This is a column about books.  If you are a reader, read on.  If not, proceed directly to the sports page.  There is plenty of action in the football reports.

In early 2007, I began keeping a list of the books I was reading.  You can see the list, if you like, at www.cityofderidder.org. This week I finished my one-hundredth book.  Looking at the list, I have a few thoughts.

 There are not so many big names on the list, only one book by William Faulkner and none by Hemingway or Fitzgerald.  I read those back in my teaching days.  There is, however, a book called “That Summer in Paris” by Morley Callaghan.  He writes about the summer of 1929 which he, Hemingway and Fitzgerald spent in Paris.  The highlight of the book is a boxing match between Hemingway and Callaghan.  Fitzgerald was the timekeeper.  Callaghan claims he won the match.  Fair enough, it is his book.

There is only one book by Robert Penn Warren.  However, I am saving Warren.  Many communities around the country are adopting a program in which the whole community focuses on one book for an entire year.  This would be a good project for DeRidder.  I would recommend “All The King’s Men,” Warren’s fictionalized account of Huey Long, as DeRidder’s book.  For non-readers there are two movie versions of the book.  The one with Broderick Crawford is absolutely classic.

Several reviewers have recently mentioned New Iberia’s James Lee Burke as America’s greatest living novelist.  I would not go that far, but he is good.  He leads the list with eight appearances. 

Two of his books have been made into movies.  “Heaven’s Prisoner” stars Alec Baldwin, and “In the Electric Mist” stars Tommy Lee Jones.

 C.J. Box appears on the list six times.  Box writes about Joe Pickett, a game warden in the Yellowstone area.  His stories are high adventure.  If Joe Pickett ever meets up with James Lee Burke’s Dave Robichaux, it may be the literary event of the new century.

 Pat Conroy has a book out just last month called “South of Broad.” It is about growing up in Charleston.  It reminds me of the movie “The Big Chill”—minus, of course, the soundtrack.  As good as “South of Broad” is, it can’t replace Hamilton Basso’s The View from Pompey’s Head (1955) as a chronicle of growing up in the South.

On a historical note, probably all of us need to know more about Leonidas Polk, the namesake of Ft. Polk.  There is an excellent biography from the L.S.U. Press written by Joseph H. Parks.  You will remember Polk as the Fighting Bishop.  He was a lieutenant general in the Confederate Army. 

For a short while he was a minister at Trinity Episcopal Church in New Orleans.  I go there when I am in New Orleans.  For some reason Polk is buried a few blocks away at Christ Episcopal Church.  There is probably a good fight story behind this discrepancy, but I don’t know it to tell.

An interesting historical novel is “Widow of the South.”  This is the story of Carrie McDavock, a Tennessee lady who moved more than 1000 Civil War bodies, both Yankee and Confederate, to her Tennessee farm and buried them there.  She spends her life tending to this private cemetery. 

Some folks have more goodness in them than an average person  can tolerate.

If you are of a religious bent, and people in DeRidder seem to be, “The Jesus Family Tomb” is an interesting read.  I think there is a television documentary about this book.  Also intriguing is Susan’s Haskin’s “Mary Magdalen: Myth and Metaphor.”  Looks like support is growing for the idea that history has been unkind to Mary.  If you can handle some heavy lifting, you might want to read John Henry Cardinal Newman’s “Apologia Pro Vita Sua.”  One of my professors claimed that this was the most beautiful prose document in the English language.  Smooth is probably not the best word, but it is the only suitable one I can think of.

 If you are a musician of any sort, there is a marvelous little volume by Thad Carhart called “The Piano Shop on the Left Bank.”  It gives you the ambiance of Paris as well as a romantic discourse on the relationship between pianos and their owners.  People often have pianos in their lives longer than they do spouses.  Think about that.

And I must connect Paris and music with Tom Sancton.  Tom grew up in New Orleans as a clarinet player.  Then he spent twenty-two years in journalism, mostly as a Paris correspondent for Time.  He returned to New Orleans after Katrina and resumed his musical career – he did not play while he was abroad.  Tom has written a marvelous book titled “A Song for My Fathers.”  I’m not going to tell you any more about this because Tom is coming to DeRidder next spring.  He will give a reading from his book in the afternoon, and he and his band will perform at the Wooten Theatre in the evening.  You don’t want to miss this.  If you would like a preview, Tom’s book can be ordered from Author’s Alley, and his CD is available from the Louisiana Music Factory at www.louisianamusicfactory.com.

Certainly not every book on my list merits comment, but I can’t help but notice that several authors appear more than once.  The British novelist Anita Brookner is there four times, as is the American lawyer Louis Auchincloss. 

They are unsurpassed in their ability to describe the machinations of the mind and the treacheries of the human heart.  Evelyn Waugh is also on the list four times.  “Brideshead Revisited” remains a great story both in the original and in several movie versions.

Let me finish this column with a confession and the answer to an obvious question.  The confession: I have been trying to finish Stendhal’s “The Red and the Black” for more than a year now.  Many critics say his Julien Sorel is the best drawn character in fiction.  He is also tedious! 

The implied question is, of course, my favorite book.  The answer:  “The Fencing Master” by Arturo Perez-Reverte. 

The explanation: reading is kind of a personal thing, isn’t it….