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Don Noble Reviews... podcast (Book Reviews)

  • Host: Don Noble
  • Recently retired as English professor at The University of Alabama, Don's specialties are Southern and American literature.
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Last updated 45 days ago Update show info

"The Pillared City: Greek Revival Mobile," by John S. Sledge, Photography b

Mon, Oct 12 Listen
In Alabama, Greek Revival may have flourished best in Mobile, but when planters from the Black Belt came to town to meet with their cotton factors and to shop, they liked what they saw and sometimes had their country rural places built in this style.

"Mighty by Sacrifice: The Destruction of an American Bomber Squadron, Augus

Mon, Sep 28 Listen
WWII veterans are passing on now at a rapid rate and the generation that came home and resumed civilian life and said so little about their experiences will soon be silent forever. Their stories, like the ones the Noleses have captured in this book, must not be lost.

Alabama Illustrated: Engravings From 19th Century Newspapers

Mon, Sep 21 Listen
Although the five illustrated newspapers from which the engravings in Alabama Illustrated were taken were all published elsewhere, two in New York, two in Boston and one in London, the readers of these papers had a strong curiosity about life in the American South.

"The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement

Mon, Sep 14 Listen
This is a story told calmly, without bitterness or self-aggrandizement. I admired Zellner's candor about his adversaries, without a smarmy mellowness. He has, as a Christian, mostly forgiven, but he has not forgotten.

The Well and the Mine: A Novel, by Gin Phillips

Mon, May 18 Listen
Those are kinds of novels this is not. What then are the strengths which led Barnes and Noble to make The Well and the Mine a "Discover Great New Writers Selection" and the Alabama Library Association to award it the 2009 prize for fiction? There are several.

On Harper's Trail: Roland McMillan Harper, Pioneering Botanist of the South

Mon, May 11 Listen
He was an odd duck all right, but this book, with its many, many lists of the specimens, including their Latin names, Harper saw on his many, many outings, will be of interest mainly to botanists.

The Help: A Novel, by Kathryn Stockett

Mon, May 4 Listen
Kathryn Stockett received a BA in English and creative writing from UA, worked in magazines in NYC for nine years, and now lives in Atlanta. This is her first novel and it is a marvel, a great read, engrossing and fast-paced.

"Fanning the Spark: A Memoir," by Mary Ward Brown

Mon, Apr 27 Listen
Brown's many devoted fans will take in this book avidly, wanting to know every detail of her life, even though it is a life spent mainly rooted in middle Alabama, on a farm, without global travel except for one trip to Russia, or politics or scandal, or rich, famous, important friends and acquaintances.

Truman Capote's Southern Years: Stories from a Monroeville Cousin, by Maria

Mon, Apr 20 Listen
In tiny Monroeville, Alabama, population about 1,400, in the 1920s and '30s, Nelle Harper Lee and Truman Capote were friends and next-door neighbors.

The Adventures of Douglas Bragg: A Novel, by Madison Jones

Mon, Mar 9 Listen
Jones' hero is young Douglas Bragg, who is 24 years old, has graduated from college, lives in Birmingham, Alabama in 1960 and has itchy feet. He will go out to see the world, heading north, hitchhiking.

Frankly, My Dear: Gone With the Wind Revisited, by Molly Haskell

Mon, Mar 2 Listen
Familiar to many from her guest appearances on Turner Classic Movies with Robert Osborne, Molly Haskell is one of our country's foremost movie critics, historians, and interpreters. Haskell has every credential needed and brings all her skills to bear in this book on GWTW. It is often said of Venice, there is no more to be said about Venice. One might think that about GWTW also. But Haskell has taken some new approaches towards this classic book and movie and there are new insights.

Wishbones, by Carolyn Haines

Mon, Feb 23 Listen
Wishbones is the eighth in Carolyn Haines' "Bones" series, and is a little different from its predecessors. The series' premises were set out in Them Bones. Sarah Booth Delaney returns to her home, Dahlia House, in Zinnia, Mississippi, Sunflower County, because the family place is threatened with foreclosure. Sarah Booth's parents died in a crash when she was twelve and she has been in NYC in a not very successful attempt to establish a career as an actress. Back in Zinnia she runs into a...

The Agnostics: A Novel, by Wendy Rawlings

Mon, Feb 16 Listen
Rawlings has a pleasing style, a good eye for the Tom Wolfe "status life" detail, draws convincing and realistic characters and has certainly captured the tone of this slice of the 70's and 80's. This novel reads smoothly, and I enjoyed it, even if I could not finally figure out whose side Rawlings was on. Maybe that is after all its greatest strength.

The Millionaires: A Novel of the New South, by Inman Majors

Mon, Feb 9 Listen
Majors has published The Millionaires, set in Knoxville in the 1970s, and it is a marvel. The Millionaires, with its wry, sophisticated narrative voice, a voice in full control, is the best, most fully accomplished new novel I have read in perhaps three years.

The Fair Hope of Heaven: A Hundred Years After Utopia, by Mary Lois Timbes

Mon, Feb 2 Listen
Timbes is something of an expert on Fairhope, having written a previous Fairhope book, Meet Me at the Butterfly Tree, with Robert E. Bell. She has a pride in the town's unusual history, and she has a lament, a sad feeling, for what has happened to Fairhope recently. So this book serves as a kind of warning to pleasant, quaint places everywhere.

