Georgia Books

Wild Card Quilt is a follow-up to Ecology of a Cracker Childhood in which the author builds on prior relationships and revisits childhood from the perspective of an adult. She honors her parents without agreeing with them and is apparently honored and respected in return. Some old disagreements persist!
While raising her son as single parent she lives a life of simplicity. Home she finds has values differing from those she has developed.
Her love and appreciation for the vanishing habitats of south Georgia propel her to activism. Her deep seated need to write forms new diverse relationships.
Enjoying things she loves leads to romance and fulfillment in an unexpected place.
Come stroll the long leaf pine forest with Janisse Ray.

Excellent,,,took you home and if you weren't from there you went with your imagination....

If Janisse Ray's first memoir, "Ecology of a Cracker Childhood," is an evocative reclamation of a treasured Southern ecological system, her sequel, "Wild Card Quilt" emerges as a moving, inspiring and passionate attempt to reclaim her adult life. Ray's poetic prose is part autobiography, part self-identification with place and part manifesto. Her writing soars with exquisite metaphor and astounding revelation. She is unapologetic in her defense of the longleaf pine ecosystem and convincing in her appeals for Americans to redefine the very nature of our national character. "Wild Card Quilt" required courage to write, and Ray more than met the challenge. Years from now, she will be recognized as instrumental to late twentieth-century ecology as Rachel Carson was some half-century earlier.

After having fled her restrictive and repressive childhood home in rural Georgia, Ray discovers herself adrift and alienated as an adult. A single mother of an inquisitive and sensitive son, her spiritual restlessness compels her to return to her grandmother's isolated shotgun cabin and reclaim her life. In so doing, she rediscovers her fervent, but latent, identification with the disappearing longleaf pine forests of the Southeast. As she had in "Cracker Childhood," Ray provides masterful descriptions of this endangered ecology, lavishing as much love on the richly interdependent plant and animal life as she does on the family and community with which she interlaces herself in Baxley, Georgia.

Firmly linking herself with those social critics of American life who decry our culture's obsession with consumption and lack of identification with nature, Ray agrees with Paul Gruchow's conclusion that "we raise our most capable rural children...to expect that as soon as possible they will leave." Against this diaspora, Ray launches numerous campaigns, not only to preserve the ecology of her home, but the social structure groaning under the pressures of eradication in the name of jobs, progress and consumption.

As moving as her political polemics are, Ray reserves her best writing in portraying her people. Likening her family to homemade pure cane syrup, Ray surmises, "It's sweetness that keeps people together. Sweetness. The sweetness of our tongues, of kind words, of praise." But not only that. It is also the "sweetness, too, of acts of imagination and love." Quiet, nearly invisible kin earn her respect. Her reclusive uncle Percy, "not a man to reach out...or...demand much from life," through Ray's characterization, gains enormous dignity from his modesty. Percy, who excels at attending church and mowing the lawn, is as "extreme in his quiescence as Hemingway had been in his ardor to eat life's marrow." Content to allow life to come to him, "Percy nibbled at the crust."

From her mother, whose labors produce the quilt which gives the memoir its title, arises a sense of beauty that fits with Ray's defense of rural life. Her mother's quilts originate from "necessity, using rags and torn clothes." To Ray, "the need for usefulness...produces objects of the greatest beauty." The adult Ray has a kinder, more forgiving understanding of her father's psychology. Never giving in to his rigidity, she forgives him, and in so doing, opens the door for his reconciliation with Ray's oldest sister, with whom he had been estranged for nearly two decades.

Towering above everything in "Wild Card Quilt" is Janisse Ray's unabashed sense of hope. This infectious optimism, infused with deep conviction and enormous compassion, may align itself with our nation's longstanding sense of hope and vision. As the author becomes increasingly integrated in her Baxley environment, as she becomes ever more passionate in her advocacy for the longleaf pine forests, as she plants her own taproot deep in the fertile soils of family love and community solidarity, she outlines not only a personal blueprint of redemption, but a national one as well.

"Somebody, I thought, has to fight to protect the ravaged places. If a place loses the ones who care, the ones who can make a difference, what kind of doom does that spell? If the Southerners who love the wild leave the South, well, what happens then?"
--Janisse Ray, in Wild Card Quilt

Sadly, the answer to Janisse Ray's earnest question can be seen all over, and not just in the South. Too often, "what happens" is rampant, fragmented, inadequately planned development, communities without community, places devoid of a sense of place. Her new book Wild Card Quilt chronicles her return to homeplace Baxley, Georgia, to reestablish family connections and create a sustainable life for herself and her son Silas. Her "experiment in rural community" is largely successful. That it is so is due to Ray herself. A less outgoing, less imaginative, less self-sufficient person would likely find a hamlet like Baxley too isolated, its often-parochial attitudes suffocating. Indeed, Ray does battle feelings of loneliness and futility, and these she shares eloquently. But more often she is hopeful, ardently forging associations with people who share her ideals, creating friendships that restore her sense of purpose and connectedness. She joins with other Baxley residents to save their small school, participates in the creation of a watchdog organization to protect the Altamaha River, advocates for the preservation of Moody Swamp, an ancient, old-growth forest of cypress and longleaf pine, and joins with several other aspiring authors to form a writers' group.

In all her endeavors, Ray adopts a stalwart but cooperative stance with those she seeks to persuade. She is nonjudgmental, preferring to inspire and connect, rather than to scold. This is an approach we should emulate in our own efforts to promote habitat conservation and restoration. However convinced we are of our own rectitude, we must not alienate people by being ideologically rigid or unnecessarily confrontational.
Central to the book is the notion that building human connections is not only important for our emotional health as individuals, but that these ties strengthen our communities and make them better, stronger, more pleasant places to live. The bonds we form in working on community projects helps us individually, as well as helping society collectively. I know this has been true for me, as I count as invaluable the opportunities for fellowship provided by my volunteer activities.

The gravity of these themes is lightened by Ray's obvious joy in life's simple pleasures, in the earth's natural beauty and wild creatures, and in her sweet and entertaining descriptions of the ways and characters of Baxley, like her chain-smoking, church-going Uncle Percy, and the stubbornly self-reliant photographer E.D. McCool, who lives in a bus and tootles around town on a riding lawnmower. She relates her experiences at a pork cook-off, a syrup-boiling, the local Martin Luther King Parade, and a night-time gator hunt with good humor that is often self-deprecating. The result is a book that is heartwarming and uplifting, especially to those who love nature and want to preserve it.

This is a hell of a good book. The person who wrote it knows something about people who race horses.

And he can write.

Most likely you've never heard of this author or his stories--he's been published in a lot of smaller, literary journals. (A fact proving that a lot of good authors slip through the cracks at the bigger, more important magazines.) And if you're not a gambler or someone who frequents horse tracks or OTB parlors, you probably don't know firsthand about the pain and dazzling success that come from winning and losing--experiences that happen sometimes all at once. But Plattner and his characters have seen all of this. And whether you're a horse person or not, the dignity and grace that his characters achieve in a lifestyle that's dying around them is compelling. And hopefully, Andy Plattner will be a name you here about later.

Plattner has a racer's eye for thorobreds and a Southerner's ear for good stories. Settle back in your easy chair with a good bottle of cheap bourbon and a few hours to spare, you'll need both.

I was hesitant to award five stars to this book---since it seems a common practice to heap inordinate praise on books that are usually undeserving---but I give Winter Money five stars because of its originality and freshness of voice. Ostensibly, the theme is horse-racing and the track, but really this is a loosely-linked collection of coming-of-age stories. Plattner's prose is lean and unpretentious, sometimes almost bare-boned, but he turns phrases of simple elegance, putting me in mind of Richard Ford's style in Rock Springs. And the characters and voice also somewhat resemble Richard Ford's collection; if I were Plattner's writing professor, I would ask him, "You've read and learned from this book, haven't you?" Not that this diminishes in any way the power of the collection. The characters, situations, and dialogue linger long in the mind after reading, and it's a book you'll find yourself drawn to again.

There is a wealth of good, solid information in this very creative and readable book on writing. Practical suggestions and concrete examples add to it's value. This is an important book for anyone who wants to write or has a story to tell. I truly enjoyed it.

In this book Georgia offers us a guide back to ourselves. The exercises not only help us to become better writers but help us to know ourselves better as well. Very practical and enlightening.

Some say write what you know. But how do you find out the things that will make you interesting? That will make a writer out of you? In Write What You Know author Georgia Jones takes you through the steps that she herself has taken along the path to better writing. Georgia, who has helped writers find their voices for over five years, and whose own books and articles have spanned a period of over 30 years, tells us how her own life affected her fiction, non-fiction, journalism, commentary, poetry, and plays. Patiently and with a wonderful prose, she assists you through a series of exercises. She entertains with story examples to demonstrate techniques. She describes complex ideas so simply that anyone who has the spark can continue to improve on the skill that must go along with the love of writing. Write What You Know is a book that can be used and enjoyed by the new writer looking for guidance, or is a book for the seasoned pro in search of a fresh outlook. And for $12.95, you get to meet an absolutely marvelous woman.

