2010 – Page 5 – Lemuria Books

Year: 2010 (Page 5 of 45)

Fairy Tale Appreciation, Part 2.

On November 23, 2010

Since quite a few of you were interested in my last fairy tale post (which you can read here), this post is here to let you know that I am still very much into fairy tales and have been collecting quite a few more since we last spoke of them.

As of late, my bedside table has been home to a veritable tower of books. (That’s not to say that I’m talented enough to read all of them at once, though I very much wish that I was.) Living in this book-tower are two books that I’m excited to let you know about right now in this very post, so without further ado….they are St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves and My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me.

St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell

You may remember St. Lucy’s from an earlier post by Zita. I believe she referenced it as “an awesome little book of short stories,” and that could not be closer to the truth. I recently gifted this book to a friend of mine, who in the middle of writing her honors thesis and finishing up all of the other requisite undergraduate work, found time to read a bit and said that the stories really stuck with her. Russell was named one of The New Yorker’s “Top 20 Under 40 Writers” this summer and with good reason. I personally wish that I could crawl into the world she has created—a world of sleep-away camps for “disordered dreamers” where one of the remedies is to fall asleep in a hot air balloon, alligator-wrestling theme parks hidden away in swamplands, and cities made of large, abandoned shells. I recently received an advance reading copy of Russell’s new novel Swamplandia! (happy early Christmas to me)and can hardly wait to get started on it.

My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me edited by Kate Bernheimer

This book is a fairy tale anthology, but what Kate Bernheimer has done is asked contemporary writers like Aimee Bender, Michael Cunningham, Neil Gaiman, and Joyce Carol Oates (the list of wonderful authors goes on and on) to take a fairy tale “classic” (think La Fontaine, the brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson) and write a new version or spin-off inspired by that classic. It’s a fun book to read, and since it’s an anthology, it’s easy to just pick up and read one story whenever the mood strikes.

Bernheimer is an Associate Professor of English and Writer in Residence at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette and has written several books of her own. She founded the Fairy Tale Review in 2005 and remains the editor. Check out her website here.

Gregory Maguire (author of Wicked) writes in the Foreword:

Let’s open the door to the green room and peek to see who is waiting. A bevy of beauties…an evanescence of sprites…an abundance of adversaries…a passel of princes…Maybe we should have brought that bubbly; but there’s something being served here more deeply inebriating than champagne. Hush.

What are some of your fairy-tale favorites? The last time I wrote about fairy tales I received some lovely suggestions, and I’d love to add more books to the soon-to-be-toppling-tower on my bedside table. -Kaycie

The Eleven Questions John Grisham Has Never Been Asked Before

By admin

On November 23, 2010

In Newsworthy

As John Grisham was signing many copies of his latest book for Lemuria, we all got to wondering how many he has signed over the years at Lemuria. So while Grisham signed, he and John Evans worked on the numbers. Using the list inside a copy of The Confession, Grisham figured it out by hand and has left that uniquely signed copy for the first person who comes up with the closest number.

Question: How many books has John Grisham signed for Lemuria bookstore since his debut novel, A Time to Kill?

The first to guess the amount closest to the number will win the signed copy of The Confession, a signed poster, and a bottle of Cathead vodka—Mississippi’s first legal distillery— signed by the distillers Austin Evans and Richard Patrick.

Stay tuned to the blog over the coming weeks: John Grisham will be answering 10 more of his own questions no one has ever asked him before. This first question will be answered at the end of Grisham’s question series.

All answers must be submitted as comments on this blog posting.

Question:

How many books has John Grisham signed for Lemuria bookstore since his debut novel, A Time to Kill?

The first person to guess closest to the number, figured by John Grisham himself, will win a signed copy of The Confession, a signed poster for The Confession, and a bottle of Cathead vodka—Mississippi’s first legal distillery— signed by the distillers Austin Evans and Richard Patrick.

The contest closes on Wednesday, December 15^th at 5:00 pm.

All answers must be submitted on our blog posting.

The Book of Leaves by Allen J. Coombes

By Former Lemurians

On November 22, 2010

In Nature

I have this thing with leaves and it’s kind of strange. It started two years ago when I was taking a few design classes and getting pretty arts-and-crafty at home. With the array of beautiful trees on the ole miss campus in Oxford, I began picking up more and more fallen leaves to and from class. I’m fascinated with leaves and the intrinsic design qualities they hold. It’s like each one is a little piece of symmetrical artwork. In a large way, they allow the trees different personalities. This leaf collecting became a problem when it ate up all my space. Delicate leaves that I didn’t want to crush were everywhere around my place. Leaves that I wanted to draw or paint on or epoxy. But after a while most of these leaves got crushed. This habit of leaf gathering has died down but not subsided. I’m sure springtime will be a different story.

