2010 – Page 18 – Lemuria Books

Year: 2010 (Page 18 of 45)

Lemuria Reads Mississippians: Jerry Rice

On September 6, 2010

On January 22, 1989 I learned one of those important “how to be a grown-up” lessons. It was the night of Super Bowl XXIII and I was 13-years-old. I had picked the Bengals because, as a thirteen-year-old, I thought the red tiger uniforms were cool. They also had a quarterback named Boomer and another guy named Ickey.

I didn’t grow up in Mississippi and didn’t know about “world” or “The Satellite Express” or that Jerry Rice had managed to be a Heisman trophy candidate coming out of little Mississippi Valley State.

Growing up in Knoxville, Tennessee I didn’t even know who Joe Montana and Jerry Rice were before that night, but after a two touchdown fourth quarter and an MVP trophy for Jerry Rice I was a fan. In fact . . . I think that was the night I became a football fan. And (ask my wife) I really, really like football.

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.

xxxx

Bananas for Ape House

By Former Lemurians

On September 5, 2010

In Fiction

I was very excited when I heard that Sara Gruen had a new novel coming out this fall. I loved Water for Elephants and I know that many of you did also. I began to read some of the reviews coming out about Ape House and they were very mixed…some loved it others hated it. Being a bookseller as long as I have been I knew that they only way to know about this book was to read it myself. Last week I got my chance because I got an advance copy from my lovely reps from Random House. I went home on Thursday, ate some dinner and started reading and I finished Ape House on Friday! I thoroughly enjoyed myself while reading this book. Do I think that everyone that loved Water for Elephants will love Ape House? No, they are very different novels but I do think that everyone should give it a chance.

This is the story of a family of Bonobo Apes. Sam, Bonzi, Lola, Mbongo, Jelani and Makena are part of an experiment to study their capability to have relationships with each other and humans. In fact they have been taught American Sign Language and can communicate with Isabel, a scientist at the Great Ape Language Lab. There is an explosion at the lab that injures Isabel and “liberates’ the apes. After she leaves the hospital Isabel begins her search for the apes and comes to find out they have been purchased by man who has started a reality show called Ape House. Isabel realizes that to save her “family” she must enlist the help of those she has never been able to fully connect with…her own kind, humans. She enlists the help of a lab assistant, a reporter, a vegan protestor and a ex-porn star with plans of her own.

This is an article I found with Sara Gruen about why she wrote Ape House:

Sara Gruen on Ape House

Right before I went on tour for Water for Elephants, my mother sent me an email about a place in Des Moines, Iowa, that was studying language acquisition and cognition in great apes. I had been fascinated by human-ape discourse ever since I first heard about Koko the gorilla (which was longer ago than I care to admit) so I spent close to a day poking around the Great Ape Trust’s Web site. I was doubly fascinated–not only with the work they’re doing, but also by the fact that there was an entire species of great ape I had never heard of. Although I had no idea what I was getting into, I was hooked.

During the course of my research for Ape House, I was fortunate enough to be invited to the Great Ape Trust–not that that didn’t take some doing. I was assigned masses of homework, including a trip to York University in Toronto for a crash course on linguistics. Even after I received the coveted invitation to the Trust, that didn’t necessarily mean I was going to get to meet the apes: that part was up to them. Like John, I tried to stack my odds by getting backpacks and filling them with everything I thought an ape might find fun or tasty–bouncy balls, fleece blankets, M&M’s, xylophones, Mr. Potato Heads, etc.–and then emailed the scientists, asking them to please let the apes know I was bringing “surprises.” At the end of my orientation with the humans, I asked, with some trepidation, whether the apes were going to let me come in. The response was that not only were they letting me come in, they were insisting.

The experience was astonishing–to this day I cannot think about it without getting goose bumps. You cannot have a two-way conversation with a great ape, or even just look one straight in the eye, close up, without coming away changed. I stayed until the end of the day, when I practically had to be dragged out, because I was having so much fun. I was told that the next day Panbanisha said to one of the scientists, “Where’s Sara? Build her nest. When’s she coming back?”

Most of the conversations between the bonobos and humans in Ape House are based on actual conversations with great apes, including Koko, Washoe, Booey, Kanzi, and Panbanisha. Many of the ape-based scenes in this book are also based on fact, although I have taken the fiction writer’s liberty of fudging names, dates, and places.

One of the places I did not disguise or rename is the Lola ya Bonobo sanctuary in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They take in orphaned infants, nurse them back to health, and when they’re ready, release them back into the jungle. This, combined with ongoing education of the local people, is one of the wild bonobos’ best hopes for survival.

