2010 – Page 14 – Lemuria Books

Year: 2010 (Page 14 of 45)

Beth Ann and Tom were with me on one of the most important days of my life – the birth of my little girl Harper. Well, not really there in the hospital… let me explain.

In the fall of 2005 my wife Wendy became pregnant with our first child – my reaction was varied – freaked out, scared, happy… you know, the normal stuff. I also started reading parenting books as fast as I could. I read “how to” books and I also read daddy and mommy memoirs. Then came the announcement that Mississippi’s favorite poet Beth Ann Fennelly was publishing a parenting book of sorts. Great With Child is a book of letters that Beth Ann wrote to a pregnant friend about being an expecting mother. Beth Ann’s book signing was on May 25th of 2006 – the very next morning we were due in the hospital for a scheduled induction – around 5:00 in the afternoon of the 26th Harper was born.

So Beth Ann was an interesting part of that very special event, but Tom was there as well – Tom’s third book Smonk was due out later in 2006 and I had just gotten my advance copy before that trip to the Hospital. So there I am reading Smonk on May 26 of 2006 waiting for Harper. Poor Wendy had to endure me reading key passages out loud from Smonk during that part of the day when contractions are far apart and not much is happening.

You get the idea, one of the most important days of your life and you have to endure your husband reading stuff like: “She gazed at her belly and wondered how a girl got knocked up. She was as skinny as a skeleton and no matter how much she ate she couldn’t put on no fat. But you got fat when you got knocked up. Maybe it was a pill you bought or something you shot. She bet a doctor could tell her.” On second thought, reading that passage on that particular day may not have been such a great idea.

At any rate – Beth Ann and Tom are two of the finest writers we have and, I think, the only married couple in Neil White’s Mississippians.

Click here to see all of “Lemuria Reads Mississippians.”

Editor Neil White will be signing at Lemuria on Thursday, October 28th.

Reserve your copy online or call the bookstore 601/800.366.7619.

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Ninth Ward by Jewell Parker Rhodes

By Former Lemurians

On September 29, 2010

In OZ: Young Adult Fiction

This week, I’ve been reading Jewell Parker Rhodes‘ newest work, Ninth Ward. What a moving read! Told from the perspective of 12 year old, New Orleans resident, Lanesha, Rhodes provides a respectful and thoughtful portrayal of this young girl’s experience through Hurricane Katrina. Rhodes reminds us of youthful times and understandings, full of questioning and curiosity.

We follow Lanesha as she travels through the set of days that have now become legendary. The same storm that altered so many thousands of lives and routines-and the one that washes away Lanesha’s material home–also ends up being the waves that beat in constant remembrance. Remembrance of the mother she never met but still sees as a ghost, and remembrance of her grandmother and number one caretaker, Mama Ya-Ya. Mama Ya-Ya teaches her of the love of a family while imparting her own acquired knowledge of symbols and numbers. “Put 4 and 8 together and it equals 12. That’s spiritual strength. Real Strength, Lanesha.” Being this age, it’s no wonder why this knowledge becomes an encouragement throughout her journey.

We experience the growth of Lanesha’s understanding of these tragedies with much pre-storm foreshadowing. “I think I’d like traveling by water. Unlike dirt, water seems alive, moving and shifting, always making lapping sounds against the boat and shore.” These alive waters that also bring destruction ultimately help define her: “I’m Lanesha. Born with a caul. Interpreter of symbols and signs. Future engineer. Shining Love. I’m Lanesha. I’m Mama Ya-Ya’s girl.”

-Peyton

The Story behind the Pick: Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin

By admin

On September 28, 2010

In Southern Fiction

Since Lemuria has selected all four of Tom Franklin’s published works for our First Editions Club, I asked John how this all came about.

John first met Tom Franklin in the early 90s when he was traveling from his hometown in Alabama to Fayetteville, Arkansas, where he was working on an MFA in fiction at the University of Arkansas. Tom would always stop at Lemuria and talk to John about books and reading.

Before you know it, school was finished, it was 1999, and Tom’s first book Poachers was on the shelf. Not only did the staff at Lemuria admire this collection of short stories and the title novella, “Poachers,” so did Richard Ford, Rick Bass, and Barry Hannah. Comparisons were made to James Dickey and soon the Edgar Allen Poe Award for the Best Mystery Story was awarded to the title novella, “Poachers.”

