Lemuria – Page 13 – Lemuria Books

Author: Lemuria (Page 13 of 16)

As you may remember from John’s story about “how all this Damned stuff came about,” Zita was our long-time Palahniuk reader currently on staff at Lemuria. So the rest of us are trying to get our Palahniuk education, John’s been working really hard on it. He just finished reading an advanced copy of Damned. Here are his thoughts:

It seems the more I try to learn about the work of Chuck Palahniuk, the more scrambled I become.

My thoughts from reading Chuck’s work becomes mixed up with flashing insights about the world around me. The author projects an onslaught of ideas to the reader generating creativity mixed with the uncomfortable.

Trying to grasp the truth of Chuck, as a reader, I’m struck by his skill to observe the world. His work challenges us to question our own egotistical ideals and desires. Through his keen eye for observation and his ability to translate what he sees into fiction, we seem not only to understand but identify with aspects of his flawed characters.

Chuck’s ability to relate details that cause association to character or situation is uncanny and sneaks up on the reader. We experience details of experience even when we don’t want to. It is this skill he seems to have honed through his personal reading and his ability to observe without judgment. He seems to challenge the reader about their beliefs without telling them what to believe in.

Some readers may feel Chuck characters are too bleak or dark, such as Maddy’s gang from Damned, running around Hell like Quantrill’s gang of Jesse, Cole and Bloody Bill did through Kansas. Maddy’s wild bunch rouses up fairy tales of mischief in the underworld or in our own world, the reader. When you gang up in Hell with the worst of our lot, what as a character, have you got to lose? At this point, in Hell, the bottom of the barrel is when truth begins to emerge.

Obviously, Chuck has looked hard into his mirror. Through his writing we look into ourselves, closer up, even while we fight the discomfort. Reading Chuck makes us see the world differently and changes our observations about how we fit into it. We emerge from the combine efforts of (author/reader) with enlarged perspectives.

On Thursday, October 20, 2011, Lemuria with our collaborative (or gang) of good folks come together to throw down for Chuck Palahniuk’s introduction to Jackson. This evening is extra special for Lemuria since October 20, 1975 was Lemuria’s first day to sell books. We end our 36th year celebrating writing and reading.

From now until October 20th, I leave you, Jackson readers, with this concept to pause and reflect on:

Social commentary is the act of rebelling against an individual, or a group of people by rhetorical means. This is most often done with the idea of implementing or promoting change by informing the general populace about a given problem and appealing to people’s sense of justice.

JX//RX

* * *

cpcp

Chuck Palahniuk’s Damned Book Night Poster

By Lemuria

On September 1, 2011

In Newsworthy

Drop by the store if you would like one of the these posters to hang up.

cpcp

Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl! by Sandra Beasley

By Lemuria

On July 27, 2011

In Biography/Memoir

Sandra Beasley has had severe allergies to certain foods her entire life. When butter is deadly and eggs can make your throat swell shut, cupcakes and other joys of childhood are out of the question—and so Sandra’s mother used to warn guests against a toxic, frosting-tinged kiss with “Don’t kill the birthday girl!”

Now an award-winning poet, essayist, and editor, Sandra has written a captivating memoir about a subject that has only been addressed in either medical guides or recipe books: a cultural history and sociological study of food allergies, melded with her own humorous and sometimes heartbreaking experiences.

From her short-lived gig as a restaurant reviewer to the dates that ended with trips to the emergency room, Sandra writes with verve and style about the struggle of a modern young woman to come to terms with a potentially deadly disorder.

Join us this evening at 5.00 for a signing and reading with Sandra Beasley!

Civil Rights History from the Ground Up by Emilye Crosby

By Lemuria

On July 11, 2011

In Civil Rights

The Civil Rights Movement began when Rosa Parks, a middle-aged seamstress who was simply tired after a long day at work, refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. The ensuing bus boycott lifted a young minister, Martin Luther King Jr., to become the leader of a movement to gain civil rights for southern blacks. Using the philosophical principles of non-violence he had learned from Gandhi, King led a series of large-scale marches and protest campaigns, including the historic March on Washington during which he gave his stirring “I Have a Dream” speech. With the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of the following year, the movement finally achieved its goal of securing racial equality in the South.

