Not many people have sat and read two anthologies of contemporary Southern short fiction in one weekend, but I just did. Fifteen minutes ago I was startled awake at my table by the sound of tapping. I thought someone was at my door but it was the neighbors hammering something into the party wall. I had been dreaming about rock-climbing around an enormous, round, polished-granite fountain. I remember thinking in my dream, why do I always dream about this fountain? though I know I never have before. But I fell asleep on top of the ms of the second of the two Southern short story collections. I fell asleep with violence; I remember my head actually bobbing. So far in these collections there's one story that blows me away. It's the lead story in the second collection, and I am crazy about it. I almost cried reading it. There's a lot of dog-killing in the South, in other news, and people have incest a lot.



At this point, if the short story doesn't end (a) in a tragic sexual misunderstanding (b) in an epiphany during fireworks or (c) at the grave of a dog, I find it fresh. Even the dumbest of books can leave you with one great image.



I don't like twist endings. It frustrates me when the Southern voice is so clearly a put-on that the characters can't resist saying "purportedly." I also hate the construction "adding that" after a quote: "I love her," he said, adding that she was the only woman for him. [Unless "he" here is Smoove B.] I also hate foreshadowing. One of the stories contains a phrase that goes like, "At last he'd done a purely good deed, something no one could take away from him." Cue the tragic sexual misunderstanding and you better believe this one ends at the grave of a dog. I also just hate stories that revolve around one semi-nonsensical act that the main character performs in the belief that the act will clear his mind or is foreordained for him to do. How did you, Mayron T. LaCutcheon, president of the Buck Ankle Federated Bank, get it into yer haid to try 'n catch that ol' panty thief?



There does seem to be a short-story industry that turns out these paint-by-numbers jobs. He's divorced. She's around. Tragic sexual misunderstanding. As he drives home in the rain he has an epiphany and ends up throwing a trash can through the window of a 7-Eleven. If this were a New York short story collection you could flip the sexes and replace the TSM with a comic sexual understanding and you might have "Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living in New York."



You know what I would read is a Connecticut townie collection. Connecticut townies are the most fascinating people on the planet. I would also read any short story written by Boston Rob from Survivor.

On top of all this nonsense I am doing the most bizarre job I have ever done. My job is to go through this novel set (and already published) in Canada and remove all the traces of it being set in Canada.

Two interesting questions at the bookstore Tuesday. First, two women came in looking for romances with African American themes. We were out of Terry McMillan, and I spent the next fifteen minutes pulling likely-looking books off the fiction shelves and checking the cover art and author photo. If I never see another white woman again ... there should be more books than we have, that's for sure.



Then a man came in looking for a book by Cecil Brown; he got out a little notebook and read, slowly and carefully, "The Life and Loves of Mr. --" and I cut him off: "Oh, I read that book." I think he was relieved, and I know I didn't want to make him say the whole title. We didn't have a copy in either the new or old edition, and the guy said he couldn't find it anywhere. I know Robin's will help him out.

If you work at a magazine, you should read The Big Clock, by Kenneth Fearing. Or so I tell everyone.

Read: "The Art of Fine Baking," by Paula Peck
Why: I like to bake
A detailed guide to making cakes and pastry
Takeaway: I like to bake (see above) but I don't know if I have it in me to make anything in this book. These are the classic recipes for things you love from the bakery; each cake involves four or five complex steps for the cake itself, separating eggs and cooking sugar syrup to 238 degrees on a candy thermometer, and then you can make a buttercream frosting or glaze that involves another three steps and three pans. Making strudel or your own puff pastry would tie up your kitchen all day; it would be a fun project with my sisters but how annoyed would we be when people ate only small slices, or left half the plate uneaten? Reading this made me tense with all the tied-up expectations of making a cake that takes eight hours.

Read: "Lebek: A City of Northern Europe Through the Ages" by Xavier Hernandez and Jordi Ballonga; illustrated by Francesco Corni (1991)

Why: Wanted to buy something from used bookstore in Italian Market

A large black-and-white illustrated book in the style of Macauley's "Cathedral," it shows how a seaside port city develops from 1000 BC to the present.

Takeaway: Every time I open this book I get lost in it and get a crick in my neck. Fourteen enormous bird's-eye-view illustrations, in pen and ink, follow the city from the Bronze Age to the late 20th century. The city of Lebek starts as a farmers' campsite, builds a stockade, fights the Vikings, then builds a Gothic cathedral that rises in the middle of the little townhouses like a giant turbine. The whole city is like a machine that's being built from the inside -- it's neat to watch the city grow bit by bit and make itself into something that looks familiar. I got so invested in the growth of Lebek that when it got pounded in World War II, I was sad.

Read: "The Contortionist's Handbook," by Craig Clevenger (2001?)

Why: Paid to

It's the story of a man who creates a bunch of aliases so he doesn't get thrown in jail or the mental hospital

Takeaway: One day I was dropping something off at my friend the publisher's, and offered to input some proofing corrections on another manuscript while I was there. Twenty pages in, I noticed two things: one, the proofreader had missed a lot of errors, and two, the manuscript was *fantastic*. Just beautifully written. It had a clear, fresh way of putting things -- a way of seeing images in a flash that made the book feel like a good movie. It was clear to me that every word had been considered. Once I read the whole thing straight through, it got even better. I like most things my friend publishes, but this was another kind of liking -- I realized I liked this book as a book, not just as a product of my friend, of whom I am very proud.