A Weekend Read

I’ve been reading T.R. Pearson’s first book, A Short History of a Small Place and LOVING.EVERY.WORD. He is a literary genius. Each sentence is perfectly crafted and I’m torn between wicked jealousy over that fact that my writing could never compare and sheer amazement at his brilliance.  Just take this excerpt for example:

Pinky, however, got on with his life a little more successfully than Bubba did. He married one of the Jeeter girls whose family had inherited a chicken ranch in Draper and so had relocated there from Rock Hill, South Carolina. There were five Jeeters altogether, Momma and Daddy Jeeter, Grandma Jeeter, and the two Jeeter daughters, who had legitimate Christian names that got no sort of wide circulation and who were known instead as the fat Jeeter and the bald Jeeter. Daddy said the fat Jeeter was what Momma might call hefty, which according to Daddy was a lady’s way of saying she had the girth of a tractor tire, and Daddy himself said the fat Jeeter was a girl of tremendous quantity who cut an imposing if not disgusting figure. But Daddy said she was the one Pinky lost his head over at first and he wooed her and courted her and kept her in chocolates for the best part of three months before the wind changed, Daddy said, and blew what flame there was from the fat one over to the bald one and Pinky began to call on her and bring her candied fruit since chocolates made her scalp break out. Daddy said the bald Jeeter had not been born bald but lost her hair in childhood during a bout with scarlet fever and had been slick as an egg ever since. And Daddy said once she got old enough to care that she was hairless her Grandma Jeeter made her a pair of wigs out of a combination of human and horse hair, one of which was satiny black while the other, taken mostly from a chestnut mare, was a lovely natural brown and heightened the otherwise drab features of the bald Miss Jeeter’s face. And Daddy said once Pinky married the bald one and left the fat one to go her own way, most everybody agreed he’d done the wise thing since the bald one was not bald or always brunette or always chestnut-headed, but the fat one was always fat. Daddy said Pinky had simply opted for variety, which nobody much was willing to blame him for.

I could literally type the whole book out for you because every paragraph is a brilliant as that one but I wouldn’t want to rob you of the privilege of checking the book out from your library and I’d like to prevent myself from getting carpal tunnel.

What have you read lately?