This popular version of the Civil Rights Movement, enshrined in public memory and school curriculum around the country, has come under attack by a new generation of historians who have sought to add greater complexity to the heroic story of the civil rights struggle. In Civil Rights History from the Ground Up: Local Struggles, a National Movement, Emilye Crosby has compiled a series of essays from this group of revisionist scholars who argue that the civil rights movement has been misunderstood by most Americans.

While not questioning the importance of national leaders like King, they have delved deeper to see how the movement played out in the various counties across the South. These historians argue, quite persuasively, that this local perspective reveals the flaws and simplicity of the popular narrative of the movement.

For example, take the notion of non-violence, that most sacred principle of King and his followers. In her essay “It Wasn’t the Wild West,” Crosby points out that most African Americans in the South did not subscribe to the philosophical principles of Gandhi, but rather used non-violence as a tactic, if at all, while always reserving the right to defend themselves against white violence. In places like rural Mississippi, gun ownership was common among blacks and whites, and advancements in civil rights were always played out against this mutually understood fact.

Perhaps the best argument about the poverty of our public understanding of the Civil Rights Movement comes in Jeanne Theoharis’ essay about Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King. These two iconic figures, who died just a few months apart in 2005 and 2006, received unprecedented public memorials. But in both cases, most of their careers were ignored in the numerous tributes and eulogies.

In popular memory, Parks was just a tired woman who did not want to give up her seat; in reality she was a long-standing activist, who had been trained at the Highlander Folk School and whose commitment to racial justice guided her life and career until her death.

Coretta Scott King was not simply a dutiful wife, but rather was a longtime peace activist who pushed her husband to come out against the Vietnam War. While she ended her own autobiography with her husband’s death, Coretta spent the next four decades continuing to fight against injustice and war. When looked at closely, the careers of these celebrated women are far more compelling that the bit parts they are given in the civil rights narrative.

Also, as these scholars show, the civil rights timeline is all wrong. Instead of the movement essentially ending with the landmark legislation passed in 1964 and ’65, in many places, the struggle for freedom was just getting started then. Both Crosby and J. Todd Moye show that public challenges to white supremacy only begin in places like Claiborne and Sunflower County, Mississippi after President Johnson signs the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. It was all well and good for congress and the president to pass these laws, but it was up to what John Dittmer calls “local people” to ensure that they would be enforced in the rural parts of the Deep South.

Also, these scholars argue that the movement did not end in the 1960s, or even the 1970s. To them, the struggle for racial justice continues today, even in an era where Barack Obama was elected president. As one learns from this book, don’t just look at the top, but examine the counties and towns across the country, where the wide disparities in income and education between blacks and whites continue.

In the end, Crosby and her colleagues seek to change the way the civil rights movement is taught and understood in America. Crosby points to the seminal PBS documentary “Eyes on the Prize” as an example of how to incorporate local people and their stories into the history of the movement. Like this documentary series, Crosby and her colleagues seek to reach out beyond the ivory tower and reshape the popular narrative with the local stories they have gathered.

To this end, Civil Rights History From the Ground Up is a good start. Its essays, both engaging and readable, challenge the reader to rethink their assumptions about the movement and to understand that the story is much more complicated and interesting that they ever imagined.

Join us Tuesday evening at 5.30 for a visit with Emilye Crosby, author of Civil Rights History from the Ground Up.

Thank you to Dr. Stuart Rockoff for kindly sharing his review with Lemuria Blog. He currently serves as the Vice-President of the Southern Jewish Historical Society and is working on a general history of Jewish life in the South.

The sight and scent of Jackson, Mississippi: A Guest Blog from Jason Goodwin

By Lemuria

On April 5, 2011

In Mystery

I am much looking forward to bringing my 17-year-old son on the US book tour for An Evil Eye in April – he’s never been to America, but he plays guitar and the name Robert Johnson means something very good to him.

We’ll be visiting a range of fantastic independent bookstores across the south and west, with Lemuria as my very first gig, talking about the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, crime thrillers and food, I hope.

Now, the Telegraph newspaper in the UK has asked me to keep a travel blog on its pages, kicking off with a print piece on detectives and travel, and I’d really appreciate the help of you blog readers here.