By 2003, readers were enjoying the grizzly tale of Hell at the Breech which is based on the events surrounding an 1897 murder near Franklin’s hometown. After reading the gun-slinging tale of Smonk in 2006, John remarked: “Not since Hannah’s Tennis Handsome has Southern fiction been so shocked. Nasty, bloody, violent, and just damn good–lean, mean writing with missiles flying off the pages.”

Tom Franklin now lives with his wife, the poet Beth Ann Fennelly, in Oxford, Mississippi, teaching for the University of Mississippi’s creative writing program. Although Tom is an Alabama native, he has taken a key role in carrying on the tradition of great Mississippi writers. We’d like to say he is one of our own.

Tom and his wife have two children, but John remembers when there was just the first baby, memorable because Tom and Beth Anne brought a baby bed and placed it in our fine first editions room. I guess that’s one of the beautiful places you get to sleep when both of your parents are writers!

Crooked Letter Crooked Letter is published by William Morrow and Company with an initial print run of 35,000.

Curtis Wilkie’s The Fall of the House of Zeus: Patterson & Balducci Desperate for the Biden Name

By Lemuria

On September 28, 2010

In Southern Culture

The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie (Crown, October 19, 2010)

“If Dick Scruggs’s name was essential to the success of the superfirm that Tim Balducci and Steve Patterson envisioned, so was the name Biden . . . The Biden connection went back more than twenty years, to the time when Patterson signed on as the southern coordinator for the young Delaware senator in his first, quixotic campaign for the party’s presidential nomination. In the intervening years, Patterson stayed in touch with Biden and became acquainted with members of Biden’s family . . .” (195)

“Patterson and Balducci were both supporting Biden’s quest for the 2008 nomination, and co-sponsored with Scruggs and three others a fund-raiser when the candidate came to Mississippi in August 2007. On that visit, Biden was accompanied by his brother Jim, who used the trip to cement plans with the Mississippians to open a Washington office that would capitalize on the name Biden.”(195-196)

“While senator [Joe Biden] charmed the Mississippi guests at the party, his brother was busy talking with the hosts. It was determined that Jim’s wife Sara, an attorney, could credibly bring the family name to the firm they planned.”

“Though purportedly a ‘law group’ with a base in Washington, the firm would specialize in lobbying. No law degree was necessary for any of the firm’s associates in the District of Columbia, freeing Patterson and others to operate under the banner of an office engaged with legal work . . .”

“A month later, the idea had become a reality. On September 27, the same day Balducci handed over the first $20,000 payment to Judge Lackey, Balducci also visited Scruggs’s office to tell him of a more savory initiative. Enthusiastically, he described plans for the firm of Patterson, Balducci and Biden.”

“‘We formalized our relationship with the Bidens,’ he told Scruggs. ‘It’s not going to be some bullshit shingle hung somewhere in a window. This is the real deal.'” (196)

The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie goes on sale October 19th.

We hope to see you at the signing/reading event with Curtis Wilkie on Thursday, October 21st, but if you cannot attend, you can reserve a signed copy online.

Click here to open an account on our website and we can save your information for future visits to LemuriaBooks.com.

You can also call the bookstore at 601/800.366.7619 and we can put your name on our reserve list.

Read other excerpts from The Fall of the House of Zeus.

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The Distant Hours by Kate Morton

By Former Lemurians

On September 27, 2010

In Foreign Fiction

Attention all you readers out there who love a good story, I have one for you. I’m talking no fancy-shmancy writing techniques; nothing experimental. I mean a good yarn. A story that can transport you to a different place even if you have no frame of reference to this place.

A few years ago Kate Morton released her first American book The House at Riverton. I was immediately sucked into this tale of an English country estate house with a history and a mystery. Well this seems to be a recurring theme that Kate can’t quite get away from, and that is fine by me. Her second book The Forgotten Garden was even better than the first. You absolutely fall in love with her female protagonists in every story she writes.

Well Kate Morton is giving us a new great story this year, The Distant Hours. I am about 265 pages into my advanced reader copy and I can’t put it down. The story starts out with a long lost letter written decades ago being delivered to the addressee. And this begins a whole world of memories and secrets flooding back into the narrator’s mother’s life and into the narrator’s life for the first time. Edie, our main character, is at once curious about this letter from the past. It is a letter from the woman who took Edie’s mother in as an evacuee during part of WWII. Edie’s mother stayed with this woman, Juniper Blythe, and her two significantly older twin sisters for over a year. Did I mention that the sister’s lived in an old family castle named Milderhurst? Well they do and the house is just overflowing with secrets.

