Literary Friday, Edition 83

We took a break for Thanksgiving last week, but Literary Friday is back and sporting a gifting theme today!

10 Southern Cookbooks for Gifting 

We just hit publish on our list of Southern cookbooks that would make great holiday gifts this year. There’s a little something for everyone, whether it be Southern slow cooker recipes for the hurried cook, Anne Quatrano’s Summerland or John Besh’s Cooking from the Heart, which could easily double as coffee table books, or The Wild Chef for the hunter and fishermen on your list. We’re also giving away six of the 10 books on the list, so click on over to find out how to win. 

And because everybody knows a good dish deserves a tasty cocktail to go along with it, check out Flavorwire’s 5 Essential Tips on Hosting a Successful Literary Holiday Party.

Upcoming Twitter Chat

As part of our Fall/Winter Reading celebration, join us in chatting with The Storycatcher author Ann Hite next Friday, December 13, from 1-2 CST. We’ll be joined by Traveling With T blogger Tamara Welch as co-host and also have a copy of Ann’s book to give away during the chat.

Literary News 

We have a guest post by author Dorothy Love, whose new book Carolina Gold releases on Sunday and tells the true story of a female rice planter who returned to her father’s South Carolina plantation after the Civil War to resume growing the superior strain of rice by the same name.

The New York Times included Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch in its list of the 10 Best Books of 2013, as did The Huffington Post along with Karen Russell’s Vampires in the Lemon Grove.

Slate has Daniel Woodrell’s The Maid’s Version on its staff picks for Best Books of 2013.

A list of 100 Must-Read African-American Books also went up online this week and includes several Southern classics by Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker and Richard Wright.

Get a Book Club Recipe for Joshilyn Jackson’s Someone Else’s Love Story over at SheReads.

Zachary Lundgren revisits The Legend of Frank Stanford, Arkansas’s cult poet, in our Arts & Lit section.

The winners of Goodreads’ Best Books of 2013 have been announced, with the Jim Henson Biography taking the prize in the History & Biography category and Tequila Mockingbird winning in Food & Cookbooks.

The Louisiana Book Festival has announced that its 2013 festival set a record for attendance, with 29,066 people turning out to the State Capitol grounds last month.

Calling Me Home by Julie Kibler has been announced as Target’s book club pick for January and Ladies’ Home Journal‘s pick for February.

BookRiot’s Cozy Bookish Sweatshirts for Cold-Weather Reading includes one pronouncing that “Atticus Finch runs Maycomb County.”

Literary Events

The Key West Literary Seminar will be held January 9-12 and 16-19 this year with the theme “The Dark Side.” Guest authors include Megan Abbott, Lee Child, Michael Connelly, Percival Everett, Gillian Flynn, Attica Locke and Joyce Carol Oates.

New in Southern Voice

Fireflies by Devin Murphy and The Continental by Christi Craig, a pair of short shorts about hope.

To find out more about Southern authors’ haunts and hangouts, download the Deep South Literary Trail App, available direct from iTunes and for Android.