If I had been on another planet for the last year and deprived of books, and had just arrived on earth, and someone were to ask me, “Nan, if I were to give you a book for each day of the 12 Days of Christmas, what would you want to read?”–then I would quickly and happily comprise a list!
And on that list would be a book for each of the Twelve Days of Christmas……………………
One the first Day of Christmas………..The Forgotten Garden by Australian writer Kate Morton, made famous last year by House at Riverton, is set on the cliffs of England, explores a century of three women of the same family, and features a walled garden, a fairy tale writer, a mystery, and one beautiful read!
One the second day of Christmas………………..The Woodsburner by John Pipkin offers an interesting, unique novel based on the incident in the life of Henry David Thoreau in which the famous writer accidentally set fire to the woods outside of Concord.
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On the third day of Christmas ……………….Noted North Carolina literary writer Ron Rash weaves a mesmerizing story titled Serena, which is set in the Appalachian Mountains during the Depression years in a logging community, and which involves a powerful married couple, initially very much in love, but who eventually turn against each other in a life or death mystery.
On the fourth day of Christmas…………….Little Bee by Chris Cleave focuses on a native Nigerian woman, named “Little Bee,” who immigrates to London to reunite with a London couple with whom she shares the memory of a horrific event which occurred on the beaches of Nigeria a few years before.
On the fifth day of Christmas…………..Well known Louisiana writer Tim Gautreaux pens a page turner in The Missing which is set on the Mississippi River during the glorious days of the steamboat era in which the main character searches for the kidnapper of a precious “Shirley Temple” type singing wonder.
On the sixth day of Christmas………..Ernest Hemingway’s original A Moveable Feast, which depicts the renowned author’s colorful time in Paris in the 1920s, where he interacted with F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda, as well as other greats such as Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein, has been re-released by Hemingway’s son and grandson to include never before read additions and notes which the author intended to be included in his biography of these infamous years of his life, but which was removed by Hemingway’s first wife.
On the seventh day of Christmas………..The Help by Kathryn Stockett, a Jackson, Mississippi natitve, depicts in honest, colorful,disturbing, but often humorous language, the life of a Jackson, Mississippi, African American woman who is befriended by a socially secure white young woman in the tumultuous 1960s.
On the eighth day of Christmas………..In Hell, Pulitizer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler has created a painfully real, but extremely humorous “hell” filled with earthly characters we all know such as Richard Nixon, Bill and Hillary, J. Edgar Hoover, and George Bush, among others, who are all at a loss to answer the question posed by the protagonist, “Why are you here”?
On the ninth day of Christmas………..Jhumpa Lahiri, made famous by her novel The Namesake which became “movie-bound”, writes in this notable collection of short stories, called The Unaccustomed Earth, about second generation Indian children who have assumed the characteristics of American customs and mores, but who are still invested in strict Indian customs because of their parents, thus creating a challenging and often disarrayed life.
On the tenth day of Christmas………..The Year of the Flood by prolific writer Margaret Atwood offers loyal readers another dystopic novel set in the not too distant future where gene splicing creates the “wolf-sheep” with purple hair, and where an antibiotic resistant virus rapidly swirls through the world leaving only the great and strong to ponder life’s meaning.
On the eleventh day of Christmas………..In the Sanctuary of Outcasts, a non-fiction masterpiece by former Mississippi journalist Neil White, who served time in a Louisiana prison in the early 1990s for check kiting, offers an up-close look at the unique federal facility, which housed not only prisoners, but also those people afflicted with Hansen’s Disease, most commonly know as leprosy.
On the twelfth day of Christmas………..A top five finalist for the National Book Award in 2009 for Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips, this “Faulkner-like” book, in character similar to The Sound and the Fury, offers a literary gem which involves the loving relationship between a sister, named Lark, and her mentally and physically challenged younger brother, named “Termite.”
-Nan
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