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 Post subject: I know I'm a homer but this is really good
PostPosted: Wed Feb 08, 2006 12:16 pm 
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Bayou Farewell by Mike Tidwell

It's kind of a cajun On The Road of sorts. It's the account of a journalist from D.C. who hitchhikes his way through Louisiana's bayou country on the shrimp boats of total strangers in unfamiliar territory. Lots of interesting and real characters. Very informative and interesting to even someone like me who lives in the same area. If you're interested in Americana and American History, you'll absolutely love this. The writer is very good too.

I had to read this recently because I'm part of a civic organization that meets monthly to discuss local issues. I was unaware of it prior. I was also skeptical because alot of stuff like this isn't very well written or put together. Tidwell did an excellent job and this book has universal appeal. I thought some people here might be interested in like Fu.

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I tried to find somebody of that sort that I could like that nobody else did - because everybody would adopt his group, and his group would be _it_; someone weird like Captain Beefheart. It's no different now - people trying to outdo ! each other in extremes. There are people who like X, and there are people who say X are wimps; they like Black Flag.


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PostPosted: Wed Feb 08, 2006 12:19 pm 
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A True Aristocrat of Freedom

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What years did the author do this?
Sounds pretty cool.

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Throughout his life, from childhood until death, he was beset by severe swings of mood. His depressions frequently encouraged, and were exacerbated by, his various vices. His character mixed a superficial Enlightenment sensibility for reason and taste with a genuine and somewhat Romantic love of the sublime and a propensity for occasionally puerile whimsy.
harry Wrote:
I understand that you, of all people, know this crisis and, in your own way, are working to address it. You, the madras-pantsed julip-sipping Southern cracker and me, the oldman hippie California fruit cake are brothers in the struggle to save our country.

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LooGAR (the straw that stirs the drink)


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PostPosted: Wed Feb 08, 2006 12:25 pm 
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Senator Top Cat LooGAR Wrote:
What years did the author do this?
Sounds pretty cool.


Somewhat recently. The new addition has a Katrina and Rita afterword. I think his original intention was to discover a "lost" America of isolated rural American unaffected by modernization of America. He finds that and alot more.

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I tried to find somebody of that sort that I could like that nobody else did - because everybody would adopt his group, and his group would be _it_; someone weird like Captain Beefheart. It's no different now - people trying to outdo ! each other in extremes. There are people who like X, and there are people who say X are wimps; they like Black Flag.


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PostPosted: Wed Feb 08, 2006 1:24 pm 
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That sounds awesome. It's going on The List.

Thanks mang.

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PostPosted: Wed Feb 08, 2006 1:30 pm 
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This is from publisher weekly about the book

This lyrically intense travelogue will provide historians of the not too distant future with a guide to a vanishing landscape and a lost culture. Tidwell (Mountains of Heaven) graphically recounts catching rides on shrimp boats and crab boats through the dark water swamps of southern Louisiana into the heart of Cajun country. Here, among the great blue heron, spoonbill, gar and gator, the reader meets bayou folk-from the honest and generous fishermen, who provide the author with room, board and transport for his work as a deck hand, to the disheveled backwoods healer who intrigues and tantalizes the writer with his shamanistic spells and incantations. It is these portraits of people on the edge of survival, living in a world where the land is sinking into the sea at a rate of 25 acres a day, that truly engage the reader

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I tried to find somebody of that sort that I could like that nobody else did - because everybody would adopt his group, and his group would be _it_; someone weird like Captain Beefheart. It's no different now - people trying to outdo ! each other in extremes. There are people who like X, and there are people who say X are wimps; they like Black Flag.


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PostPosted: Wed Feb 08, 2006 1:33 pm 
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swiateck Wrote:
That sounds awesome. It's going on The List.


yep. same here. thanks!

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PostPosted: Wed Feb 08, 2006 1:48 pm 
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oldbullee Wrote:
This is from publisher weekly about the book

gar


It's ON!!!

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Throughout his life, from childhood until death, he was beset by severe swings of mood. His depressions frequently encouraged, and were exacerbated by, his various vices. His character mixed a superficial Enlightenment sensibility for reason and taste with a genuine and somewhat Romantic love of the sublime and a propensity for occasionally puerile whimsy.
harry Wrote:
I understand that you, of all people, know this crisis and, in your own way, are working to address it. You, the madras-pantsed julip-sipping Southern cracker and me, the oldman hippie California fruit cake are brothers in the struggle to save our country.

