The first time I read “And That’s Why You Should Learn to Pick Your Battles” I had one of those can’t-breathe-you-are-laughing-so-hard moments.  A friend had posted a link to this particular blog posting via Facebook. After reading it, I had to find out more about the author, Jenny Lawson aka The Bloggess. It just so happens that The Bloggess does indeed publish a blog, chock full of hilarious/awkward/cringe-inducing personal experiences.

“And That’s Why You Should Learn to Pick Your Battles,” a tale of a large metal chicken named Beyonce(see picture to the left, which was borrowed straight from Ms. Lawson’s blog,) starts out as a simple disagreement between husband and wife over the purchase of new bath towels but quickly develops into a fifteenth wedding anniversary prank gone wrong. As you are reading Ms. Lawson’s blog, you discover fairly early on that her sense of humor does not quite match that of her husband’s. Where she finds the act of placing a five-foot-tall metal chicken at her front door and then gleefully watching her husband’s reaction from afar as he opens said door to the aforementioned chicken perfectly acceptable, her husband’s  reaction aptly sums up his opinion of his wife’s sense of humor. He opens the door, sees the chicken, lets out an exasperated sigh and then promptly slams the door in Beyonce’s face. If you want to learn the fate of Beyonce (and Victor and Jenny’s fifteenth wedding anniversary,) please click on the link to Ms. Lawson’s blog that I’ve included above and again here.

You read it and are having your own can’t-breathe-you-are-laughing-so-hard moment? Okay, good. Now let me tell you about Ms. Lawson’s new “memoir” Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir, which is essentially a collection of some her funniest blog posts and misadventures to date. Here’s a book summary from her website:

For fans of Tina Fey and David Sedaris-Internet star Jenny Lawson, aka The Bloggess, makes her literary debut.

When Jenny Lawson was little, all she ever wanted was to fit in. That dream was cut short by her fantastically unbalanced father (a professional taxidermist who created dead-animal hand puppets) and a childhood of wearing winter shoes made out of used bread sacks. It did, however, open up an opportunity for Lawson to find the humor in the strange shame spiral that is her life, and we are all the better for it.

Lawson’s long-suffering husband and sweet daughter are the perfect comedic foils to her absurdities, and help her to uncover the surprising discovery that the most terribly human moments-the ones we want to pretend never happened-are the very same moments that make us the people we are today.

Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir is a poignantly disturbing, yet darkly hysterical tome for every intellectual misfit who thought they were the only ones to think the things that Lawson dares to say out loud. Like laughing at a funeral, this book is both irreverent and impossible to hold back once you get started.

Whether she is writing about her most recent fight with Victor via post-it notes or expounding her love of slightly off-kilter taxidermy (which, let’s face it, taxidermy is pretty much off-kilter to begin with,) Ms. Lawson will have you howling with laughter. I would NOT advise reading this book in public unless you relish weird looks from strangers. Anytime I need to put a bad day behind me, I read one of the Blogess’s stories and feel a little bit better about myself. I’m pretty sure that’s what she was going for when she decided to put her life on the internet and then turn it into a book.

by Anna

As Lisa mentioned, memoir has just been moved to the fiction room. Because of that, I’ve found myself moving memoirs up in my current reading stack.  Just published at the end of April, Anna Quindlen’s new memoir Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake was the first one I’ve picked up.

Anna Quindlen is no stranger to the fiction room. She has a list of titles that are both fiction and nonfiction. She started off as a reporter for the New York Post in 1974. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1992. In 1995 she quit her journalism career to become a full time novelist. I am thankful for her transition into the novel world.

Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake is a book of Anna Quindlen’s observations through life. Her knowledge on life as a woman is broken up into chapters. The variety of topics include: girlfriends, parenting, faith, marriage and solitude.   The chapters are full of observations, thoughts, and a variety of emotions. Some happy, some sad, some nostalgic. They are all emotions that we have felt at one time or another.  Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake is written in a way that makes it easy to pick up as you are able. You don’t have to sit and read the whole thing all the way through but you might just want to.

On parenting, she says “Being a parent is not transactional. we do not get what we give. It is the ultimate pay-it forward endeavor: we are good parents not so they will be loving enough to stay with us but so they will be strong enough to leave us.”

My mother has said something similar to me many times. Of course that doesn’t make things any easier when we are saying goodbye after a good visit. While reading through parts of this book,  I have thought to myself  “my mother should read this.” Sunday is Mother’s Day. I’ve got my gift in hand.  -Quinn

This book review comes from our friend and occasional bookseller, Billie Green.

In her brilliant new memoir, called Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness, Alexandra Fuller returns to her African roots for a closer look at her parents’ own experience as white settlers on the Dark Continent. In so doing, Fuller wisely anchors much of her narrative on the reminiscences of her memorable, larger than life mother.

