I would need waders to take the compost out today (click and click again). I haven’t looked to see whether the Landfill Dungeon is dry but we typically don’t have water down there, Hurricane Ike being the exception. But I don’t want to talk about weather today. I am just glad that what was coming out of the sky today wasn’t white and slippery and that I only heard one rumble of thunder this morning on my 0-skunk-30 walk. It was 30 miles to the south and I was two doors away from my house at the time.

Florida books? What are some good novels set in Florida? First, here are my requirements:

1) I need to read fiction (this is for an upcoming vacay). My work involves analyzing exceedingly complex situations and writing about how things need to work, adding in flowcharts and screenshots and tables and other graphics as needed. I understand that non-fiction can be wonderful (and readable) but I need escape reading and so I need stories that *grab* me, if that makes any sense.

2) That said, I don’t want anything too simple or maybe cheesy would be a better word. I’m looking for literature… How do I describe that… No romance novels. *Formulaic* mysteries or fantasies or sci-fi are not my thing although elements of one or all of those genres are warmly welcome. Just that the story and characters need to be somehow grounded in some sort of reality and developed to a point that I can connect with them. I doubt that made any sense. I’m not sure it even does to me and I just now wrote it.

Florida books that I have *already* read and loved, in reverse chronological order:

1) Their Eyes Were Watching God (Zora Neale Hurston): I read this only recently (it’s an old book and why have I never read it?) and I cannot put into words how I felt about it except that I loved it. The hurricane description? …

2) Swamplandia (Karen Russell): This book has elements of “bizarre” in it and I’m not sure that all of it is anywhere near plausible but that was part of what I loved about it.

3) The Talking Earth (Jean Craighead George): This is a children’s “chapter book” as we used to call them. Maybe nowadays it would be classified as YA (“young adult”) literature. I want to think I read this aloud to my children but I also have a fleeting memory that we did it as an audio book in the POC, maybe on our trip to the Badlands? I can’t remember exactly but I LOVED the book.

So if you have a favorite fictional book about Fla, I would love to know what it is. Or even just a favorite book about Fla of any genre. As you may be able to see via #3, I enjoy young adult lit too. Froggy can actually understand those books when I read them to him 🐸.

Love you all,
KW and Frroooogy

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