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Books and Bites
JCPL librarians bring you book recommendations and discuss the bites and beverages to pair with them.
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Carrie: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Books and Bites podcast. Each month we bring you book recommendations and discuss the bites and beverages to pair with them. I'm Carrie Green and I'm here with my co hosts, Michael Cunningham and Jacqueline Cooper.
Michael: Hello.
Jacqueline: Hi everyone.
Carrie: So, before we get started with the topic of our latest episode, we thought we'd do a little check in, because it's just about, maybe a little bit over at the time that you're listening to this, halfway through the Summer-fall Books and Bites Bingo Reading Challenge.
So, yeah, how are you guys doing so far?
Michael: Pretty good. I've only got three or four squares left, so doing better than last time.
Carrie: Yeah. Excellent. How about you, Jacqueline?
Jacqueline: I think I'm right on target. I think I just have two, maybe three.
Carrie: Mm
Jacqueline: hmm. Nice. Yeah.
Carrie: Yeah, I can't remember exactly how many squares I have left.
It might be more than that, but I feel I feel better about it than I [00:01:00] did last time.
Michael: Yeah.
Carrie: I think the doubling up a little bit more has been helping.
Jacqueline: Yeah, that really has helped. Those asterisks.
Carrie: Yes. Yeah, we're all for asterisks. All right, so, today we're discussing Southern Gothic books, which have a little, you know, they have some things in common with gothic novels, which we did about this time last year.
But they also have their own kind of twist on things. How would you all define southern gothic?
Michael: Gothic with a twang.
Let's see, I know there's a lot, usually they have, southern gothic has like a strong sense of place somewhere in the south mostly, and they usually got some weird eccentric characters, there's something, you know, a lot of macabre things, maybe some dark humor thrown in there, you know, you know, look at Faulkner, who's one of the more [00:02:00] popular southern gothics, you know, decay and violence.
Jacqueline: Yeah, I think it also seems to lend itself to all the other tropes of just regular gothic fiction as well.
Carrie: Although they might, like, like in Gothic fiction, you know, a mansion or a house, like derelict house, but maybe in Southern Gothic, it might be a plantation or something like that.
Jacqueline: And actually, in my setting, the, is like more of where they've kind of taken a modern twist to it, which I think is there is like a funeral home and then there's like, instead of a mansion or a castle or something, there's a bathroom in the back of a station that, you know.
It's like eerie, you know, to go in like a, you know, bathroom station.
Carrie: And I think maybe Southern Gothic maybe has more discussion about race.
Michael: Oh yeah.
Carrie: Than traditional Gothic might. Flannery O'Connor is another classic [00:03:00] Southern Gothic writer. And, speaking of Flannery O'Connor, my husband and I just watched Wildcat, which was the film
Michael: That was filmed here in town, wasn't it?
Carrie: Yeah,
well, was it here in town?
Michael: In Lexington? Or maybe they just
Carrie: Yeah, I don't think it was in Nicholasville, but, they, they did show it. Yeah, they had like the premiere at the Kentucky theater. But yeah, it was filmed in central Kentucky like, you know, Frankfort and Louisville and some other places.
But anyway, it's about Flannery O'Connor's life, but it also mixes in scenes from her short fiction in with it. So if you're looking, if you're looking for a, you know, movie based on a book and you'd like to fit into that southern gothic theme for it. I highly recommend it. Yeah. And it's available on Kanopy.
Michael: Okay. Yeah. I've been wanting to, I remember I saw the trailer for it and it [00:04:00] looked pretty good. And I heard that one of her favorite beverages, she mixed Coca Cola with coffee. You heard that?
Carrie: Oh my gosh. Wow. No, I hadn't heard that.
Michael: Yeah.
I can't remember where I read that and I was like, I need to try that, but I haven't.
I haven't done it yet.
Carrie: So mix your caffeine with even more caffeine. It's like the pre Red Bull, Red Bull.
Jacqueline: When I was a teenager, that was what I drank. I drank Coke instead of coffee. That was my break, my wake-up caffeine call.
Carrie: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. My mom, for many years, her wake up caffeine call was TAB.
Jacqueline: Oh, okay.
Carrie: Hi mom! She's probably listening.
Jacqueline: Oh, I remember TAB.
Michael: I don't think they make that anymore.
