Books like To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever

Warren St. John spent a season with the University of Alabama fans who drive their RVs to every single Crimson Tide game, chronicling the lengths and depths of their obsessive fandom, the ways they build community and identity out of a bunch of kids playing a kids’ game... and this was before the Crimson Tide won six national championships in the last 15 years.

As I often tell my wife, an Alabama fan born and raised, “You people are insane.” Lucky for me I find their insanity captivating.

The book that started it all (for me, at least): I read this book just before the 2007 season, when my beloved Wake Forest Demon Deacons were the reigning conference champs, when Alabama was about to start the Nick Saban Era.

It was a fall of unusual hope after a summer of deaths and distances. From The Last Coach I not only learned a lot about the legendary Bear Bryant, and about America in the American Century, but also felt like I got a pep talk from Bryant himself.

Soon after I finished reading this I met a beautiful woman. When I learned she was an Alabama fan I told her I’d just read this and asked if she had. She told me to check the dedication page: The author’s her uncle.

I just don’t get why some males are so threatened by women who love sports. I mean, I get it, but I don’t get it. I thought meeting and marrying a fellow football fan was hitting the jackpot: What could be better than a spouse who wants to spend our anniversaries road-tripping to away games?

This book is a harrowing and infuriating journey through the insecurities of the American male, which you should never underestimate. Far too many of my fellow sports fans need to get their hearts right.

What does this book have to do with sports? Nothing.

What does it have to do with identity and community, and how the one pushes and pulls, rips and welds the other into form? With how histories can turn into hauntings and our fondest hopes into demons? Everything.

Randall Kenan died while I was finishing my book and I still haven’t really gotten over it. I’m always going to miss the words he never got to write, even as I cherish those he did.

Scott Ellsworth's account of a legendary game that took place between the Eagles of North Carolina College for Negroes (now North Carolina Central University) and Duke University on Duke's campus in Durham, in 1944 (the Duke team comprised medical students but included several former college stars). John McClendon, a protege of the game's founder, John Naismith and coach of the Eagles is widely credited with having transformed the sport, refashioning a slow, stolid affair into a fast-paced, exhilarating game. In the process, he turned the Eagles in mid-century into a juggernaut in the Carolina Intercollegiate Athletic Association, a conference of Black colleges and universities. Jim Crow made it illegal for the Eagles to compete publicly against their intracity rivals, but both programs relished the prospect of playing one another, and a secret game was organized, widely considered the first integrated collegiate game to be played in the south. Ellsworth paints… show more.

This atlas, a beautiful but money-losing coffee table book from the book-publishing arm of Southern Living, appeared just as a new CEO ordered the company’s book people to think of themselves “more in the direct-marketing business, as opposed to being a book publisher.” (This strategy led eventually to How to Cook for Your Man and Still Want to Look at Him Naked.) It was probably treated as a write-off from the beginning and not marketed at all, which is a shame, because it is much more than a handsome ornament for your living room. Three geographers and a historian, all from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, produced a solidly-researched and profoundly informative work of cartographic excellence, one that repays both casual browsing and close study. (Some used book sites incorrectly show a different cover, but don’t worry about that.)

Dead and Gone was the first book I purchased with my own “earned” money. I was ten years old when I saw the book on display in a North Carolina bookshop. The book’s cover was orange and featured an illustration of the grim reaper in a top hat and coat. Needless to say, it grabbed my attention. Inside, Wellman’s words did not disappoint as he brought ten (pre-1914) North Carolina murders vividly to life. In fact, his words were so vivid, that I could not put the book down and finished reading it in a day. Wellman’s book sparked my interest in North Carolina’s not-so-happy past and I am sure it will spark your interest too.

I credit John Hart for inspiring me to write; I think this is his best work. I love the balance between gritty, literary-style writing and an action-filled, fast-paced plot.

As a reader, I found that balance to be exquisite, especially as the POVs shift from a child's mind to troubled adults and the investigation into the missing child.

It contains all the elements that make a great novel. I’ve only read one novel twice, and this was the one. 

Another book that uses humor to get at the truth of things, in this case a dark truth that author Mimi Herman expertly negotiates. Plus, The Kudzu Queen has characters with great names (Mattie Lee Watson, James T. Cullowee).

I love characters with odd names, probably hearkening back to a childhood love of O. Henry, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain. Best of all, the bad guy gets his comeuppance in this book.

That’s one of the best things about writing fiction. You can make villains drown in their villainy. It beats reading the newspaper where the villains get page one attention, while the golden retrievers who save babies are on page six.

Nancy Roberts, also known as the “First Lady of American Folklore,” inspired many children—including me—to read. North Carolina Ghosts & Legends recounts stories of “true” ghostly encounters and has sent many readers on ghost hunts of their own. I became fascinated with Roberts’ story of the Little Red Man—a ghost who is said to haunt a historic site in Winston-Salem—and while visiting the site (on a second-grade field trip), I interrupted a tour guide to inquire about his whereabouts. My classmates erupted in giggles and I was reprimanded for the disruption. Nevertheless, many years later, I had the pleasure of working at that historic site; but, I never had the pleasure of meeting the infamous ghost.