With that in mind, you’ll understand why I found Allen J. Coombes’ The Book of Leaves so interesting. This “leaf-by-leaf guide to six hundred of the world’s great trees” is a great idea for anyone interested in the principles of design or those who love nature. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the layout, with each page containing an actual size leaf photo and easy-to-follow description of the trees species and history. This book may just have to be a present to myself this year!

-Peyton

Larry Brown featured in Sonny Brewer’s . . . Don’t Quit Your Day Job: Acclaimed Authors and the Day Jobs They Quit

By admin

On November 22, 2010

In Southern Fiction

Larry in the Square at Oxford; Photo by Hubert Worley

Larry Brown wrote a most earnest essay on his aspirations to be a writer. I am not sure if it has been published before, but Sonny Brewer has included in his new book, Don’t Quit Your Day Job: Aspiring Authors and the Day Jobs They Quit.

Reading Larry Brown’s essay, I got all teary eyed and it reminded me of why I love to read so much. The essay should be read in its entirety in one sitting, but enjoy this excerpt from a much loved writer whose impact on southern literature will not be forgotten.

“It took me a long time to understand what literature was, and why it was so hard to write, and what it could do to you once you understood it. For me, very simply it meant that I could meet people on the page who were as real as the people I knew in my life. They were real people, as far as I was concerned, not just characters. Even though they were only words on paper , they were as real to me as my wife and children. And when I saw that, it was like a curtain fell away from my eyes. I saw that the greatest rewards could be had from the printed page came from literature, and that to be able to write it was the highest form of writing.”

“All of my work comes out of Mississippi, out of the dirt roads and the woods and the fields I drive my truck by. The people who live in this land are the people I’ve known best throughout my life, and together with the country we live in, they form a vast well that will never run dry.” (57)

Editor Sonny Brewer will have a signing and reading for Don’t Quit Your Day Job on Wednesday, December 1st.

Click here to read an excerpt from Pat Conroy. And here to read one from John Grisham.

See a complete list of Larry Brown’s work on our website.

Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin

By Former Lemurians

On November 21, 2010

In Fiction

I have really had a hard time trying to figure out what to blog about this week. Every book that I am reading and liking it seems so is everyone else in the store–which ultimately means that there are a lot of people in the store with good and similar tastes. So while I was scanning my bookshelves I found a book that I really loved earlier this year and tried in vain to get people to read. Alice I Have Been is a historical fiction book about the real Alice in Wonderland!!! And if that doesn’t interest you than I am at a loss. Everyone loves Lewis Carroll’s classic and if you don’t I bet you are real hesitant to say so in most crowds. It is a staple in every library period!

Alice Liddell is her name and she was the daughter of the Dean of Christ Church at Oxford. She had free roam of those grounds with all that knowledge that surely must cloud the air there. So many students, some even princes, and professors to meet and befriend. Mr. Charles Dodgson aka Lewis Carroll was quite fond of the Liddell girls, especially Alice. He took them on boat rides in the pond, made up stories for them and often photographed them. FYI: Lewis Carroll was quite a fine photographer and I am willing to bet that most are familiar with his photographs of Alice and just don’t know the whole story about the photos.

But of course where there is a closeness between a small girl and a full grown man the rumors will start to materialize. So that is all I feel at liberty to say about this book without spoiling this great read. After I was finished with this book I went back and reread Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and became obsessed with everything about Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell.

Luckily shortly after I read this book I came upon a book about Lewis Carroll in the store with his books, The Mystery of Lewis Carroll. So of course I had to buy it and I went straight home and started to read it. So I truly wanted to do a research project on the whole subject after reading this book!

So I implore you to give into your flights of fancy, but also learn about a fun little snippet in literary history at the same time.

Check out some of the many beautiful editions of Alice in Wonderland.

