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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.
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