic and funny coming-of-age novel set in Louisiana in the 1960s.

    The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia by Mary Ellen Stefaniak is a new one I have heard good things about.

    For a Southern series to sink your teeth into, you can try James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux mysteries.

    mishalibrarian answered in Book Recommendations about 1 year ago | Report
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  • Dscf0354_small
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    For Southern fiction, I particularly like Truman Capote. For drunks, losers and rotten people, Jim Thompson is the guy to go to.
    I heartily second the Cormac McCarthy and Shirley Jackson recommendations.

    Amy W. answered in Book Recommendations about 1 year ago | Report
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    David Wright

    Such great answers. It is gilding the lilly, but I just to have to add one WONDERFUL Arkansas author, the late, great Donald Harington, who between 1970 and 2009 wrote several books set in the fiction town of Stay More, AK. Pretty amazing stylist - a true original - finding him was for me like suddenly discovering that there was this other James Joyce, or Faulkner, or ... well, not so heavy as those - anyway, trust me and try him out.  It looks like we need to order some missing titles for the library, but we do have some, and I might suggest his book With.

    (When in Arkansas, you might also enjoy the Arkasas Noirs of Daniel Woodrell.  And my favorite Southern Gothic Madman, Harry Crews - maybe try A Feast of Snakes.

    David Wright answered in Book Recommendations about 1 year ago | Report
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    Try Nancy Lemann's Lives of the Saints. Very funny, takes place in New Orleans, features a charming, dissipated wreck as a character.

    Christina L answered in Book Recommendations about 1 year ago | Report
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  • Sacri_ordines_by_charism_small
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    Wait, Did you read Rice's Witching Hour without following up with Lasher and Taltos? Maybe even Blackwood Farm?

    Reading Interview with the Vampire isn't a bad idea either - half is in europe, but much is in the dank N'Awlins south.

    Otherwise your list is excellent - who's been pointing you to these gems? Trust them again!

    Rev.Enant answered in Book Recommendations about 1 year ago | Report
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    You have so many good suggestions here. I recently finished "How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly," and think it might fit your criteria. It's set in Florida, with lots of ghosts and a woman who doesn't start out strong, but fights to get there. I liked it. It felt very atmospheric and Southern-y. It's a bit book-club, but if you're in the right mood, you might enjoy it also.

    Squirrel Girl answered in Book Recommendations about 1 year ago | Report
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  • Quincy2_small
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    Wow - what a list - one more suggestion to consider: Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil, by John Berendt.

    (Ditto on the Palahnuk thing! Was at a reading of his a few years ago & someone fainted during that story. I have been unable to read anything of his since.)

    lilybird99 answered in Book Recommendations about 1 year ago | Report
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    Have you read Jennifer Crusie? She is wonderful and, from what you describe, right up your alley.

    Marguerite answered in Book Recommendations about 1 year ago | Report
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