Back in the mists of time, I wrote travel books – one, in fact, about walking across Europe to Istanbul – but I believe that it’s in crime novels that some of the best ‘travel’ writing is being done these days. I mean, a trip to Venice is much enhanced by following Donna Leon’s Brunetti through the watery streets, just as London will remain, for generations to come, the city of fogs and rattling horse-drawn cabs depicted in Sherlock Holmes. And when James Lee Burke gets going on Louisiana, I smell the swamp – don’t you?

So I want some tips from you guys – who, in your opinion, really captures the scents and sights, not to mention the seamy underbelly, of some of the places I’m set to visit on this compendious book tour? Let’s see: Jackson? Alabama. New Orleans. Austin, Texas – does Austin have a fictional crime fighter I should know about? Houston?

And who’s the go-to crime writer for Arizona? I can do Raymond Chandler for LA, obviously; less obvious to me is San Diego. Give me a few top tips for San Francisco, too: who really puts the Bay Area on the page? We wind up in Portland, Oregon. Is there a murder mystery I don’t know of, set in the city, or the state?

It’s a parlor game, really: try it, and drop me a line if you can. You can find me at jsn.goodwin@gmail.com and all suggestions are welcome. I also blog at thebellinicard.wordpress.com

If the writer you propose is published in the UK, so much the better – but let’s leave no stone unturned here!

Maybe we can blast somebody really good across the Atlantic…

Lemuria is where the US Magic Carpet Tour for April 2011 is kicking off.
I’ll be there on Wednesday, April 6th at 5:00 pm for reading and talking and signing. Come along – and send your friends, too!

-Jason Goodwin

We have a winner

By Lemuria

On March 18, 2011

In Newsworthy

We have a winner for our Grisham contest:

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

Vicky Myers has won with her guess of 75,001.

The runner-up was Bethany Thompson with a guess of 84,444.

The actual number of books signed at Lemuria–figured by John Grisham–is 79,000.

The Prize Pot:

A uniquely signed first edition of The Confession
A signed poster for The Confession
A bottle of Cathead Vodka
A signed first edition of The King of Torts
A limited signed edition of The Chamber.
A signed first edition of The Painted House
A signed first edition of The Bleachers
A signed first edition of The Runaway Jury

Thanks to everyone who participated!

The Eleven Questions John Grisham Has Never Been Asked Before: Part 5

By Lemuria

On March 14, 2011

In Newsworthy

The last public signing at Lemuria, The Chamber in 1994: “You want me to do what?”

Back in November, we started a series of interview questions with John Grisham. He had just been here to privately sign a great number of copies of The Confession. Instead of us coming up with the questions, he agreed to write and answer his own questions as we did not want to ask the same questions everybody else was asking him.

This last part of the series answers a question many people wonder about.

What was your weirdest experience at Lemuria?

John Grisham: There are two. A young mother asked me to autograph her baby’s diaper. I did, and I’ve never believed it was fresh. And a very strange lady once asked me to autograph a book to Delores, her best friend, who had died the week before. I did so quickly.

And your most surprising experience?

John Grisham: Years ago, before I dreamed of getting published, and before Lemuria moved to Banner Hall, I was leaving the store one day and recognized Eudora Welty as she was entering. I stopped her, introduced myself, offered some drivel about how much I enjoyed her work. She was grateful. I still regret the intrusion.

Now for some more fun–We also started a contest in November with this question:

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

We promised you a prize pot for the guess that is closest to the actual number as calculated by John Grisham. It includes:

A uniquely signed first edition of The Confession

A signed poster for The Confession

A bottle of Cathead Vodka

A signed first edition of The King of Torts

(And, now John Evans has added these items, after having time to rummage through storage for more Grisham treats.)

A limited signed edition of The Chamber.

A signed first edition of The Painted House

A signed first edition of The Bleachers

A signed first edition of The Runaway Jury

The winner will be announced Friday, March 18th.

Click here to add your guess. (One guess per person please.)

***

Here’s a recap of the John Grisham Interview Series.

Part 2: Mississippi Politics

Part 3: Book Collecting

Part 4: What’s next?

