Lemuria Books – Page 156

Page 156 of 257

Heston’s FANTASTICAL Feasts

On July 31, 2011

Have you ever thought about how you would go about actually making Willy Wonka’s lickable wallpaper? I have…quite often. Meet Heston Blumenthal and his very fantastical cookbook with which you can learn how to make lickable wallpaper, an edible graveyard and all sorts of other crazy edible delights.

“I wanted to create feasts that captured the spirit of their times. They had to be theatrical and fantastical, stimulating all the senses and conjuring up for my guests all sorts of memories and allusions and associations, as though I had waved a magic wand. To that end, I explored some strange places and some even stranger ideas. I ate boar’s eyes, Play-Doh and a lot of Spam. I went to the walled city in Fes to get tips on cooking camel meat and to snowy Transylvania to find out about a legendary recipe for leeches fed of goose blood. I tried to make edible bones, lickable wallpaper, floating food, superstringy cheese, a savory Zoom lolly and fake Champagne using a SodaStream. It was a mad, invigorating, informative, frustrating, funny, shocking and surprising journey-and it’s all here in the pages of this book.”

Within the cookbook you are given six different Feasts; A Fairy Take Feast, A Gothic Horror Feast, A Titanic Feast, A Chocolate Factory Feast, A Seventies Feast and An Eighties Feast to create and told exactly how to go about doing so.

Take a look at the Fairy Tale Feast. It includes Cinderella’s Pumpkin (Pumpkin Puree, Langoustine Tail and Osetra Caviar Sprinkled with Golden Fairy Dust), The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg (Chicken Testicle Jelly Beans, White Bean Veloute, Peashoot Beanstalk, Golden Egg and Shredded Goose Leg), Snow White’s Heart & The Wicked Queen’s Apple (Deep-fried Boar’s Ears, Braised Cheek and Tongue, Snout Sausage, Gribiche and Radish Eye Apples with Boar’s Heart Parfait) and Hansel & Gretel’s Edible House (Shortbread Roof Tiles, Marshmallow Bricks, Sugar Stained-glass Windows, Aerated Chocolate Door, Green Moss, Welcome Mat).

I suggest you pick up a copy of Heston’s Fantastical Feasts and get to cookin’. Enjoy.

by Zita

The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel, Ph.D.

By John

On July 30, 2011

In Psychology

The Procrastination Equation: How to Stop Putting Things on Off and Start Getting Stuff Done

by Piers Steel, Ph.D.

Harper Collins (2011)

For the last few months, I’ve been thinking about why distractions, so constant in modern life, keep us from having authentic face-to-face experiences. It seems every experience is interrupted by someone informing us of something consequential or not. Often these interruptions seem to caused by device hypnosis. I think this psychologically distracting habit is interesting especially when this behavior seems to destroy concentration and even to the point of producing rude self-centeredness. In the workplace, interruptions lead to poor customer service and can infringe on other coworkers’ time and focus.

Procrastination has been identified as not just a delay but an irrational one. That is when we voluntarily put off tasks despite believing ourselves to be worse off by doing so. We know we are acting against our own best interests. Self-deception and procrastination go hand and hand, exploiting the thin line between couldn’t and wouldn’t by exaggerating the difficulties we face and come up with justifications even if we don’t vocalize them.

Procrastination is to suffer from weak impulse control, lack of persistence, lack of work discipline, lack of self-management skill, and the inability to plan ahead of time. Even after starting, a procrastinator is easily distracted. Putting off responsibilities inevitably follows. This behavior is especially rude and counterproductive in the work environment. It’s almost like a learned helplessness which decreases the pleasure and quality of life, and its source is likely procrastination.

Impulsiveness shares the strongest bond to procrastination, for example, cell phones are responded to by people who act without thinking. Those who act on impulse are more likely procrastinating. In the retail world, impulse results in unwanted purchases leading to impulse buys and decreasing the customer’s opportunity for good service. Our love affair with the present moment and immediate gratification is the root of this process.

So attached it seems are cell phones and computer that they seem embedded, not only within people’s lives but that they are an actual part of their body, even to the extent that when they are not around people can experience a phantom limb syndrome, for example, a faux cell phone arm. Americans on the average watch 4.7 hours of TV. By doing this, the TV is controlling part of our mental body. Does this create a faux TV brain?

In the short term, we can regret what we do; but in the long run, we regret what we don’t get done. When interrupted by a device, it takes approximately 15 minutes to refocus. About two hours of our work day is lost to interruption and less productivity, i.e., entertainment for the employee paid for time. Could this be called shoplifting or just stealing?

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Every indecision brings about delays in usually costly and unproductive efforts. These types of effort produce drudgery and decrease the flow of total engagement which in turn decreases creativity. A bigger picture understanding is clobbered by this narrowness of effort, thus producing less work success and reward.