Carrie: Yeah, they don't. They did for a very long time, and she was still able to get it, but yeah, I think they did stop making it. It doesn't have to be fiction. [00:05:00] So, like, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a true crime novel that is considered Southern Gothic.
Michael: Oh, yeah. One of my favorites. This one is, fits a lot of the Southern Gothic I guess tropes. Donald Ray Pollack did Devil All the Time and it takes place like West Virginia, Ohio border, I guess it's more me, more Appalachian Gothic, but I mean, that's probably one of my very violent, very brutal, very weird, strange characters,
Jacqueline: a lot of religion also.
Yes. Oh yeah. In southern. Yeah. Did you all find that? Yeah.
Michael: Yeah, that's true.
Carrie: Well, we have some good options for you today, and we've also got a book list that you can find on the Books and Bites webpage with even more options, so hopefully you'll find something to get you in the fall mood.[00:06:00]
So the book I read for this prompt is The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty. Eudora Welty is one of my favorite Southern writers, though I don't think of her as gothic in the same way as, say, Flannery O'Connor or William Faulkner. But this Pulitzer Prize winning novella does have many of the characteristics listed in Book Riot's article on Southern Gothic literature, including, " eccentric, flawed characters, sinister events, elements of the supernatural or fantastical, and themes relating to race, class, decay, violence, and isolation, ".
Main character Laurel McKelva Hand is a widow in her mid 40s who travels from her home in Chicago to New Orleans, where her father [00:07:00] has a consultation with an eye doctor who is from their hometown of Mount Salus, Mississippi. Judge McKelva is quickly admitted to the hospital for an operation. All seems to go well at first, but the judge doesn't recover like he should, remaining unresponsive and falling into what seems like a deep depression.
Laurel and her father's much younger wife, Fay, take rooms in a nearby boarding house where they stay for weeks. Laurel can't understand what her father sees in her crass, young stepmother. Fay seems more concerned about how her husband's illness affects her than with his well being. One night, Fay makes a scene at the hospital, and Laurel blames her when the judge suddenly dies.
Laurel must accompany her father's body back to Mississippi with her stepmother. What follows is even more Southern Gothic: the small town [00:08:00] funeral of an important man, a stepmother whose working class Texas background continues to clash with Laurel's upper middle class upbringing, and, most searingly, a haunting past.
When Fay decides to return to Texas with her family for a few days after the funeral, Laurel is left alone in her childhood home to confront her memories. One of my favorite aspects of Welty's writing is her use of imagery, and in The Optimist's Daughter, birds help convey Laurel's fear and grief. The bird imagery takes a particularly sinister turn when a chimney swift becomes trapped in the house the night of a storm.
Welty writes, " The bird touched, tapped, brushed itself against the walls and closed doors, never resting. What am I in danger of here? [Laurel] wondered, her heart pounding." The answer becomes [00:09:00] all too clear when Laurel darts into her parents' room, slamming the door so the bird can't follow. She is trapped like a bird , forced to reckon with her memories and her loss.
Laurel's mother died years ago after a long illness, and remembering her mother's confusion and helplessness during that time is difficult. She finds letters her father wrote her mother while traveling for work, and recalls childhood visits up home, as her mother referred to her home state of West Virginia.
Grieving for her parents reopens Laurel's grief for her husband, Philip, who died in World War II shortly after their marriage. She has a ghost-like vision of Philip: " He looked at her out of eyes wild with the craving for his unlived life, with mouth open like a funnel's. " Laurel wrestles with what it means to love once all your beloveds have [00:10:00] died.
" The fantasies of dying could be no stranger than the fantasies of living," she thinks. "Surviving is perhaps the strangest fantasy of all. " If you'd like to read some classic Southern Gothic fiction, you can't go wrong with The Optimist's Daughter. This bittersweet, atmospheric novella shows one of our best Southern writers at the height of her powers.
If you've experienced love or loss, Laurel's introspection will make you reflect on them. If you haven't, perhaps she'll make you empathize with those who have. I couldn't help but think of my Mississippi grandmother while reading this book, as well as one of her favorite casseroles to make: Pat Nixon's Hot Chicken Salad.
