Lone Star ReviewsMichelle Newby, NBCC,
Contributing Editor
Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole
>> archive
Texas doctor relates bedside stories from his career
Dr. Tom Hutton was no doubt a top-notch doctor during his more than thirty years of practicing in West Texas and Minnesota. He is also a very gifted writer and storyteller, as he demonstrates in his memoir, Carrying the Black Bag: A Neurologist’s Bedside Tales (Texas Tech University Press, $27.95 hardcover).
Hutton is a past president of the Texas Neurological Society and taught at the Texas Tech School of Medicine before retiring in 2001 and moving to his ranch near Fredericksburg.
His stories show compassion, insight, and humor as he deals with real-life patients facing life-and-death challenges.
Hutton grabs the reader’s attention right off with “Of Middle Linebackers and Medicine,” telling how he got into medicine. As a scrawny sophomore on the Richardson High School football team, Hutton collided with the team’s star middle linebacker and suffered a broken thumb. It ended his fledgling football career but resulted in him deciding to be a doctor.
The family doctor who set his thumb offered to let Hutton follow him into the exam rooms for several weeks as he treated patients at his clinic. Three examples from those visits — including a humorous encounter with a breast augmentation patient — illustrate how a sensitive doctor uses various skills and approaches in treating people. “I experienced the excitement and affirmation that goes with practicing medicine,” Hutton writes. And he passes that excitement along in his stories.
One piece concerns research he did into Adolph Hitler’s medical problems — “Did Hitler’s Parkinson’s Disease Affect the Outcome of World War II?” The short answer is yes, but the whole story makes interesting reading.
Waggoner Ranch: Weatherford photographer Jeremy Enlow says his book, Cowboys of the Waggoner Ranch, is a “100 percent Texas book — produced by Texans, about Texans, for Texans.” It was even printed in Texas.
The elegant, full-color, 140-page oversized book (11 inches by 12) features Enlow’s captivating photos, with informative text by Fort Worth writer Jan Nichols Batts. The book focuses on the day-to-day life of the twenty-six cowboys who continue to work cattle on the Waggoner, even as the massive 510,572 acre ranch is on the market and its future is unresolved.
“This book,” the authors note in the introduction, “is a glimpse into the lives of cowboys who ride the trails of their forebears, living a life and practicing skills that have almost disappeared.” The book sells for $58, and the first printing (November) sold out in ten days. A second printing came out earlier this month.
To get more information, view some of the photographs, or order the book, go to waggonercowboys.com.
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Glenn Dromgoole is co-author, with Carlton Stowers, of 101 Essential Texas Books Contact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.
>> Check out his previous Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Lit
Got Christmas cash to spend? Check out these great Texas novels, nonfiction, and children’s books!
INSIDE: Holiday GIFT GUIDE 2015
Looking for the perfect present for the Texas book lover in your life? We have armloads of ideas—from inspiration, romance to history and popular culture. Books make great gifts—especially Texas books! >>SHOP NOW
LONE STAR LISTENS interviews >> archive
Kay Ellington, Editor and Publisher
Cliff Hudder, “partisan promoter of Texas authors,” discusses the fun side of fiction — and the serious
Pretty Enough for You has been described as a rollicking carnival of a debut novelCliff Hudder. It’s the kind of book that reminds you that literary fiction can be fun, so it seems only fitting that its author is our final front-page profile of the year, as we look back and forward at the same time. With Conroe novelist Hudder, Lone Star Lit has now interviewed all ten authors of our Top Fiction of 2015 list.Hudder, who teaches English at Lone Star College-Montgomery, took time between semesters for an email interview with us.
LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE: Where did you grow up, Cliff, and would you describe that for us?
CLIFF HUDDER: I grew up in Pasadena, Texas, a refinery town on Houston’s southeast flank. Back then, the 1960s and ’70’s, Houston radio stations commonly used Pasadena as the punch line for jokes about rural country redneck hicks, but those are our chemical plants you see John Travolta’s pickup driving past in the opening credits of Urban Cowboy. The sinful megalopolis where the poor lad brings his inadequate cowboy values is actually Pasadena, not Houston.
In my youth it was lily-white and ultra conservative in addition to being carcinogenic. The schools were quite good, though — Mrs. Bowen had us reading Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Thornton Wilder as high school freshmen — but I met exactly one Latino and no black people in my classes. On Red Bluff Road was a low red brick building that served as regional Klan Headquarters, and I don’t mean secret headquarters: a sign on the roof spelled out KNIGHTS OF THE KU KLUX KLAN in red letters five feet tall. I grew up thinking every town had a branch office.