Don DeNevi

Georgia Jones has put together a writer's guide that mixes humor, guidelines, exercises and examples of real writing. This is all done in a way that gently draws the aspiring author into the process of writing. The book guides us through the elements of fiction including character, place, dialog and plot but each of these is brought to life in a way that makes one eager to start writing.

For example, as I read the section on development of a character for fiction, my first thought was that it is far more complicated than I expected. Yet, at the same time I felt that it would be truly fascinating to work with character in this way.

It's not so much that Georgia Jones makes writing look easy, but that it would be well worth the time and effort to build the skills that she guides us through. She shows us that writing is not so much a mystery as a challenge. She begins the book talking about how we write what we know. In the end we realize that we know far more than we ever imagined.

This was an awesome book--very nostalgic and melancholy. It made me remember my childhood. I even was fortunate to meet the author at my university so that made me enjoy the book even more!

Slow starting, but a great story, especially good for those that grew up in the south in the 40's. Good for men and women to read.

A must-read for anyone who grew up in Georgia during the 1940s or '50s, especially those of us who remember the day the REA (Rural Electrification Administration) hooked us up and turned us on. Life changed dramatically. If you're not old enough to remember those days, let Terry Kay show you what they were like. This book -- as usual in a Kay opus -- is hilarious at turns, tender and sad at others. Kay is a master chef at blending a bittersweet brew of young love, class consciousness and changing times. Don't deprive yourself of a look at this fine early work, which was first published in 1976 -- before Kay established himself as one of our great Southern writers with the novel, "To Dance with the White Dog."

There is a nice story here, of nice people. The writing moves without hitches, glitches nor bumps. It is very real, a terrific book for teenagers. Could and should be studied in college. Teaches without being overly preachy...actually teaches while being a very fun and funny book, too.

This is a great read, especially for history enthusiasts. It is a wonderful, insightful glimpse into the past. Abbeville, Farewell would be a great choice for high school students taking U.S. History. It has been painstakingly well researched and is entertaining.A good book for everybody!

I finished your book this morning and just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed it. I cannot imagine the amount of research you must have done to provide such in depth information about the geography, technology, organization of the society and the political attitudes of the times. The characters you developed in your novel reacted to and evaluated the events that were happening, and in the process made this period of history come to life. Thank you!

What a great read! I picked up this book one Friday night and stayed mesmerize all weekend. Abbeville Farewell is an easy recommendation.

As the child of the old south, Estelle Ford-Williamson transported me back to my roots. I felt she was writing about my family and their early 19th century journey from South Carolina and Georgia. There is mystery in the uprooting of the young Morgan family from their home in Abbeville, the adventure of the overland migration to Marthasville (present-day Atlanta), the human and personal struggle of building a new life for the family in this raw frontier city and, once settled and successful, the need to move again. Time and the times play their part in the story as children grow and personal perspectives change. And as you turned the pages of Estelle's great story, you find the growing social issue of slavery festering. In many ways the message of the book mirrors a struggle of any age - personal morality versus accepted community standards.

There is a villain in the story, but he is more a prop than a player. The real story is family and family relationship. The Morgans are good people and, if you end up judging one right and another wrong, you miss the essence of plot. I closed the book with a smile and promise. I will re-read this book. Re-reading books is something I seldom do and only on those rare occasions when they have had the ability to touch me deeply.

Estelle's writing style is open and honest. I feel she is talking to me. Her words flow easily off the pages of her book. Her character development is strong and her ability to build emotion and create rich drama is superb.

If you've ever walked in the woods, loved a dog, lost a dog, lost a love, failed at school or been to camp, you will relish Amy Blackmarr's essays in Above the Fall Line. Blackmarr returns to her native Georgia from Kansas, where life dealt her some blows, to live in a tiny cabin in the mountains. There she reflects on her surroundings and everyday events, masterfully weaving irony and insight but avoiding sentimentality. Her topics range from romance gone bad to her dog's encounter with a bear, and her wry observations allow the reader to learn from her self-discovery.

Amy Blackmarr's third book of personal essays may be the best yet. Her sensitive descriptions of the environment, poetic musings, and characteristic flashes of humor make this book a joy to read. The epigraph is a quote from Ann Beattie--"What will happen can't be stopped: aim for grace." I believe that's what Blackmarr did with this book, and she has succeeded admirably.

I've been shacking up with Amy Blackmarr for several years now, first in a cabin in South Georgia, then a strange house with fifty-two steps out in Kansas. And, more recently, back to another Georgia cabin -- this one in the North Georgia mountains, where it, as Blackmarr writes, "sits alone near the crest of a solitary hill in the Yahoola Valley, gathered in among white pines and scarlet oaks, mosses and ferns, mountain laurel and rhododendron."

