FICTION

NONFICTION

CHILDREN’S PICTURE BOOKS

YOUNG ADULT LITERATURE

Red Rising by Pierce Brown

For fans of The Hunger Games, Star Wars, and the Ancient Greeks.

WARNING: Spoiler alert. Read ahead at your own peril of series induced craze.

Darrow is a Helldiver in the underground mining colony of Lykos. He spends his days drilling into the core of Mars for helium-3 to terraform the surface to make it suitable for the people of Earth to inhabit. Life, if not extravagant, is good. Darrow is the best at what he does, he has a beautiful red-haired wife named Eo, and he thinks any day he will win the Laurel for drilling the most helium.

Up to this point, I admit that I was concerned that I was just reading another space book set on Mars. Well, it is set in space, and on Mars, but it is definitely not just another sci-fi book.

The world Darrow lives in is Red. He is at the absolute bottom of the caste system. There are Browns, Pinks, Violets, Greens, Blues, Oranges, Grays, Obsidians, etc. You are born into your color and you will die in your color. Golds rule the planet.

Darrow the Helldiver and Eo are not meant to last long in Lykos. After trespassing in a garden forbidden to them due to their color, they are sent for punishment. Eo sings a song of death and lament, forbidden by the Golds, and she is sent to the gallows for her zealotry.

“On Mars there is not much gravity, so you have to pull the feet to break the neck. They let the loved ones do it.”

Darrow will hang, too, for burying his wife’s body. He is not supposed to wake after his execution, but he does, and he is now in the hands of the revolutionary Sons of Ares. Ares himself has a mission for Darrow. The Sons show Darrow what Mars actually looks like above ground; a planet that sparkles in dazzling Technicolor in contrast to the rust-covered underground colony of Lykos. Mars has already been terraformed. There are whole cities built above the surface. Darrow has been lied to his entire life; he was not a pioneer for mankind, but a slave. In a way, it must have felt how Dorothy feels when she finds herself in Oz after being in Kansas.

At this stage in the story, the light switch flipped, and I realized all I was reading was Greek Mythology. And if there’s one thing I really love, it’s a good, old-fashioned epic.

So let’s do a little analysis:
Lykos is Greek for wolf (which comes into play later on). It is also the name of a Libyan king in mythology who sacrificed strangers to his father, Ares. In Red Rising, Eo sacrifices herself for the Sons of Ares, and becomes a martyr known as Persephone. Darrow is delivered into the hands of the Sons of Ares to complete a mission for the greater good of Society, and he is our Epic Hero. Ah, Pierce Brown, you are sneaky.

The Sons of Ares have a mission for Darrow. He is to become a Gold, and infiltrate their society and rise to the top, just like a proverbial Trojan Horse.

So, is this just another geeky space book set on Mars? Yes, but it is also full of loyalties and betrayals, alliances broken and forged, grav-boots and a ragtag group of friends. The second book is, if at all possible, even more action-packed, but that’s another blog post for another day.

 

Written by Clara 

 

One of the great thrills of my life is being able to interview Mississippi high school seniors who have applied to Duke University. The conversations are usually thoughtful and reflective, but there is always one question that I like to ask to get the student’s thoughts flowing. That question is:

“If you could bring back three people from the dead to have a conversation with, who would they be and why?”

Some of the people who have been brought back from the dead are Abraham Lincoln, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Louisa May Alcott, Cleopatra, Ernest Hemingway, and Gandhi; just to name a few.

After the student tells me who and why, I always ask a follow up question. “In your conversation with Dead Person A, he or she asks you for a book recommendation. What book would you recommend that person read?” This is where the conversation gets fun! From recommendations like, Cleopatra reading Kelly Oxford’s Everything’s Perfect When You are a Liar, to Martin Luther King, Jr. reading Richard Wright’s Black Boy. I love this question, but I’ve never answered it myself. So, I am going to indulge all you fine folks with my answers.

The first person I would bring back from the dead would be the Apostle Paul, formerly known as Saul. This is where I must admit that I am a theological and biblical nerd. Not a biblical nerd in “the bible is the literal truth of God written by the Holy Spirit in men who were awesome and unflawed” kind of nerd, but the kind of nerd that looks at theology and the Bible through a critical (maybe too much sometimes) and suspicious lens. I would love to bring Paul back because I have a huge problem with him. I really don’t like him, and I think some of his writings (or writings attributed to him) are sexist, anti-body, anti-agency, crap. But on the reverse side, some of his letters are beautiful, poetic, and full of grace. There is a paradox in his writing, and in his life. As far as what book I would want him to read? Well, I’m gonna be cliché and a cheater here, but I’d love to sit down and get him to read the book of Romans, particularly Romans 1 and 2. Why? Well, in Romans 1, Paul condemns everyone to hell. Like literally, everyone. It has been a scripture that people have used to oppress and deny people their basic human rights (I’m thinking LGBTQ people here…) and yet he starts Romans 2 with this:

“Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things.”

It is the paradox. He judges a long list of people, condemns them to hell, and then says, “DON’T JUDGE!”  I just think it would be interesting to talk about.

My second person I’d bring back from the dead is Jane Austen. Unlike Paul formerly known as Saul, I freaking love Jane Austen. I never read her until I was in a class at Duke where my favorite teacher ever, Dr. Amy Laura Hall, made us read her work. I love Jane Austen because I think she was a badass feminist before feminism was a thing. Her biting comedic social commentary always gets me going. I would love to talk with her about her books, but if she asked me for a book recommendation, I would have to recommend Beloved by Toni Morrison. Beloved is a book that is hard to read because it delves deeply into the intersections of race, class, sexuality, and slavery. It slaps you in the face and makes you say, “damn.” Jane Austen wrote books critiquing the gentry of her time; Toni Morrison wrote Beloved which depicted the horrors of slavery and the treatment and commodification of black bodies. The conversation Jane Austen and I would have would be interesting, deep, and hopefully life-changing.

The last person I would bring back from the dead would be Whitney Houston. Why? Well, I’m a big fan, and even though she has been dead less than 5 years, I will always love her. I would love to talk to her about her life, how she felt when she sang, why she stayed with Bobby Brown, and things like that. As far as a book recommendation: this is the hardest for me to answer. But as I think about it, I would recommend Lamb by Christopher Moore. This is so random, I know. If you don’t know Lamb, let’s just say, it is a satirical look at the childhood of Jesus through the eyes of his best friend, Biff. It is hilarious, yet deeply moving. Whitney had a glamorous life, but it was a life full of addiction and pain. I would recommend Lamb because it is irreverent, and it makes you think while you laugh your ass off at the hilarity of it all. Whitney deserves to laugh her ass off.

So, with that; I am done. But I do have a question for you!

Who would YOU bring back from the dead, and what books would you recommend to them?

 

Ciao.

 

Written by Justin 

Something inhabits the summers of childhood that makes our skin itch. It’s not the heat as much as the heavy air of waiting–for school to start, for bicycles left in lawns to be once again stored properly, for long days to become long nights. Summers such as these have launched many coming-of-age novels, as the mistakes of summer haunt the school room halls and dining room tables of autumn and winter. (To Kill a Mockingbird, My Name is Asher Lev, The Virigin Suicides, The Round House, etc.)

Which leads me to my first question:

What were you doing in the summer of 1989? *

If you listened to This American Life’s new podcast, Serial, then you know how important (and damning) questions like this can be.  (If you haven’t listened to Serial yet, that’s okay, you can download it and listen to it for free in between chapters of M. O. Walsh’s debut novel, My Sunshine Away)

Set in Baton Rouge, My Sunshine Away follows the 14 year-old narrator’s love-turned-obsession with Lindy Simpson, the girl next door. The seeming innocence of the year is shattered when Lindy is raped on her way home from track practice. The narrator knows something, but as the novel unravels, along with the mystery and the innocence of childhood/first love, everyone is guilty of something.

Which leads me to my second question:

How much of memory is created in hindsight?

Walsh tugs at the rug under our feet as we read. Unreliable narrators aren’t anything new. We all read Catcher in the Rye. We know what’s coming. But Walsh has nailed his characters: their blindness to the obvious, their self-delusion, their dangerous faults.

My Sunshine Away is a novel as much about Louisiana as a boy’s childhood. It is also a book about growing up in the late 1980s, of the shift from the white-picket fence childhood to the suburban nightmare. (Remember Jeffrey Dahmer?)

If you want to know what Southern writers are writing about, read My Sunshine Away. Walsh has taken an upstanding literary tradition and done good by it.

M.O. Walsh will be at Lemuria signing and reading from My Sunshine Away Thursday, February 19th at 5 PM.

 

*If you weren’t around in 1989 to remember it, just listen to Taylor Swift’s new album and you’ll know nothing about 1989, but you’ll have a lot of catchy songs stuck in your head.

Written by Adie

A few weeks ago, I introduced the very first Lemuria Book of the Year Award to you.  Over the past few weeks our staff has put together a list of what we think were the best books released during 2014.  If you’re looking to fill your backlog with the best of the best fiction, non-fiction and young literature, here is the place to start.

Fiction:

25 books were submitted for contention in the fiction category!  The standouts are: The Story of Land and Sea by Katy Simpson Smith, Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, All The Light We Cannot Sea by Anthony Doerr, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Murakami Haruki, and The Orenda by Joseph Boyden. Here is the complete list:

The Orenda by Joseph Boyden

The Martian by Andy Weir

In The Light of What We Know by Zia Haider Rahman

The Strange Library by Haruki Murakami

The Story of Land and Sea Katy Simpson Smith

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Seconds by Bryan Lee O’Malley

This One Summer by Jillian Tamaki

Lila by Marilyn Robinson

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Colorless Tsukuru and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami

One Kick by Cheksea Cain

The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henriquez

Paper Lanterns by Stuart Dybek

Thirty Girls by Susan Minot

Wolf In White Van by John Darnielle

Something Rich and Strange by Ron Rash

Red Rising by Pierce Brown

The Future for Curious People by Greg Sherl

Fourth of July Creek by Smith Henderson

The Parallel Apartments by Bill Cotter

End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck

The Painter by Peter Heller

Consumed by David Crorenberg

The Weirdness by Jeremy Bushnell

Non-Fiction:

22 books were submitted for contention in the non-fiction category.  The standouts include Empire of Sin by Gary Krist, The Opposite of Loneliness by Marina Keegan, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant by Roz Chast, and What If? by Randall Munroe.

A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip by Kevin Brockmeier

What We See When We Read by Pete Mendelsund

Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant by Roz Chast

Notes To Boys by Pamela Ribbon

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty

Ed King’s Mississippi by Ed King

The Queer South by Douglas Ray

Strange Glory by Charles Marsh

The Opposite of Loneliness by Marina Keegan

The Romanov Sisters by Helen Rappaport

The Terrible and Wonderful Reasons Why I Run Long Distance by The Oatmeal

In The Kingdom of Ice by Hampton Sides

The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo

Empire of Sin by Gary Krist

What If? by Randall Munroe

The Emphathy Exams by Leslie Jamison

Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

The Mockingbird Next Door by Marja Mills

So We Read On by Maureen Corrigan

The Teacher Wars by Dana Goldstein

This Changes Everything by Naomi Klein

Jackson: Photographs by Ken Murphy

Congratulations to all the nominees!  Check back tomorrow when we announce the Oz Long-list!

Written by Andre

I love bundling up in tights and scarves and sweaters, drinking hot tea, and reading by our little fireplace in the cold months. Winter seems to be my most bookish season, the time of the year when nature tucks me inside to read the most. But these last few days of sunshine have given me an early case of spring fever, and all I want to do is be outside in the glow. Today as I ate lunch in my backyard, I noticed tiny baby mushrooms sprouting up all over the place, and I was struck by their unassuming beauty. I studied our shriveled brown Muscadine vines and remembered how full and green they had been last August. I could barely believe it was the same plant that had sagged heavy with fruit back in its glory days…and that somehow it’s going to bear fruit again in a few months.

Looking around at all the life in my yard—and all the space for more plants to grow—made me really want to adopt gardening as a hobby.  We just revamped our whole gardening section at Lemuria, jogging my memory about how many amazing books we have. If you are a novice or an old pro, or if you just know someone else who loves to grow things, you should come in and check out the shelves of green.

 

If you’re just starting out (can I say green?)…

Check out the how-to books on growing practically anything, as well as our shelves for landscape design and outdoor space planning. If you haven’t had the best luck with plants and want to start somewhere easy, read up on succulents and cacti! (Aloe plants are incredibly forgiving…I once forgot mine for a year and it still soothed my sunburned shoulders.)

 

If you have dirt under your fingernails already…

Look at the A-Z plant section, gardening journals, books with pruning tips, and your favorite books on Southern gardening (with all the best from Felder Rushing and Norman Winter, of course).

 

If you’re short on space but need a little more oxygen in your life…

Take heart! We have tons of tomes on container/small space/square foot gardening.

 

If you want to make your yard more kid-friendly…

Peruse our books on gardening projects for the whole family…and the TREE HOUSE section. Even if you don’t have kids.

 

If you’re buying a gift for your green-thumbed friend…

We have a whole shelf devoted to the most beautiful gardens of the world and another shelf full of writing about gardening—these are great gifts.

 

If you enjoy time in the kitchen as well as time outdoors…

Read our extensive selection on herbs, organic vegetable gardening, and urban farming.

 

If you want to show Mother Nature some love…

Read about composting! We have some pretty cool books to steer you in the right direction.

