Belle Weather

Columnist, Celia Rivenbark makes us laugh again with Belle Weather: Mostly Sunny With a Chance of Scattered Hissy Fits. I'm not quite sure what makes me laugh so hard at her work. Is it the southern flavor? I don't live in the south so is it "really" southern. Is her gentle but snarky (hard to combo but I think it works) jabs to one and all of her favorite topics? Or is it the ride of the absurd as she gives us a rambling tale that ends with us saying "Huh? Didn't we start back over there? " Or is just her funny turn of phrase?

Some examples:
On online dating-
"Her friend complained 'There ain't nothing out there for the rednecks.' ...but "listing one of her 'unique attributes' as the 'ability to pee off the side of my daddy's bass boat while standing' wasn't the sort of thing most on-line dating services could really appreciate."

On how she is disappointed in the 'new' TV Guide magazine-
"...I always felt that the Holy Grail would be to write the program synopses for TV Guide. It wasn't my fallback, it was my dream job and now, verily, it will never be. ...I pictured being paid a big pile of money to watch hundreds of hours of TV before reducing a complicated plot line to few powerful nouns and verbs."

And her open letter to Britney Spears is something to read...
"Through all the wild partying and head shaving and fornicating and tattooing and what not I've got your back. Even though, when you shaved your head , you looked like the world's only redneck Tibetan monk. ...I didn't lose faith in you."

A little essay here, a little essay there - fun for all abounds. A fun read for a crummy time.

McIlhenny's Gold: How a Louisiana Family Built the Tabasco Empire

Jeffery Rothfeder's book McIlhenny's Gold: How a Louisiana Family Built the Tabasco Empire is not just a book about a business. It is a book about a family - the McIlhenny's, a place - Avery Island, Louisiana, and a time - the Civil War reconstruction era. Rothfeder does an excellent job of explaining how the product Tabasco - has been intertwined since the beginning with these three.

The business was begun as a post war enterprise. It grew to engulf the island - which is also home to salt mines. It helped create one of the first "company" towns. And it helped change the culinary culture as the appreciation for hot foods has grown. Tabasco has become an icon.

The McIlhenny family is full of bankers, naturalists, and soldiers and their family-run company has, in some ways, become an extension of themselves. Rothfeder does a nice job keeping the story going through the decades. An interesting story of history, food and a family run business. Don't blame me if you run out and get some hot sauce. A very good read.

Buried Bones

Carolyn Haines has a mystery series set in the Mississippi Delta. It is saturated with the essence of the South. Old money, old houses and a small town where everyone knows what everybody is up to. Buried Bones is her second book in the Sarah Booth Delaney series.

Sarah has just saved her family home from being sold by solving a case. Now it looks like she is going to be an investigator. But her investigations come very close to home, when several friends are suspected of murder. The victim, a writer, knew a lot of secrets about everyone. And he was going to put the truth in his biography. Sarah gets to sort out whose secret is whose and who was willing to kill to keep those secrets quiet.

This may sound similar to other mysteries but Haines livens things up with her wild eccentric cast of characters, and her willingness to let Sarah not take things too seriously. Humorously written and very dense - a huge cast of characters- Haines creates a winner. I read in a review that they called this series is a mix of the Ya- Ya Sisterhood meets Nancy Drew - and I think they are right. A fun read. Looking forward to more in the series.

Secret Life of Bees

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, takes a 14 year old girl, Lily, who has grown up without a mother and any parental affection, and sets her loose during the days of the 1964 Civil Rights Act in South Carolina. She gets into trouble when she tries to help her black caretaker who is beat up when she tries to register to vote. They escape her father's farm with what little possesions Lily has left from her mother and head toward the one town she thinks her mother may have been to.

In this town, they are taken in by three black sisters who are beekeepers, producing a line of honey with a Black Madonna on the label. Lily soon finds out that everyone has secrets, including her mother, and while racial tensions stir around them she finds a place of refuge.

There are great characters in this book. August is the older woman mentor that every woman needs in her life. Monk writes of friendship, motherhood, and a community of women with reverance and respect. She makes this a wonderfully written book, something worth reading - not just as the latest hot read for book discussion groups. And you also learn a bit about bees!
A great read.

One of my favorite passage between August and Lily:

"But lifting a person's heart - now that matters. The whole problem with people is ---"
"They don't know what matters and what doesn't," I said filling in her sentence and feeling proud of myself for doing so.
"I was gonna say, The problem is they know what matters, but they don't choose it. You know how hard that is Lily? .... The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters."