was so darned good, as noted below. Then I got to read Joshilyn Jackson's Gods in Alabama. How often is it that even the acknowledgements make you laugh out loud in public? I picked up the book on the way to meet a friend for lunch downtown and sat outside reading and waiting. She was probably annoyed because throughout lunch I couldn't stop from opening up and reading bits out loud to her, even though I'd only gotten 5 pages into it while waiting. If she wasn't such a good friend, I would have been irked at her timeliness, in fact, because I would rather have kept reading than have lunch with anyone but a very good friend! This book has everything going for it: humor, mystery, great characters, and writing that just flows. Arlene left Alabama 9 years ago after promising to give up fornication (as she politely puts it during prayers), to never tell a lie, and to never go back to the town she grew up in as long as a certain body was allowed to remain hidden. When she becomes convinced that the deal is off, she breaks all three of her promises, returning home with her boyfriend, fornicating on the way, and lying to her family that they're already married. Between flashbacks and the current scenes, you come to know the loving, albeit imperfect, family she left behind and the far-from-perfect gods in Alabama.
Now I'm finished Gods in Alabama
and I'm at that point where I just know nothing can top these last two books. I hated each of them ending. While I was eager to know what happened, I wasn't ready to leave the characters behind. So now I'm stuck. I can't pick up another fiction book because the odds of finding a third as good as these last two are just astronomical. So I have to face disappointment, or at least risk it, in order to read another novel. I've decided to solve that dilemna for now by going to nonfiction. I'm reading MFK Fisher's journals and letters in Stay Me, oh Comfort Me
and they are delightful so far.
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