Every year, I purchase New Stories from the South, but I always buy last year's, in paperback, then I might take another few months to read it. So I've just finished the 2000 issue and will start on 2001 one of these days (I have it in my pile of books somewhere). I never regret having purchased or read these anthologies. They always include good writers, both new and familiar, and the stories are an interesting combination of themes, locales and styles. The South is a part, sometimes subtle, but always there, and the characters are seldom sterotypical, their stories never trite. Pick up any of these issues. The stories are timeless.

One wonders a bit at the subtitle: The Year's Best, 2000, and then one remembers this collection, the latest in a long line of such anthologies stretching back to the 1980's, was edited by Algonquin Books' Shannon Ravenel, and she knows more about these things probably than anybody else.

Nevertheless, I would call this a mixed bag of Southern storytelling. Allan Gurganus's "He's at the Office" has a clever premise, one familiar to anyone from a close-knit, aging family, and once again showcases Gurganus's sharp eye for detail and razzmatazz prose style, but the ending is silly and the story collapses because of it. R.H.W. Dillard's "Forgetting the End of the World" seems much ado about nothing and strains for a significance it most certainly does not achieve. These are two of the weaker links in the chain. Among the stronger ones are "Mr. Puniverse", a marvelous comedy of unrequited passion, Romulus Linney's "The Widow", which has the rhythm and cadence of a good Appalachian folk ballad, Melanie Sumner's "Good Hearted Woman", the book's longest piece and most obvious crowd pleaser, about a young woman's confrontations with work, love, and family, and Margie Rabb's "How to Tell a Story," my own favorite of the bunch, and an incisive, very moving, and all-too-true look at the dog eat dog world of university creative writing programs and one young writer's determination to tell stories despite what happens to her and the stories she tells.

This is an attractively designed paperback. Each story ends with an author biography, with the writer revealing why he/she wrote that particular story.

This conference proceeding is quite focussed on fuzzy logic applications and theoretical considerations for applying fuzzy logic for some real applications.

I found this book to be loads of fun for the casual Alabama Football fan and the not so casual fan. I was reading the book with a group of friends and we talked about the ins and outs of each play and discussed the worth of each play that was included. The CD that was included was well done and brought back some cherrished memories.

If you are looking for new design ideas or if you have ever been curious about what the First Americans might have worn a couple of hundred years ago, this book offers a wealth of information.

Here you can find detailed drawings of blouses, skirts, men's shirts and leggings, moccasins and head coverings. Although the book doesn't include patterns per se, the written instructions appear to be detailed enough for most readers with some sewing experience to follow. (As a very amateur seamstress, I have to admit I would have liked more detailed explanations, espeically for the finger weaving section).

Since this book includes clothing of all the Great Lakes tribes, you can see the variations in design and construction between the peoples of that area. However, as Hartman points out, it is almost impossible to identify clothing as belonging to a specific tribe. Contact among these people offered the opportunity for trade as well as imitation of dress styles. Looking at the many drawings, you can see the influence that the French and other Europeans had on clothing and jewelry design.

However, this is more than just a sewing or design book. In addition to the pictures and how-to sections, Hartman also includes quite a bit of historical and cultural information. She briefly mentions the role of trade silver used for decoration. (If this is a subject that interests you, you may want to look at "The Covenant Chain, Indian Ceremonial and Trade Silver," by N. Jaye Fredrickson.)

This is a good book. There's a lesson in this book that tells you that you shouldn't get upset over little things. Another lesson tell us that it's okay to get scared because a lot of people get scared.

As being part of this family it was fun to read and find out about my families history and background especially the stuff about UNCLE TED. Erik Wright

I think this book is really good because I like funny characters. Some of the funny characters in this story are Elliot Banks and Adam Joshua. My favorite chapter is called "The Show-and-Tell War."

Written by a team of two sailing CPAs and a lawyer, this comprehensive guide covers what you need to know to help you identify your most effective tax-planning strategies. It is quite possible that maintenance, depreciation, and operating expenses will be tax deductible, provided certain strategies are adopted now. Not only have the authors clearly explained these points of tax law, they have illustrated them by example and provided sample documents to help you confidently adopt a tax plan for your yacht.

I am a big fan of Lee Smith. No author today is capable of bringing the southern family to life the way she does and she does it again in Family Linen. The only problem is that she hangs them out to dry too long. There are all these wonderful characters, each with their own distinct voice and unique story to tell but then nothing really happens. She tries to cover it up by saying small town gossip gets forgotten as soon as there's something new to talk about but it shouldn't work that way in a book. When you've invested a couple of hundred pages in something there should be some kind of payoff. Definitely not her best effort.

