This one surprised me. I’m not a huge Stephen King fan. While I certainly find his writing style accessible, I’ve had a hard time being drawn into his novels. So, imagine my surprise when I discovered that I really enjoyed this book.
A relatively short work by King’s standards, and nonfiction at that, it helps to clearly illuminate parts of the writing process for the general public while shedding light on certain events in King’s life with an immediacy that helps to get the reader interested. Far from a dry read.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil - John Berendt
Midnight was first published in 1994, and I waited thirteen years to read it. I can dimly recall avoiding it at first because of its popularity – I was much younger, and at the time was in a stage of life where I assumed that any book selling that many copies for so long couldn’t possibly be good or sophisticated in any way. Don’t hold it against me.
Essentially a travelogue of Berendt’s time in Savannah, this book is an extremely easy read – which isn’t meant as an insult. Often very funny, Berendt’s prose makes some keen observations about life in the South during the seventies and eighties. Nothing earth shaking, mind you, but an enjoyable read, stylistically assured and (yes) sophisticated. It is infinitely better than Berendt’s less satisfying follow up, The City of Falling Angels
.Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War - Tony Horwitz
A really interesting look at the culture of American Civil War reenactors. Horwitz spent a good deal of time following a series of ‘hardcore’ Civil War reenactors, and his research paid off. The book is, in equal parts, insightful, funny, and rather frightening in its examination of the attitudes behind a particular group of people for whom The Civil War never really ended.
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