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Kentucky by Heart: More popular book selections; Kentucky Playwrights and Screenwriters Conference


Editor’s Note: This is the second in a two-part series on what books are popular among Kentuckians.

By Steve Flairty
KyForward Columnist

Over in Mt. Sterling, Cynthia Wilson has read both Rob Lowe’s biographies, Love Life and Stories I Only Tell My Friends.

“They were stellar,” she said. “He’s a very good writer and painfully open about his life, yet very discrete. Now I’m reading It Takes Two, by Drew and Jonathan Scott. It’s a measure of how well they do their craft when celebrities turn out to be deeper individuals than they appear on screen. Rob Lowe and the Scott brothers have led fascinating lives. As you read their stories, the celebrity ‘mystique’ diminishes and there are real, likable people who just happen to do work in front of cameras.”

Another person in Mt. Sterling, Liz Prather, is reading Anne Lamott’s Stitches, a book of connection to others and the wisdom it takes to make it happen. One of my favorite books is Lamott’s Bird by Bird, an entertaining, often quirky offering on the craft of writing.

Darlene Snyder

Darlene Snyder is spending some of her retirement time from Madison County government work by reading such books as Cornbread Mafia and Bluegrass Conspiracy (for the second time). The Kirksville resident is currently reading Dark Highway, by Ann Dangelo, and finds the true story riveting. “In the 1930s a beautiful businesswoman, Vera Garr Taylor, is found in a ditch on a highway in rural Kentucky. The case had gone cold until attorney and author Ann Dangelo dug through the dusty bin and trial and trial transcripts.”

You might say that Dan Oberg is “sky high” about David McCullough’s The Wright Brothers. “So much to say about this incredible story and these men,” Dan said. “It’s a story of ingenuity, of integrity, of the best that America and Americans have to offer. In many ways, also, it’s a story that is lost in a different era, one that may never be reclaimed. We can learn a lot from Wilbur and Orville Wright today and David McCullough has made it easier to walk through the pages of relatively recent history and emulate their successes.”

Tom Friedman’s Thank You for Being Late is high on David Miller’s list of current events reading that provoke thought. He called it “hopeful, which I need right now, though America seems to be doing the opposite of what he notes has worked well other places—encouraging education and making it financially viable .” David noted that Friedman “points to the revolution in rural China and even in places like Africa, where technology is enabling even the poorest to step up and educate themselves and become players in global markets.” David is also reading native Kentuckian and nationally recognized author Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men, as well as Reza Aslan’s Zealot. He called Zealot “terrific, very straightforward, rounding up a lot of the facts of Jesus’ known life into a historically accurate picture that makes him more human but also tells how the three main belief traditions, pan-, mono-, and non-theistic could be reconciled in a father, son, spirit.”

On a recent trip to Ireland, Frankfort novelist Michael Embry received a tip from an Irish woman: “Read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man…it is a must read if a person wants to understand Dublin and the nation.” He is now taking her advice. He also has been reading Snapshot, by local author Chris Helvey, calling it “an intriguing tale about sex, love, and friendship in eastern Kentucky.” He also adds variety to his literary choices by poring through Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, along with True, a female soccer player’s coming-of-age story.

Michael Embry

Doris Settles just finished Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Won’t Stop Talking. She summarized it as “an interesting look at the world through the eyes of both introverts and extroverts, of which I am the latter, but married to and gave birth to introverts.” She is also reading Signora da Vinci by Robin Maxwell and Night Mark by friend Tiffany Reisz.

Dudley Gaine, Versailles, loves to study the past and likes Don’t Know Much about the Civil War, by Kenneth C. Davis, and is listening to Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945, by Tony Judt. Of the Judt book, he noted: “The part 1945-1953 was very interesting about how Europe suffered as a result of World War II. The Marshall Plan saved Western Europe from communism. The author implies that Khrushchev’s secret speech in 1956 on ‘The Crimes of Stalin’ was the beginning of the Soviet Union.” Dudley found a particularly interesting tidbit in the Civil War book, he said, learning about the first published autobiography of an African American, called The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vasa, the African.

Despite what some say, Kentucky is a place that is loaded with readers who are diverse in their selection of books. I’m hoping it continues, and broadens, as we go forward.

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For those interested in being a part of this growing arts area in the state, you might want to check out this week’s Kentucky Playwrights and Screenwriters Conference carnegiecenterlex.org at the Carnegie Literacy Center in Lexington, September 6-8. For information, call the Center at 859-254-4175 or email Bill McCann at wmccann273@gmail.com.

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Steve Flairty is a teacher, public speaker and an author of six books: a biography of Kentucky Afield host Tim Farmer and five in the Kentucky’s Everyday Heroes series, including a kids’ version. Steve’s “Kentucky’s Everyday Heroes #4,” was released in 2015. Steve is a senior correspondent for Kentucky Monthly, a weekly KyForward and NKyTribune columnist and a member of the Kentucky Humanities Council Speakers Bureau. Contact him at sflairty2001@yahoo.com or visit his Facebook page, “Kentucky in Common: Word Sketches in Tribute.” (Steve’s photo by Connie McDonald)      


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