As Fuller explains it:

Our Mum—or Nicola Fuller of Central Africa, as she has on occasion preferred to introduce herself—has wanted a writer in the family as long as either of us can remember, not only because she loves books and has therefore always wanted to appear in them ( the way she likes large, expensive hats and like to appear in them) but also because she has always wanted to live a fabulously romantic life for which she needed a reasonably pliable witness as scribe.

Alexandra's mum, Nicola, with Stephen Foster: www.alexadrafuller.org

From this rather lighthearted opening, one might anticipate an equally light-hearted read —sort of an Auntie Mame of Africa. And though Fuller does portray her flamboyant mother as almost zany at times, Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness is much more than that. In her non-linear, very fluid style, Fuller skillfully weaves moments of laugh-out-loud humor with incidents of heartbreaking sadness as she offers a vivid account of her parents’ dramatic and often tragic lives as British colonialists in East Africa.

Along with this very personal story, she seamlessly incorporates some fascinating history of a rapidly changing era of turmoil and upheaval, when Africa was beginning to shed the yoke of white colonialism for good. Her evocative glimpses of the African landscape and vistas and of the animals and people of a land she clearly still loves only add to the depth of the work itself.

Alexandra's Mum, Nicola, Le Creuset Pots: www.alexandrafuller.org

Born on the Isle of Skye, her mother, Nicola, moves with her parents to Kenya as a child. Meanwhile Fuller’s father, Tim, born in England to a British naval officer, rejects his father’s career path and comes to Kenya as an adult.

Nicola and Tim meet and soon are married and so begins their long love affair with Africa—an affair that proves to be one of continuous adventure and enormous challenge. They spend several happy years in Kenya (where their first child, Vanessa, is born), but after it is declared independent they move to Rhodesia where colonialism still reigns.

After several financial set-backs (including losing his job managing a farm) and the devastating loss of their second child (a son), they return briefly to England (where Alexandra is born). But as Fuller wryly puts it :

However much my parents tried to ensure a colorfully chaotic life for themselves, there was an underlying sense that as long as they stayed in England, they would always have to be the source of their own drama.

Alexandra Fuller with her dad, Tim: www.alexandrafuller.org

So it’s back to Africa and Rhodesia, where this time they buy a farm of their own and where, not incidentally, there is a full scale civil war going on. Her father, Tim, is conscripted into the Rhodesian Army Reserves. Her mother carries an Uzi in the Land Rover when they drive into town.

In the meantime, they face drought, constant danger and uncertainty, and most heartbreaking of all, the loss of two more of their five children—little two-year-old Olivia accidentally drowns and later their new baby boy dies. It is then that Nicola descends finally into depression and madness.

Somehow with amazing courage and resilience she manages to recover. And as the book ends, she and Tim are happily and peacefully ensconced on a farm in Zambia.

In Fuller’s first memoir about her family, written several years ago (Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight), she chronicles her growing up years in war torn Rhodesia through the eyes of the child she was then. Though generously laced with her often irreverent humor, it is a ruthlessly candid, even a disturbing book.

It is also one in which her mother comes off as a rather dark figure. Fuller approaches this latest effort from an adult’s vantage point, and thus expresses much more compassion and understanding for her parents’ situation and actions. She clearly recognizes the sheer determination and perseverance it took for them just to survive.

But while Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness is ostensibly about the lives of both of her parents, it is, at its heart, her mother’s story. In fact, it becomes something of a tribute to her mother—a woman who could be quite outrageous, volatile, and sometimes even frighteningly unstable, but who also ultimately refused to be defeated by tragedy or circumstances and whose courage and resilience enabled her in the end to be reconciled to her past and to forgive herself at last.

The Tree of Forgetfulness: www.alexandrafuller.org

Written by Billie Green

Visit www.alexandrafuller.org

Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness by Alexandra Fuller, The Penguin Press: August, 2011.

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!

I ran across an essay by Kathryn Stockett yesterday and discovered that it was an excerpt from Katie Couric’s new book The Best Advice I Ever Got: Lessons from Extraordinary Lives.

Here’s how the book came about. Katie Couric was asked to give a commencement speech, and as this was not the first time, she decided to try something new. She began e-mailing people she had interviewed over the years asking questions about life lessons. In Katie’s book you will find advice from Jay Leno to Margaret Albright to Gloria Steinem to Whoopi Goldberg to Chelsea Handler and Tavis Smiley.

This book is wonderful. It’s probably the one you were looking for as you searched for something meaningful yet not too heavy for the graduate in your life.

As Kathryn’s essay seems to have escaped Katie’s book and found its way into cyberspace, I’ll share it with you here in honor of Kathryn’s visit to Lemuria today at 5:00.

Don’t Give Up, Just Lie by Kathryn Stockett

If you ask my husband my best trait, he’ll smile and say, “She never gives up.” But if you ask him my worst trait, he’ll get a funny tic in his cheek, narrow his eyes and hiss, “She. Never. Gives. Up.”

