Lemuria Books – Page 210

Page 210 of 257

The answer to an unasked question

On April 7, 2010

reading005sm

This is what I have stacked up on my nightstand right now.

In order, from the top:

Burning Bright, Ron Rash
The Unfair Advantage, Mark Donohue
Are We Winning?, Will Leitch (due May 2010)
Bounce, Matthew Syed (due April 2010)
Intellectuals and Society, Thomas Sowell
Mark Donohue: Technical Excellence at Speed, Michael Argetsinger
Linchpin, Seth Godin

I finished The Unfair Advantage by Mark Donohue a few weeks ago — its appeal is pretty narrow, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone but an avid racing fan, but within that niche it is a must-read. Published the same year Donohue died in a Formula One practice session, it follows Donohue’s racing career from his first amateur races to the year just before his death, and focuses primarily on development work on the cars and how he and his team adapted with each new challenge.

Next up was Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell. It’s 100% classic Sowell, carefully and clearly laying out his case. It reminded me a lot of Sowell’s The Vision of the Anointed — very readable with frequent cultural and historical examples throughout.

Every few days I pick away at Seth Godin’s Linchpin, a chapter at a time.

Ron Rash’s new book of stories is next up, but I’m waiting for an evening when I have a few hours to relax and enjoy it.

Forecasts and Faith by Barbie Bassett

By admin

On April 6, 2010

In Biography/Memoir

After I had moved to Jackson about three years ago, I noticed that my fiancé got kind of excited about the local news. He said, “Let’s see what Barbie has to say about the weather!” And he would comment if Maggie (or Howard or Roslyn) was on that night. I thought how silly. Who’s Maggie and Barbie? And who cares about their local news team? Well, it didn’t take very long before I started caring because I realized that WLBT is a hometown team. They’re more like family for Jackson and I imagine this is also true for many across the entire state of Mississippi. So when I saw that Barbie had written a book, I grabbed the first copy that I could get my hands on and started reading.

When Barbie was at Lemuria yesterday I shared this thought with her as it related to her book: “I don’t know how to put this, but I think we are two very different women, although we are nearly the same age . . . ”

Barbie has spent most of her life in Mississippi; I landed in Mississippi not long ago and have lived in some rather different places. She has been married for a good while and has three kids; I am just getting to the married part and have no children yet. Barbie is very active in her church; I am not-so-much these days.

Forecasts and Faith is a book about how one person has dealt with the challenges of life. Certainly, we all have tough times in life and we all spend a good deal of time listening to how others deal with their own tough times, whether it be amongst friends, through television shows, coworkers or faith groups. Barbie is just somebody who is a very familiar face to us and has taken the time to not just tell her story to her community but to also share her heart and the different ways her faith has helped her get along in life. As Barbie hopes, I believe her book does inspire and reach out to a broad audience of readers.

Barbie expressed some amazement that so many people would want to read her book. I am not surprised at all because most of us hunger for connection with others. I think stories have the power to connect so many different people, and soon the world becomes less isolating and bewildering. Individuals become community when their stories are told, and Barbie has sincerely shared hers with us.

Me and Barbie!

See Barbie’s website and blog for more information about her life and work and upcoming events.

Oz News for the week of April 5th

By Former Lemurians

On April 5, 2010

In Oz: Children's Books

Wow! What an amazing week it is going to be! We kicked it off on Saturday with an amazing event with Flying Lessons by Gilbert Ford and we are just getting started!

On Wednesday at 5:00, Sharon Draper will be here to sign her new book Out of My Mind. Sharon’s new novel is a very personal book. The main character in this novel is an 11 year old girl named Melody who has cerebral palsy, a disease that makes it impossible to control her muscles very well. Draper’s own daughter has this same disease and much of the first part of the book captures perfectly the helplessness of the disease that the whole family feels. In Melody’s case, this disease has also taken away her voice. Melody, however, is not mentally impaired. She may not be able to move her body, eat by herself, or even speak beside grunts and laughs, but she has a bright mind that soaks up everything. When she finally gets a device that she can program to speak for her, the world begins to open up slightly. She secures a spot on the school’s Whiz Kids team and leads the team to a win at the regional tournament. They are invited to Nationals in Washington D.C. where they will compete for a chance to appear on Good Morning America and win money for their school. The end of this story, however, does not paint a happy, pretty image of the way most of the world views kids with such diseases, and the reader learns how strong people with debilitating diseases must be and how little it takes to make a difference in someone’s life.

Then, on Thursday at 5:00, Stacey Jay will be here to sign her new book in the Megan Berry series, Undead Much? I wrote a blog about these books recently, so I won’t go into that much detail here, but I am so excited about this event.