Although Ms. Morton has already written two books focused around old English country estates the stories couldn’t be more different. All three of these books are absolute gems in themselves and all deserve to be read.

In the meantime, there’s an unusual video to make you even more curious about Kate’s next book. -Ellen

The Distant Hours by Kate Morton from Pan Macmillan on Vimeo.

The Distant Hours was released in November of 2010.

The Delta Blues Museum: Mississippi State of Blues by Ken Murphy and Scott Barretta

By John

On September 27, 2010

In Blues

In 1941, John Work and Alan Lomax made the first recordings of Muddy Waters (i.e., McKinley Morganfield) on Stovall Plantation outside of Clarksdale. The site of Muddy’s cabin is marked by a blues trail marker and a holy place to tip your glass and toast something very special.

Inside The Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale rests the actual cabin of Muddy while he lived on Stovall. It’s decorated with Muddy (himself in wax) and cool Muddy-ana.

The Delta Blues Museum has accumulated a broad array of blues artifacts in a very comfortable setting. Music dress suits from performances, instruments, photos and blues history abound in this wonderful place to spend an afternoon. Our pal, Shelley, has done a fine job of making this museum alive and comfortable.

The Delta Blues Museum is not just about artifacts of the past but the home of the today’s blues. The well-designed music stage hosts music events and the Sunflower Music Festival in August as the blues of 2010 lives on.

Click here to read about the studies of John Work and his notes and photographs of Muddy Waters during the 1940s.

The New Rules of Marketing & PR

By John

On September 26, 2010

In Business/Economy

The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media , Blogs, News Releases, Online Video, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly by David Meerman Scott

John Wiley 2010 (2nd revised edition)

Lemuria ends our 35th year of business. As this year ends, we have been hammered by the recession for at least 25 months. As a result of a tough business climate, I have returned to reading more business books to help me reflect and be more creative.

The one thing that I am convinced of is that the old ways of retail merchandising will not work anymore. The book retail world will be something very different in the near future (as will most forms of business). My struggle is to adapt Lemuria so it can be ready to prosper as the recession weakens and a new reality for opportunity begins.

David Scott’s book has opened my mind to explore extensive virtual contact with my customers. Lemuria has taken ideas generated from New Rules in using our blog to add value to those who follow our work. We hope you feel more of a part of our bookstore by reading our blog and being informed through Facebook and Tweets when you cannot make it to the store. We hope our sharing through these mediums speak to you and make you want to be our customer virtually and physically.

New Rules is about representing your work and knowledge by sharing information. It’s an opportunity to let people know what has been meaningful about your efforts. It’s also about creating new ways to be more open about your services and how they compare to the competition.

If you find yourself puzzled by the new business challenge of our times, David Scott is rolling the dice with his New Rules ideas. We have only so much energy and money to use, however, we know we need to do things differently.

Reading David’s New Rules could help you light a spark on finding a new successful approach.

The Complete Book of Garlic by Ted Jordan Meredith

By admin

On September 25, 2010

In Gardening

A few years ago my fiancé decided to try his green thumb on garlic. I grew up with a garden but my parents never grew garlic. I had never seen my mother use even one garlic clove since my dad found it did not agree with him. Garlic in our garden? We had a lot to learn, but it has been very rewarding and a lot of fun.

You may not realize it but garlic grows really well in Mississippi. It is a winter crop and we plant ours between October and January—though usually closer to October. It can tolerate very cold temperatures, and it did magnificently last winter when Jackson experienced lows in the teens.

A couple of years ago I found The Complete Book of Garlic by Ted Jordan Meredith. With the growing advice from Meredith, our garlic crop increased greatly in quality. This is a book that could be used by a very experienced garlic grower or a complete novice. Though there is copious and dense information, it is not too difficult to parse out the information needed for your situation. You will also find the most beautiful photographs and drawings of the garlic plant.

2010 Summer Garlic Harvest

Besides information on cultivation and varieties of garlic, Meredith also explains the natural history of garlic and its culinary uses over time. Particularly interesting to me were the chapters on therapeutic benefits and the preservation of allicin—the key component with all of the health benefits (lower cholesterol, a natural antibiotic, aphrodisiac qualities).

So we have become better growers but we have also broadened our cooking experience. Perhaps the most exciting experience was making roasted garlic soup. I used ten, yes ten bulbs, of garlic in one small pot of soup. It was divine, but thank goodness we were eating this alone at home. As you cook with garlic, you will learn more about the taste of garlic and will adjust how much fresh garlic you like to use.