-Ellen

The Search for Wondla by Tony DiTerlizzi

By Diane

On November 19, 2010

In OZ: Young Adult Fiction

Here is a good read from Tony Diterlizzi who wrote The Spiderwick Chronicles (with Holly Black), The Spider and the Fly (a picture book, Caldecott Honor winner) and the wonderful and delightful middle reader, Kenny and the Dragon. His illustrations are always awesome and The Search for Wondla is no exception. Once again he has come through with and exciting story about Eva Nine, a girl who had never been above ground until the age of 12 when a wicked huntsman destroys her underground home. With the aid of Diterlizzi’s illustrations, you can let your own imagination soar. Enjoy! (ages 10 and up)

The China Study, Loosely Interpreted

By Former Lemurians

On November 19, 2010

In Health

The China Study by T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D. and Thomas M. Campbell, II

You are what you eat. This is today’s topic. I am not a physician, not a nurse (even though I entered that course of study in trepidation and departed almost as quickly in greater trepidation. But I can practice what I preach and this is the sermon):

We Americans don’t eat right. We eat too many of the wrong kinds of calories. We eat too much meat. Meat is an acidic food. Too much acidic food creates a chain of events that looks a little like this: eat some part of a cow, say, while out to lunch with the kids at a burger joint, and during the course of its digestion (the cow), it is absorbed into the bloodstream which makes our blood and tissues more acidic. The body then attempts to neutralize the acid by pulling calcium from the bones, the bones have thus lost calcium. Over time, dem bones from head to (“the leg bone connected to the foot bone . . .Oh, hear the word of the Lord (you know the song)” to toe might just get weaker and weaker, leading to easier fracturing and osteopenia or osteoporosis.

Of course, if we exercise and eat right and have a positive outlook, then perhaps that won’t happen. Bear in mind that the bare bone facts about this weighty subject suggest that the exercise we do to strengthen our framework, must be weight bearing. That means you must do something standing up and moving forward (or backwards, if you prefer) on your weight bearing bones (all those that hold up something above them) while following your feet until they have moved you somewhere for an hour. Or you can garden on your knees and stand up to prune a tree then lean over to swat a mosquito while holding your gardening shears in your other hand and repeat these activities for an hour, at least. Swimming and biking are nice for your circulation and your muscles ( you probably won’t do either anyway, unless you look just fab in a bikini or biking shorts) but don’t count it as weight bearing.

If you eat right (and we haven’t gotten to RIGHT yet, but I’m saving that for another sermon. I’ll give a little hint: plant-based diet), you just may get to move forward into that most desired state of a happy, healthy life well into old age. Of course, remember the bare bones facts in paragraph 2–you must exercise. The China Study goes on to say that even though many of us may have genetic dispositions toward certain maladies, a plant based diet as opposed to a meat based diet can go a long way in preventing those genetic markers to materialize. And that’s great news for all of us. And if you have been confused about proper nutrition as we all have, then it is NOT TOO LATE. The body is a remarkable thing. Feed it right and it will give you high fives till those cows that we will no longer eat, come in.

To find out more about why this is true, read this book. Several smart, forward thinking, down to earth, bare bones doctors in metropolitan Jackson have been sending their patients into get this book, The China Study, from which this info was extrapolated and poured into this mustard seed blog. The exercise part (though covered in depth in the book, also) came from my longtime OB-GYN who has challenged me to reverse my lifelong bone loss through some vitamin D-3 supplementation while eating a spinach salad a day and walking for at least an hour while removing the gentle but sacred cow from my diet.

-Pat

I Curse the River of Time by Per Petterson

By Former Lemurians

On November 18, 2010

In Foreign Fiction

When I learned that Norwegian writer Per Petterson had written a new novel, I was so excited, for I just loved Out Stealing Horses, released in 2007. In fact, I liked it so much that I chose it for our book club to read and discuss for one of our meetings. It’s hard for me to believe that Petterson’s work always appears in translation since the language flows so beautifully that it seems to be written in our native tongue here in the United States. This, of course, speaks well for the ability of his translator, Charlotte Barslund who translates Scandinavian novels and plays. In fact, at the conclusion of this new title, information is included about the translation.

I Curse the River of Time, an unusual title for a novel, comes from the lyrics of a tune whose words are included within the novel’s pages, as are the lyrics of other songs throughout the novel. Written in a flashback structure, the novel should be read, in my opinion, in two or three readings, and not over a period of two or three weeks, as I did. It is short enough to be read in a few sittings. The problem with stretching it out over a longer period of time is that the reader can’t remember the flashback location, and with the locales being in Norway, the recognition of the cities is not as easy. (I tend to read four to five novels at the same time, and sometimes this can be the detriment of not being able to finish one in the period of time that would be advantageous.)

The main character, thirty-seven year old Arvid, experiences great anxiety due to many factors in his life: his impending divorce, his terminally ill mother, his inability to find a job which satisfies him, and his frustration with the current state of politics. (He has made a conscious decision to support Communism in the late 1980s.) That should be enough to stress out anyone, but add to this mix the fact that obviously there is a slight Oedipal complex at play which rears its head often in the limitless number of flashbacks involving his mother who seems to favor another of his many brothers. Suffice it to say that Arvid is discontented.

