A Riot reader from the Midwest was so intrigued by my love letter to Flannery O’Connor, she tweeted me and asked if I had a copy of my Southern literature class reading list. She always wanted to dig into Southern lit, but didn’t know where to start. I suddenly realized that if you aren’t exposed to Southern lit, you really don’t know where to start. Sure, you’ve read To Kill a Mockingbird, and yeah… that Faulkner guy was from Mississippi (let’s face it, Faulkner’s words ain’t easy on the brain). But what else is there?
I started to make a list of Southern books I had in my personal library, and I had around 70 that I would be willing to tell a stranger to read. Bookseller extraordinaire Joe Hickman of Lemuria Books in Jackson, Mississippi helped me fill in some gaps, and we exchanged a few notes on upcoming releases. Lemuria is by far the best bookstore in the South because they have a huge staff full of people who know their stuff. Plus, they have ALL THE BOOKS. Seriously. The books overflow off the shelves all over the floor. Great place.
A few notes: some authors have so many good books, I just listed the ones I liked the most. In the case of Faulkner, I picked his more accessible novels. There is some really great nonfiction included and a lot of really great nonfiction NOT included. I had to cut it off at some point.
I suggest you pour yourself a glass of single barrel bourbon, make a batch of cheese straws, and start reading.
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A Childhood: The Biography of a Place – Harry Crews
A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
A Death in the Family – James Agee
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
Airships – Barry Hannah
A Land More Kind Than Home – Wiley Cash
A Lesson Before Dying – Ernest Gaines
All Over But the Shoutin’ – Rick Bragg
All the King’s Men – Robert Penn Warren
Apostles of Light – Ellen Douglas
As I Lay Dying – William Faulkner
A Streetcar Named Desire – Tennessee Williams
A Time to Kill – John Grisham
The Awakening – Kate Chopin
Bastard Out of Carolina – Dorothy Allison
Bats Out of Hell – Barry Hannah
Big Bad Love – Larry Brown
Black Boy – Richard Wright
Blues All Around Me – B.B. King
Brother to a Dragonfly – Will Campbell
Burning Bright: Stories – Ron Rash
Before Women Had Wings – Connie May Fowler
Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy
Can’t Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters – Robert Gordon
Child of God – Cormac McCarthy
The Civil War: A Narrative (I-III) – Shelby Foote
Cold Mountain – Charles Frazier
Cold Sassy Tree – Olive Ann Burns
*The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty – Eudora Welty
The Color Purple – Alice Walker
The Complete Stories – Flannery O’Connor
The Courting of Marcus Dupree – Willie Morris
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter – Tom Franklin
Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man – Fannie Flagg
Deep Blues – Robert Palmer
Deliverance – James Dickey
Delta Wedding – Eudora Welty
Ellen Foster – Kaye Gibbons
The End of California – Steve Yarbrough
Every Day By the Sun – Dean Faulkner Wells
The Fall of the House of Zeus – Curtis Wilkie
Father of the Blues – W. C. Handy
Fire in the Morning – Elizabeth Spencer
Geronimo Rex – Barry Hannah
Give My Poor Heart Ease: Voices of the Mississippi Blues – William Ferris
Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
The Great Santini – Pat Conroy
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – Carson McCullers
Hell at the Breech – Tom Franklin
House of Prayer No. 2 – Mark Richard
I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down – William Gay
It Wasn’t All Dancing and Other Stories – Mary Ward Brown
Joe – Larry Brown
The Keepers of the House – Shirley Ann Grau
The Kitchen House – Kathleen Grissom
Known World – Edward P Jones
Lanterns on the Levee – William Alexander Percy
The Last Gentleman – Walker Percy
The Last Girls – Lee Smith
The Last of the Southern Girls – Willie Morris
Light in August – William Faulkner
The Little Friend – Donna Tartt
Long Time Leaving: Dispatches from Up South – Roy Blount Jr.
Look Homeward, Angel – Thomas Wolfe
The Mind of the South – W.J. Cash
The Moviegoer – Walker Percy
Mudbound – Hillary Jordan
The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure – Jack Pendarvis
Native Guard – Natasha Trethewey
North Toward Home – Willie Morris
Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All – Allan Gurganus
Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored – Clifton Taulbert
One Foot in Eden – Ron Rash
One Mississippi – Mark Childress
The Optimist’s Daughter – Eudora Welty
Other Voices, Other Rooms – Truman Capote
Poachers – Tom Franklin
The Prince of Tides – Pat Conroy
Provinces of Night – William Gay
The Quiet Game – Greg Iles
Raney – Clyde Edgerton
Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 – John Barry
Run with the Horseman – Ferrol Sams
Salvage the Bones – Jesmyn Ward
Salvation on Sand Mountain – Dennis Covington
The Secret Life of Bees – Sue Monk Kidd
Serena – Ron Rash
The Sharpshooter Blues – Lewis Nordan
Shiloh and Other Stories – Bobbie Ann Mason
The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
Southern Belly: A Food Lover’s Companion – John T. Edge
Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom – Peter Guralnick
Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
Victory Over Japan – Ellen Gilchrist
Walking Across Egypt – Clyde Edgerton
Welding with Children – Tim Gautreaux
Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor
Work Shirts for Madmen – George Singleton
Zeitoun – Dave Eggers
Coming soon:
The Death of Santini – Pat Conroy (Nan A. Talese)
Lookaway, Lookaway by Wilton Barnhardt (St. Martin’s Press)
Men We Reaped – Jesmyn Ward (Bloomsbury USA)
The Realm of Last Chances – Steve Yarbrough (Knopf)
The Resurrectionist – Matthew Guinn (W.W. Norton)
Rivers – Michael Farris Smith (Simon & Schuster)
Someone Else’s Love Story – Joshilyn Jackson (William Morrow)
Sycamore Row – John Grisham (Doubleday)
This Dark Road to Mercy – WIley Cash (William Morrow)
The Tilted World – Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly (William Morrow)
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I started to make a list of Southern books I had in my personal library, and I had around 70 that I would be willing to tell a stranger to read. Bookseller extraordinaire Joe Hickman of Lemuria Books in Jackson, Mississippi helped me fill in some gaps, and we exchanged a few notes on upcoming releases. Lemuria is by far the best bookstore in the South because they have a huge staff full of people who know their stuff. Plus, they have ALL THE BOOKS. Seriously. The books overflow off the shelves all over the floor. Great place.