And then on Saturday we will have an awesome story time at 10:00 with Fancy Nancy: Poet Extraordinaire by Jane O’Connor to kick off Poetry month! We will be reading the book and writing our own name poems as fancy as you please. We have extravagant writing implements (that’s fancy for a pencil) and poetry journals for everyone who comes, so all you Fancy Nancy fans, come in your fanciest for our fancy story time!

Also on Saturday, Lindsey Leavitt will be here to sign her new book Princess for Hire at 1:00. I am about halfway through this book right now, but here is the synopsis from her website. I can say that this book is too cute and just perfect for middle schoolers.

When a flawlessly dressed woman steps out of an iridescent bubble and wants to know, like, now if you’d like to become a substitute princess, do you a) run, b) faint, c) say Yes! For Desi Bascomb,

who’s been longing for a bit of glamour in her Idaho life, the choice is a definite C–that is, once she can stop pinching herself. As her new agent Meredith explains, Desi has a rare magical ability: when she applies the ancient Egyptian formula “Royal Rouge,” she can transform temporarily into the exact lookalike of any princess who needs her subbing services. Dream come true, right?Well, Desi soon discovers that subbing involves a lot more than wearing a tiara and waving at cameras. Like, what do you do when a bullying older sister puts you on a heinous crash diet? Or when the tribal villagers gather to watch you perform a ceremonial dance you don’t know? Or when a princess’s conflicted sweetheart shows up to break things off–and you know she would want you to change his mind?

In this hilarious, winning debut, one girl’s dream of glamor transforms into something bigger: the desire to make a positive impact. And an impact Desi makes, one royal fiasco at a time.

So yeah, crazy busy, and if you have any questions about any of this, give us a call(601.366.7619) or just email me! (emily@lemuriabooks.com)!

Faves of the week:

Picture Books: Hattie the Bad by Jane Devlin – Hattie is the worst kid you know! And very cute. This picture book has striking colors throughout and adorable illustrations.

Beginner Readers: Mokie and Bik Go to Sea by Wendy Orr – In Mokie and Bik’s second adventure, they finally go out to sea! The sing-song words of this book are reminiscent of Pippy Longstocking and too cute!

Young Adult: Once by Morris Gleitzman – Set during WWII, one Jewish boy tells us his fictional story of survival. Very good!

Teen: Birth Marked by Caragh M. O’Brien – this is another great dystopian novel, perfect for fans of the Hunger Games and Incarceron!

Non-fiction: Blockhead: The Life of Fibonacci by Joseph D’Agnese – If you liked Sarah Campbell’s Growing Patterns (here’s our blog on that), then you’ll enjoy learning about the man who found the pattern of numbers we now call Fibonacci numbers.

Upcoming Events:

Wednesday, April 7th @ 5:00 – SIGNING – Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper

Thursday, April 8th @ 5:00 – SIGNING – Undead Much by Stacey Jay

Saturday, April 10th @ 1:00 – SIGNING – Princess for Hire by Lindsey Leavitt

Tuesday, April 13th @ 5:00 – SIGNING – Warriors: Omen of the Stars #2 Fading Echoes by Erin Hunter

April 22nd @ 5:00 – SIGNING – The Jaguar Stones #1 Middleworld by J&P Voelkel

Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper

By Former Lemurians

On April 5, 2010

In OZ: Young Adult Fiction

In Melody’s case, this disease has also taken away her voice. Melody, however, is not mentally impaired. She may not be able to move her body, eat by herself, or even speak beside grunts and laughs, but she has a bright mind that soaks up everything. When she finally gets a device that she can program to speak for her, the world begins to open up slightly.

She secures a spot on the school’s Whiz Kids team and leads the team to a win at the regional tournament. They are invited to Nationals in Washington D.C. where they will compete for a chance to appear on Good Morning America and win money for their school. The end of this story, however, does not paint a happy, pretty image of the way most of the world views kids with such diseases, and the reader learns how strong people with debilitating diseases must be and how little it takes to make a difference in someone’s life.

Miss Welty Story KARL MARLANTES

By admin

On April 5, 2010

In Fiction

The following is from Publisher’s Weekly – The title is “Why I Write” but it could just as well be titled “Why I read” – a truly great piece. Karl will be at Lemuria on May 12.

by Karl Marlantes — Publishers Weekly, 1/25/2010

Having read a galley of my novel, Matterhorn, about Marines in Vietnam, a somewhat embarrassed woman came up to me and said, “I didn’t even know you guys slept outside.” She was college educated and had been an active protester against the war. I felt that my novel had built a small bridge.

