by Kelly Pickerill

Working at Lemuria, we’re privileged to keep abreast of the publishing world; we get to read a book sometimes months before its release – many of us read The Help early and were already excited when Kathryn came for her first signing minutes, it seemed, after it appeared on the shelves.

We’re also enthusiastic book collectors; we salivate over signed first editions of the old standbys as well as those of promising new authors – this year, among many others, I’ve collected signed firsts of Tea Obreht’s debut The Tiger’s Wife (we sold out of the signed copies) and Geraldine Brooks’s latest Caleb’s Crossing (still available!).

I am a fanatic book collector, yes, but I was first simply a reader. So in the midst of reading all the newest books, I mix in the old ones I’ve always wanted to read. I get them in paperback, and I like to abuse them. Well, as much as it’s possible for me to abuse a book. I just finished The World According to Garp on the Fourth, and the copy ended up looking not read. But sometimes I do this while I’m reading a paperback:

and it’s extremely satisfying. I just enjoy books. I enjoy John Irving too, can’t tell you how much. I haven’t read anything new of his, just the old big ones. They’re some tasty books.

Now I’m reading Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer. I’d never read anything by him, and it was beginning to make me ashamed. I love it so far; I was just in New Orleans at the end of June, and because it was my third visit I’ve started to remember my way around, recognizing neighborhoods, able to picture where Magazine is in relation to Elysian Fields, which is fun when reading Percy’s novel.

Several of us have read through many of Haruki Murakami’s books. Kaycie’s expressed Murakami love, I recently devoured The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, I think Joe’s reading through them all in order. I may read Kafka on the Shore after I finish The Moviegoer.

During the summer, whether relaxing in the sun on the beach or in the backyard, isn’t greasing up a paperback with sweat and sunscreen is just the greatest? Come in, if you can, for more summer paperback recommendations. We’ll set you up.

Lately I’ve been having the urge to re-read a few books. This isn’t something that I do often because, quite frankly, I’ve got too many unread books living on my shelves. But sometimes you just want to hear a good story again.  Or maybe re-reading a certain book isn’t so much about the story but about getting back that feeling of however your life was going the first time you read it.

Right now I’m a little stressed out about all of the graduate loans I’m about to take out, signing the lease on an apartment in a city where I don’t know anyone, and packing up to move across the ocean.  All big exciting things, for sure, but needless to say I’ve given more than one longing glance at the novels that I loved last summer when I was first working at the bookstore with no big plans to put into action, only possibilities.  I could use a little dose of carefree right about now.

So the books of last summer that have been particularly drawn to (as you’ve probably guessed by the covers featured) have been Audrey Niffenegger’s Her Fearful Symmetry and Aimee Bender’s The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake.  You can read some of my co-worker’s takes on these two wonderful novels here, here, and here.

What are some of the books that you find yourself drawn to over and over again?  Is it solely for the story or maybe for a bit of comfort too?  -Kaycie

I lost a pet a little over a week ago and did not want to get into any fictional drama in my reading. I needed something comforting and wise. A copy of  The Chicken Chronicles had been laying on my bedside table. I knew it was finally time to read it.

I spent a long afternoon reading The Chicken Chronicles. It began with the recollection of growing up with chickens on her parents’ sharecropper farm in rural Georgia. The memory came to the surface when Alice was startled by a hen and her chicks crossing her path. She remarks that she felt as though she had never seen a chicken before. But if you know anything about Alice, you know that it can’t be true. She writes:

Though I grew up in the South where we raised chickens every year, for meat and for eggs, and where, from the time I was eight or nine, my job was to chase down the Sunday dinner chicken and wring its neck. But had those chickens been like this one? Why I hadn’t I noticed? Had I noticed?

Recalling those childhood memories Alice slowly began to realize that she missed chickens, chickens as “A Nation” she writes. And considering how often she ate eggs, she decided that she should learn more about them by having a few of her own.

Naming them curious names like Gertrude Stein, Agnes of God and Glorious, you’ll experience the ups and downs of caring for a brood of chickens and wonder at the chickens who regularly nap on her lap. You’ll think differently about eating meat, if you do so. You’ll reconsider the love you have for your animal friends. And Alice does all of this in her characteristically gentle way.

I read on Alice’s website about the chicken on the cover of the book. She notes the missing toenail and how she thought about sticking on a little fake one. But she then thought better of it and reflects on how she starting writing this book and the unexpected lessons she learned from her chickens :

Life gives us broken toenails and worse to let us remember where we’ve been and the struggles we’ve overcome . . . this is the book that grew on this blog, as I sat with my chickens in the outback of Mendocino, California.  I sat with them expecting nothing and over the months they pecked open places I hadn’t been able to enter by myself.  All of my “girls” have their toenails but occasionally, and though it is shocking it is natural, they lose their  feathers. (Source: Alice Walker’s official website)

I suppose I felt like I had lost all my feathers when I lost my beloved animal friend. Reading about the blessings, the memories and sorrows she has had with her chickens, I took away an intention to be more mindful of the animals who bring us the miracle of unconditional love.

The Chicken Chronicles by Alice Walker (New Press, May 2011)