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Summary: Southern Ladies and Gentlemen
Review: Just like everyone else, I've read and re-read this book until I'm forced to buy another copy - it's the funniest, most accurate depiction of life in the South! Born a Texan and raised in Alabama, I went to school with Good Good Ol' Boys and Self-Rejuvinating virgins (Muffy, are you reading this! ) And I swear, I really did have this devastingly handsome Good Ol' Boy whisper, in the height of passion, that he'd kill for me. Honest.
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Summary: Florence is the best!
Review: Southern Ladies and Gentlemen was the first book by Miss King that I read. Since that time several years ago I have read every title I could find. S L&G is a laugh out loud, wipe the tears from your eyes look at a group of people that I have always thought to be just a little boring. How wrong I was. After looking at them through Miss King's eyes and with the help of her biting humor and mastery of the language, I always look forward to my travels in the south. It seems I can almost point out the folks in Miss King's book and I find myself trying to classify them according to her "system". I'm a professional pilot and although I usually have one of Miss King's books with me to read on layovers, I don't dare peek at one when I'm on the flight deck. Belly laughs aren't appreciated there.
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Summary: Florence is the best!
Review: Southern Ladies and Gentlemen was the first book by Miss King that I read. Since that time several years ago I have read every title I could find. S L&G is a laugh out loud, wipe the tears from your eyes look at a group of people that I have always thought to be just a little boring. How wrong I was. After looking at them through Miss King's eyes and with the help of her biting humor and mastery of the language, I always look forward to my travels in the south. It seems I can almost point out the folks in Miss King's book and I find myself trying to classify them according to her "system". I'm a professional pilot and although I usually have one of Miss King's books with me to read on layovers, I don't dare peek at one when I'm on the flight deck. Belly laughs aren't appreciated there.
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Summary: Southern Perspective
Review: The drawl that deceptively covers the importance of the very extensive scrutiny and judgment taking place in the Southern mind serves to avoid the unpleasantness that might be too prominent as practiced in the north, for Southern comfort. To be sure, the natural buffer - mostly learned from birth - is often misconstrued as ignorance or crudeness, but in fact, is largely underestimated by others of other regions of the nation who cannot seem to appreciate the gentility that lies beneath the exterior that is duly sensitive as a result, perhaps, of the Civil War, where modest humility had to become an acquired taste, and practiced sincerely and earnestly to provide dignity and respect in the new society that is the South. Mistakes are often made of the tolerance that Southerners have for lack of sensitivity and awareness of others, however, due to their history in that war, however, since most have a strict and rigid boundary of person and privacy, which when exceeded, nearly always produces backlash and disgrace borne of contempt for not upholding their lofty standards of interpersonal realations that emphasize the dignity and respect each person is deservedly entitled to. Most hometown southern ways are designed to manage those complexities with grace and delicacy without the disruption or indelicacy of full frontal confrontation which can often get out of hand due to their persistent spirit of independence. It's all in the interpretation, and the exposure!
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Summary: And Richmond too
Review: This book is superb! I laughed, I cried, I grimaced. I too have read it multiple times starting in 1974 when it first came out. I've given it as a present over and over, as I am doing now with this purchase. It nails the culture in the "Capital of the Confederacy" so perfectly that my first reading of the book was in awe of Ms. King's omniscience.
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Summary: Do not eat or drink while reading this book!!!!!
Review: This is King at her misanthropic best. A must read for any daughter of the American South, or for anyone raised by one
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Summary: God help us all...it paints an accurate picture of Alabama.
Review: Today, when I checked Amazon.com for another copy of Southern Ladies and Gentlemen it came to mind that this will be the nineteenth copy I have purchased since the late 1970's when I found the book at the Birmingham Public Library in the Travel section. I keep buying them and then lending them and never getting them back. For some reason my friends never manage to return them. The bittersweet truth is I married two "Good Ole Boys", have done the cemetary crawl, know first hand about the "Upton Womb" and aspire to become a "Dear Old Thing" within the next decade. My best friend in college could have been Florence King's mother and my own mother was related by spirit to Granny. No matter how many times I read this book, I still laugh until I cry. This time, I will not lend the book. I will not lend the book. I will not lend the book.
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Summary: Southern comfort
Review: Vicious, outrageous, funny, warm, well-written, and entertaining. What more could you want in a book? I was first introduced to Florence King via her "The Florence King Reader" and have not regretted the introduction. One can only hope that Oprah or someone will pick up on her immense intelligence and cult-like popularity and give this book an extra shove! Would also recommend another great read I've recently come across, though everyone seems to have heard of it or read it already. It's called "The Bark of the Dogwood--A Tour of Southern Homes and Gardens" and it is equal parts laugh-out-loud and disturbing. Great Southern literature lives on! (insert Rebel yell here!)
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Summary: Oh, lordy, our secret is out....
Review: Well, bless her heart, I guess she felt she had to tell it like it was....and boy did she ever!This is one of the funniest, most candid and accurate views into what makes Southerners Southern that I've read. On one hand, I'm sorry that she let the cat out of the bag; on the other hand, I've mailed a few copies to my Yankee friends who have been baffled by their visits to the South or with folks from the South that they now work with. They seem to "get it" a little better now, but they keep losing their copies to other friends! Being a "transplanted" Southern -- soon to be RE-planted if Lord's willing and the creek don't rise -- this was as much a taste of home as a GRITS (Gal raised in the South) can get and not start packing for home immediately. Yes, we're eccentric, yes, we're neurotic, yes, we're odd -- and we work damn hard to get that way, so you may as well sit back and enjoy the ride. The section on writing for the Society pages of a Southern newspaper (which just happens to be in my hometown) was so darned accuarte that I have no doubt it all happened just the way she describes. And Ms. King is right....no decnet Southern gal is ever caught sneaking into buildings at night, especailly without her stockings! Between Florence King and Clyde Edgerton, the South lives on.
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Summary: Did Florence King come to my family reunions?
Review: What a hoot!!!! All southerners can relate -- and name names! Read her other books! "When Sisterhood Was in Flower" is particularly funny. "Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady" is particularly funny and surprising
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