|
|
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
New Literary Territory
It used to be commonplace to say that Florida
was fragmented: part South (in the north), part Northeast (in the south), part Native America, part Latin America, part Disney.
I think this is less true since the hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005, when storms blew across our imaginary borders, crisscrossed
our state’s evacuation destination, Orlando, made mock of attempts to isolate our citrus canker (yes, I’m still
mad that the Dept. of Ag. cut down my healthy lime tree!), showed us our mutual danger and swamped us all in impossible insurance
rates.
We’re all in this together: We share the wind, the
ocean, the power of nature and the fantasy of glass towers, our booms and busts, our crime, our politics, our scoundrels and
heros, our worries and our amusements. We’re a peninsula seemingly apart from the rest of the country, and yet we’re
often at the center of its attention. Rare is the story without some Florida angle, it seems. When you heard about Anna Nicole
Smith, I bet you said, it had to happen in Florida. A death at the Seminole Hardrock Casino, just down the road from tabloid
headquarters, with the Broward sheriff guarding the morgue, at an intersection of Hollywood and the Bahamas: the event had
our territorial complexity and our propensity for stories with abundant plot lines and characters both sad and grotesque.
I’m only beginning to realize the hunger of readers to
understand this place. When I was doing readings around South Florida this winter as one of the contributors to Miami
Noir , everywhere we went I heard the eagerness of questions from audiences: Is there something about Hialeah in there?
How about some ghost stories like the ones my grandmother told me about St. Augustine? The rapidity of our development is
also the high-speed obliteration of our past, and many people expressed their wish that stories be written before they are
forgotten. And lots are being written. Florida books come out in abundance, but nowhere that I know of is the picture they
form being put together. Our trash and pleasure, our serious concerns about nature and politics, all infuse our fiction and
nonfiction, the work of our crowds of crime writers and clusters of poets. Shouldn’t they be read in the context of
the rich history of Florida literature, of Ernest Hemingway and Elizabeth Bishop, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and Zora Neale
Hurston, John James Audubon and John D. Macdonald and so many more?
So I said, “There ought to be a website for reviews and discussion of Florida books,” and Susan Parsons challenged
me to create one with her, and: here we are.
Our first reviews
of course just begin to show what we have in mind, but I’m pleased to say that we at least touch on some of the range
of Florida history and genres. We look at books about Florida’s First People and the heyday of Miami Beach and I had the pleasure of reading Bill Belleville’s Losing It All to Sprawl which documents our present losses and future danger. We review new fiction by Chantel Acevedo and Harry Crews and Karen Russell and Ginny Rorby’s young adult novel which has been garnering national awards. We offer a reconsideration of Russell Banks’ Continental Drift twenty years after and an interview with poet Michael Hettich. We’ve posted some links to the bookstores, presses, magazines, and writers’ organizations around the state
and hope you’ll let us know about more we can include.
New
material is being added all the time and I’ll be writing here regularly to talk about the many seasons of our year and
things to read to get you through them.
Please enjoy what’s
here, sign up for our mailing list, link to us, and while you read, think about what Florida is.
—Lynne Barrett
3:52 pm edt
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
| (Image from a Florida postcard) |
Weblinks to follow the weather:
www.nhc.noaa.gov - This is the official site of the National Hurricane Center. It's probably the most "official" site on the web,
so if you have trust issues, go here. They've improved over time, most notably with better maps and a new small news feed
at the top. In the past, their maps have been less definitive, with a huge cone, especially for slow-moving storms. Their
text descriptions are also very technical and dense. Plus, the site's not as colorful, and we all like colors, don't we?
www.wunderground.com/tropical/ - This is Weather Underground's tropical weather site. They are good if you want easy access to a wide range of information,
including things like the "historical" diagram which shows how similar past storms have moved. They have a good
variety of computer models (which are lacking on the NHC), and they're very easy to navigate. They're also the best source
I know of for hurricane blogging - Dr. Jeff Masters blogs about tropical activity pretty consistently, although if you're
a complete beginner he may seem a bit jargonish. Plus, they're the best location for hurricane news if you're trying to "one-stop
shop" for weather info at your mansion on Fisher Island, your home in the Hamptons, the Manhattan apartment, the London
flat and the Chateau on the Loire. On the con side, they are a commercial entity, so there are ads around the site.
www.skeetobiteweather.com - These guys have very clear diagrams that show not just where the storm will go, but how strong it will be in different
locations. They're also good for more minor systems, as they show details "investigation areas" that may develop
into depressions, which neither the NHC nor Weather Underground does. Their historical records, previously the least complete,
have been updated to include all storms since 2008, bringing them up to par with the others on that front. They have a slightly
wider variety of computer models than Weather Underground, though you need to visit both sites to see all of them. They can
be a bit slow in updating (they normally have a 45-minute to an hour lag in updating after the NHC, as compared to Weather
Underground's 5-minute lag), but that's because they end up presenting much more information with their diagrams. They come
across as no-frills, with their relatively plain layout and lack of things like "wind history" that the other two
throw in. --James Barrett-Morison
|
|
Winners of the 2009 Florida Book Awards Children's Literature Gold
Medal: Joan Hiatt Harlow, Secret of the Night Ponies
Florida Nonfiction Gold Medal: Jack E. Davis, An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the American Environmental Century
Silver
Medal: Carlton Ward, Jr., Florida Cowboys Bronze Medal: Todd
T. Turrell, Naples Waterfront—Changes in Time General Fiction Gold Medal: N.M. Kelby, A
Travel Guide for Reckless Heart.
Silver Medal: Janet Burroway, Bridge of
Sand
Bronze Medal: Ana Menendez, The Last War A. Manette
Ansay, Good Things I Wish You
Michael Lister, Double
Exposure
Popular Fiction Gold Medal:
Glynn Marsh Alam, Moon Water Madness
Silver Medal: Diane A.S. Stuckart,
Portrait of a Lady: A Leonardo DaVinci Mystery
Bronze Medal: Jonthon
King, The Styx
Chris Kuznecki, The Lost Throne
Tim Dorsey, Nuclear Jellyfish
Poetry Gold Medal: Campbell McGrath, Shannon
Silver
Medal: Denise Duhamel, Ka-Ching!
Bronze Medal: Jesse Millner,
Neighborhoods of My Past Sorrow
Peter Meinke, Lines
from Neuchatel
Spanish
Language Book Gold Medal: Juan Cueto-Roig, Veintiún cuentos concisos
Silver Medal: José Álvarez, País y la revolución cubana Young Adult Literature
Gold Medal: Alex Sanchez, Bait
Silver Medal: Rick Yancey, The Monstrumentologist
|
|