Proper goal setting is the smartest thing you can do to battle your own procrastination. Framing our goals breaks down big picture success into short term objectives. Routines get stronger with repetition, and so does the habit become stronger every time you slack off or interrupt yourself with your cell phone, Facebook, Twitter, etc. If you protect and nurture your routine with good habits, it will eventually protect you.

If you are in a small business and want good service generated by right-minded efforts that lead to you enhancing your community, I suggest Steel’s book. Managing your time and those you employ correctly eventually makes your efforts have longer constructive effects for your business and your community.

If these ideas interest you, your time reading The Procrastination Equation will give you plenty to think about.

Children’s Classics, what are they to you?

By Former Lemurians

On July 29, 2011

In Oz: Children's Books

I’ve been working back in OZ lately, mostly with the classics section, and I’ve realized how much of a conundrum this section really presents. What actually constitutes a children’s classic? Is it the number of years it has stayed in print? Is it based on fads (for example, will the Harry Potter series eventually be considered classics? Or is fantasy just in vogue right now but likely to fall by the wayside in fifty years)? What gives a children’s book staying power?

It’s different from adult classics, which are often just an accepted part of the Western canon and appear again and again on high school and college reading lists to teach us about certain cultural and historical perspectives. And that’s not to say that some children’s classics are not also on the academic list for important literary analysis, because they certainly are, but what makes them stay on the shelves just for a child’s enjoyment?

For example, a book that I am always eager to show children and their parents is Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. I had a hardcover copy of this book when I was a child and distinctly remember my parents reading it to me quite often. And though I consider this book a classic, it’s not as if it’s very old. Maurice Sendak is still alive, and Where the Wild Things Are was first published in 1963. That’s not so long ago. Not like, say, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden which was first published in 1910 and lives in children’s classics along with Sendak’s work.

Philip Pullman’s (author of His Dark Materials) publisher David Fickling (in a 2007 Times article )”says that his definition of a classic is ‘rereadability.’ ‘Plenty of books are enjoyable to read once, but with a classic, the more you reread, the more comes out. It’s the same for all ages; there is that tone, that care with words, that control from the big picture down to individual sentences.'”

And I have to agree with Mr. Fickling on that, but I have to wonder if there’s not more to it than “rereadability.” What about books that I read and loved as a child that would never be on the Western canon, but that I would certainly buy for my child to read for fun–books like The Baby Sitters Club series, R.L. Stine’s creepy collection of child-appropriate horror stories, and Bunnicula. Everyone in my elementary school enjoyed those books, and no one buys them now. But who is to say that when my generation starts having children that they won’t come back in style? I mean, I wouldn’t want my future child to miss out on vampire bunnies! That just wouldn’t be fair.

So what do you think makes a children’s classic? What kid’s books have staying power with you? Or with your kids?

Just to start the conversation, I will say that some of my favorites are The Witches by Roald Dahl (1983), The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll (1865 and 1871 respectively), The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster (1961), I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (1949) and The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (1937). -Kaycie

Dean Faulkner Wells passes at age 75

By admin

On July 28, 2011

In Newsworthy

Dean Faulkner Wells passed away yesterday at the age of 75 after suffering a collapsed lung. Dean Faulkner Wells was the niece of William Faulkner and he became her legal guardian shortly before she was born when her father died in a plane crash.

It was just this past spring when Dean Faulkner Wells released Every Day in the Sun, a memoir of the Faulkner family and her life with William Faulkner, her “Pappy.” Lemuria enjoyed a signing and a visit with her in March. Jerry Mitchell talked with writer Hunter Cole about Dean and the Wells family and shared this quote in The Clarion Ledger:

Author Hunter Cole, who knew the Wellses for 40 years, also was saddened by the news.

He said the book enables “all who knew and loved her to be forever connected with her voice and her presence. We’re blessed she wrote it.”

She is the last of that generation that knew Faulkner, he said. “When Willie Morris went, I thought the world would end, and now Dean is gone.”

Read the rest of Mitchell’s story here.

Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl! by Sandra Beasley

By Lemuria

On July 27, 2011

In Biography/Memoir

Sandra Beasley has had severe allergies to certain foods her entire life. When butter is deadly and eggs can make your throat swell shut, cupcakes and other joys of childhood are out of the question—and so Sandra’s mother used to warn guests against a toxic, frosting-tinged kiss with “Don’t kill the birthday girl!”

Now an award-winning poet, essayist, and editor, Sandra has written a captivating memoir about a subject that has only been addressed in either medical guides or recipe books: a cultural history and sociological study of food allergies, melded with her own humorous and sometimes heartbreaking experiences.

