I’m beginning to feel the gardening bug come to life again. I know, I know that is barely the middle of January, but, still, I feel it coming on. I know that my early blooming daffodils will be peaking their hopeful heads up through the cold damp earth in the next few weeks, and that will certainly signal to me that spring is not far behind. I don’t know about you, but the last week’s extreme cold has made me realize that living any further north would really be hard!
So, as I begin to think of spring, I am planning on growing more herbs and vegetables this year. I had some good success last year, but I want to grow more that I can cook with this coming spring and summer. A new book which just came into Lemuria in early December ’10 is titled: The Kitchen Gardener’s Handbook by Jennifer R. Bartley. Within this beautiful book, the food gardener will find design plans, seasonal checklists, fresh recipes, plant profiles and growing tips, and flowers for the table, as the subtitle suggests.
Seasonally subdivided, gardeners can find herbs, vegetables, and fruits for every season of the year, and as an added treat, the gardener author has even included special recipes to be made from the vegetables which he grows in his own garden. For instance, for the Spring section, one will find how to grow strawberries and rhubarb and an accompanying recipe using both. For the summer, blueberries are certainly included complete with recommended varieties, as well as a recipe for “World’s Famous Blueberry Pie”. Included in each seasonal section with the plants which grow best, is also a highly helpful chart detailing the common name, scientific name, zone to grow, and certain notes about each plant. Beautiful color photographs accompany each section.
I highly recommend this new release published by Timber Press, the prestigious guru of gardening publishers, for gardeners wanting a helpful, practical and beautifully compiled guide to growing what one wants to eat. -Nan
I can remember the first time that I saw a piece of William Christenberry’s work. It actually was not a photograph but a model of a ramshackle building. Really what caught my eye was the name of the piece, Coleman’s Cafe. You see Coleman is my Dad’s name so I was naturally attracted to it. In fact, Coleman was with me in the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. As I looked around I noticed some of his photographs and really related to all of it. Christenberry is after all one of the South’s premiere photographers.
Many textual purists are balking at NewSouth’s decision to publish Alan Gribben’s edition of Mark Twain’s “companion boy books,” The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. In his edition, Gribben, a Twain scholar and professor at Auburn, has replaced the offensive terms, both “nigger” (so prevalent in Huck Finn) and “injun” (Tom Sawyer), with the word “slave.”
Yet there’s no single reason why the book is so often considered unteachable to students high school age and younger, and I have a hard time believing the changing of a word will magic any and all of them away. When Huck has seen through his dilemma of whether or not to turn Jim in, the moral climax of the book, he’s still so indoctrinated with the culture of slavery that he believes himself to be extremely wicked though he’s making the “morally right” choice. Calling Jim by another name will not change Huck’s prevailing belief system: that Jim is an inferior being because of the color of his skin.
the second Friday of every month from 3:30-4:45. This month that means we will be meeting this Friday. We will be discussing 
January’s First Editions Club can be one of the hardest to pick, but it can also be one of the most rewarding. Think about it, there are so many books coming out in the three months before Christmas, holiday sales etc., that January turns out to be somewhat of a dry month for publishing. So, very few books being released equals very few choices for the First Editions Club. The good news is January is the month where we have to work a little harder and dig a little deeper, and usually come up with something unique and fun. Often the pick is a first time author or an author for whom we really have to pitch a tour stop to the publisher. (all of the First Edition Club authors come to the store for a signing – it’s part of the deal) For instance Kathryn Stockett, Stuart Dybeck, Mary Ward Brown, and William Gay have all been January FEC authors.
Borders has consistently been in the headlines since the New Year due to the fact that they cannot pay their bills to the publishers. And now the publishers must decide how they will handle the situation, which is no small feat since every other bookstore will expect any grace that Border receives.
This leaves independent bookstores in particular with many more questions: Will publishers give bookstores the information and tools to help preserve the hard back read? Will publisher sales reps go to bat to preserve their stores and keep reading vital? Will marketing become more credible and more important to the independent book seller? Will the publishers recognize a need for real book selling, word of mouth in our stores and on our web presence?
This sent me back to Minsky’s book scouring for any information that might give me more clues about my books. The first book is entitled My Heart and Stephanie by R. W. Kauffman. Published in 1910 by L. C. Page & Company, the cover featuring artwork by A. G. Learned. Tooling around on the Internet gleaned little information about Learned. Obviously, the content of the book was simply the fiction of the day. (Sadly, someone appears to have used Stephanie as a coaster at some point.)
No doubt, the books I innocently picked up were not in the gorgeous condition featured in Minsky’s studies. But studying Minsky’s collection, I began to imagine the what vibrancy The Man on the Box must have had. Published in 1904 by the Bobbs-Merrill Company, the cover art does not yield any information or initials for the artist. Nonetheless, it is still charming in its rather worn state.