On page 186, Arvid’s self realization comes to the front as he admits:

“…..it suddenly dawned on me that what I had tried to do might not be possible: to leave behind the Arvid I had been up to this point in my life, to pull him up by his hair and then lower him into some other Arvid I still did not know, yes, with full conviction turn my back on the Arvid who was loved by those he loved the most, who greeted him and called him by pet names when he passed them in front of the house, the Arvid who got one hundred kroner notes from his mother when he was broke, but now had done what I had done and joined the “peuple” which really did not exist any more, but was an anachronism. I was a man out of time, or my character had a flaw, a crack in its foundation that would grow wider with each year.”

-Nan

Is that beautiful writing, or what? Take a look again at the length of that sentence and how smoothly it flows.

What I came away with after turning the last page, still stands for me today as I write: sad can be beautiful too. This is not a depressing book, but it is a sad one, but the way Petterson handles the character is with such beauty and craft that I was fulfilled as a reader to be a part of such a creative, well written novel. The reader has hope about Arvid and believes that he is not a lost soul forever, but is one slow to mature and deal with life’s challenges and problems.

It’s no wonder that Petterson won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the largest international prize for a work of fiction published in English for his previous novel Out Stealing Horses. The “New York Times” and “Time” also named this prior novel as a Best Book for 2007. Petterson is a master at his craft. He was born in Oslo to a working class family, and he still lives in Norway today. Readers who have not discovered Petterson yet are in for a treat.

P.S. In case any of you readers speak Norwegian, this book was published with the title: Jeg forbanner tidens elv by Oktober Forlag, Oslo, in 2008 and the English translation was first published in Great Britain by Harvill Secker, Random House Group, London, in 2010.

Lemuria Reads Mississippians: John Grisham

By John

On November 18, 2010

In Southern Culture

Around 20 years ago, John walked into Lemuria, introduced himself, and asked, “Do you want to help me work on my new book?” As easy of a guy to like as John Grisham is, it was a no-brainer for me to say, “Sure, let’s give it a go.”

As John was visiting Lemuria on Monday, signing his new thiller, The Confession, I’ve reflected on this friend’s kindness and willingness to support our bookstore. John is a book guy and he loves good books. He also has a passion for collecting literary first editions. Over the years, Lemuria has placed a few gems in his fine library.

The real fact is John Grisham’s enhancing support of Lemuria, more than any other author, has helped make Lemuria the bookstore that it is. Without his generosity, tough times would have forced change in our bookstore in ways we don’t want to think about. However, this author’s love and friendship have enabled us to maintain our efforts of desire to give our community the best bookstore we can.

I feel it is difficult to show thanks to John, perhaps our booksellers being the best they can be shows our thanks to John in a way he can appreciate. All of Lemuria says thank you very much, your support is greatly appreciated.

Jay-Z: Decoded

By Former Lemurians

On November 17, 2010

In Music

From the projects hustlin’ crack to the top of hip-hop to board room executive, Jay-Z has been around. For me, as a white boy who was raised in what felt like the heartbeat of the suburbs, I didn’t exactly grow up feeling like hip-hop was the voice of my experience in the world; but neither is Baroque polyphony and I can get down on Johann’s fugues all day long. Overtime I have nurtured a strong respect for the hip-hop phenomenon and the artists who define it.

In this fresh looking book Jay-Z tells his story and outlines a host of his songs with footnotes for clarification. One might say he: decodes them…But in all seriousness, so far, what I have read of the book it is very fascinating. Jay-Z has had the insight to be able communicate his experience with a person like me and know that there is power in that.

“Hip-hop had described poverty in the ghetto and painted pictures of violence and thug life, but I was interested in something a little different: the interior space of a young kid’s head, his psychology. Thirteen-year-old kids don’t wake up one day and say, ‘Okay, I just wanna sell drugs on my mother’s stoop, hustle on my block till I’m so hot niggas want to come look for me and start shooting out my mom’s living room windows.’ Trust me, no one wakes up in the morning and wants to do that. To tell the story of the kid with the gun without telling the story of why he has it is to tell a kind of lie.”

-John P.

Year: 2010 (Page 5 of 45)

Fairy Tale Appreciation, Part 2.

The Eleven Questions John Grisham Has Never Been Asked Before

The Book of Leaves by Allen J. Coombes

Larry Brown featured in Sonny Brewer’s . . . Don’t Quit Your Day Job: Acclaimed Authors and the Day Jobs They Quit

Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin

The Search for Wondla by Tony DiTerlizzi

The China Study, Loosely Interpreted

I Curse the River of Time by Per Petterson

Lemuria Reads Mississippians: John Grisham

Jay-Z: Decoded

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