Nursery Rhyme Noir: The Hasp Deadbolt Files, by David C. Kopaska-Merkel

Mon, Jan 19 Listen
Nursery Rhyme Noir is not quite flash fiction but it is only one notch upthe short-short. Kopaska-Merkel has created a P.I., Hasp Deadbolt, often mistakenly called Deadbeat, to tell these stories. Read aloud, or even silently, Deadbolt sounds like Garrison Keillor's Guy Noir...

In the Company of Owls, by Peter Huggins. Illustrated by Paula G. Koz

Mon, Jan 12 Listen
This novel may simply be mislabeled and should be marketed as a "chapter book," that newish genre in between children's booksin which the story is told primarily through picturesand young adult. The plot is thin and the characters not much developed, but if the readers are 7-10, it should be appropriate.

Jim Crow and Me: Stories from My Life as a Civil Rights Lawyer, by Solomon

Mon, Jan 5 Listen
Solomon Seay did not wish to write an autobiography or a memoir and he has not. This volume is, as the subtitle indicates, a collection of anecdotes, mainly stories from his decades as a civil rights attorney in Alabama, mainly from 1957 to 1977. In a way, this format is more effective than a regular biography, because the day-to-day life of almost anyone is not that interesting. Seay's book is, then, a series of dramatic scenes, which are, I think, what we remember most from histories and...

Breathing Out the Ghost, by Kirk Curnutt

Mon, Oct 6 2008 Listen
There is no question about whether Curnutt's first novel is well done. Breathing Out the Ghost has already won the Independent Publishers bronze medal for fiction and the 2008 Best Book of Indiana in Fiction, and is a finalist in the Foreword Magazine fiction competition.

Letter From Point Clear

Mon, Oct 6 2008 Listen
Ellen Owen and her brother Morris were raised on Mobile Bay, on the promenade, just a few houses down the boardwalk from the Grand Hotel. When they were teenagers, their affluent family sent them north to New England, to school, and that was that.

A Yellow Watermelon

Mon, Oct 6 2008 Listen
A Yellow Watermelon is the fourth "Young Adult" novel I have read recently. Is it useful to ask a critic in his mid-sixties to evaluate a story intended for 12-year-olds? Maybe not, but what choice do we have?

Southern Belly: The Ultimate Food Lover's Companion to the South

Fri, Jan 11 2008 Listen
Organized state by state, this is a guide to the finest . . . what shall we call it? Down home cooking? Country cooking? Soul food? Traditional southern fare? This is a guide to BBQ, fried chicken, fried catfish, sausages, oysters raw and cooked, crawfish, hushpuppies, Brunswick stew, smoked mullet, collard greens and pot likker, and a dozen different kinds of biscuits, cornbread, and rolls.

Wallace Wade: Championship Years at Alabama and Duke

Tue, Nov 6 2007 Listen
This book is for fans, and I might say, fans only. It is loaded with statistics and relentless game-by-game, quarter-by-quarter, score-by-score, and even play-by-play summaries. Let me say simply that the statistics are incredible. Alabama teams went up to twenty games without a loss, without even been scored upon. In 1930, Alabama scored 247 points, opponents 13.

A Centennial Celebration of the Bright Star Restaurant

Tue, Oct 9 2007 Listen
Greeks are famous for choosing self-employment over working for others. That is a commonplace. There's more money and freedom in owning your own business, however humble, and being the boss. In any case, these Greeks took a look at the coal mines, where miners were killed in ceiling collapses and explosions, and at the foundries, where workers slaved away in the summer near furnaces in unimaginable heat, and "discovered they were better suited for the restaurant and food service industries."

Operation Homecoming

Mon, Sep 24 2007 Listen
It was the intention of the editorial board and the NEA that this volume be neither for nor against the Afghanistan/Iraq wars. And it succeeds. But I can't see how anyone could read these heartbreaking accounts without becoming determined that no war should be begun without absolutely good, unimpeachably good, in fact nearly perfect justification.

Chemistry

Fri, Sep 21 2007 Listen
In these stories, the mountain folk have to deal with divorce, the breakup of families, and, in general, the steady erosion of a way of life that was hard but had a wholeness to it. Ron Rash is capturing this moment of transformation and making it into art.

Night Rain: A Mike Connolly Mystery

Fri, Sep 14 2007 Listen
A lowlife loser named Dibber Landry (given name Dilbert) is waiting in his family's house on the north side of Dauphin Island for the eye of the hurricane to arrive. He then quickly gets into his motorboat and rides to the south side of the island to loot houses that have been evacuated. Things are going fine until, after gathering up items of value in the Marchand family house, Dibber comes upon a corpse.

Prophet from Plains: Jimmy Carter and His Legacy

Fri, Sep 14 2007 Listen
The joke among pundits is he used the presidency "as a stepping stone to greatness." Gaillard reevaluates both the Carter presidency and the years since, neither canonizing nor castigating.

Hallelujah, Alabama!

Mon, Sep 3 2007 Listen
On the one hand, it seems child's play to make fun of Alabama politics. The legislators have fistfights; two of our recent governors have been convicted of felonies; the scandals in the junior college system are too widespread and brazen even to comprehend easily. How to outdo reality is the problem.

Willie Mays: Art In The Outfield

Mon, Sep 3 2007 Listen
As Willie Mays's seventy-fifth birthday approached on May 6, 2006, friends thought they wanted to do something more, something different for him than just birthday cake and testimonials.

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