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ophelia

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dear fj-community,

 

in about a week i'll go on my long needed, much deserved vacation to croatia. nothing but laying on the beach, hanging out with my friends and enjoying life.

 

since i have to read a lot for my university classes, i usually don't have time to read books i like.. and i want to change that this summer.

 

i know a lot of you guys are really well read and i'd hoped you may have some suggestions what books to bring on vacation.

 

i am really don't like all that romantic nicolas sparks, cecilia ahern stuff that nearly all the girls i know take to the beach. i'd prefer something in style of 'fried green tomatoes'. it would be great to read something that takes place in the south and has a nice style of storytelling. i am really open to anything (except thrillers - i already packed a good one from sweden!)

 

so, feel free to share your suggestions. they all be appreciated.

 

thanks!!

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Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns; The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver; I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou; The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom; Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene; Fair and Tender Ladies by Lee Smith

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South: The Help (Kathryn Stockett)

Bood books: nearly everything from John Irving (I love him, I really do!), Northern Lights (Philipp Pullmann), 40 Rules of Love (Elif Shafak)

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Have you tried Rainbow Rowell yet? Not southern, kind of YA, but good novels.

Orange is the New Black- not fiction- by Piper Kiernan

Sarah Addison Allen does wonderful Southern, with hints of magic, novels. Lost Lake and The Peach Keeper were delightful, The Sugar Queen was also good.

I hate Stephanie Plum, but I pretty much like everything else Janet Evonovich puts out, Fox & O'Hare series, Lizzy & Diesel series.

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Anything by Barabara Kingsolver

Anything by Pat Conroy

World Between Oceans

Gone Girl

The Help

The Peachkeeper

Cold Mountai

Cold Sassy Tree

Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil

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Ellen Gilchrist -- The Annunciation and her books of short stories (which have some of the same characters as her novels.)

i second Pat Conroy.

Josephine Humphries -- Dreams of Sleep and Rich in Love

Padgett Powell -- Edisto

Zora Neale Hurston -- Their Eyes Were Watching God

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"Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood" is a lot like "Fried Green Tomatoes." It's a healthy dose of epic Southern craziness. Movie wasn't much, though.

"Gone with the Wind" is a great read, if you've never read it -- better than the movie. It doesn't have the comedy of Fried Green Tomatoes or Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood, though.

"The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All" is good too, as is "Cane River," which is a tale the author fabricated about her ancestors.

Have a great vacation! A beach in Croatia sounds so exotic and wonderful!

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dear fj-community,

in about a week i'll go on my long needed, much deserved vacation to croatia. nothing but laying on the beach, hanging out with my friends and enjoying life.

since i have to read a lot for my university classes, i usually don't have time to read books i like.. and i want to change that this summer.

i know a lot of you guys are really well read and i'd hoped you may have some suggestions what books to bring on vacation.

i am really don't like all that romantic nicolas sparks, cecilia ahern stuff that nearly all the girls i know take to the beach. i'd prefer something in style of 'fried green tomatoes'. it would be great to read something that takes place in the south and has a nice style of storytelling. i am really open to anything (except thrillers - i already packed a good one from sweden!)

so, feel free to share your suggestions. they all be appreciated.

thanks!!

It looks like your fellow FJ-ers are giving you some great suggestions. I write a book review blog. Maybe you'll find some intriguing titles there.

http://thebookselfblog.wordpress.com/

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Bastard out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison

Lucky - Alice Sebold

Hick (unsure of author, its a movie with Chloe Moetz too)

Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

Anything by Amy Tan

Geek Love

Room - Emma Donahue

I have some re-reads to get on :)

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Not set in the south, but still with the healthy dose of regionalism and the triumphing humanity of Fried Green tomatoes, I suggest Trailer Park by Russell Banks. Also, Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver. Also, Charlaine Harris does more than just write vampire novels: the Aurora Teagarden series and the Shakespeare series are nice mysteries set in the South. They are great beach reads.

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British based (but sooo good)

Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronvitch

OMG! Yes! This series is amazing. Also, the InCryptid series by Seanan McGuire.

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OMG! Yes! This series is amazing. Also, the InCryptid series by Seanan McGuire.

AND the next one's publication date has been bumped back to November :evil: not good after the cliff hanger of Broken Homes.

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You guys are truely amazing. I am really overwhelmed how many people posted their favourite books.

I would buy and take them all, but my bag is too small and I'm way to broke to get them all, but this thread is going to be a good source for the future too.

Right now I picked Cold Sassy Tree, because for reasons I don't know I'm quite obsessed with Georgia at the moment.

Once again: THANK YOU! Hope you all have a great summer.