At first it was just the two of us, with Blackmarr vicariously taking me along as she lived like a hermit, forsaking all others, except for her ubiquitous dogs, in her first two books, "Going to Ground: Simple Life on a Georgia Pond," and "House of Steps: Finding the Path Home." But, when I began reading her third book in this series of essays, "Above the Fall Line: The Trail from White Pine Cabin," we became a threesome: a literary menage a trois. That's because when I read some of Blackmarr's eloquent words aloud to my wife, I then had to read the entire book to her -- chapter by chapter. Well, I guess it did seem more proper this time, with my wife along.

Reading Amy Blackmarr's trio of flights to temporary dwellings is like peeking inside someone's diaries, sharing not only the richness of her solitude and the glory of her nature hikes, but her intimate thoughts as well. She writes, "Three divorces before I turned thirty, not to mention all my other failed romances, had cinched the whole relationship thing for me." And yet she admits to "scanning crowds for the long-haired, blue-eyed blond hero who would recognize me the instant he saw me."

In each of her books, this modern-day Thoreau encounters creatures large and small, dangerous and otherwise, and in "Above the Fall Line," she comes upon scorpions in the shower, snakes in the woods, and even a black bear that seems interested in her spoiled pork roast. Even the simple act of taking out the trash turns into a hilarious episode. The author also deals with the loss of a treasured dog, a graduate school disappointment, and another failed relationship. Though a lot of the book is indeed about loss, Blackmarr is in a constant process of rebirth and reevaluation, where failures are realized simply as "trail trees" that point to happier hunting grounds, and a sundown is merely a passage to tomorrow's great adventures down pathways, hillsides and streambeds.

Her "Above the Fall Line" ends in 2003 as, she writes, "The crows are calling, and the wind is up..." So I know she's out there right now, somewhere, living and writing down our next nature quest. You would do well to shack up with Amy Blackmarr -- even if your spouse does insist on tagging along.

     It is rare to come across a scholarly textbook of research that is relatively understandable to lay people and beginning researchers. Yet Tesser's _Advanced Social Psychology_ succeeds where others fail. It is unlike other disciplinary or subdisciplinary textbooks, written by a single author covering tons of ground. This book is an anthology of reviews describing cutting-edge research in Social Psychology by those who are doing the cutting - the most prominent researchers in the field describing the state of their specialty. So while one does not get the perfectly smooth ('processed') feel of a textbook written by a single author, one gets an intimate feel for what is really being done, and a feel for what is on the horizon, for each line of inquiry by the people who are most interested in the area.

     Another outstanding facet of this anthology is the vibrance held within its pages, precisely because it was not written by a single author. Each chapter displays the personality of its author(s). And each is written with the student in mind, not only the attempt to relay information. The book, depite its relative brevity, is filled with (often humorous) examples and illustrations. Terminology, critical to any discipline, is spelled out at the beginning to assure a common ground between author and reader. And, as a book on Social Psychology, the research areas are incredibly interesting and personally relevant: Attitude Change (R. E. Petty), Social Influence (R. B. Cialdini), Attraction and Relationships (M. S. Clark & S. P. Pataki), and Prejudice (P. G. Devine), to name a few. Each chapter educates and intrigues the reader into the complexities of our daily lives that comprise modern social psychological research. This is a must-read for anyone who wishes to gain a better understanding of how the world works and appreciates intellectual challenges. And Tesser's _Advanced Social Psychology_ is the clear choice for both undergraduate and graduate courses in the area.

     - Richard J. Shakarchi
       Graduate Student, OSU Social Area

Tesser has gathered a formidable anthology representing the best and brightest of the field. I am impressed by the clarity and relative 'timelessness' of the research he chose and the way each author rose to the occasion to present her or his projects in such a way that a layman could grasp its significance. I have seen the text used in graduate courses, but the language is such that, although challenging, it could be digested by an upper-level undergraduate class.

Abraham Tesser did a fantastic job of assembling the top names in social psychology in 1994 to write this book. Scholars such as Susan Fiske, Daniel Gilbert, and Robert Cialdini wrote a chapter each on the core topics of social psychology. They also presented a lecture, and the complete 12-part lecture series is available on video.

The only problem is, this book gives a fantastic insight into where social psychology was a decade ago, but much research has since been conducted. This is such a pity, because there are few social psychology textbooks that are written for students in 3rd-year to graduate-level courses. Most social psychology books are directed to either introductory students, the general public, or academic audiences. This book filled a gap (catering for advanced students), but has now fallen a little behind the times. It gets five stars for what it was, and for the fact that most of its content is still relevant.

