HottyToddy.com Lists Top 100 Books of the South

This blog by HottyToddy.com contributor Emily Gatlin originally appeared on BookRiot.com and appears here with permission.

A Book Riot reader from the Midwest was so intrigued by my love letter to Flannery O’Connor, she tweeted me and asked if I had a copy of my Southern literature class reading list. She always wanted to dig into Southern lit, but didn’t know where to start. I suddenly realized that if you aren’t exposed to Southern lit, you really don’t know where to start. Sure, you’ve read To Kill a Mockingbird, and yeah… that Faulkner guy was from Mississippi (let’s face it, Faulkner’s words ain’t easy on the brain). But what else is there?

I started to make a list of Southern books I had in my personal library, and I had around 70 that I would be willing to tell a stranger to read. Bookseller extraordinaire Joe Hickman of Lemuria Books in Jackson, Mississippi helped me fill in some gaps, and we exchanged a few notes on upcoming releases. Lemuria is by far the best bookstore in the South because they have a huge staff full of people who know their stuff. Plus, they have ALL THE BOOKS. Seriously. The books overflow off the shelves all over the floor. Great place.

A few notes: some authors have so many good books, I just listed the ones I liked the most. In the case of Faulkner, I picked his more accessible novels. There is some really great nonfiction included and a lot of really great nonfiction NOT included. I had to cut it off at some point.

I suggest you pour yourself a glass of single barrel bourbon, make a batch of cheese straws, and start reading.

1. A Childhood: The Biography of a Place – Harry Crews
2. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
3. A Death in the Family – James Agee
4. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
5. Airships – Barry Hannah
6. A Land More Kind Than Home – Wiley Cash
7. A Lesson Before Dying – Ernest Gaines
8. All Over But the Shoutin’ – Rick Bragg
9. All the King’s Men – Robert Penn Warren
10. Apostles of Light – Ellen Douglas
11. As I Lay Dying – William Faulkner
12. A Streetcar Named Desire – Tennessee Williams
13. A Time to Kill – John Grisham
14. The Awakening – Kate Chopin
15. Bastard Out of Carolina – Dorothy Allison
16. Bats Out of Hell – Barry Hannah
17. Big Bad Love – Larry Brown
18. Black Boy – Richard Wright
19. Blues All Around Me – B.B. King
20. Brother to a Dragonfly – Will Campbell
21. Burning Bright: Stories – Ron Rash
22. Before Women Had Wings – Connie May Fowler
23. Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy
24. Can’t Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters – Robert Gordon
25. Child of God – Cormac McCarthy
26. The Civil War: A Narrative (I-III) – Shelby Foote
27. Cold Mountain – Charles Frazier
28. Cold Sassy Tree – Olive Ann Burns
29. *The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty – Eudora Welty
30. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
31. The Complete Stories – Flannery O’Connor
32. The Courting of Marcus Dupree – Willie Morris
33. Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter – Tom Franklin
34. Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man – Fannie Flagg
35. Deep Blues – Robert Palmer
36. Deliverance – James Dickey
37. Delta Wedding – Eudora Welty
38. Ellen Foster – Kaye Gibbons
39. The End of California – Steve Yarbrough
40. Every Day By the Sun – Dean Faulkner Wells
41. The Fall of the House of Zeus – Curtis Wilkie
42. Father of the Blues – W. C. Handy
43. Fire in the Morning – Elizabeth Spencer
44. Geronimo Rex – Barry Hannah
45. Give My Poor Heart Ease: Voices of the Mississippi Blues – William Ferris
46. Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
47. The Great Santini – Pat Conroy
48. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – Carson McCullers
49. Hell at the Breech – Tom Franklin
50. House of Prayer No. 2 – Mark Richard
51. I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down – William Gay
52. It Wasn’t All Dancing and Other Stories – Mary Ward Brown
53. Joe – Larry Brown
54. The Keepers of the House – Shirley Ann Grau
55. The Kitchen House – Kathleen Grissom
56. Known World – Edward P Jones
57. Lanterns on the Levee – William Alexander Percy
58. The Last Gentleman – Walker Percy
59. The Last Girls – Lee Smith
60. The Last of the Southern Girls – Willie Morris
61. Light in August – William Faulkner
62. The Little Friend – Donna Tartt
63. Long Time Leaving: Dispatches from Up South – Roy Blount Jr.
64. Look Homeward, Angel – Thomas Wolfe
65. The Mind of the South – W.J. Cash
66. The Moviegoer – Walker Percy
67. Mudbound – Hillary Jordan
68. The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure – Jack Pendarvis
69. Native Guard – Natasha Tretheway
70. North Toward Home – Willie Morris
71. Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All – Allan Gurganus
72. Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored – Clifton Taulbert
73. One Foot in Eden – Ron Rash
74. One Mississippi – Mark Childress
75. The Optimist’s Daughter – Eudora Welty
76. Other Voices, Other Rooms – Truman Capote
77. Poachers – Tom Franklin
78. The Prince of Tides – Pat Conroy
79. Provinces of Night – William Gay
80. The Quiet Game – Greg Iles
81. Raney – Clyde Edgerton
82. Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 – John Barry
83. Run with the Horseman – Ferrol Sams
84. Salvage the Bones – Jesmyn Ward
85. Salvation on Sand Mountain – Dennis Covington
86. The Secret Life of Bees – Sue Monk Kidd
87. Serena – Ron Rash
88. The Sharpshooter Blues – Lewis Nordan
89. Shiloh and Other Stories – Bobbie Ann Mason
90. The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
91. Southern Belly: A Food Lover’s Companion – John T. Edge
92. Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom – Peter Guralnick
93. Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
94. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
95. Victory Over Japan – Ellen Gilchrist
96. Walking Across Egypt – Clyde Edgerton
97. Welding with Children – Tim Gautreaux
98. Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor
99. Work Shirts for Madmen – George Singleton
100. Zeitoun – Dave Eggers

Coming soon:

1. The Death of Santini – Pat Conroy (Nan A. Talese)
2. Lookaway, Lookaway by Wilton Barnhardt (St. Martin’s Press)
3. Men We Reaped – Jesmyn Ward (Bloomsbury USA)
4. The Realm of Last Chances – Steve Yarbrough (Knopf)
5. The Resurrectionist – Matthew Guinn (W.W. Norton)
6. Rivers – Michael Farris Smith (Simon & Schuster)
7. Someone Else’s Love Story – Joshilyn Jackson (William Morrow)
8. Sycamore Row – John Grisham (Doubleday)
9. This Dark Road to Mercy – WIley Cash (William Morrow)
10. The Tilted World – Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly (William Morrow)

Emily Gatlin spent four years as the manager of an independent bookstore in Mississippi. In 2012, she was nominated to serve on the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Board of Directors. She is a contributor for Book Riot, Food Riot, and also writes for Invitation Oxford and Mud & Magnolias Magazine. Occasionally, she updates her own blog, A Prose For Emily.