When I was assigned Cormac McCarthy’s The Road for my American literature class last semester, I approached it apprehensively. Oh no, I thought. Can I really handle reading this right now? Will it leave me with a feeling of hopelessness, like most of the other post-apocalypse lit out there?

The answer was no. The Road was simply amazing: tense, terrifying, and yes, hopeful. The characters, unnamed throughout, are carrying the torch of humanity through impossible odds, and though they don’t emerge from the road of the title unscathed, they still emerge.

I read the book in a night, and then started loaning it out to everyone I knew. Things may get bad, the world may end, maybe even in 2012, but at least we have good books to get us through. (I’m still not ready to go see the movie, though.)

Written by: Amethyst V.

It seems perfectly appropriate the I should be reading Stephen King’s The Shining in one of my literature courses this month. Aside from producing some really high-quality, Technicolor nightmares, this book also raises questions about what is so scary about an empty hotel. Aside from the supernatural element, there’s also a definite fear of being alone with the people you love most. I think anyone who’s been on a family vacation recently can relate to that.

Though King didn’t get much love from the critics at the outset of his career, many scholarly articles are beginning to pop up, particularly about his early works. As people are beginning to examine genre fiction as a legitimate form with its own values and codes, the elements that made it so enjoyable to begin with are still intact.

I just love the fact that intellectual inquiry and scary thrill rides can go hand in hand. Fall is the perfect time to curl up and enjoy both!

Written by: Amethyst V.

I can’t imagine a world more different from my own than the one I’ve been entering every time I open one of my Heritage Library editions of Shakespeare’s plays. My cell phone chirps and trills as his messengers run breathlessly from place to place. There are no Dukes plotting revenge in Birmingham’s Southside, and the only cuckolds I see are on midday soap operas.

Still, there’s a magic there. As distant as it seems, once you start reading, you find you can’t stop until the end. It’s a long journey from my kudzu-covered porch to the courts of Venice, but the people, those you can recognize anywhere. Their fears, their hopes, their loves and pain, are very close to home.

Even if home is Alabama.

Written by: Amethyst V.

I suppose I had been feeling a little distant from my roots when I decided to do an independent study last semester. The project would involve a lot of research on a place I should know like the back of my hand: Jasper.

For four months, I refined searches on LexusNexus, combed through historical society web pages, and drove the 45 minutes west on Highway 78 on weekends. Poking through the history of the place gave me a different sense of what it meant to be from Jasper.

From the early settlers who burned down their courthouse more than once to the coal miners who disappeared underneath its hills for generations in search of a living, Jasper’s history is full of defiance, independence and hard work.

I may still sound like I was born somewhere else, but by learning more about the history of the place and my own history there, I got a sense of how it’s informed who I am. Now when I get the inevitable question, I follow up my answer with a few interesting facts. I point west, in the vague direction of winding Highway 78, just so there’s no mistake. I may never get a taste for sweet tea, but I’ve become a connoisseur of my hometown.

Written by: Amethyst V.

The book covers many regional writers, both north and south of the Mason-Dixon. One Alabamian’s story particularly stuck out in my mind. Augusta Jane Evans, a Mobile native, was part of the boom of fiction written by women during the middle of the 19th century.

Maybe the most interesting aspect of this book was the fact that these women wrote, and supported their families with their writing, while they were still expected to cook, clean and care for their children full time.

As the tensions leading up to the Civil War rose, Evans used her fiction to idealize the South and the system of slavery, work to which she had to reconcile herself once the war was over. Evans spent the rest of her career revising the sentiments of those earlier works and her own earlier beliefs.

Maybe the most interesting aspect of this book was the fact that these women wrote, and supported their families with their writing, while they were still expected to cook, clean and care for their children full time. If these women could write great works without the aid of a dishwasher, a vacuum cleaner, or a washing machine, I think we could all find the time to do just a little bit more, too.

Written by: Amethyst V.