I read this book for the first time over 20 years ago, and I must admit it shaped my life. When I have kids (twin boys preferably) I will see to it that Machiavelli's Prince, and Smollet's Fathom are mandatory reading.

As you are lead through the life and adventures of FCF, you realize just how villanous a handsone dandy can be. Whistling as he makes love to your daughter so as not to let on that he is picking the lock on your safe with a toothpick between his toes definately displays a sense of arrogance that one must admire!

The texts of many Eighteenth Century books are full of interpolations by printers and may contain thousands of edits by the author, too. What Dr. Brack has done is to identify and evaluate EVERY variant to assemble a DEFINITIVE TEXT. He's spent a lifetime tracking down what Smollett actually wrote. If you want to know what Smollet wrote, and not his printer, read an edition that Dr. Brack has collated. These volumes are triumphs of scholarship as well as a service to readers.

Osagie's book fills a lacunae in the Amsitad historiographic record, but not only for providing details of the Amistad survivors' African return. She provided us with some insights into historical recollections and how they really only exist for present day agendas. She describes the appropriation of the Amistad story by Sierra Leoneans today in order to provide some morale for a society that has lurched from colonial exploitation to home grown exploitation and finally vicious civil war. Quite correctly she has departed from the American-centric purview and focused on the ramifications for African Americans and especially Africans.

i would like to tell u that this is one of the best books ever wrote i wanted to thank you for this strong experence for me so i decide to write a poem i will get back to u on it because i have to get it copyrighted first thanks again

Osagie's book covers all the things that have been glossed over in the traditional telling of the Amistad story: the stories of the Amistad Africans once they returned home, the generalized context of revolt and resistance to slavery at the time, and what the story has meant in Sierra Leone. She also has excellent critiques of plays, novels, and monuments about the Amistad incident, including Steven Spielberg's movie. It is a timely look at a popular story that takes the point of view of the Africans and Africans-American involved with it, instead of focussing on the white abolitionists and the court batttles. I very much enjoyed reading it.

John O'Donahue wrote poetry with the grace and passion of a waterfall -- a grand IRISH waterfall. He was wonderfully Irish in the musicality of his work. His poems are marked by whimsy, humanity, and spiritual power, but they are readily accessible too. I was driving when I first heard a recording of him reading a selection of his poems. Sadly, it was just after his untimely death. (Everyone says "untimely," but he was still in his fifties when he died. What glorious poems are we missing?!) I had to pull over to recover, to steady up. When I got home, I immediately went online to search for his books of poetry. This is the best I've found so far.

Celtic spirituality distilled into a language so rich it makes you swoon. John O'Donohue has synthesized his formidable intellect, the depth of mature spiritual experience and his love of the nature of his homeland into poems of great beauty and poignancy.

At first glance, John O'Donohue's poetry appears simple. That deception is largely due to its brevity and form. Yet it is complex with tiered symbolism. As is frequently the case with poetry, the reader may not "get it" first time through but these verses are worth a second, third, even fourth read. Some, like "Decorum" are so short as to approach the level of Celtic haiku.

"Conamara Blues" is divided into three parts. Since O'Donohue is a Catholic scholar, this may or may not be an intentional acknowledgment of the Holy Trinity, the Holy Family, etc. The middle portion bears a distinctly religious slant, though not unpleasantly so.

The first and final sections are more secular in tone. They touch on diverse topics: nature, the attitudes of foreign tourists seeking the "true" Ireland, the emotional discomfiture of meeting an old flame (" . . . let nothing slip/ From the invisible ruin/ We carry between us"), even death ("you can almost hear the depth/ Of white silence, rising to deny everything.") As befits Irish literature, there are occasional moody, melancholic notes, threaded like quicksilver through an otherwise optimistic flow of imagery.

Americans are unlikely to have encountered old European customs like using the wide wings of a slaughtered goose to sweep the floor around a wood-burning kitchen stove. We hear O'Donohue's sad perspective in looking past human practicality to see those wings no longer ". . . being folded around . . . Embracing the warmth/ And urgency of a beating heart/ . . . Never again to be disturbed/ Every year by the call/ Of the wild geese overhead".

Few of the 54 pieces take the shape of traditional, rhymed verse. If you are in search of that, I suggest the Hallmark section of your local store. O'Donohue's poetry follows its own rhythm and internal rhyme. In so doing, it reminds us that it is the desire and duty of each writer to see beyond the obvious, to take less tangible connections and gently define them for the rest of us.