Eager beavers who want to dive in right now:  it’s a great time to start some cabbage, lettuce, and beets, and you can go ahead and get your zinnias and poppies germinating. I’ll probably wait until it warms up a little more. Until then, I’ll cozy up with some gardening books and savor last year’s Muscadine jelly from my backyard.

 

 

Written by Marianna 

I have a weird relationship with book clubs.  I think it stems from my weird relationship with schedules.  I’m really bad at keeping time, and lists, and track….of anything.  Those are all pretty fundamental things that make up being a regular member of a book club.  My time with every bookclub I’ve been a part of has always been brief.  As much as I would love to stick around and become a regular member, something always happens that pulls me away and onto something else.  Any hope of returning is usually met with some sort of guilt that I’m imposing on this intimate conversation between people that are more dedicated and loyal to that particular book club.

The thing is, I love talking about books.  I love hearing the stories that other people tell about their own reading experiences.  The myriad of ways people reach the same, and at different times the complete opposite resolution of a particular event absolutely blows my mind.  I want to be in a bookclub, but I’d like it to be flexible.  Not just for the absolute narcissist of I, but also for every other person in the club.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about ways I think a 21st century book club can operate successfully, by examining the pitfalls that I feel the current structure of book clubs fall into:

Frequency of meet-ups: Book clubs usually meet once a month.  Thats  pretty frequent for busy individuals.  Instead how about we bring that down to a quarterly meet-up?

Book selection:  Instead of picking one book, how about we pick one topic or theme?  In the months leading up to our next meet-up, we select books that tackle a particular theme or idea to give readers more freedom.

Having nothing to add to the conversation:  We’ve all been here right?  Sometimes people will be speaking about a subject that you didn’t really relate to, or have nothing to really add to the conversation.  For me, this feels imposing and intimidating.  Lets widen the user base and record the meet-ups and release them as podcasts for everyone to experience at their leisure.  It’s also a way to allow the more shy readers to participate without feeling like they have to speak.

My idea is something that I am calling The Reader’s Arcade: a quarterly book club/podcast.  It’s a book club that can be flexible and malleable for anyone that wants to be a part of it.  If you’re interested in something like this or if you have any ideas about how I can improve on the base model please let me know.  Stop by the bookstore, find me on Twitter. (@_andtheuniverse) or email me directly (andre@lemuriabooks.com).

I’m interested to know what you all think.

 

Written by Andre

 

The contacts come out first. Maybe I’ll put on my comically large glasses and doodle around the house for a while, or watch an episode of whatever BBC cop drama currently has me in its clutches. Eventually the weight of the day  needs to come off with a good face-washing; I could conquer the world after I’ve washed my face. Around this time, I might pour myself a glass of red wine. Things are winding down in my little apartment- my two cats and the dog have signed a momentary peace treaty so that everyone can toast in front of the gas heater in peace, and I’ve begun the nightly dialogue with myself about what to read when I crawl into bed.

Brush your teeth. Gargle. Trip over a cat, get a glass of water, check to make sure the doors are locked, ask your husband if he minds that you leave the light on for a while.

Read.

 

“Knowing you have something good to read before bed is among the most pleasurable of sensations.”

― Vladimir Nabokov

Written by Hannah

 

Epic Sports, 2000.

With this year’s exciting football season, even booksellers find a way to participate in Mississippi’s football madness. Rick Cleveland’s Vaught: The Man and His Legacy is a pictorial history of Johnny Vaught, the Texan who became an icon in Southern football and led the University of Mississippi through 25 seasons of some of its most historic football from 1947-1973. Ole Miss won six Southeastern Conference championships under Vaught and the team has not won another championship since then.

What was the secret to the Legendary Vaught’s success? Cleveland addresses this question throughout the book. Robert Khayat cites Vaught’s natural leadership abilities: the assembly of the best coaching team, the setting of goals and maintaining of focus, and the recruitment of players who could meet those expectations. The late Bruiser Kinard added that Coach Vaught wanted his assistant coaches to problem solve on their own. Vaught is quoted saying, “I didn’t want yes-men; I wanted people who would speak their mind.” Vaught earned his staff’s respect and they stayed with his team for a long time.

When Vaught: The Man and His Legacy was released in 2000, the 91-year-old Vaught graciously joined Cleveland for signings at bookstores and other venues. Signed copies of “Vaught” are great mementos to Mississippi’s football history. Rick Cleveland has spent over 40 years sharing his love for writing and sports with Mississippi and beyond. As I watch this historic football season unfold, I can’t help but wonder if Cleveland will be able to keep his book-writing pen still.