Of course, several decades ago the building was sold and the sign replaced by five-foot red letters that spelled out HERNANDEZ UPHOLSTERY, and the area is now largely Hispanic. Unlike some Texas writers I don’t look back with nostalgia to my small-town youth and despair of the changes. After college I moved and spent about twenty years in the Montrose area of Houston — not far from Pasadena in miles, but pretty distant otherwise — and I still consider that my spiritual homeland, though I spend my days now here behind the Pine Curtain in Montgomery County. >>READ MORE
Bookish Texas event highlights 12.27.2015
>> GO this week Michelle Newby, Contributing Editor
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FRIDAY, JAN. 1 New Year’s Day. Resolve to read more Texas books in 2016!
Fort Worth’s Dock Bookshop invites community to celebrate seven days of Kwanzaa, through Jan. 1
The Dock Bookshop, at 6637 Meadowbrook Drive, Fort Worth, TX 76112, observes Kwanzaa with a week of free events open to the public.
• Day 1 Sat., Dec. 26 – Umoja (Unity): FAMILY NIGHT 4-7pm
Libations & candle lighting ceremony, children’s story time, real-talk on unity in our community, creative expressions from local guests artists & poets – featuring Hip Hop Artist Dezyne, music by DJ Oke and food.
• Day 2 Sun., Dec. 27 – Kujichagulia (Self-Determination): A TRIBUTE TO OUR ANCESTORS,3-5pm – Libations & candle lighting ceremony, slideshow presentation, discussion, creative expressions & light refreshments.
• Day 3 Mon., Dec. 28 – Ujima (Collective Work & Responsibility): GET TOGETHER, 7-9pm -Libations & candle lighting ceremony, introductions of partners, discuss community agenda, games, music and food co-hosted by Soul Sistahs.
• Day 4 Tues., Dec. 29 – Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics): BUSINESS MIXER, 6:00-8pm -Libations & candle lighting ceremony, business & networking mixer co-hosted by Buy Black 365, music by DJ Oke and light refreshments. Bring your business cards.
(Open Mic Poetry begins at 8p. Cover $5)
• Day 5 Wed., Dec. 30 – Nia (Purpose): FILM & FOOD, 12-2pm – Libations & candle lighting ceremony
, film showing of the Black Candle, discussion and food.
• Day 6 Thurs., Dec. 31 – Kuumba (Creativity): KUUMBA ART & BOOK SHOW, 12-3pm-Libations & candle lighting ceremony, display of creative works from local
authors & artists – featuring artist Ahmed Salam and food
• Day 7 Fri., Jan 1 – Imani (Faith): DAY OF REFLECTION & REST
For more information, visit www.thedockbookshop.com.
(From the organization’s website)
Top Ten Texas Nonfiction Favorites 2015:
LSLL editors, readers weigh in on this year’s selections
As 2015 slips to a close the editors of Lone Star Literary Life would like to say thank you to all of the authors who have written books about our state or set in our state, but we’d like pay special recognition this week to our Favorite Texas Nonfiction of 2015.
What constitutes Texas nonfiction? To our way of thinking, it’s true stories of the Lone Star State’s history, people, culture, land and landscape, and so on, past or present. >>READ MORE
Check out our list of Top 10 Texas Fiction Favorites 2015, too.
Top Ten Texas Fiction Favorites 2015:
LSLL editors, readers weigh in on this year’s selections
As 2015 slips to a close the editors of Lone Star Literary Life would like to say thank you to all of the authors who have written books about our state or set in our state, but we’d like pay special recognition to our Favorite Texas Fiction of 2015.
We winnowed down an internal list and placed a couple of versions of it out on our social media as a survey. To our pleasure, the lists reached almost 2,000 people and hundreds weighed in.
The selections reflect the diversity and range of the state, with settings from the Panhandle to the Mexican border. The ten authors include (by happenstance) five men and five women, and they range in ages from thirty-five-year old Keija Parssinen to seventy-one-year old Carlos Nicholás Flores. >>READ MORE
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Christian romance novelist 
Becky Wade on her approach to fiction
Becky Wade, Dallas-based inspirational novelist with Bethany House, discusses her path to publishing—and advice to writers. Wade is the Carol Award, INSPY Award, and Inspirational Reader’s Choice Award winning author of contemporary Christian romances My Stubborn Heart, Undeniably Yours, Meant to Be Mine, and A Love Like Ours as well as Love Is in the Details and The Proposal, out fall 2015. >> LISTEN NOW (mp3)
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