The chasm that small bridge crossed is still wide and deep in this country. I remember being in uniform in early 1970, delivering a document to the White House, when I was accosted by a group of students waving Vietcong and North Vietnamese flags. They shouted obscenities and jeered at me. I could only stand there stunned, thinking of my dead and maimed friends, wanting desperately to tell these students that my friends and I were just like them: their age, even younger, with the same feelings, yearnings, and passions. Later, I quite fell for a girl who was doing her master’s thesis on D. H. Lawrence. Late one night we were sitting on the stairs to her apartment and I told her that I’d been a Marine in Vietnam. “They’re the worst,” she cried, and ran up the stairs, leaving me standing there in bewilderment.

After the war, I worked as a business consultant to international energy companies to support a family, eventually being blessed with five children. I began writing Matterhorn in 1975 and for more than 30 years, I kept working on my novel in my spare time, unable to get an agent or publisher to even read the manuscript. Certainly, writing the novel was a way of dealing with the wounds of combat, but why would I subject myself to the further wounds all writers receive trying to get published? I think it’s because I’ve wanted to reach out to those people on the other side of the chasm who delivered the wound of misunderstanding. I wanted to be understood.

Ultimately, the only way we’re ever going to bridge the chasms that divide us is by transcending our limited viewpoints. My realization of this came many years ago reading Eudora Welty’s great novel Delta Wedding. I experienced what it would be like to be a married woman on a Mississippi Delta plantation who was responsible for orchestrating one of the great symbols of community and love. I entered her world and expanded beyond my own skin and became a bigger person.

I was given the ability to create stories and characters. That’s my part of the long chain of writers, publishers, agents, booksellers, librarians, and a host of others who eventually deliver literature to the world. I want to do for others what Eudora Welty did for me.

Click here to see a video related to this article.

A reader’s blog on Matterhorn.

The Story behind the Pick: Matterhorn

The Five Things We Cannot Change by David Richo

By John

On April 5, 2010

In Psychology, Zen

One of the great rewards of working in a bookstore is the new writers you learn about from customers. My reading has always been enhanced by loyal Lemuria readers caring enough to share meaningful suggestions with me. Thanks to Eliza, a Boston pal, I embarked on a David Richo reading path.

Accepting the difficult realities of life and dropping our resistance to them is the key to liberation and discovery. Richo, a psychotherapist, states that there are five unavoidable facts, five unchanging facts that come to visit us many times over.

1. Everything changes and ends.

2. Things do not always go according to plan.

3. Life is not always fair.

4. Pain is part of life.

5. People are not loving and loyal all the time.

Richo believes our fear and struggle against these givens are the real sources of our troubles. Exploring these facts in separate chapters, Richo provides many helpful ideas on how to break down our automatic neurotic ego controls.

In part two, Richo combines Buddhist insight to give us tools for our daily work of establishing an unconditional yes to our conditional existence. Lessons for using lovingkindness and meditation to understand our feelings. As our awareness and mindfulness improve, we are able to move toward yes to who we are psychologically and spiritually.

Using Richo’s insight of shadow-work psychology, Five Things shows how we can open our lives and decrease the automatic ego controls that narrow our lives.

Readers of James Hollis should enjoy reading David Richo as well.

How to Clean a Hippopotamus by Steve Jenkins & Robin Page

By Diane

On April 4, 2010

In Oz: Children's Books

This is a book about animal symbiosis—unusual partnerships in the wild—why does the crocodile let the plover stroll in and out of its mouth? Why does the giraffe let the oxpicker over its body and into its ears? The last pages offer more information about the size, habitat and diet of the animals included in the book. This is a fun and educational read.

(Children’s picture book, ages 4 to 9)

Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives by Brad Watson

By admin

On April 2, 2010

In Southern Fiction

Up in Wyoming, there are still snow drifts, not pollen drifts. Brad Watson teaches creative writing at the University of Wyoming in Laramie and was here just last week reading from his new collection of short stories, Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives.

Brad has been to Lemuria numerous times before, but this was my first time to meet him. Out of the readings so far this year, Brad and Amy Greene have to be some of the best readers. It did not matter if you had a short attention span, I don’t think anybody had trouble listening to Brad read from the title novella.

“Aliens” is about a highschool-age couple who finds out they’re going to have a baby. Worried and scared, they leave their homes to set up their own place. While the young girl is asleep, the young man is visited by a couple who claim to be aliens. They share beers and talk . . . This is as far as Brad would read and this also happened to be the one story I have not read in the collection so far. I am thinking that perhaps these aliens put it all in perspective for this young couple?

After talking with Brad, I think Wyoming must be an extraordinarily thoughtful place to live, but I think Mississippi needs to think again about letting Brad spend all of his time there. The winters are long, a southerner needs the warmth of the South–in all its forms, and most of all, Brad Watson is just too talented of a writer to let go.