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If it's not too late, or for when you're back home: Susan Wittig Albert's Darling Dahlia series, about a garden club group in the Depression-era South (Carolinas, I think). Sort of a "cozy mystery" but with some very good characters and writing. She's also got the China Bayles series, set in present-day Texas Hill Country, still mysteries but a bit less cozy. I think there are 4 or 5 Dahlia books so far, and the China Bayles are up into the teens. (Also #2 - her mystery series featuring Beatrix Potter and lots of animals. The Cottage Tales - only 8 books in that series.)

I just finished the first volume of Beverly Cleary's memoirs, Girl from Yamhill. Now I need to read Boys in the Boat (our community One Read book this year) and Philomena, among others. The library stack has gotten out of control again, and I need to either read or return a pile of books.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I am late to the party, but I wanted to recommend "The Same Sweet Girls" by Cassandra King. A Southern setting and a book I very much enjoyed.

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Have you tried Rainbow Rowell yet? Not southern, kind of YA, but good novels.

Orange is the New Black- not fiction- by Piper Kiernan

Sarah Addison Allen does wonderful Southern, with hints of magic, novels. Lost Lake and The Peach Keeper were delightful, The Sugar Queen was also good.

I hate Stephanie Plum, but I pretty much like everything else Janet Evonovich puts out, Fox & O'Hare series, Lizzy & Diesel series.

I've tried to get the hype about Rainbow Rowell's books. I really have. But apparently, she is very content with making her fellow Nebraskans want to hit something while they read. I'm sure you are not annoyed at all to read the email correspondence in Attachments between Beth Fremont and Jennifer Scribner-Snyder if you have never drove the school van from Fremont to a speech meet at Scribner-Snyder High School. And I'm sure the adventures of Cather who lives in Pound Hall don't annoy you at all if you are unaware that Pound Hall is attached to (the never mentioned in the novel) Cather Hall.

I assume she thinks all her name games are cute for those in the know.

Also, back before the novels, she was a not very good newspaper columnist around these parts. That didn't help me get into it, either.

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I've tried to get the hype about Rainbow Rowell's books. I really have. But apparently, she is very content with making her fellow Nebraskans want to hit something while they read. I'm sure you are not annoyed at all to read the email correspondence in Attachments between Beth Fremont and Jennifer Scribner-Snyder if you have never drove the school van from Fremont to a speech meet at Scribner-Snyder High School. And I'm sure the adventures of Cather who lives in Pound Hall don't annoy you at all if you are unaware that Pound Hall is attached to (the never mentioned in the novel) Cather Hall.

I assume she thinks all her name games are cute for those in the know.

Also, back before the novels, she was a not very good newspaper columnist around these parts. That didn't help me get into it, either.

I have never been to Nebraska, not even in the airport for a layover. So, I don't get worked up about the place things. But Attachments. OK, you have me there. I HATED Attachments. Seriously, using Y2K as a plot device? So dated. And email stalking? But I loved Elanor & Park- I sobbed like a baby reading that.

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I have never been to Nebraska, not even in the airport for a layover. So, I don't get worked up about the place things. But Attachments. OK, you have me there. I HATED Attachments. Seriously, using Y2K as a plot device? So dated. And email stalking? But I loved Elanor & Park- I sobbed like a baby reading that.

I just find the place naming so god awful cheesy and stupid--again you have to be from here to recognize it, so I assume she thinks it is a cute wink to local readers. It is every fricking character in Attachments. And yes, the entire plot is awful. Stalking, via email or otherwise, is not romantic.

Fangirl is not that bad other than the couple of weird names thrown out and that fact that she tries to turn Lincoln, a city of nearly 300,000, into a small college town. There is a point where her character informs us that there is hardly anywhere to eat around the university. Again, not expecting non-Nebraskans to know or care, but consider this--on Saturdays in the fall, the University has sold out football games in a stadium that as of a few years ago held over 80,000 people. How would it come close to making sense (practically or economically) for there to be no restaurants in the immediate area? If you are writing a realistic novel set in a real place, Rainbow, you should make sure the details are at least close to correct. Since she is an alum of UNL, she should not have needed to research that, either.

I have not read Eleanor and Park. Tell me it is not set here and I might be willing to try.

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Eleanor & Park is, sadly, set in Omaha. In the 1980's. Two misfit outsider teens bond over their mutual love of comic books and music. Park is racially different, and therefore an outsider. Eleanor has an incredibly horrible and sad home life. It's YA too, so that can turn people off. But, I thought it was wonderful.

Fangirl was good in it's own way. I felt that it was almost a love letter to anyone who writes Harry Potter fanfic.

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