Retrieve Alabama Stories Rendered By John Isaac Jones Available As Textbook

Stories by John I Jones is a collection of short stories detailing bits and pieces of the life of one William Vernon Johnson so called when his mama is yelling at him or Billy as he is mostly known in the stories.
The stories take place in the deepvery deepsouth and begin in the middle's, when Billy is about five years old and is introduced for the first time to racism by his mother and father.
They run the gamut from a pool hall shooting, a high school hero dying, ayear high school reunion and plenty in between,

The stories themselves are easy to read, well written in a spare, succinct manner, They are also very charming, even the sad ones or the ones detailing a shooting or a dead body, They are charming, first because they describe a bygone era and secondly because they are a "slice of life" of the south that most northerners and even city southerners are not familiar with.
Rural southern living was a world of it's own apparently!

There is another thing that makes the stories charming: The innocence of Billy.
Although introduced to prejudice, he sees no reason for it so it never grabs hold of him, While spending the summer with his mother while she nurses a dying woman, he spends time with a grizzled, antisocial curmudgeonwho becomes something else entirely while hanging out with Billyand seen through Billy's eyes.
The story was sweetly and lovingly written, which gave it the innocence it deserved, Although this particular story is called Psychotic Love, to me it is the essence of love: I love you no matter who you are, I just love you.
Forever.

Billy's teen years crack me up when he discovers pool, pool halls with no women and where you can cuss all you want and seem to be able to do just whatever.
Being a women, I felt I was gaining some inside info into boys/men that maybe would if not help me to actually understand menwould at least give me glimpse of what my sons were really like when not around me!

Even as Billy grows older, works a journalist and sports writer gets married several times he somehow maintains the same innocent view pointmaybe because he always seems to have the ability to see something happening without judging itthe true mandate for journalist everywhere.


It is a fun book to read and I think everyone will enjoy the stories and find something meaningful in them, Each story seems to illustrate an important moment, perception or event in his life, moments that are life altering in some wayand if we all searched back into our own lives could find many such moments ourselvesmoments that define who we are becoming.


For instance, the summer Billy spent hunting relentlessly for a Gil McDougal baseball card to complete his extensive collection helped solidify who he was to be.
As his father watched him, Billy not only didn't give up searching for the elusive card, but he figured out ways to earn money, trade, and hunt for the card he wanted.
Billy developed perseverance and ingenuity that summer and I am sure those qualities became integral to who William Vernon Johnson was for the rest of his life.
I would like to think that I have such a defining momentsummerin my life that helped to shape me into the person I am today.


Bottom line, my most favorite story was the Grandfather story, I love Billy's experience with his grandfather and the fact that he finally remembered it and found a way to recreate a similar experience with his grandchild.
Many of the stories brought tears to my eyes, but this one had me crying, . I raised my children myself, no grandparents in the picture, the story made me deeply realize an experience that was missing from my childrentwo boys who could have really used a male imageand I was just happy as heck that Billy had the experience and passed it on.
So much better than passing on prejudice!