Check out Brad’s website:

Brad Watson’s stories worm their way through you. Watson’s talent is singular, truly awesome; he reminds me of Raymond Carver, Flannery O’Connor, Chris Offutt in his bravery, his unflinching willingness to look at what might set others running. And yet these are not exactly dark stories – that is part of their magic, they are infused with an uncanny beauty in which, even at the most god-awful moments, something is salvaged.”

– A.M. HOMES, AUTHOR OF THIS BOOK WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE

Other Lemuria blogs on Aliens

Poetry in Person by Alexander Neubauer

By admin

On April 2, 2010

In Poetry

Pearl London with students (featured in Poetry in Person; Estate of Pearl London)

I think most people have had a teacher who made a difference in their lives. Margrethe Alschwede taught a class entitled “Women’s Lives” where I went to college. I still reflect on that class as it continues to help me in so many varied and unnameable ways.

No doubt Pearl London was one of these teachers. As a new teacher, she started a course at New School in Greenwich Village entitled “Meet Poets and Poetry, with Pearl London and Guests”. Despite a list which included W. S. Merwin and John Ashberry, nobody really payed attention; few students signed up. Then Pearl spiked thing up a bit; she asked the poets to brings in works-in-progress, doodles, scrap pieces of paper that revealed the process of writing poetry for such poets as Adrienne Rich, Charles Simic, Muriel Rukeyser, and Derek Walcott, to name a few.

Set in an usual room with a nine-panel mural by Thomas Hart Benson, the course soon became sought-after by students and (future) prize-winning poets alike. And Pearl was not to be forgotten with her colorful style and excitement for poetry.

As I put up a new display for National Poetry Month, I came across Poetry in Person. Alexander Neubauer, also a teacher New School, learned of Pearl’s class and eventually became aware that there were tapes of these meetings with famous poets. He carefully edited and compiled the transcripts with background information on the poets. Neubauer writes about his editing process for Poetry in Person:

“My primary goal was to capture the poets’ voices and habits of thought as faithfully as possible, whether they spoke in complete paragraphs, like Walcott and Matthews, or sounded like telegrams. In short, poets not only spoke for themselves, they were also allowed to sound like themselves. Since cuts had to be made, much of Pearl London’s voice was lost in favor of space for the poets.”

Despite the focus on the poets, I think it is easy to feel the behind-the-scene energy of Pearl in the book, as Neubauer explains: “. . . Edward Hirsch repeats a line from Robert Frost to the effect that if a book of poetry holds twenty-nine poems, the book itself becomes the thirtieth poem . . . Pearl London loved that thought, and I think I know why. There was a narrative drive behind the rhythm of her questions, energized by a deep love of poetry–and poets. Her classroom became the thirtieth poem, and, one hopes, that energy and love will be present in this book.”

Thanks to all the Margrethes and Pearls in the world!

Check it.

By Former Lemurians

On April 2, 2010

In Art/Photography

Recently, I have looked through a couple of awesome collections of poster and logo designs. This world of graphic design and illustration is a quirky one; and although I a member of their race, I am nerdy enough to get excited about these books. The work of these we see everyday and do not always recognize the the value and the craftsmanship that is displayed through the trademarks on our products or the posters for our bands.

This book, Gig Posters, is a slick 14 x 11 in. collection of the stellar show posters from GigPosters.com which contains the cream of the crop in contemporary illustration. It utilizes its large spacious pages allowing you to see all the detail and setting, giving multiple examples of the included artists and their write-ups.

This next book is so cool that it can pretty much speak for itself. Once you crack the pages you are overwhelmed by some of the best designs throughout the history of American Trademarks. I myself could be just fine to spend many hours analyzing these beauties and picking favorites. Both of these books have enough to say in their own way, so its worth taking a gander next time your popping around the store.

And speaking of bands [good segue?] , ya’ll remember Hunter. He left Lemuria at the beginning of the year and moved to Austin with his wife and band. Last month he had an accident involving a dog and a window and was left with a gash on his arm needing surgery and 37 stitches. In an effort to help pay for his surgery, Byron Knight and friends held a fundraiser concert at Sneaky Beans. During this event we debuted a music video for his band that was done by Hunter’s friend and mine, Robby Piantanida. So here is the video to bring a little attention to a buddies misfortune.

Law School – King of the Crops from Robby Piantanida on Vimeo.

-John P.

Page 210 of 257

The answer to an unasked question

Forecasts and Faith by Barbie Bassett

Oz News for the week of April 5th

Faves of the week:

Upcoming Events:

Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper

Miss Welty Story KARL MARLANTES

by Karl Marlantes — Publishers Weekly, 1/25/2010

The Five Things We Cannot Change by David Richo

How to Clean a Hippopotamus by Steve Jenkins & Robin Page

Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives by Brad Watson

Poetry in Person by Alexander Neubauer

Check it.

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