An Introduction to Ghost Light by Joseph O’Connor

By Lemuria

On February 16, 2011

In Foreign Fiction

On a Saturday night, when I was a teenager in 1970s Ireland, my pals and I would go to the school-kids’ disco at the Presentation College, Glasthule. ‘Prez’, as it was known, was fairly grimy at the time, but fantastically exciting, too. Deep Purple were in vogue. The girls wore cheesecloth and denim. When Status Quo were played, the air would be filled with swirling dandruff as we head-banged and thrashed air guitars. The climax of the evening was always Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’, and if you hadn’t persuaded someone to slow-dance with you before that song sped up, the consensus was that you were going home alone. And most Saturday nights, that’s what happened to me. Tongue-tied, nervous, I faced the long road home. But still, there was a love story in Glasthule.

My walk home would take me past the old Victorian house where the great writer John Synge and his widowed mother had endured their last years, a house that appears several times in Ghost Light. As a child, I passed it often, was faintly afraid of it, often wondered about the stories it had seen. On a wintry night it could be forbidding as the Bates Motel, or as Wuthering Heights in a rainstorm. But on a moonlit summer evening in that coast-town of seagulls and steeples, a strange beauty seemed to glitter from its windows.

Molly Allgood by John B. Yeats

My late mother, a great reader, had often told me the strangest story of all: how in the last years of Synge’s life, this reticent, broken genius, the son of a Protestant land-owning family, had fallen tempestuously in love with a Catholic girl from the inner city of Dublin, a young actress called Molly Allgood. Molly had been an apprentice dressmaker at one point in her teens. My mother, too, had trained as a dress-designer. Molly’s stage name was ‘Maire O’Neill’, my grandmother’s surname. These tiny connections, and other ones, kept the story burning long in my mind. But the main thing that fuelled it was the memory of lonely Saturday nights, when I’d walk past that house and feel its ghosts gazing out at me, every bit as friendless as I was.

A couple of years ago, I began writing this novel inspired by Molly Allgood and Synge. I started with the uncertainty most novelists have at the outset. You don’t know if your story is going to work at all. What tense should it be written in? Who should be the narrator? Every book needs to have a style, its own unique voice, and to find it can be gruelingly frustrating. But somehow, over time, through dozens of drafts, I came to see that this story needed to be simple, focused closely on Molly. She began to loom up at me from the phantoms of dead drafts, as funny and flirtatious as I had imagined her in my teens. I suppose I learnt to stand out of her way, to let her lead me into the story of Ghost Light. I follow her through a day in the 1950s in London, when the past comes back to an elderly Irish actress who was once the beautiful muse of a genius.

William Butler Yeats

To write fiction based on real people and those they loved is a morally ambiguous enterprise, to say the least. Ghost Light is a work of the imagination, frequently taking immense liberties with fact. The experiences and personalities of the real Molly and Synge differed from those of my characters in numerous ways. Yeats and Lady Gregory and Sean O’Casey appear in the book too, no doubt in forms some biographers won’t like. Then again, these giants often said they had fanned their fictions from the sparks of real life, renaming the people who had inspired their stories. The practice was sometimes a camouflage, sometimes a claim of authenticity. It was an option I considered carefully but decided against in the end, and so I dare to ask the forgiveness of these noble ghosts of world literature for not changing the names of the innocent.

To finish a book is an ambiguous feeling too. You have worked so long and hard on it, you know its every line and comma. In the final stages of editing, you dream about it. And then suddenly, the day is coming when it must go out into the world. You won’t be there to hold its hand, to reason away its deficiencies, to explain it to those who will encounter it. There is a kind of joy in finishing, but there is fear and apprehensiveness too. You want the book to find friends who will meet it halfway. Perhaps it’s similar to what a parent feels when a child leaves the house. This day was always coming; it’s what everything was building towards; but there is anxiety in the mix, a sense of encroaching realities, and if I am honest, there is even a touch of sadness. You come to know your characters so well; everything about them. Things you’ll never know about your spouse or your closest friend, you know about a person you have created. To see her walk away, into the great, wide world, is to watch a little piece of your self take its chances. But that’s what a novel is for: to offer itself to the reader. I hope you find something in it that speaks to you.

This essay first appeared on Joseph O’Connor’s official website. There you can find material for book clubs, reviews, video, book tour information, and much more.

Lemuria is one of nine stops on Joseph O’Connor’s U.S. tour for Ghost Light. He will be signing at 5:00 and reading at 5:30 on Friday, February 18th.

The signing and reading will take place at our Dot Com events building.

