Eat, Drink and be from Mississippi

So, I’ve had this book sitting on my ‘to be read’ pile for months. You know what I’m talking about. That table where you store books you bought impulsively. What? You don’t buy books impulsively? Okay, well, we’ll talk about developing a book buying fetish in another blog. Todayit is all about Eat, Drink and Be From Mississippi. I loved the title, even though I’m not from Mississippi. I’m from the deep South and I feel an automatic simpatico with any writer who celebrates Southern culture and when the back cover made comparisons to Harper Lee, well I was standing in line at Barron’s paying good money for a hard back book. But, then months would go by and I’d read other things first: Thomas Jefferson, Phillip Yancey and Susan  Elizabeth Phillips–please don’t judge, I’m an eclectic. Finally, I took the plunge. I settled in one night on the cushy sofa, opened the first page and by the fifth or sixth page, I was flipping to the next chapter. I’m sorry! I like dialogue. Well, so I thought maybe it was just me. I’d give it another night to win me over with deep-fried magic. But there again, I was flipping pages trying to get to the point where I was sucked deep into melodrama. It never happened for me. I threw my hands up in despair, cried to the patron saint of Southern writers and briefly considered that I’ve lived too long in Texas to be sensitive to the nuances of slow, meandering character development. So, it is with regret that I tell you, despite my affinity for the sisterhood of Southern writers, that I could not whole-heartedly recommend Eat and Drink. .. I wonder if it is because the story took place in California?

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