My Southern Journey: True Stories from the Heart of the South by Rick Bragg

I don't think I would have loved this book if I had read it--but I did love it as an audiobook. It is 100% necessary that you listen to this book instead of read it, so that you can listen to Rick Bragg's crazy strong Southern drawl reading his essays about football, southern food, and the red dirt of the South. All of these essays were put together from being previously published in magazines, mostly Southern Living, and all of them are about Bragg's life, childhood, and experiences of the South. And all of them give you the strongest feeling of the South. It made me want to go eat a grouper sandwich, something I have never even heard of and doesn't even sound remotely appealing to me, and to move to New Orleans and feel the liquid dirt there. I loved all of his family members who he wrote about so lovingly, and loved the imagery of all of his huge family gatherings and his strong sense of a family tree and his Southern heritage. This book made me feel like I want to move to Alabama, which is a huge accomplishment considering how little I actually want to do that. The only other book I've read that makes me feel that way is To Kill a Mockingbird. I wish I could have written down what some of the best lines were, but I couldn't since I was listening to it. This wasn't a page-turner by any means (or whatever the equivalent would be for an audiobook), but everything in it was so good. I'm wanting to read much more Southern literature now.