Ya’lls Blues will start playing music at 5:00. Come on over for a beer and a relaxing evening on the deck.

Also see Nan’s blog on Ghost Light.

Ghost Light by Joseph O’Connor (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2011)

Martini Soup

By Lemuria

On January 26, 2011

In Newsworthy

Hey Guys–

Since girls and girl reading selections now dominate the fiction room, we guy Lemurians have to decided to launch our certified guy reading club monthly selection. Suggestions will be picked only by the male Lemurians (now Mark, Joe and John). Each month one of us will pick a favorite to feature, with the hope of providing a good fun reading experience.

Our monthly guy book fix will be called Martini Soup. We hope as you read our list, your stew pot will be full of some good meaty reading. Also, we suggest these fine books to be read with a stiff martini (straight up or on the rocks) by your side, and of course, Cathead vodka to be the beverage of choice.

Without question, Jim Harrison is our first author of choice. Our baptism fiction is his 1978 novella Revenge included in his immortal Legends of the Fall. What more can I say to kick this club off, but–

“Revenge is a dish better served cold.”

-Old Sicilian adage

To read or reread is our proposition. While following our club, find new jewels or revisit old favorites. John picked first, Joe and Mark will follow and then the list will grow as it will. We welcome your suggestions and comments. Let’s have some fun.

P.S. We welcome you gals to read along if you like stiff drinks while you read.

-John

This link will lead you to all of our editions of Legends at Lemuria. The one pictured above is a first edition signed (1979). To get his memorable voice in mind, enjoy the audio file of Jim Harrison reading from The Beast God Forgot to Invent and a poem, “In the Old Days,” at Lemuria in 2000.

Bookstore Keys: The Changing Book Industry

By Lemuria

On January 11, 2011

In Newsworthy

With the widespread use of e-books, the book business is in a state of tremendous change. Authors, professionals in the publishing industry, book sellers, independent bookstore owners, CEOs of the big bookstore chains, and readers have all been left with an abundance of questions as we go through this exciting paradigm shift.

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.

The brick and mortar bookstore is being challenged like never before. What will bookstores that sell e-readers do with all the square footage? The marketing emphasis is on the e-book, no longer the physical book. It seems a major overhaul is overdue for the big box bookstores.

How do authors react to the e-book? Seth Godin, a Lemuria favorite, says his next book will only exist in e-format. Do all authors only want to read and publish books this way? We don’t think so. Authors also feel the financial pinch of the e-book. While many unknown writers may have a better chance to get published, established authors are seeing a fraction of the advances they typically received. One has to ask how does this influences the quality and respect for literature. Will authors rally to preserve bookstores?

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?

Will all these changes make readership grow? As the demand of maximizing our reading time increases, will these changes add more value to our lives?

This time is very exciting for our industry. Change is now. Lemuria has the opportunity to redefine itself to you, our customer. As the spring unfolds, we will be blogging our take on all things concerning book selling.

We want you, our readers, to stay informed and have the ability to voice your concerns and questions. We also invite authors, publishers and their reps, editors, anyone who has a stake as changes unfold to follow-up with any comments.

The Bookstore Key Series on Changes in the Book Industry

Finding “Deep Time” in a Bookstore (March 8th) Reading The New Rules of Retail by Lewis & Dart (March 3) The Future Price of the Physical Book (Feb 18) Borders Declares Bankruptcy (Feb 16) How Great Things Happen at Lemuria (Feb 8th) The Jackson Area Book Market (Jan 25) What’s in Store for Local Bookselling Markets? (Jan 18) Selling Books Is a People Business (Jan 14) A Shift in Southern Bookselling? (Jan 13) The Changing Book Industry (Jan 11)

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Author: Lemuria (Page 13 of 16)

Reading Chuck Palahniuk: From discomfort to enlarged perspectives

Chuck Palahniuk’s Damned Book Night Poster

Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl! by Sandra Beasley

Civil Rights History from the Ground Up by Emilye Crosby

The sight and scent of Jackson, Mississippi: A Guest Blog from Jason Goodwin

We have a winner

The Eleven Questions John Grisham Has Never Been Asked Before: Part 5

An Introduction to Ghost Light by Joseph O’Connor

Martini Soup

Bookstore Keys: The Changing Book Industry

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