Rating: 
Summary: Very Entertaining
Review: I first experienced Julia Reed in the pages of the southern literary magazine, "The Oxford American" and I was hooked. She has a wonderful way with words and if you are in any way interested in the culture of the American South then this is certainly one view of it. Funny stuff and well worth your time!
Rating: 
Summary: The perfect balance...
Review: I have been looking for a book like this for some time. If the "GRITS" series took it all a little too seriously for you, then pick up "Queen of the Turtle Derby" (this is a true 'you cant put it down' title). I was delighted to find a fellow southerner/ part-time new orleanian in love with the gulf coast, in love with the south, the food, the people, but with a sense of humor about it (doesnt being a southerner revolve around a sense of humor in the first place?). This is the book for the girl who choose NOT to be a debutante but who still holds a very special place in her heart for those who were. Its the book for those who grew up steeped in this culture, and possibly even rejected it at some point, but who realized later in life how much it is a part of who you are and now accept it with open arms, ready to laugh at any minute. Its incredibly smart, funny, and filled with unforgettable stories about friends, family, guns, booze, debs, food and pagents. Reed is an incredible writer and after enjoying her articles for years, I can only hope that there is a second book on the way. And she is welcome to parade in mobile anytime as the catfish queen!
Rating:
Summary: Great Read!!!
Review: I loved this book! I picked it up on a whim. I only gave it four stars because it ended to soon! The whole book felt more like having a conversation with someone than just reading a book. Not only did it give great insight to living in the south, but also tips on cooking, parties, and recipes. Don't miss this book!!!
Rating:
Summary: Shocking, funny, wry, and accurate
Review: I LOVED this book. It was so much fun to read, and it was educational in places. Unfortunately, it was also VERY MISLEADING to anyone who does not have personal knowledge of the South. (I speak from the vantage point of being a native of Memphis, Tennessee for fifty-five years.)The author repeatedly makes blanket statements about the South as though we were all just alike. Over and over she begins with "Southerners...." and then she goes on to imply we all carry or at least own a gun, set our tables with a gun, have very little regard for the ideals of truth and justice, and have no intellectual curiosity. Granted, there are many Southerners who do indeed fit this profile, but neither I, nor many of my friends, deserve this description. In addition, unlike the author, we consider cock fighting to be cruel and inhumane. I shudder to think what someone from another region of the country will think when reading this book. I only hope they are wise enough to realize this is just one aspect of the South, not a balanced picture of all its people. Julia Reed has given the impression that we are ALL a bunch of ignorant rednecks. I fully understand that in order to write an entertaining book such as this one, one must focus on the nuts and the crooks, but the continued practice of stating that "Southerners......" and going on to write about only the least enlightened Southerners, is hardly what one would expect from someone who claims to love the South. Read this book and enjoy it, but please remember it's just one aspect of a complicated region.
Rating: 
Summary: Tremendously Fun Read, HOWEVER...
Review: I LOVED this book. It was so much fun to read, and it was educational in places. Unfortunately, it was also VERY MISLEADING to anyone who does not have personal knowledge of the South. (I speak from the vantage point of being a native of Memphis, Tennessee for fifty-five years.) The author repeatedly makes blanket statements about the South as though we were all just alike. Over and over she begins with "Southerners...." and then she goes on to imply we all carry or at least own a gun, set our tables with a gun, have very little regard for the ideals of truth and justice, and have no intellectual curiosity. Granted, there are many Southerners who do indeed fit this profile, but neither I, nor many of my friends, deserve this description. In addition, unlike the author, we consider cock fighting to be cruel and inhumane. I shudder to think what someone from another region of the country will think when reading this book. I only hope they are wise enough to realize this is just one aspect of the South, not a balanced picture of all its people. Julia Reed has given the impression that we are ALL a bunch of ignorant rednecks. I fully understand that in order to write an entertaining book such as this one, one must focus on the nuts and the crooks, but the continued practice of stating that "Southerners......" and going on to write about only the least enlightened Southerners, is hardly what one would expect from someone who claims to love the South. Read this book and enjoy it, but please remember it's just one aspect of a complicated region.
