Fried Green Tomatoesis one of my favorite movies of all time. As far as films go its got a little bit of something for everybody: adventure, romance, melodrama, and even a murder mystery! The secret’s in the sauce, or at least that’s what I’ve heard. It was made for a paltry sum of just $11 million, and while that’s quite a loot haul for the likes of Joe Schmoe on Main Street, for Hollywood that’s chump change. It grossed more than ten times that amount and proved once again that American audiences love a well-told Southern yarn, especially when the acting is as stellar as it is in Fried Green Tomatoes. I mean, talk about an embarrassment of riches, to have Kathy Bates, Jessica Tandy, and Mary-Louise Parker all in the same film—and as leads, no less!
And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God:
Ruth 1:16 (KJV)
One thing that was never discussed among my family members when we watched the film together is the lesbian love story at the heart of the film. Now mind you, the onscreen depiction is chaste, but anyone with eyes can clearly see the sparks that fly and the deep love that grows and endures between Idgie Threadgoode (Mary Stuart Masterson) and Ruth Jamison (Mary-Louise Parker). There are even none-too-subtle nods to a queer couple from the Bible itself: Naomi and Ruth. Now, I’m not interested in getting into a historical-theological debate with anyone regarding the canonically gay biblical couple, but perhaps any naysayers reading this would like to check out this excerpt from The Children Are Free: Reexamining the Biblical Evidence on Same-sex Relationships.
…anyone with eyes can clearly see the sparks that fly and the deep love that grows and endures between Idgie Threadgoode (Mary Stuart Masterson) and Ruth Jamison (Mary-Louise Parker).
The same-sex love story at the heart of the larger narrative is frequently straight-washed and written off as simply a superlative example of a great friendship, and it is a story of a great friendship, but it’s also the story of a marriage, one that never received the validation it deserved and was never allowed the public expression it warranted simply because the married people were both women. You can call it what you want but I will call it what it is: love. No one can rightfully condemn it.
You can call it what you want but I will call it what it is: love. No one can rightfully condemn it.
The film won a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Film — Wide Release, as well as Oscar noms for Tandy and the adapted screenplay written by Fannie Flagg (who wrote the novel on which the film is based) and Carol Sobieski. There’s so much inside of it (both the film and its source material) to unpack for anyone willing to search it.
I know that I frequently use these “quotes posts” as jumping-off points for whatever tangent I feel like exploring that day, and I really appreciate those of you who are always willing to follow the bread crumbs with me. You have my love and sincerest thanks forever.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night, And wild plum trees in tremulous white,
Robins will wear their feathery fire Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn, Would scarcely know that we were gone.
Sara Teasdale (1884-1933), while frequently excluded from mention in conversations surrounding early twentieth century American poetry, was critically acclaimed and lauded by both her peers and the public alike during her lifetime. Her deeply personal and heartfelt poems charted the changing inner landscape of a woman living through one of the most turbulent periods in American history, and we would do well to re-examine her impact on her contemporaries as well as her successors. You can read more about her life and work here.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say It is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
Winter Journal: Threshed Blue, Cardings, Dim Tonsils by Emily Wilson
stripped batting of cloud glimpsed ligaments dusk coming up under lithographic, nib-hatchings instruments click the fine-sprung locust replicate dinge along hill-lines tailings of umber, the rust smudge There is still that hemmed ocean of oaks the various reds, the somehow silver cast over the brown-gold the under-brushed shadows How can there be more of their dispensing into air? The night-openings of the trees The thousand clefts into Their corridors shiver and merge and piece apart There is no one beside what was once river Only the carbons incoming accreting in leaves Love of old oaks unencumbering Root-beauties brought through crude sieves of bare trees the few fastened leaves Those pods are like tongues or like sickles The blades have been pulled from their sheaths The backs of the clouds now upturned They herd from pink seas They make their untouchable stream through regions of steep emptiness against which the trees have their gestures Drop down, drop down toward me your little sleek scars Make your bed in rough cedars clangor of darks numbering in clusters of trunks and spoked lungs the thistles that work at the gums
Emily Wilson studied at Harvard University and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has taught at the latter, as well as at Colby College, Grinnell College, and the University of Montana. Wilson is the author of four poetry collections: The Keep(University of Iowa Press, 2001); Morpho Terrestre(2006), a limited edition book featuring artwork by Sara Langworthy; Micrographia(University of Iowa Press, 2010); and The Great Medieval Yellows(Canarium Books, 2015).