FT Wrote:
LooGAR (the straw that stirs the drink)


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PostPosted: Wed Feb 08, 2006 1:55 pm 
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this sounds very good - thanks for the rec!

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PostPosted: Wed Feb 08, 2006 5:09 pm 
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If any of you actually do get a chance to read this, I would love to know what you thought of it.

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I tried to find somebody of that sort that I could like that nobody else did - because everybody would adopt his group, and his group would be _it_; someone weird like Captain Beefheart. It's no different now - people trying to outdo ! each other in extremes. There are people who like X, and there are people who say X are wimps; they like Black Flag.


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PostPosted: Wed Feb 08, 2006 5:15 pm 
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I haven't read this, but Blue Highways from William Least Heat-Moon is awesome. I think he even spends some time St. Martinville or Abbeville or somewhere down there.

From Amazon:
First published in 1982, William Least Heat-Moon's account of his journey along the back roads of the United States (marked with the color blue on old highway maps) has become something of a classic.

When he loses his job and his wife on the same cold February day, he is struck by inspiration: "A man who couldn't make things go right could at least go. He could quit trying to get out of the way of life. Chuck routine. Live the real jeopardy of circumstance. It was a question of dignity."

Driving cross-country in a van named Ghost Dancing, Heat-Moon (the name the Sioux give to the moon of midsummer nights) meets up with all manner of folk, from a man in Grayville, Illinois, "whose cap told me what fertilizer he used" to Scott Chisholm, "a Canadian citizen ... [who] had lived in this country longer than in Canada and liked the United States but wouldn't admit it for fear of having to pay off bets he made years earlier when he first 'came over' that the U.S. is a place no Canadian could ever love."

Accompanied by his photographs, Heat-Moon's literary portraits of ordinary Americans should not be merely read, but savored.

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PostPosted: Wed Feb 08, 2006 5:17 pm 
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hmm. looks interesting.

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I tried to find somebody of that sort that I could like that nobody else did - because everybody would adopt his group, and his group would be _it_; someone weird like Captain Beefheart. It's no different now - people trying to outdo ! each other in extremes. There are people who like X, and there are people who say X are wimps; they like Black Flag.


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PostPosted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 11:31 am 
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I recommend this one, also based in bayou country:

Image

Plus, two of its characters are very memorable bounty hunters: one is an elvis impersonator, and the other is an ex-circus freak with a a half-formed siamese twin growing out of his chest.

Plus, it has one of the greatest starting sentences to a novel ever:

"It was hell's season, and the air smelled of burning children."

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 Post subject: Re: I know I'm a homer but this is really good
PostPosted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 11:40 am 
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oldbullee Wrote:
who hitchhikes his way through Louisiana's bayou country on the shrimp boats of total strangers


Don't encourage him.

Looks interesting, though. I just started "Dissolution" by C.J. Sansom, and if it doesn't suck there's a follow-up. This appears to be the first in what will become a series of mysteries set in Reformation England. The protagonist is a lawyer and consultant to Oliver Cromwell. Interesting premise, hope the prose & plot deliver.


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PostPosted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 11:47 am 
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here's a poem I wrote several years ago:

The Shrimp Boat

The shrimp boat.

It was a boat.
It had shrimp on it.
it was a shrimp boat.

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PostPosted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 2:13 pm 
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A True Aristocrat of Freedom

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olbull -- you ever read Carl Hiassen?

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Throughout his life, from childhood until death, he was beset by severe swings of mood. His depressions frequently encouraged, and were exacerbated by, his various vices. His character mixed a superficial Enlightenment sensibility for reason and taste with a genuine and somewhat Romantic love of the sublime and a propensity for occasionally puerile whimsy.
harry Wrote:
I understand that you, of all people, know this crisis and, in your own way, are working to address it. You, the madras-pantsed julip-sipping Southern cracker and me, the oldman hippie California fruit cake are brothers in the struggle to save our country.

FT Wrote:
LooGAR (the straw that stirs the drink)


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PostPosted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 2:14 pm 
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Senator Top Cat LooGAR Wrote:
olbull -- you ever read Carl Hiassen?


No, I haven't. Just looked his stuff up on Amazon. Seems pretty entertaining.