The recipe I used is from Emeril Lagasse’s new cookbook Farm to Fork. I have to warn you about the soup. You may experience an array of sensations.

This Time We Win — James S. Robbins

By Former Lemurians

On September 24, 2010

In War

Since reading Matterhorn I’ve caught myself flipping through every Vietnam book that comes in to the store. Some are classics like Michael Herr’s Dispatches or Malcolm McConnell’s Into the Mouth of the Cat, and there are an awful lot of less-than-classic books rehashing the same material. But James S. Robbins’ new book This Time We Win made me stop and read for a few minutes while I was working.

The full title, This Time We Win: Revisiting the Tet Offensive, reveals the focus of the book. The series of surprise North Vietnamese offensives that began in late January 1968 challenged the American military opinion that the Communist forces were incapable of launching a massive, coordinated attack. U.S. intelligence, interpreting enemy actions by the standards applied to American military forces, had judged the likelihood of a coordinated attack according to the relative strength of the North Vietnamese forces, rather than according to the apparent intentions of the North Vietnamese leadership.

The element of surprise couldn’t prevent massive losses for the North Vietnamese (it is estimated that some 45,000 were lost out of the attacking force of 80,000), and in the aftermath of the initial attacks, it became clearer to U.S. intelligence that the Tet Offensive was a last-ditch effort to maximize the remaining North Vietnamese military strength, and given the crippling losses inflicted on the attacking forces, there was a real possibility of military victory for the American and South Vietnamese forces. Robbins challenges the established interpretation of these events — that the American media and public, jaded by premature predictions of success, saw the Tet Offensive as just the latest and worst example in a long pattern of being lied to by military leadership, and in the critical moment of the war, media pressure was applied to stop a request for more American troops. Instead, Robbins argues that the failure ultimately was not the disillusionment of the American public, but the lack of clear policy and political will to follow the path to victory. The North Vietnamese leadership had pushed in all their chips, and won their gamble, not because of success on the field of battle, but because the demonstration of their utter and final committment to the war destroyed resolve within American political leadership.

Robbins covers this materal adeptly, linking the events overseas with the media and political reactions to form a clear narrative. Most interestingly, though, is not just his identification of this mechanism of military defeat, but how he boils it down to the component parts and applies it to other historical and contemporary events, with a particular focus on the disconnect between how Western military forces have approached the War on Terror and how insurgent forces now tailor their military efforts to induce a reluctant and wavering response from those who oppose them.

After standing for 10 minutes in the back room, flipping through This Time We Win and reading bits and pieces, I realized it was a book headed for the top of my reading pile. Come take a look at it and see if you have the same reaction.

The North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic: State of Blues by Ken Murphy and Scott Barretta

By Former Lemurians

On September 24, 2010

In Blues

For the past four years around the first of June a question forms on many mouths: “Are you going to The Picnic?”

The most common answer: “Yep!”

We had all been listening to R.L Burnside, Junior Kimbrough and Othar Turner for years and then the rest of the world caught up with us. These gentlemen have all passed away but they passed their talents on to the younger generation and even taught some friends a thing or two. Lucky for us! My husband, Steve,went to The Picnic the first year in 2006 and came home with some great tales of music and mayhem so I marked my calendar for 2007. We have enjoyed ourselves ever since, and in fact, The Picnic at Kenny Brown’s farm was part of our honeymoon in 2009! How many people do you know can say they honeymooned in Potts Camp, Mississippi?

Click here to see all of our blogs on Mississippi State of Blues.

Ken Murphy and Scott Barretta will be signing at Lemuria on Thursday, November 11th.

Reserve your copy online or call the bookstore 601/800.366.7619.

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Year: 2010 (Page 14 of 45)

Lemuria Reads Mississippians: Beth Ann Fennelly and Tom Franklin

Ninth Ward by Jewell Parker Rhodes

The Story behind the Pick: Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin

Curtis Wilkie’s The Fall of the House of Zeus: Patterson & Balducci Desperate for the Biden Name

The Distant Hours by Kate Morton

The Delta Blues Museum: Mississippi State of Blues by Ken Murphy and Scott Barretta

The New Rules of Marketing & PR

The Complete Book of Garlic by Ted Jordan Meredith

This Time We Win — James S. Robbins

The North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic: State of Blues by Ken Murphy and Scott Barretta

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