books I've read

Anne Hawn's books

Who Moved My Cheese?
If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans
Scientific Secrets for Self-Control
Just One Damned Thing After Another
The Vanishing
Exercises in Knitting
The Good Dream
The Very Best of Edgar Allan Poe
The Chosen
BT-Kids' Knits
Talking God
The Professor
The Christmas Files
The Finisher
Home Decor for 18-Inch Dolls: Create 10 Room Settings with Furniture and 15 Outfits with Accessories
Dracula and Other Stories
A New Song
Christy
All Quiet on the Western Front
File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents


Anne Hawn Smith's favorite books »

I'm reading 150 Books

2019 Reading Challenge
2019 Reading Challenge 19614 members
<b>Are you ready to set your 2019 reading goal?</b> This is a supportive, fun group of people looking for people just like you. Track your annual reading goal here with us, and we have challenges, group reads, and other fun ways to help keep you on pace. There will never be a specific number of books to read here or pressure to read more than you can commit to. Your goal is five? Great! You think you want to read 200? Very cool! We won't kick you out for not participating regularly, but we'll love it if you do. Join us!

Books we've read

The Help
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
The Night Circus
The Golden Compass
11/22/63
The Little Lady Agency
Catch-22
The Good Father
A Discovery of Witches
The Knife of Never Letting Go
Fahrenheit 451
Frankenstein
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
A Christmas Carol
Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
The Color Purple
Matched
Cloud Atlas
The Princess Bride
The Catcher in the Rye


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Tuesday, October 30, 2001

The Coffin Quilt: The Feud Between the Hatfields and the McCoys

The Coffin Quilt: The Feud Between the Hatfields and the McCoysThe Coffin Quilt: The Feud Between the Hatfields and the McCoys by Ann Rinaldi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was excellent. The feud is the background to the story of young Roseanna McCoy who meets and falls in love with Johnse Hatfield. It is told by Fanny McCoy who understand the futility of the feud an its terrible impact on everyone.

The tragedy of the relationship is made more poignant because of the coffin quilt Roseanna works on to preserve the memory of family who are killed over the feud. Coffin quilts were made in the Appalachian Mountains and contained a graveyard in the center of the quilt and an outer border of coffins. When a person is born or married into the family, a coffin with his or her name on it is appliqued on the outer border. When they die, the coffin is moved into the graveyard in the center.

Coffin Quilt: http://folkwaysnotebook.blogspot.com/...

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Wednesday, April 18, 2001

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop CafeFried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
It seems like this book started a whole new genre in Southern writing. It's the South at it's best and worst. It is sleepy little towns at their best and worst.

The book is about two women, Ninny whom Evelyn, who meets in a nursing home while her husband visits with his mother. Ninny tells about the town she was raised in and various threads weave in and out. Sometimes the book is confusing and hard to keep in order, but I remember sitting outside on the porch in Mississippi and listen to my family tell stories and it seemed like they went just this way. As a child, I did not want to interrupt to have a detail clarified because someone would notice that it was way past my bedtime, or I had something else I should be doing, or worst of all, what they were discussing wasn't a subject I should have been listening to.

The old story is about Idgie and Ruth who run the Whistle Stop Cafe and raise a boy together. It isn't totally clear to the town if it is a lesbian relationship but it is just accepted in Whistle Stop. I don't see any inconsistency with it in the book because the old South has always been very tolerant of people who might be called characters.

Idgie idolized Buddy Threadgood and when he was killed, something happened to her. She was always a tomboy, but she became wild and nothing civilized her until Ruth came one summer to teach Vacation Bible School.

As Ninny tells the tale to Evelyn, we also see a change in her. She starts taking hormones for menopause and selling Mary Kay cosmeticis. It is as if she wakes up and begins to be a person. While the book was better than the movie, the one scene where Kathy Bates (Evelyn) rams a young woman's car is absolutely priceless and worth seeing the movie for.


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