Writing for Boston Review, James Galvin said of Wilson: “Generous in her spareness, clear in her complexity, matching wildness of diction with precision of sense, nervousness with nerve, her poems are not written for analysis, perhaps not even for approval. As we watch poetical heresies turn into orthodoxies, it becomes clear, especially in a poet like Wilson, that only originality, a signature style, remains steadfastly heretical.”
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
Beloved, men in thick green coats came crunching through the snow, the insignia on their shoulders of uncertain origin, a country I could not be sure of, a salute so terrifying I heard myself lying to avoid arrest, and was arrested along with Jocko, whose tear had snapped off, a tiny icicle he put in his mouth. We were taken to the ice prison, a palace encrusted with hoarfrost, its dome lit from within, Jocko admired the wiring, he kicked the walls to test the strength of his new boots. A television stood in a block of ice, its blue image still moving like a liquid center. You asked for my innermost thoughts. I wonder will I ever see a grape again? When I think of the vineyard where we met in October—when you dropped a cluster custom insisted you be kissed by a stranger—how after the harvest we plunged into a stream so icy our palms turned pink. It seemed our future was sealed. Everyone said so. It is quiet here. Not closing our ranks weakens us hugely. The snowflakes fall in a featureless bath. I am the stranger who kissed you. On sunny days each tree is a glittering chandelier. The power of mindless beauty! Jocko told a joke and has been dead since May. A bullethole in his forehead the officers call a third eye. For a month I milked a barnful of cows. It is a lot like cleansing a chandelier. Wipe and polish, wipe and polish, round and round you go. I have lost my spectacles. Is the book I was reading still open by the side of our bed? Treat it as a bookmark saving my place in our story.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
I feel like publishers really stack the deck (or TBR pile, if you will) with November releases. They know the season for gift-giving is just around the bend and therefore the biggest titles of the year usually release in the weeks leading up to Hanukkah and Christmas. Below are some of the titles I’m most looking forward to picking up myself this season or considering getting as gifts. Links are included. Happy reading!
A Book of the Month Clubpick as well as Jenna Bush Hager’s Read With Jenna selection for November 2021, The Familycouldn’t have been released at a better time. For one thing, The Many Saints of Newark: A Sopranos Story, a prequel film to HBO’s The Sopranos, just came out on October 1st. While its theater performance was lackluster, it was a steaming hit on HBO Max and reignited interest in the original series as well as all things mafia in general.
Now, yours truly really appreciates the font on the cover, which serves as a none-too-subtle nod to Mario Puzo’s The Godfather. After all, it’s what made me pick up the book in the first place. There are some who would say that stories centering the families of organized crime had their heyday long ago, and who am I to tell someone they’re wrong? The Voracious Bibliophile, that’s who! For God’s sake, let us have our mobsters!!!
The Familytells the story of Sofia Colicchio and Antonia Russo, two Italian-American women raised in an insular Brooklyn community where their families’ business interests force them to hold the rest of the world at bay, forging them together into a bond not easily broken. The secrets of their world threaten that bond as they grow up, though, and only time will tell if the threads of their friendship will knit back together or fray past the point of repair.
Kirkus gave The Familya lukewarm-at-best review, calling it “a little too facile” and “readable but somewhat shallow”. Kruptisky’s novel is also negatively compared to the work of Elena Ferrante, but it’s not really fair to measure anyone in comparison to Ferrante, whose Neapolitan Novels quite literally changed my life. This was one of my Book of the Month Club picks for November and my box came the other day, so I will let you know my thoughts when I’m able to dig into it.