Rating:
Summary: Southern Amusements
Review: It used to be thought that media, especially television, would produce a homogenized America, with accents becoming neutral and local color all blending into one American norm. It's true that a McDonald's here is pretty much the same as one there, and suburban sprawl seems the same everywhere. The South, however, is a truly peculiar place that will not be culturally assimilated, and if you don't believe it, check out _Queen of the Turtle Derby: And Other Southern Phenomena_ (Random House), a collection of comic essays by Julia Reed. Reed, a senior writer at _Vogue_ and a contributing editor at _Newsweek_, grew up in the Mississippi Delta, in Greenville, and now shuttles between New York and New Orleans. Naturally, as comic essayist, she does not concentrate on the problems of the South, but her funny reporting on the startling eccentricities and insistent traditions of her homeland is a joy to read. The darkest part of the South she covers, even if she does so with a grin, is the violence. A third of the nation's population lives in the South, and they commit 42% of all homicides. Serious crime has risen in the South, where it has gone down nationally. A simple explanation: "We shoot more people because we have the most guns." Elvis Presley took guns when he visited the White House. "I'm sure he didn't even think about it. He's going out, he's got his guns." When her father visited her in her apartment in New Orleans, he failed to mention the high ceilings or the fancy plasterwork or mantels. His one housewarming comment: "You need to get a gun." The title of the book comes from a turtle race, an annual event known as the Lepanto Terrapin Derby. Turtles race on a sixty foot course for an exciting fifteen minutes. There is a festival surrounding the event, and the climactic crowning of the Turtle Derby Queen. The South has such royalty all over, not just the traditional beauty pageant queens, but the Catfish Queen, Poultry Princess, Miss Pink Tomato or monarch over some other local point of pride. Southerners drink, and there is a chapter here on the bizarre history of Mississippi prohibition which included bootleggers of illegal whiskey paying legal taxes to ply their trade. Southerners eat. Personifying Southern hospitality, Reed gives here the recipes for George Jones Sausage Balls, which she got from the country singer himself, for that strange Southern misnomer the frozen tomato, and for fried chicken, although it won't be as good fried chicken as that from her own cook, Lottie Martin. There is, appropriately, a good deal about religion, too, including the story about the Arkansas governor who refused to sign a tornado relief bill because it referred to the tornado as an "act of God," and his God would never have done anything like that. Perhaps, as Reed points out, he needed refreshing on the earlier books of the Bible. Reed herself says that in New Orleans, there are mosquitoes, caterpillars with spines that are toxic even when the caterpillar is dead, feral hogs digging up the levees that protect the city, and indestructible Formosan termites that have bigger colonies and bigger appetites than the normal ones and can eat through mortar. She used to say that living there is like living in the Old Testament. She has realized, though, that "the plagues of Egypt lasted only seven days. Ours never end." And may the South as she so amusingly describes it here, silly, tradition-bound, patrician, vicious, and gracious, never end as well.
Rating:
Summary: Southern Amusements
Review: It used to be thought that media, especially television, would produce a homogenized America, with accents becoming neutral and local color all blending into one American norm. It's true that a McDonald's here is pretty much the same as one there, and suburban sprawl seems the same everywhere. The South, however, is a truly peculiar place that will not be culturally assimilated, and if you don't believe it, check out _Queen of the Turtle Derby: And Other Southern Phenomena_ (Random House), a collection of comic essays by Julia Reed. Reed, a senior writer at _Vogue_ and a contributing editor at _Newsweek_, grew up in the Mississippi Delta, in Greenville, and now shuttles between New York and New Orleans. Naturally, as comic essayist, she does not concentrate on the problems of the South, but her funny reporting on the startling eccentricities and insistent traditions of her homeland is a joy to read. The darkest part of the South she covers, even if she does so with a grin, is the violence. A third of the nation's population lives in the South, and they commit 42% of all homicides. Serious crime has risen in the South, where it has gone down nationally. A simple explanation: "We shoot more people because we have the most guns." Elvis Presley took guns when he visited the White House. "I'm sure he didn't even think about it. He's going out, he's got his guns." When her father visited her in her apartment in New Orleans, he failed to mention the high ceilings or the fancy plasterwork or mantels. His one housewarming comment: "You need to get a gun." The title of the book comes from a turtle race, an annual event known as the Lepanto Terrapin Derby. Turtles