Given that The Optimist's Daughter was first published as a book in 1972, it seems like a [00:11:00] timely pairing. This recipe calls for many of the ingredients you'd recognize from cold chicken salad: cooked chicken, mayonnaise, lemon juice, celery, onion, pimentos, but you add a can of cream of chicken soup.
Because what would a casserole be without
a cream of chicken soup? Top with a mixture of crushed potato chips, toasted almonds, and grated cheese, and bake. I haven't eaten this in many, many years, but I still remember it as one of my favorite dishes my granny used to make. We'll link to the recipe on our blog.
Michael: Yum.
Jacqueline: That really reminds me so much of that time period.
Carrie: Yeah, it does, doesn't it?
Jacqueline: I remember those dishes with the chips or the crackers on top.
Carrie: Yes.
Jacqueline: Fritos. Those seemed to be like, that time period just seemed to really love that kind [00:12:00] of
Carrie: mm hmm
Jacqueline: Topping, I guess you'd call it.
Carrie: And this one, you know, a lot of those casseroles, it's kind of like dumping a bunch of cans , but this one requires that you, you know, you have to cook the chicken ahead of time and like do some chopping vegetables.
So it's kind of a production to make.
Michael: Yeah, my in laws still make those kind of recipes.
Carrie: Oh yeah?
Michael: With the crackers and the chips in the casserole.
Jacqueline: We still have this broccoli casserole that my sister makes that's, you know, from along, like has Ritz crackers on top and all that
kind of stuff.
It seems like, surviving and loss seems to be really predominant in Southern Gothic too.
Like how hard it is for the survivors.
Michael: Yeah,
Jacqueline: especially when they've been through traumatic events, I think.
Carrie: Mm hmm. Yeah
Jacqueline: the horror [00:13:00] expert
Michael: Well, yeah, I'm gonna say my that's exact like sums up my my choice Almost perfectly like that's a lot of grief.
Carrie: Mm hmm. Yeah, interesting one of the books that I almost read for this challenge was a book by a local author that I've had on Prompt to Page before, Wake the Bones.
It's a, it's actually a YA novel. Oh,
Jacqueline: I almost read that one, that's good. I had downloaded it.
Carrie: Well, yeah, so, I guess we'll have to, we'll have to try again soon. But yeah, it's about I think grief and loss really heavily influence in that, and I can't remember exactly the premise, but it has to do with, like, she can, the main character can communicate with the dead, or she, like, I don't know, there was something to do.
Jacqueline: Ghosts.
Carrie: Yeah.
Jacqueline: In this book that I'm gonna read, [00:14:00] there's like this, this presence, which seems kind of like, calls to the traditional gothic, you know, like Rebecca and, Jane Eyre and all these, you know, where they're, there's always ghosts in these stories.
Carrie: Yeah. And I think ghosts are a way that we kind of tried to process and understand our loss and grief.
Jacqueline: I hadn't thought about it that way, but that makes sense.
Carrie: Beloved by Toni Morrison. There's another good example of Southern Gothic that uses, I mean, a ghost plays a very large part in that novel. Okay, we're writing a dissertation, aren't we?
Jacqueline: I don't know.
The book I chose for the Southern Gothic literature prompt is Losing Brave by Bailey Madison and [00:15:00] Stephanie Miller. Set in a small Mississippi town, this young adult Southern Gothic mystery focuses on death, social interaction, and terror. It is suspenseful with a bit of romance. Payton Brave, a popular high school girl whose twin sister Dylan has been missing for more than a year, is mentally devastated by the disappearance of her sister and cannot remember anything about the day that Dylan disappeared at the train station, the day they planned to go to Charleston with their Nana.
Although the twins have vastly different goals and aspirations, They are remarkably close. Payton refuses to believe that her sister would just take off without telling her or their parents. Payton realizes that she must remember what happened on the day her sister vanished, when the police recover one of the missing girls from a nearby lake on the anniversary of
Dylan's disappearance. As Payton slowly attempts to recover the events in her mind, strange unexplainable things begin happening. The author uses Payton's recalled memory to [00:16:00] slowly reveal events to the reader as Payton begins to remember them. Payton begins her own investigation into what she now believes is her sister's death.
She becomes suspicious and distrustful of the two boys who have previously dated Dylan when they start showing romantic interest in her. Is one of them the monster hiding among her friends and family? And if so, is she their next target? In true Gothic fashion, the authors keep us in suspense throughout.