One day, I’m going to be brave enough to visit Lola ya Bonobo. In the meantime, in response to Panbanisha’s question, I’m coming back soon. Very soon. I hope you have my nest ready!

Emeril brings the local flavor

By Former Lemurians

On September 4, 2010

In Cooking

by Kelly Pickerill

Growing up, my family’s culinary experiences were limited. Whether it was a sign of the times — I feel like bologna, instant mashed potatoes, fish sticks, toaster pastries, and other “convenience foods” had their heyday in the nineties, and my family took advantage of their kid-friendliness — or because when feeding four kids you’re bound to have to sacrifice quality for quantity, I don’t remember many made from scratch meals. Cakes always came out of a box, and peanut butter and jelly could often be found in the same jar.

Now that I’m grown and have a palate for food with more than one ingredient (it can even touch other foods on the plate!), I’ve also found myself wanting to experiment with more and more complicated (and usually more delicious) recipes. When I get a new cookbook, I read it from cover to cover, daydreaming about the tasty possibilities and poring over each photograph. Emeril Lagasse, renowned New Orleans chef, has a new cookbook out this summer, Farm to Fork. The cookbook is organized by the type of focal ingredient, and showcases Emeril’s love for local ingredients and fresh flavor. One of the first recipes to catch my eye was for a quiche, a food I don’t think I knew existed until adolescence. An egg pie? How does that work? Wonderfully, it turns out. This is Emeril’s take, simple yet spiked with blue cheese.

“Herbed Quiche with Blue Cheese”

Savory pie crust:

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
8 tablespoons (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
3 to 4 tablespoons ice water

1. Place the flour, salt, and pepper in the bowl of a food processor, and pulse to combine. Add the butter and process until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. While the machine is running, gradually drizzle in the water, processing until the dough comes together to form a ball.
2. Transfer the dough to a lightly floured surface and shape it into a flat disk. Wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate it for at least 1 hour or up to overnight. (The dough can be frozen for up to a month; thaw in the refrigerator before using.)

Pie filling:

6 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
2 ounces Maytag blue cheese, at room temperature
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
3 eggs
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons chopped fresh mixed herbs, such as parsley, thyme, tarragon, chives, and/or oregano

1. Preheat the oven to 400F
2. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the pie crust dough to 1/8-inch thickness to fit an 8-inch fluted tart pan. Fill the pan with the dough, easing the dough into the bottom and lightly pressing it against the sides. Trim off the excess dough.
3. Line the pastry shell with parchment paper, and fill it with ceramic pie weights or dried beans. Place the tart pan on a baking sheet, and bake for 9 minutes. Remove the baking sheet from the oven and set the tart pan on a wire rack to cool. Remove the parchment paper and the weights.
4. Reduce the oven temperature to 375F.
5. In a medium bowl, whisk together the cream cheese, blue cheese, and butter. Whisk in the eggs until well blended. Stir in the cream, milk, salt, pepper, and herbs. Pour the filling into the partially baked pie shell. Return the tart pan to the baking sheet and bake, rotating the quiche halfway through, until it is puffed and golden brown, 25 minutes. The quiche is done when a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.
6. Remove the tart pan from the baking sheet and set it on a wire rack to cool for at least 5 minutes before slicing. Serve hot, warm, or at room temperature.
6 to 8 servings

Lemuria Reads Mississippians: Natasha Trethewey

By admin

On September 4, 2010

In Southern Culture

I had always intended “to get to” Natasha Trethewey’s poetry, but when I saw that she had a new book coming out, that she was coming to Lemuria, and that she had been featured in Mississippians, there was no time to waste. To begin, I explored some of her poetry and ended up finding a book of Bellocq’s photography.

In the early 1900s, E. J. Bellocq photographed the prostitutes of of Storyville, the red-light district of New Orleans. Bellocq’s was largely unknown until the 1970s and many years later, in 2002, Trethewey published a collection of poetry inspired by these women and Bellocq’s photographs. The photographs can be painful to look at, but the viewer also recognizes the respect with which the photos were taken. Similarly, when reading Trethewey’s poetry, she leaves the reader the tenderness with which she writes.

I just finished reading Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Although I have been reading Trethewey’s work on a variety of subject matters, each piece leaves me with the care and tenderness she gives to the subject while never neglecting the hard truths of a situation. In reflecting on the possibilities that her family hopes lie ahead for her brother, Trethewey writes:

“There was still the possibility of a life he imagined–prosperous, stable, perhaps even emotionally rewarding, as it had been when he was first renovating houses. And it must have been in sight, reflected in the images of the “good life” plastered on casino billboards up and down Highway 49 to the beach: attractive people, in elegant clothes, laughing into cocktail glasses poised above plates of beautiful, abundant food. The casinos were among the first to recover, and they broadcast their message of affluence above the heads of people struggling to reconstruct their lives from remnants.” (page 92)

I will continue to read her work and no doubt we are proud she is a Mississippian. Natasha Trethewey will be at Lemuria this coming Wednesday, September 8th for a signing at 5:00, reading at 5:30.