race on a sixty foot course for an exciting fifteen minutes. There is a festival surrounding the event, and the climactic crowning of the Turtle Derby Queen. The South has such royalty all over, not just the traditional beauty pageant queens, but the Catfish Queen, Poultry Princess, Miss Pink Tomato or monarch over some other local point of pride. Southerners drink, and there is a chapter here on the bizarre history of Mississippi prohibition which included bootleggers of illegal whiskey paying legal taxes to ply their trade. Southerners eat. Personifying Southern hospitality, Reed gives here the recipes for George Jones Sausage Balls, which she got from the country singer himself, for that strange Southern misnomer the frozen tomato, and for fried chicken, although it won't be as good fried chicken as that from her own cook, Lottie Martin. There is, appropriately, a good deal about religion, too, including the story about the Arkansas governor who refused to sign a tornado relief bill because it referred to the tornado as an "act of God," and his God would never have done anything like that. Perhaps, as Reed points out, he needed refreshing on the earlier books of the Bible. Reed herself says that in New Orleans, there are mosquitoes, caterpillars with spines that are toxic even when the caterpillar is dead, feral hogs digging up the levees that protect the city, and indestructible Formosan termites that have bigger colonies and bigger appetites than the normal ones and can eat through mortar. She used to say that living there is like living in the Old Testament. She has realized, though, that "the plagues of Egypt lasted only seven days. Ours never end." And may the South as she so amusingly describes it here, silly, tradition-bound, patrician, vicious, and gracious, never end as well.
Rating:
Summary: Shocking, funny, wry, and accurate
Review: Talk about your "hitting the nail on the head." Julia Reed's wry and witty observations about THE most colorful region of our nation is by far one of the best books I've encountered. Upon first reading (yes, I actually read it twice), I thought to myself, "This is not so---we don't all carry guns." Then I gave it a little more thought. We all DO carry them! Even my eighty-three year-old aunt has one in her purse. But Reed's observations don't stop there, for she delves into the "why" of things and in some instances, touches a nerve. Perhaps her unique perspective on the south comes from actually living there AND the north. The only other writer who has tackled these issues and the sort of "north/South current debate" on this level is Jackson McCrae in his "Bark of the Dogwood--A Tour of Southern Homes and Gardens." In fact, some commentaries in Reed's book were remarkably similar, but the McCrae is a work of fiction. Then again, this is what binds Southerners to the South: the fact that we're all share common interests and backgrounds, yet can all be unique. It's something you can't understand unless you're from that region or have lived there for an extended period of time. Truly, it is another country and Reed has captured this perfectly. Would also recommend Flagg's "Fried Green Tomatoes" for anyone interested in good Southern literature.
Rating:
Summary: High Fashion meets brainpower
Review: Vogue Senior writer Julia Reed mesmorizes with her perspective on life in the deep south. Not only is this book interesting, it is the real thing. Julia grew up in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, which might be seen as the south on steroids. This book is six hours of literary happiness in a lovely package.
Rating: 
Summary: Not so funny...
Review: Well, having recently finished Celia Rivenbark's 'We're Just Like You Only Prettier', which was very amusing, I figured this book would be similar to that one. The reviews said it was very humorous, and entertaining. I'm sorry, but I do not agree. Julia Reed is a Vogue writer living in New York City, but she's from Mississippi. Now, I felt that at times when describing the silly ways of the southern women's traditions, it was almost like she was making fun of them. But then when she would bash the Yankees (which I happen to be, and am darn proud of it) she was all for her southern heritage.
I love southern books, and I've always had this fascination with the south. I truly hope one day to live there when my husband retires. I have always admired southern women, their traditions, their tight family bonds, and the land itself. Ms. Reed made these women sound ditsy, and shallow, while making us Yankees sound like ignorant, clueless slobs. And she made the area (the south) sound like pure hell to live in.
I gave this 2 stars because there were some interesting facts in it, and some of the events that go on down there were really neat to learn about, and all the food she talked about, sounds delicious! But overall I'd just like to forget this book. It has in no way changed my opinion of southern men and women, or the south itself, and I can only hope they don't look at the Yankees the same way Julia Reed does. If you're looking for a funny book on the 'ways of the south', pick up Ms. Rivenbarks book, that one won't disappoint.
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