The Adriens are a manifestation of Willa’s wildest dreams, embodying the ideal family dynamic she always wanted but never had and living out a version of upper-middle-class life she has always craved but to which she never had access.
Win Me Somethingtells the story of Willa Chen, who while working as a waitress in Brooklyn gets the opportunity to work as a nanny for the Adrien family. The Adriens are a manifestation of Willa’s wildest dreams, embodying the ideal family dynamic she always wanted but never had and living out a version of upper-middle-class life she has always craved but to which she never had access.
As the mixed-race daughter of a Chinese immigrant father and white American mother, Willa longs for an uncomplicated history, one devoid of the racism she experiences due to her biracial identity and the bifurcations that always accompany being a child of divorce shuffled between two families, neither of which fully belong to her. Once she starts working for the Adriens, she begins to learn more about herself and the life she’s led up until now, finding that even when life is imperfect it can still be good.
Don’t expect any big reveals or melodramatics characteristic of “nanny fiction”. No husband-nanny adultery or child murder. No long-held secrets bubbling to the surface. If you’re looking for something more salacious like that, check out my Nefarious Nannies Reading List.
***Note: I was lucky enough to receive a free digital review copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher. You can read my review here.***
Publication Date: November 9th, 2021
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Page Count: 96
It’s a beacon of light as well as a sea of middle fingers raised high. Don’t miss it.
Kate Baer’s newest collection is nothing short of a reclamation. The “found poems” herein are crafted from missives sent to Baer online by detractors and fans alike. The detractors range from the annoying and intrusive to the outright abusive, and Baer takes no prisoners in transforming their vitriol into their vanquishment, their viciousness into her own sweet victory.
The detractors range from the annoying and intrusive to the outright abusive, and Baer takes no prisoners in transforming their vitriol into their vanquishment, their viciousness into her own sweet victory.
Baer’s experiences online are as old as the Internet itself. I’m sure the behaviors, if not the platforms themselves, date back much farther. The women living in the 21st century are dealing with the same crap that the women dealt with who were alive before Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue. The simple fact is men don’t like women who dare to be complex people in the public sphere. They prefer them to be silent and demure, to cow and coo, to be healthy but thin, outgoing yet deferential, smart yet never sassy, and above all, subservient. Well, pardon my French, but to hell with all of that!
Baer’s collection is perfect for anyone who has ever been subjected to unsolicited feedback about their words, their body, or their very existence. It’s a beacon of light as well as a sea of middle fingers raised high. Don’t miss it.
Bonus: Midtown Scholar Bookstore of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania is hosting a livestream discussion between Kate Baer and Maggie Smith about Baer’s new book. It’s free and open to the public but requires registration, so if you’re interested, I’m posting the link below:
Natashia Deón’s dazzling new novel was an early release pick for the Book of the Month Club and to be perfectly honest, the cover alone was enough for me to have it included in my box. The Perishingtells the story of Lou, an immortal Black woman who wakes up in an alley with no memory in 1930s Los Angeles. She has visions of a man’s face which she draws as she tries to make sense of who she is and where she came from. The premise immediately made me think of NBC’s Blindspot, as well any of a number of 40s films noir.
During the course of the novel, Lou also becomes the first female journalist for the LA Times, breaking stories of crime and vice during the era of Prohibition, which when you add in the fantasy elements make The Perishing a very intriguing read.
I am so giddily excited for this book and Natashia Deón in general. Is anyone else already casting the screen adaptation? Someone call Shonda Rhimes already and let’s get this going! *coughs* Janelle Monáe *coughs*
If you start singing this and the person you’re with doesn’t start singing it with you, that is a warning sign from God that you’d be remiss to ignore.
Will Smith first rose to prominence through his starring role on NBC’s The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. The show ran for six seasons and after its conclusion, Smith was able to transition from television to blockbuster films rather seamlessly. Now, in addition to being a producer and one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars, the Grammy Award winner and Academy Award nominee can add author to his CV.