See Nan’s blog on Beyond Katrina.

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.

xxxx

Holly Black: A Smart Chick!

By Former Lemurians

On September 3, 2010

In OZ: Young Adult Fiction

Holly Black is one of the authors who will be in Jackson on September 16th for the Smart Chicks Kick It Tour. She is well known for her collaboration with Tony Diterlizzi on the Spiderwick Chronicles, as well as her New York Times Bestselling series of Modern Faerie Tales. Her newest book, White Cat, is the start of a new young adult series entitled The Curse Workers.

The book begins with Cassel, the main character, waking up on the edge of the roof of his school dormitory. He was following a white cat he was sure had bitten out his tongue, but it turns out he was sleepwalking almost to his death. He’s had a hard past few years, what with his father’s death, his mom’s arrest after being caught conning a millionaire, and oh yeah, his best friend Lila’s murder – which he is pretty sure he did, although he has no idea why. So he has plenty of reasons to have bad dreams, but try telling that to the principal. On school probation because of liability, Cassel is forced to go back to living with his family, who, unlike himself, are curse workers. A curse worker can affect you just by touching you. Their work is illegal, so most workers end up working for the mob, influencing emotions, luck,dreams, memories, causing physical pain, and even death at the touch of a finger. After moving home, he realizes something is going on that no one will quite explain to him. He hears quiet family meetings downstairs that he is not asked to attend, his brother Barron drops out of law school, and his sister-in-law’s memories have been changed. To get to the bottom of this secret plot, Cassel must con his family into telling the truth.

Holly Black has crafted an intriguing story that had me guessing until the end. I thoroughly enjoyed it and can’t wait for the next book in the Curse Workers series or to meet her in person! This novel is great for boys and girls age 13 and up, so come on by and check it out!

Howlin’ Wolf: Mississippi State of Blues by Ken Murphy and Scott Barretta

By John

On September 3, 2010

In Blues

Last year about this time, I made a pilgrimage to West Point paying respects to an all-time hero, Howlin’ Wolf. I started listening to his music over 40 years ago, and to say his musical influence on me is huge is an understatement.

The Howlin’ Wolf Blues Museum is really a small room in size yet chock full of Wolf memorabilia. It is a fan’s paradise of Wolfana reverently displayed with gifts from Hubert Sumlin–Wolf’s longtime guitar player, and the lovable Willie King.

For me it’s hard not to think about the Wolf without hearing “Spoonful” in my mind. Going from Wolf’s version to Willie King’s and then back to the Wolf. Two greats gone from my life yet their music lives.

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.

jjj

swamplandia!

By Former Lemurians

On September 2, 2010

In Southern Fiction

back in december of 2007 i read an awesome little book of short stories titled st. lucy’s home for girls raised by wolves.

about a week ago when our random house reps were here for a sales call they met with all of us lemurians to share their big upcoming titles. one that i had my eye on was karen russell’s new novel, swamplandia!

i started reading swamplandia! a few days ago and am quite impressed. the story is based around a alligator wrestling family with its own island park in florida. the main character, ava is the youngest of three children. when the main attraction of the park, ava’s alligator wrestling mother, dies suddenly the park takes a turn for the worse. with no tourists to keep the park open the father takes long trips to the main land, the older sister becomes a spiritist and starts communicating with ghosts and the brother runs away to try to make money to keep the park out of debt.

and that’s all i’m going to tell you. you’re going to have to wait until february (when the book comes out) to find out what happens.

by Zita

Lemuria Reads Mississippians: Howlin’ Wolf

By John

On September 2, 2010

In Blues, Southern Culture

On April 12, 1973, at the New Orleans Jazz Festival, (my first jazz fest), I heard and saw 300 pounds of heavenly joy. Howlin’ Wolf, though ailing, worked his magic which still lives for me 37 years later. His gripping voice, primal and nasty, rocked my house. Wolf’s passion transferred his presence into my world and still moves me today.

His mystery still lives for me when I hear such greats as “Back Door Man,” “Evil,” “Smoke Stack Lighting” and the relentless “Red Rooster.”

Remembering April 12th, 1973, I’m surrounded by how important of an evening this was for me. I can say it was truly life-changing. Wolf’s stage presence was accentuated by other performances, my first for Como Drum and Fife Corp, The Mardi Gras Indians, Taj Mahal and Albert King, another immortal. It was a night of a lifetime.