From her short-lived gig as a restaurant reviewer to the dates that ended with trips to the emergency room, Sandra writes with verve and style about the struggle of a modern young woman to come to terms with a potentially deadly disorder.

Join us this evening at 5.00 for a signing and reading with Sandra Beasley!

Born to Run

By Former Lemurians

On July 26, 2011

In Adventure, Sports

Born to Run is one of those books that I wanted to read when it was released, but the stack of books on my nightstand was too tall at the time. Occasionally I’d spot the book when unpacking boxes or while I was looking for something in the sports and outdoor section, but it wasn’t until a few weeks ago when I suddenly found myself with nothing to read for the weekend that I finally rang up a paperback copy and took it home.

The book barely got me through the weekend – Born to Run reads so effortlessly that it’s easy to lose track of time and find that you’ve ripped through half of the book or more in one sitting. Christopher McDougall balances 3 or 4 parallel storylines, skipping back and forth between his search for the Tarahumara Indians, the development of the American ultramarathon, and his own struggles with running injuries and quest to run pain-free.

McDougall captures that perfect tone that provides just enough background information without belaboring the finer details. I’m not a runner, and never have been, but that was no impediment to my enjoyment – on the contrary, the story made me, for the first time in my life, consider the possibility that running could be something other than painful and torturous. And if you are a runner, well, I’d be hard-pressed to recommend a better read to you.

Mississippi’s Secret History – The Chitlin’ Circuit and the Road to Rock ‘N’ Roll

By admin

On July 26, 2011

In Blues, History, Music

When Preston Lauterbach set out to write The Chitlin’ Circuit I’m sure he never intended for it to be a “secret history” of Mississippi, but that’s what it feels like to me. As the dust jacket marketing says, The Chitlin’ Circuit is “The first history of the network of black nightclubs that created Rock ‘N’ Roll through an unholy alliance between vice and entertainment.” Lauterbach succeeds in writing the history he intended to write, but in doing so he fills in a blank space in Mississippi history for those of us who having been living here for years along side this interesting music and culture that is Chitlin’ Circuit music.

Sometime after moving to Mississippi in 1999 I began to notice some pretty interesting music on the radio. First I noticed a station that played classic soul music in the Stax vein. Then I noticed WMPR – a great station that plays blues, gospel, and talk shows. But the blues on WMPR didn’t sound a whole lot like the blues I know – very little Muddy Waters and very little John Lee Hooker. No, this music sounds more like a soul/blues fusion. In fact to my East Tennessee ears it sounded like a throw back to 1980s soul music, but it became apparent that this is not throw back music at all, but a vibrant and alive music culture.

Soon I started to hear a lot about a guy named Bobby Rush (find some of his CDs here) – a man who refers to himself as the King of the Chitlin’ Circuit. I did think, “what is the Chitlin’ Circuit” but I also thought, “wow, I like this”. If you’re in Lemuria late on a Friday afternoon Marvin Sease, Latimore, Ronnie Lovejoy, and Ms. Jody are just a few of the sounds you’ll hear. All of this led to Bobby Rush eventually playing a live show in our dot com building in 2007.

Now after all of these years of enjoying the music and the culture Preston Lauterbach gives us a wonderfully well written history of the Chitlin’ Circuit that explains how all of this came to be and fills a gap in American music history. To me this book fits perfectly between Robert Gordon’s Can’t Be Satisfied and Peter Guralnick’s Sweet Soul Music. So you can see why, to me, this feels like a “secret history”. The music is right here all around us in Jackson, MS, but for the first time the history has been researched and brought to light.

Join us Tuesday evening at 5.00 for a signing and reading with Preston Lauterbach, author of The Chitlin’ Circuit and the Road to Rock ‘N’ Roll.

Lemuria’s book club meeting

By Former Lemurians

On July 25, 2011

In About

On Thursday, July 7, our book club, “Atlantis” met to discuss The Long Song by Andrea Levy. This novel made the short list in 2010 for the English award, the Man Booker.This was the second work on Jamaica which the author, a native of Jamaica herself, has published. What an invigorating, delightful time we had during our book club hour! Something that makes our book club unique is the fact that we do “stick to the book” during the discussion…not our lives, not our families, not the economy, not “what we are doing, will do, or have done”. We talk strictly about the literature! Many who have been in other book clubs have told me that this feature is what makes “Atlantis” book club so different and refreshing.

While a lot of our discussion about The Long Song centered around the devastating conditions of slavery on the sugar cane plantations in Jamaica in the mid 1800s, we also talked about the general state of all women, not only in Jamaica, but also in the United States during that time period when our country was expanding westward with the advent of the new transcontinental railroads, as well as the introduction of the telegraph and numerous industries. That led us to talking about other types of slavery, such as existed in the sweat shops with underage children in NY in the early part of the 20th century. Hence, one can see that our discussions lead from one challenging topic to another.