_________________
I tried to find somebody of that sort that I could like that nobody else did - because everybody would adopt his group, and his group would be _it_; someone weird like Captain Beefheart. It's no different now - people trying to outdo ! each other in extremes. There are people who like X, and there are people who say X are wimps; they like Black Flag.


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PostPosted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 2:53 pm 
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oldbullee Wrote:
Senator Top Cat LooGAR Wrote:
olbull -- you ever read Carl Hiassen?


No, I haven't. Just looked his stuff up on Amazon. Seems pretty entertaining.


Tourist Season rocks, anything he wrote before Strip Tease is dynamite. Starts to get formulaic after that.

Double Whammy
Tourist Season
Skin Tight
Native Tongue


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PostPosted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 3:03 pm 
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That does look interesting. My appettite for buying books isn't matched by my time available for reading them unfortunately.

I've never been much of a reader of travel stories before, but I'm working on Pete McCarthy's "McCarthy's Bar" right now which I'd highly recommend.

Image

Amazon Wrote:
Although Pete McCarthy was raised in England, his mother hails from West Cork, and, despite never having lived there, he can't shake the strange feeling that Ireland is more home than home. A return pilgrimage reveals immediately why he (or anyone, for that matter) feels "involved and engaged" in Ireland. On arriving at the airport in Cork he's greeted by a guy in a giant rubber Celtic cross getup who's telling jokes with a latter-day St. Patrick (the guy who cast all snakes and pagans out of Ireland). Later, when McCarthy happens to mention that his surname matches that of the pub he's in (ever faithful to his Eighth Rule of Travel: "Never Pass a Bar That Has Your Name on It"), the owner buys him a Guinness, invites him to her raucous all-night birthday party, then insists he move to Ireland because, well, obviously he belongs. McCarthy's Second Rule of Travel states: "The More Bright Primary Colours and Ancient Celtic Symbols Outside the Pub, the More Phoney the Interior." While the island is turning into a haven for upmarket tourists--and McCarthy offers outstanding examples of bumbleheaded tourists in action--he still finds plenty of pubs where you can buy a bicycle and which still exist primarily as venues for conversation and Irish music sessions.
While most travel writers seek out opportunities to meet the famous--or the infamous--McCarthy has the charming knack of just bumping into them on his rambles, which is how he met Noel Redding, formerly of Jimi Hendrix's band, and the author Frank McCourt. Far more interesting, though, are the eccentric and talkative bachelors and landladies who turn up in pubs, B&Bs, and the middle of the road. McCarthy has mastered the art of getting creatively lost, wandering the back lanes of Ireland where the hype of tourism has yet to arrive, pursuing stone circles, impossibly romantic ruined abbeys, and, of course, pubs. What he discovers is that "In Ireland, the unexpected happens more than you expect," which makes for a hilarious tour through one of the most beautiful, friendly, and quirky places on earth with a comedian who has honed the art of telling a good story and of having fun. --Lesley Reed



one of my favorite lines so far is:

Quote:
The bicycle shop that is a pub also sells vegetable seeds and items of hardware. I go inside for an inner tube and some cabbage seeds, but I don't really need them, so I have a pint instead.

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Thu Feb 09, 2006 6:26 pm 
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A True Aristocrat of Freedom

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Billzebub Wrote:
oldbullee Wrote:
Senator Top Cat LooGAR Wrote:
olbull -- you ever read Carl Hiassen?


No, I haven't. Just looked his stuff up on Amazon. Seems pretty entertaining.


Tourist Season rocks, anything he wrote before Strip Tease is dynamite. Starts to get formulaic after that.

Double Whammy
Tourist Season
Skin Tight
Native Tongue


Well, what with the pending disney-fication of New Orleans , you may wanna check into it. You'll love Skink.

Billy G -- that is like my dad's favorite book. And believe me, I understand your appetite for reading vs. time to read dilemna.

_________________
Throughout his life, from childhood until death, he was beset by severe swings of mood. His depressions frequently encouraged, and were exacerbated by, his various vices. His character mixed a superficial Enlightenment sensibility for reason and taste with a genuine and somewhat Romantic love of the sublime and a propensity for occasionally puerile whimsy.
harry Wrote:
I understand that you, of all people, know this crisis and, in your own way, are working to address it. You, the madras-pantsed julip-sipping Southern cracker and me, the oldman hippie California fruit cake are brothers in the struggle to save our country.

FT Wrote:
LooGAR (the straw that stirs the drink)


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