Currently Reading: I’ve finally gotten around to reading Lauren Groff’s Florida (2018), a collection eleven well-crafted stories set in the state where I grew up. I like the stories’ strange characters. The New York Times called the stories “haunting,” and they certainly are that. - Are We Learning Anything in School? Jesse Watters, a conservative commentator, interviewed a bunch of people on the street for Veterans Day in a manner similar to what Jay Leno used to do on the Tonight Show. He asked such questions as “Who did we fight in World War II,” “Who bombed Pearl Harbor?” “Who did we fight in the revolutionary war?” and othe facts that seem basic to understanding the country from a history and civics point of view. There were a lot of wrong answers. Too many. Watters and I don’t agree on many things, but my take on this poor showing of knowledge is that it demonstrates one of the reasons everything is so polarized: we don’t seem to have a common base of information.
Living Jackson Magazine. This short-lived Georgia magazine brought great articles with high production values and crisp writing to the readers of Jefferson, Georgia in the northeast section of the state. I wrote most of the magazine’s book reviews, focusing on local and regional authors. I felt a bit of nostalgia when I came across this old photograph that appeared with an article on Georgia writers, “A Truck Load of Authors” published in 2006. When I posted this picture on Facebook this past week, that 1961 Studebaker pickup truck got more attention than the people.
Diana Gabadon: When Diana published the first of the nine novels (counting the one about to be released) in 1991, we were both members of the CompuServe Literary Forum. She posted snippets of Outlander (the first novel) on the forum and these created a lot of discussions about writing. The books are long, detailed, and require a great deal of research. However, I don’t think any of us thought then that the series would still be in progress thirty years later. Go Tell The Bees That I’m Gone comes out on November 23. I appreciate her work as well as the fact that as long as the forum was active, the help that she offered the aspiring writers there was a godsend. I was lucky to meet her once at a book signing in Atlanta. Plus, she wrote a blurb for one of my novels!
Have a great week.
I’m currently reading Richard Powers’ The Overstory, the 2019 Pulitzer Prize winner about trees and the people who love and defend them. Unique theme and plot. I’m enjoying the book, but have a strong feeling it’s not for everyone. The Pulitzer Prize comment for this book states that it is “An ingeniously structured narrative that branches and canopies like the trees at the core of the story whose wonder and connectivity echo those of the humans living amongst them.”
Since the homepage of my website features a picture of Florida’s Apalachicola River, it seemed only fitting to write a short post about it in the website’s blog 
Here we go again as another station (WXIA in Atlanta) is having a standoff with DISH network about fees. This means that we’re not seeing any of our regular NBC programs such as “Chicago Fire” and “New Amsterdam.” Naturally, we don’t get a refund for having one less channel than usual. This kind of thing happens randomly, and the viewer is always the one who loses out. Fortunately, the World Series wasn’t being carried by NBC this year. And the Braves won for the first time in about 25 years!
Malcolm's Round Table 