The 15th Annual Howlin’ Wolf Memorial Blues Festival starts this Friday, Sept. 3rd. Click here for more details.

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.

xxxx

Moanin’ at Midnight by James Segrest and Mark Hoffman

By John

On September 1, 2010

In Blues

Moanin’ at Midnight: The Life and Times of Howlin’ Wolf

by James Segrest and Mark Hoffman

Pantheon (2004)

Howlin’ Wolf (Chester Arthur Burnett)–all six feet three inches and 300 pounds of him–is a god of the blues. Moanin’ is the first full length biography capturing this giant of American music.

From a hard childhood around West Point, Mississippi, Wolf emerged to become immortal, even expressing desire to play the blues on the moon. This landmark biography captures the times and influences upon this icon. In the 30s, as a young man he was playing next to Sonny Boy II, from whom he learned to play the harp and Robert Johnson.

In the early 50s Wolf hit Chicago, recording for Chess, and the world opened up. Working with Willie Dixon, and backed by Hubert Sumlin, Wolf developed a style of overwhelming intensity. His presence was created with a feral state of antics, crawling around on all fours, howling out masculinity. Women found him irresistible. It was music that would pitch a wang dang doodle and tear the house down.

Moanin’ at Midnight captures it all, helping us to understand how Wolf, Muddy, Sonny Boy, Little Water and a parade of others–led by Willie Dixon– defined electric blues for the world.

Howlin’ Wolf’s final performance was in Chicago with B. B. King in November of 1975. This larger than life giant passed away in January of 1976.

West Point, Mississippi now honors the Wolf this time of year with the “Howlin’ Wolf Memorial Blues Festival.”

Mississippi: State of Blues by Ken Murphy and Scott Barretta

By admin

On September 1, 2010

In Blues

How do you make a fabulous book on Mississippi blues? Get the well-known Mississippian photographer Ken Murphy to join forces with blues aficionado Scott Barretta.

You may know the work of Ken Murphy through his previous books, My South Coast Home and Mississippi. You may not know that it was sort of an accident that he became a photographer. An injury to his right index finger in a war game operation in Germany led to a reassignment with a hobby shop at a U.S. military base which led to his interest in photography. In 1986 Ken received a BFA degree in Narrative, Documentary and Editorial Photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York. To our good fortune, he landed back in Mississippi to capture the beauty and curiosity of our state.

Scott Barretta finds his professional home at University of Mississippi, but his love of the blues has taken him cross-country and over the ocean. Studying sociology and editing the oldest continuous blues publication–which happens to be in Sweden–gave Scott a sweeping view of the blues tradition and its fans. Though his work has taken him to various and sundry places, Scott is pleased to reside in the heart of the blues while researching and writing under The Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, the Mississippi Arts Commission, Mississippi Blues Commission and other organizations at the center of blues study and support. You can also listen to him on Highway 61 Radio.

While these two were doing great work on their own, John Evans somehow managed to get them together: “Ken’s photos flip-sided by Scott’s commentary, two creators coming together on the shape of Mississippi blues today” (“Forward” Mississippi: State of Blues).

Nothing can replace holding the book in your hands, but we’re going to be giving you a preview of this gorgeous book. The unexpected treat at the end is a list of blues festivals, clubs that regularly feature blues, and a list of museums and resources devoted to the blues.

So be on the lookout over the coming weeks. We’ll be posting our thoughts on State of Blues on our blog. Got your own Mississippi blues memory about one of Ken’s photos? Share it with us in the comments section. Howlin’ Wolf is gonna start us off tomorrow!

The book will go on sale in early November. Ken Murphy and Scott Barretta will be at Lemuria Thursday, November 11th for a Signing at Sunset with live music at the DotCom building. If that’s too early for you, there’s more live music and fun at Jackson’s Underground 119 starting at 8 o’clock. (Click here for directions.)

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

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

jjj

In 1986 Ken received a BFA degree in Narrative, Documentary and Editorial Photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology in

In 1986 Ken received a BFA degree in Narrative, Documentary and
Editorial Photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology in
Rochester, New York.

Rochester, New York.

Year: 2010 (Page 18 of 45)

Lemuria Reads Mississippians: Jerry Rice

Bananas for Ape House

Emeril brings the local flavor

Lemuria Reads Mississippians: Natasha Trethewey

Holly Black: A Smart Chick!

Howlin’ Wolf: Mississippi State of Blues by Ken Murphy and Scott Barretta

swamplandia!

Lemuria Reads Mississippians: Howlin’ Wolf

Moanin’ at Midnight by James Segrest and Mark Hoffman

Mississippi: State of Blues by Ken Murphy and Scott Barretta

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