The authors do a remarkable job of creating an environment of fear as they reveal the mystery of her sister's disappearance. Madison and Miller's use of suspense builds tension in the story since the protagonists will not leave the past alone, putting themselves in danger of being the killer's next victim.
Is the main character a dependable narrator? When she begins wearing her sister's clothes and changes her name to Poe, a clear nod to Edgar Allan Poe, can we trust her? Is she just being paranoid or has she had a psychotic break? The authors are hitting all the right notes in this gothic [00:17:00] tale with all the stark, spooky, and supernatural factors.
The mortician father and the family living above the funeral parlor next to the cemetery evoke plenty of spooky chills. Instead of creepy castles and dark hallways, there is a creepy railroad station bathroom where the missing girls are last seen. The author brings Gothic fiction into the modern day.
The constant presence of life, death, and the supernatural wrap up the setting nicely. I recommend this book, and I am looking forward to reading more by these authors. This book is a must read for teens who are a fan of Jane Eyre. Instead of tea and crumpets from Gothic literature, the author uses the modern equivalent of donuts and coffee.
I found an easy donut recipe using an air fryer from Plated Cravings. These homemade donuts dipped in cinnamon sugar would make a great breakfast or treat.
Michael: Yum.
Jacqueline: I know you like donuts, Michael.
Michael: Who doesn't like donuts?
Jacqueline: I know.[00:18:00]
Carrie: That's funny that you mention it in relation to a gothic novel because my husband sent me, a link today of a sweatshirt he was thinking of buying from North Lime Donuts in Lexington. It's black and it has a coffee cup with a skull on it.
Jacqueline: Oh, perfect!
Michael: Oh man, those donuts are so good.
Jacqueline: Oh yeah, I love that place.
Carrie: So your, your book sounds good too. It's interesting, you know, we always have a fascination with the people who, with morticians and the people who run funeral homes, I think, do you remember that there was a TV series
Michael: Six Feet Under?
Carrie: Six Feet Under, that was very good.
Jacqueline: Yeah. That seems to be, you know, kind of brings in like the Adams family with the dark and
caskets and just,
Michael: [00:19:00] you know, that Southern Gothic is very much a gateway to horror.
Carrie: Yeah. I saw a description of a book, actually just today, I think it's called The Bog Woman? Have you?
Michael: The Bog Wife that's about to come out?
Carrie: The Bog Wife, yes.
Michael: I, yeah, that's, I think it's about to come out?
Carrie: Yeah, it is.
But they described it as, like, for people who don't think they like horror or something like that.
Yeah. So I think that one's out, like, maybe in a week or two, so if you, if you want to put it off until that's like a Appalachian Southern Gothic.
Michael: Yeah. Totally counts.
I read House of Cotton, the debut [00:20:00] from the Affrilachian writer Monica Brashears. This book opens in the mountains of eastern Tennessee with 19 year old Magnolia attending the funeral of her mama Brown who took her in when she was a little girl after her mother got hooked on drugs. Now with her Mama Brown gone she's left alone and practically broke living in a house that's rented from an older man named Sugarfoot.
With only a job at a gas station to support her and unable to afford rent, Sugarfoot decides to take advantage of her situation one night. Soon after, while working the late night shift at the gas station, she meets Cotton, a well dressed white man with blood on his hands and offers her a modeling job.
After contemplating her living and financial situation, she decides to at least listen to his offer and discovers that he operates a funeral home with his Aunt Eden. Funeral home, there we go. Southern Gothic bingo.
Carrie: We need to have a whole separate side quest bingo sheet. [00:21:00]
Michael: Cotton, returning home after living in New York working as a clairvoyant, has discovered a niche market where people who have missing loved ones will pay a lot of money to see them again.
With Eden's uncanny ability to transform herself and others to look like just about anyone, and Magnolia's need for money, Cotton uses Magnolia to become deceased and missing loved ones for rich people. In his word of mouth. The requests started to become weirder and unsettling, but Magnolia is keeping secrets of her own.
She's pregnant, and now the ghost of her recently deceased Mama Brown has started paying her visits. While the prose in this coming of age story is lyrical and captivating, the book is haunting, heartbreaking, and sneakily complex. The author uses the Southern Gothic novel to explore some tough themes like grief, trauma, abuse, addiction, and race.
