December Semi-Daily: Books

[resonant]

marina, "What was the last book you read that wasn't fanfic and that you intensely loved, and why."

I've loved a lot of books over the past year (and returned to some much beloved ones for reread), but "intensely loved" is a very high standard. I'm going to surprise myself by choosing nonfiction: journalist Lee Sandlin's Wicked River: The Mississippi When It Last Ran Wild.

I read this book three years ago, and here are some things that stuck in my mind:

There's a chapter that starts at the source of the river and takes you down it, town by town and mile by mile -- what the water smells like, what the surrounding towns look like, one spot where a large river joins and for a while the two rivers run side by side in the same bed but distinguishable by the color of the water.

When Lincoln died, the news was carried from town to town by a black-clad riverboat.

Boats would pull up at night and form a large floating ad-hoc network of whorehouses, bars, restaurants, dance halls, etc. In the morning they would separate and head downriver again.

The mere rumor of a slave revolt was enough to send an entire city of white people into a frenzy, arming themselves and launching preemptive attacks -- the hysteria is amazing to read about, and throws an interesting and depressing light on the way white Americans are still talking, thinking, feeling about race.

Sometimes voyageurs from Canada (recognizable by the red shirts they wore) would pole makeshift rafts down the river. When they reached the Gulf, they'd take the raft apart, sell the lumber, and take another means of transportation to get back home. "Civilized" people on the river, seeing the body of a dead voyageur bobbing in the water, would pass it by with no more interest than you or I would have in a dead raccoon by the side of the highway.

It was shocking, vivid, a great book.




24 -- wychwood, "Something about SGA! What's the one fic you're sorry you never wrote? What was your favourite episode? Do you still love John/Rodney? How gay WAS John Sheppard? Where in Atlantis would you live if you could pick any room you liked? Pick one or a topic of your choice."
25 -- isabellerecs, "What was your most favorite Christmas present that you ever received as a kid?" and/or "What Christmas present had you wanted badly but never received as a kid?"
26 --runpunkrun, I'd be interested to hear about your experience with the CPAP machine.
27 --destina, "how has your relationship to fandom changed over the years? By which I mean not just participation in it, but your level of tolerance/interest for the cyclical things about it, the way old arguments never really stop or die, etc, but also the ways fandom changes and new ways of doing fandom evolve. (And old ways evolve out, and terms evolve, etc.)"
28 -- kass, "What do you like best about where you live?"
29 --
30 -- china_shop, "Your favourite book you read this year."
31 -- wolfshark, "what is your favorite story to reread of your own stuff? what was your favorite story to write?"

Comments

[marina]

Wow that sounds like an amazing book, which I would not have guessed from the title! And also didn't expect you'd pick non-fiction! Thanks so much for this, I'm definitely taking this as a rec for that book.

[jesse_the_k]

+1 -- that book's gone on hold at the library already--thanks for the rec. AND THE AUTHOR READS the audio book, always a plus.

[resonant]

I'm so happy to have shared that book with more people! I hope you both enjoy it as much as I did.

[mekare]

voyageurs from Canada (recognizable by the red shirts they wore)

Wow instant Fraser image in my head. But also how horrifying that they weren't considered worth pulling out of the river to be buried.

[resonant]

Yeah, things like that make me wonder: what are we doing now and taking for granted that people of the future will find appalling? I mean, there are things happening now that we find appalling but can't stop -- but there must be some things that just seem completely normal to us that will shock our descendents.