Nobody is better than Lee Smith when it comes to creating marvelous characters and Family Linen is filled with them. No cardboard creatures these, but full bodied human beings most of whom are somewhere in our own lives. My only quarrel with Smith is that she sometimes gets so deeply involved with these characters, she forgets to tell us where they are going. Family Linen does have more of a plot and a mystery that will keep the reader turning the pages until it is solved. And even when we know, the characters are still the strongest force in the book.Read it and see which one of your neighbors or relatives are right there to be discovered.

I truely enjoyed this book and I don't know why some of the reviewsers were offended. This is the second review I wrote, I don't know what happened to the first one. There are family secrets that come out because of hypnotism and the family being brought together by illness and a funeral. Really this story is about some very serious matters but Lee Smith wrote from a lighthearted angle which makes th reader laugh at a lot of the situations. I wouldn't call this book "dark" at all even though it could've very easily been written that way. I liked this book a lot and to think I almost didn't read it because of some of descriptions in some of the negative reviews. Read this book, it's very good. It's about real life and sometimes real life isn't very pretty. There are many people that are raised by their parents and then find out in their adult life that these wonderful people that raised them aren't actually their parents. Their "sister" or "Aunt So-and-so" is their real mother. This is really a good book and it's written from the perfect perspective, with a touch of humor.

The Last Girls tells the story of five women who attended college together and took a raft trip, along with several other girls, down the Mississippi in 1965.
They are reunited for a cruise down the Mississippi after the death of one of the group. The cruise provides an occasion for all of them to review their lives, individually and together, to piece together their memories of what happened among them 35 years earlier and at how they arrived where they are in their personal lives.
Lee Smith is a gifted writer, creating a beautiful, clear picture of a young woman's life in the mid-60's, and while many people had many different experiences, everyones' are unique.
The characters all had an edgey, unfinished but done, feel to them. In different ways they are not complete and the feeling was that they were frozen in a period of time and emotion and the capability and capacity to move on and grow and change seems to elude them. This was not a comfortable read, but it was thought provoking. The Southern history was interesting and readable, not intrusive. The problem I had with this book is that , for me , there was not a character that I identified with or felt "close" to.....hmmmmmm on second thought, that is probably a good thing!! It is, in a way, like attending a school reunion and realizing that the"popular" crowd had already had their moments in the sun, a long time ago, and that any envy you had in school for them is replaced by realizing that it was not warranted and acknowleding all the good in your own life.

Lee Smith is amazing. In her deceptively simple style, she offers up remarkably complex characters and stories that stay with you long after you finish reading. Her intuition and humor and generosity are evident on every page. Her fiction has always sprung from a deep place in her...whether it is an account of a mountain evangelist, or in the case of The Last Girls, the story of four college friends who recreate a trip down the Mississippi after thirty-some-odd years. This latest offering is rare because its time frame is contemporary, and it's interesting to see that her strengths are undiminished in writing about women we immediately recognize and identify with. I have always liked Lee Smith's books, and have consistently turned my friends onto her work. I am an addictive reader, and am always struck by her particular voice, which is unlike any other writer's I know of: an unpretentious, intelligent and honest telling of stories, with an easy wit and poignancy. The portraits she draws are almost anthropological in their mining of culture and incident -- I always learn something. The Last Girls is no different. Read this, and everything else you can get your hands on that she's done: Oral History, The Devil's Dream, Fair and Tender Ladies, Saving Grace...they are all varied and worth your time. [...]

I was astonished to read the dismissive and angry reviews of Lee Smith's new book, The Last Girls, on this page. The characters I spent time with were heartbreakingly real to me -- I knew those women. She captures a time and a place in our culture that is long gone -- hence the title. 1965 was not 1969, not even 1967, in terms of political consciousness. The women in this book came of age before the great social upheaval, as their stories so poignantly underscore. That makes them no less interesting, instead, their world feels like unexplored territory to me. How could anyone could read about Charlotte's memories on the riverbank with her brother, digging in the mud, and dismiss her as "cardboard"? This book is full of great small moments, movingly rendered. And it's funny, too.
Lee Smith is a treasure, and her writing is infused with heart and soul and brains -- all the stuff that makes readers return to her work again and again. Read this book. It's brilliant.