Co-written with Mark Manson, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Willis a celebrity memoir I’m very much looking forward to reading.
***Note: I was lucky enough to receive a free digital review copy of this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher. You can read my review here.***
Anyone familiar with Kelsea Ballerini’s music knows she’s a gifted storyteller, and her abilities shine through just as strong in her poetry as they do in her songcraft. Following a recent spate of singer-celebrity poetry collections, Ballerini’s Feel Your Way Throughis fearsome and original, baring her soul on every page. Is this collection going to win (or even be nominated) for a Pulitzer Prize? Of course not. But you don’t have to be Walt Whitman to say something worthwhile and true about the human experience. Honestly, the elitism and pedantry surrounding what qualifies as poetry, especially “good” poetry, is a crock of 🐴 💩 anyway. Herein, Ballerini tells the truth as she sees it, and that’s more than good enough for me.
She is, in my opinion, one of the greatest living American nonfiction writers.
Publisher’s Weekly calls Ann Patchett’s newest book a “moving collection not easily forgotten,” but I don’t know if I have the emotional capacity to withstand a new essay collection by Ann Patchett, especially since Red (Taylor’s Version)drops on the 14th and 30by Adele drops just five days later on the 19th. Ann Patchett’s writing always makes me feel some kind of way and judging from the snippets I’ve gleaned from These Precious Days, it will not be the exception to the rule.
Consider the first two sentences of this excerpt furnished to CBS News:
Did I tell you I loved my father, that he loved me? Contrary to popular belief, love does not need understanding to thrive.
She has such an inimitable way of pulling the reader in, pushing them back, allowing them to flail for a little while, and then pulling them back in again. She is, in my opinion, one of the greatest living American nonfiction writers. In fact, the only writer I can currently think of who surpasses her in reticent emotional resonance is Joan Didion, long may she live.
Bonus: Read my review of Truth & Beauty, which I called “an exquisitely written and heartfelt evocation of a friendship”.
Don’t judge me if I don’t pick this one up until mid-December, although you can pretty much guarantee I’ll own it before then.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
Some nannies are downright evil. They’ll slaughter you in your crib, seduce your dad, and surreptitiously drug your mom to the point where no one trusts her and she gets to become your new mommy (did anyone else see that Lifetime movie?).
Ah, nannies. Readers of bedtime stories and makers of snacks, kissers of boo-boos and sergeants of naps. Not every nanny, however, flits in like Julie Andrews insisting that a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. Some nannies are downright evil. They’ll slaughter you in your crib, seduce your dad, and surreptitiously drug your mom to the point where no one trusts her and she gets to become your new mommy (did anyone else see that Lifetime movie?). The Nefarious Nannies in these books are rotten to the core, or at least misguided to a destructive degree. Links for purchase are included!
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
Some dictator or other had gone into exile, and now reports were coming about his regime, the usual crimes, torture, false imprisonment, cruelty and corruption, but then a detail: that the way his henchmen had disposed of enemies was by hammering nails into their skulls. Horror, then, what mind does after horror, after that first feeling that you’ll never catch your breath, mind imagines—how not be annihilated by it?—the preliminary tap, feels it in the tendons of the hand, feels the way you do with your nail when you’re fixing something, making something, shelves, a bed; the first light tap to set the slant, and then the slightly harder tap, to em-bed the tip a little more ...
No, no more: this should be happening in myth, in stone, or paint, not in reality, not here; it should be an emblem of itself, not itself, something that would mean, not really have to happen, something to go out, expand in implication from that unmoved mass of matter in the breast; as in the image of an anguished face, in grief for us, not us as us, us as in a myth, a moral tale, a way to tell the truth that grief is limitless, a way to tell us we must always understand it’s we who do such things, we who set the slant, embed the tip, lift the sledge and drive the nail, drive the nail which is the axis upon which turns the brutal human world upon the world.
Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please like, comment, follow, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at fred.slusher@thevoraciousbibliophile.com or catch me on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.
The Voracious Bibliophile 