And it is unexpectedly spicy, with Magnolia constantly making use of Tinder.
Carrie: All right!
Michael: Yeah, yeah, [00:22:00] uh, yeah, there's a lot, yeah, there's some spice in there, more than I'm used to, for sure.
Carrie: I love how you're totally, like, immune to violence, but spice is...
Michael: I was like, whoa. I just wasn't expecting it. There's quite a bit of it.
I was like, okay.
Jacqueline: Yeah, yeah.
Michael: Alright. So a spicy book calls for a spicy dish. So I paired this with one of my favorite Tennessee staples. Nashville Hot Chicken. A fried chicken dish that can really turn up the heat. After eating at Prince's and Hattie B's in Nashville, I'm excited to try some homemade hot chicken with a recipe I found at GrahamBabyCakes.
com. The recipe calls for buttermilk, hot sauce, flour, cornstarch, paprika, smoked paprika, cayenne, chili powder, and brown sugar. And it'll probably leave steam coming out your ears.
Carrie: Yeah, as you want.
Michael: Yeah, I mean, you're gonna eat hot chicken, you better make it [00:23:00] hot.
Carrie: That's right. I know Jacqueline wouldn't eat hot chicken, would you?
Jacqueline: I actually down, when I was down south, I had some fake Nashville chicken. And it was really, really good and I can't find anything like that up here.
Michael: There's a restaurant, I think it's still here, Joella's in Lexington.
Jacqueline: Yeah, do they have like, is it vegan or?
Michael: I don't know, they might.
Jacqueline: Yeah.
Carrie: But they do have, it is good.
Michael: Yeah.
Jacqueline: It's good, I'll have to try it.
Michael: It's pretty good, yeah.
Carrie: And you can get different levels of spice, like, so you don't have to go like,
Jacqueline: Atomic.
Carrie: Yeah.
Michael: Ruin your palette.
Carrie: Yeah.
Jacqueline: I will say, I went to Culver's and got their spicy chicken and I couldn't, it was, I couldn't eat it.
Michael: Was it too bad?
Jacqueline: It was hot.
Michael: Oh.
Jacqueline: I mean, if you want really hot spicy chicken, Oh, that's the place to,
Michael: I mean, yesterday I went to Wendy's and got the ghost pepper hot chicken.
Jacqueline: Yeah.
Michael: You know, I'm from the south.
Jacqueline: Yeah.[00:24:00]
Oh yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I went to a restaurant when I was living in downtown in Bur, in Alabama and it was actually downtown Birmingham and it was called Sawyer's I believe. And they had these hot pepper Hot peppers with like cheese and I think it had pork in them too.
Michael: Like jalapeno popper type.
Jacqueline: Yeah,
like a jalapeno popper. And I took one bite into that and I thought, I was like, Oh, this is good. Until. I mean, I literally, I felt like things were coming out of my ears.
Carrie: Yeah, sometimes it doesn't hit you until you're like a few bites in.
Michael: Or like three or four in.
Carrie: Yeah.
Michael: That's happened to me. Woo.
Carrie: Yeah. It's, it's funny, like, I mean, people have written about what makes you, eat hot [00:25:00] foods like that, because, I mean, even people who are used to the heat, it still can be painful. There's something in us that still wants to do it, even though it's a little bit
Michael: A little crazy.
Carrie: Yeah.
Jacqueline: I, I, some, I mean, I, for me, there's like a line between, like, what I can, you know, like.
My taste buds might like it, but then the burning or whatever.
Michael: Some folks just want to see how hot they can go and will make food almost inedible.
Carrie: Yeah.
Michael: And then like my in laws are other in that spectrum where a little pepper is like too much.
Carrie: Yeah.
Michael: Because they're, you know, they're Kentuckians, born and raised.
Carrie: Yeah. It is definitely a spectrum, even in the South.
Michael: Oh, yeah.
Jacqueline: That's true. That's true.[00:26:00]
Carrie: Thanks for listening to the Books and Bites podcast. To learn more about Books and Bites Bingo, visit us at jesspublib. org /books-bites. Our theme music is The Breakers from the album In Close Quarters with the Enemy by Scott Whiddon. You can learn more about Scott and his music at his website, adoorforadesk.com.