Come join us on Thursday, August 4, for our discussion of Parrot and Olivier by Peter Carey, another Man Booker nominee of 2010. Already a two time winner of the Man Booker, Carey is known for his incredible mastery of the English language. He is a talented wordsmith indeed. -Nan

Heirloom Gardening in the South: Yesterday’s Plants for Today’s Gardens by William C. Welch and Greg Grant

By Former Lemurians

On July 24, 2011

In Gardening

I am really, really excited about the new Southern gardening book which just appeared in my gardening section by surprise a couple of weeks ago. Everyone who has looked at it agrees with me that it is a beautiful book, but also a “keeper” for Southern gardeners. The photos alone are “eye candy” for obsessed gardeners. Just thumbing through it gave me a thrill to see all of the “knock-down/drag out ” plants and flowers. From the close up photos of such individual flowers as the Crinum lily called “Sangria” and the closeup photo of the Mayhaw blossoms, to the larger photos of such glorious trees as the Changsha tangerine growing in Texas, to the Satsuma tree also in Texas, well, my heart leaped for joy.

Heirloom Gardening in the South is divided into these sections: “Exploring Our Gardening Heritage”, “Rediscovering a Wealth of Southern Heirloom Plants”, “The Right Plant in the Right Place”, “Heirloom Plants of the South”, and “How Our Gardens Grew: Creating Your Own Garden Traditions”. Within each of these sections are logical divisions, such as in “Exploring Our Gardening Heritage”, the reader/gardener will find Native American influence, Spanish influence, French influence, African influence, English influence, German influence, Italian influence,and Asian influence. -Nan

Cloud Atlas

By Former Lemurians

On July 23, 2011

In Fiction

Dear Listener,

More often than not, a book cannot be defined or exploited by just one song or just one album or just one musician. This being the case, choosing certain albums for certain sections can be rather difficult, especially when the characters and scenes carry a similar aura throughout the book. And that is exactly why I am going to cop out and discuss a book that separates itself in a way that easily allows me to mention a couple different artists of varying tastes.

If you read the title, it’s clear I can’t keep this a secret anymore. The book in question is Cloud Atlas (2004) by British author David Mitchell. If you haven’t read Cloud Atlas (which would be your first mistake) you wouldn’t know that there are six different stories ranging from the 1850s to the 19oos to the recent past (kind of) to the present to a futuristic world to an even more futuristic post-apocalyptic world.

I’m going to start in the middle and work from there. In the futuristic section the protagonist is a clone who was made to be a servant but turns out to be more intelligent than anyone suspects. Her story is being told to a documentarian before she is put to death. The prose itself is far more inviting than I’m making it out to be, but it is dense. And it is suspenseful. And it sure does feel futuristic. That is exactly the way I feel about post-dubstep soul hero James Blake (not the tennis player). His self-titled United States debut was released this year to much critical acclaim. (http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15081-james-blake/) (His song Unluck is track eight on Issue #3). Blake creates a tension between his crooning and his startling, unpredictable laptop noise. The tension adds suspense to a chapter that was already suspenseful. The electronic quality of Blake’s music adds “future” to a chapter that was already “futurey.” Like two peas in a pod, these two.

Another chapter I want to mention takes place in the present. It’s about an older man who has to flee some thugs and accidentally ends up in a retirement home that he can’t leave. The general feeling is light hearted and rambunctious. Although it never veers away from hilarity, the plot itself moves the way an old man would move: calculated and slow. I have recently revisited this chapter while listening to a band from Chicago called Maps & Atlases, most specifically their 2010 album Perch Patchwork. (Israeli Caves from Perch Patchwork is track six on Issue #3) Although they can and will slow down songs, they are a band who are clearly most comfortable watching the audience’s feet tap. Not only did the music and prose share a riotous attitude, the high-paced complex workings of Maps & Atlases pushed the old man to move a good bit faster.

Hopefully the beginning of August will see the “release” of Issue #4, and perhaps a look back at the chapters that I didn’t touch. There are still a few (FREE!) copies of Issue #3 in the fiction room at Lemuria.

by Simon

Page 156 of 257

Heston’s FANTASTICAL Feasts

The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel, Ph.D.

Children’s Classics, what are they to you?

Dean Faulkner Wells passes at age 75

Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl! by Sandra Beasley

Born to Run

Mississippi’s Secret History – The Chitlin’ Circuit and the Road to Rock ‘N’ Roll

Lemuria’s book club meeting

Heirloom Gardening in the South: Yesterday’s Plants for Today’s Gardens by William C. Welch and Greg Grant

Cloud Atlas

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