Featured Book for Friday, June 10, 2005
HUMOR/COOKING/SOUTHERN CULTURE
Being Dead is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral
by Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hays (Miramax Books, ISBN 1401359345, $19.95)
Hosting the Perfect Funeral
We loved this book the minute we saw it, but even we underestimated just how popular this book would be. Within a day or two of acquiring it, at least one local book club adopted it as an immediate discussion book, and this is a club that selects its books months in advance. I don't know if they're discussing it out of order, but we can hardly keep up with the demand.
Here's an excerpt that truly shows what this title is all about:
Buddy Gilliam was buried in the "Old Miss (cemetery)," but his daughter was so distressed that she almost forgot to make good on a death-bed promise: Mr. Buddy refused to die until she agreed to pin a note on his lapel that said "Hell, no, I don't look nachell." Making somebody promise to pin a "Hell, no, I don't look natchell." note on your dead body is the Delta version of a living will - it tells you how we want to be disposed of and must be obliged. Old ladies are inclined to chat endlessly about what they want to wear in their coffins and threaten to return and haunt their friends if their instructions aren't carried out to the letter. "Once you're in heaven, do you get stuck in the clothes you're buried in?" asked one of our more vain little old ladies. Of course, no matter what you end up wearing, we will say, "Doesn't she look natural?" - even if you've been got up to look like Barbie in a coffin.
And then there's this, which is probably the coda to the book:
(For funerals) The smaller the town, the more food you will get. They say it's more fattening to lose a relative in Alligator or Hushpuckena than it is in Jackson or Vicksburg.
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e-mail ops@destinationsbooksellers.com
Being Dead is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral
by Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hays (Miramax Books, ISBN 1401359345, $19.95)
Hosting the Perfect Funeral
We loved this book the minute we saw it, but even we underestimated just how popular this book would be. Within a day or two of acquiring it, at least one local book club adopted it as an immediate discussion book, and this is a club that selects its books months in advance. I don't know if they're discussing it out of order, but we can hardly keep up with the demand.
Here's an excerpt that truly shows what this title is all about:
Buddy Gilliam was buried in the "Old Miss (cemetery)," but his daughter was so distressed that she almost forgot to make good on a death-bed promise: Mr. Buddy refused to die until she agreed to pin a note on his lapel that said "Hell, no, I don't look nachell." Making somebody promise to pin a "Hell, no, I don't look natchell." note on your dead body is the Delta version of a living will - it tells you how we want to be disposed of and must be obliged. Old ladies are inclined to chat endlessly about what they want to wear in their coffins and threaten to return and haunt their friends if their instructions aren't carried out to the letter. "Once you're in heaven, do you get stuck in the clothes you're buried in?" asked one of our more vain little old ladies. Of course, no matter what you end up wearing, we will say, "Doesn't she look natural?" - even if you've been got up to look like Barbie in a coffin.
And then there's this, which is probably the coda to the book:
(For funerals) The smaller the town, the more food you will get. They say it's more fattening to lose a relative in Alligator or Hushpuckena than it is in Jackson or Vicksburg.
-------------------------------------------
e-mail ops@destinationsbooksellers.com
posted by All4Word at 9:17 AM
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