I believe you will find more than one of these stories will resonate with who you are and bring back memories of your own life.
Not to mention you will laugh out loud at some of them and feel your heart clench at others, read them for yourself and see if I am not right, And make sure you have a ripe tomato and mayo with salt and pepper on white bread sandwich next to you, accompanied by a tall glass of sweet tea with lemon.
Hmmm Hmmm good. John I brings to life a separation of generations in Alabama, Those who lived through the postDepression era and their children who did not see blacks in the same vein, Sometimes funny, and oftentimes cringeworthy, John I's ability to convey stories about my native Alabama, my own father, and my desire to simply have friends who are/were black is something nonnative southerners could achieve.
This author is far from being a writerhis is the consumate storyteller, I can't wait to read more from John I! The author is a born storyteller, Every story in this collection is a joy to read, The reader enters a world where ordinary people come alive on the page, I felt as though I was sitting in the corner watching each character as they interacted with another, I was fascinated from start to finish, What a talented writer!
If you knew nothing about the people of the South in the USA this novel will both enlighten and educate you while giving you great pleasure.
What more can a reader ask for
Being an exSouth African my favorite story was the first one, PREJUDICE, The way the author depicts the young boy's naiveté is brilliant, The relationship between Gladys and Horace brings to mind how people behaved once, Alabama Stories is a collection of short works lifted from the life of native son William Vernon “Billy” Johnson, Haunting, harrowing and gloriouslymoving, these stories represent an intense examination of Billys childhood and young adult years in the Cotton State, Meet the colorful characters Billy knew during his Alabama years, There was Boone, the tightlipped, physically and emotionally crippled farmer who had a psychotic love for his invalid wife, You will never forget Annie, the lonely, tragic former actress who desperately wanted a child, Meet Bobby Worthington, the high school football star who dreamed of playing for Paul “Bear” Bryant, There was Virgil, the wildly successful Baptist evangelist who could never quite quench his thirst for black girls, Meet Charley, Billys angel unaware, These are only a few of the strangelywonderful characters who will step into your life when you read this book, Each and every one of these stories brings its own special flavor of Alabama to life and places it in direct context with the universal human experience.
Im not quite sure how to review this book, and I find its actually one of the hardest reviews I have to write! I actually really did enjoy reading this book, which was for some reason pretty unexpected.
Its a collection of short stories, and some of them are linked to each other with an underlying main character called Billy, But some of them have nothing to do with Billy at all and seem to just be

short stories,

This book is definitely what I would define a character driven read to be, I think if you are a more plotdriven reader than this book may not be for you, As soon as I started reading I was unable to stop completely immersed in the stories, I think the way the author manages to connect you to the emotions and the experiences of all the characters even those you only know for a short while was amazing.
I read this book in one sitting and was up till:am to finish reading it xD

The characters were incredibly well done, but as well as that the stories were too.
We get a little taste of almost every theme, To list just a few we cover: love, marriage, divorce, family, friendship, asexuality, loneliness and so many other things! This one is a bit of a historical fiction because it is set in thes and we get a story about negroes and their fight for rights as well.
There are two stories where murder is involved as well, and a story about pool, Im not even interested in pool in the slightest, but when I was reading that story I frankly didnt care!

There is a mention of religion in this book, and personally I didnt quite like how it was handled.
I could see a general opinion of religion running through it and that was the one generally stuck to, But that was a personal thing and I doubt it will bother many other readers, But it did a good job of showing that even people who are “supposed” to be good, for example the president lets say, or a teacher, or generally someone in a role like that, can be bad and have their downfalls as well.


I have talked to the author and he really is a nice person, I do think this book needs more attention and more people enjoying it, so do pick it up if you think you might enjoy it!

This review and others can be found on Olivia's Catastrophe: sitelink blogspot. nl/ Stories of growing up and life in Alabama

Being born in Birmingham in, I can relate to so many of the authors stories.
Roy Rogers, the Lone Ranger and Tonto were always fighting for truth, right and the American way, Great read with many lifes lessons, A book I want to hug

I didn't grow up in the South, and I had limited interaction with anyone from Southern states until I was.
I then had a supervisor from Alabama and saw the respect and closeness in his family, It was something I had never seen, but Alabama Stories brought that back to me, We should all be fortunate enough to share the lives in this beautiful book, A Lasting Tribute Between the Generations

I didnt know what to expect as I picked up this book, I got so much more than I bargained for, Its a love song between grandparent and grandchild of life and growing, of living and loving, if the same experience updated for time, John Isaac Jones is a retired journalist currently living and writing at Merritt Island, Florida, For than thirty years, John I, as he prefers to be called, was a reporter for media outlets throughout the world, These included local newspapers in his native Alabama, The National Enquirer, News of the World in London, the Sydney Morning Herald, and NBC television.
He is the author of ten novels, two short story collections and five novellas, John Isaac Jones is a retired journalist currently living and writing at Merritt Island, Florida, For than thirty years, "John I," as he prefers to be called, was a reporter for media outlets throughout the world, These included local newspapers in his native Alabama, The National Enquirer, News of the World in London, the Sydney Morning Herald, and NBC television.
He is the author of ten novels, two short story collections and five novellas, sitelink.