It took me a year and a half to write my earliest version of The Help. I’d told most of my friends and family what I was working on. Why not? We are compelled to talk about our passions. When I’d polished my story, I announced it was done and mailed it to a literary agent.

Six weeks later, I received a rejection letter from the agent, stating, “Story did not sustain my interest.” I was thrilled! I called my friends and told them I’d gotten my first rejection! Right away, I went back to editing. I was sure I could make the story tenser, more riveting, better.

A few months later, I sent it to a few more agents. And received a few more rejections. Well, more like 15. I was a little less giddy this time, but I kept my chin up. “Maybe the next book will be the one,” a friend said. Next book? I wasn’t about to move on to the next one just because of a few stupid l-etters. I wanted to write this book.

A year and a half later, I opened my 40th rejection: “There is no market for this kind of tiring writing.” That one finally made me cry. “You have so much resolve, Kathryn,” a friend said to me. “How do you keep yourself from feeling like this has been just a huge waste of your time?”

That was a hard weekend. I spent it in pajamas, slothing around that racetrack of self-pity—you know the one, from sofa to chair to bed to refrigerator, starting over again on the sofa. But I couldn’t let go of The Help. Call it tenacity, call it resolve or call it what my husband calls it: stubbornness.

After rejection number 40, I started lying to my friends about what I did on the weekends. They were amazed by how many times a person could repaint her apartment. The truth was, I was embarrassed for my friends and family to know I was still working on the same story, the one nobody apparently wanted to read.

Sometimes I’d go to literary conferences, just to be around other writers trying to get published. I’d inevitably meet some successful writer who’d tell me, “Just keep at it. I received 14 rejections before I finally got an agent. Fourteen. How many have you gotten?”

By rejection number 45, I was truly neurotic. It was all I could think about—revising the book, making it better, getting an agent, getting it published. I insisted on rewriting the last chapter an hour before I was due at the hospital to give birth to my daughter. I would not go to the hospital until I’d typed The End. I was still poring over my research in my hospital room when the nurse looked at me like I wasn’t human and said in a New Jersey accent, “Put the book down, you nut job—you’re crowning.”

It got worse. I started lying to my husband. It was as if I were having an affair—with 10 black maids and a skinny white girl. After my daughter was born, I began sneaking off to hotels on the weekends to get in a few hours of writing. I’m off to the Poconos! Off on a girls’ weekend! I’d say. Meanwhile, I’d be at the Comfort Inn around the corner. It was an awful way to act, but—for God’s sake—I could not make myself give up.

In the end, I received 60 rejections for The Help. But letter number 61 was the one that accepted me. After my five years of writing and three and a half years of rejection, an agent named Susan Ramer took pity on me. What if I had given up at 15? Or 40? Or even 60? Three weeks later, Susan sold The Help to Amy Einhorn Books.

Above: A glimpse of Kathryn Stockett in the film due out in August.

The point is, I can’t tell you how to succeed. But I can tell you how not to: Give in to the shame of being rejected and put your manuscript—or painting, song, voice, dance moves, [insert passion here]—in the coffin that is your bedside drawer and close it for good. I guarantee you that it won’t take you anywhere. Or you could do what this writer did: Give in to your obsession instead.

And if your friends make fun of you for chasing your dream, remember—just lie.

This essay appears in the anthology The Best Advice I Ever Got: Lessons from Extraordinary Lives, edited by Katie Couric and published by Random House in April 2011.

by Kelly Pickerill

If you’ve ever wondered what we at Lemuria do behind those old DOS computers all day, I’m going to let you in on some behind-the-scenes bookstore secrets. Once the Christmas rush is over, through the doldrums of summer (come in the store, people!), we take the books off the shelves, look them up, see what’s sold and what’s not, return some, and move others.

The cool thing about that is we sometimes think up new ways of grouping the books. This time, I’m working with memoir. Memoir’s not a new category by any means, but it is one that Lemuria’s done without for quite a while. We had a biography section years ago, I’m told, but it eventually got distributed throughout the store, so Faulkner bios got shelved with Faulkner’s books in southern fiction, so the Churchill biography was able to be with the British history books, so the Patton biography was placed in World War II.

But what about the memoir? What about those biographies that, though they aren’t about remarkable figures in history, nevertheless speak to everyman by either carving out a fascinating though little-known life, or fascinatingly carving out an ordinary one?

Well, now they have a place. (It’s in the psychology and business nook behind the front desk.) And just to prove how much we needed this grouping of like-minded books, now I’ll show you how much we love ‘em.

Jeannette Walls and Mary Karr both came to Lemuria in the past year. They were brilliant! Here are Lisa and Norma on Jeannette, and Billie on Mary Karr. We’ve had visits from Andre Dubus III and Mark Richard (click here for Lisa’s blog), and though their memoirs still live in the fiction room with their novels, you may find a copy or two in the memoir section. Rodney Crowell and our own Teresa Nicholas — the new section is six shelves and growing! Come in to get a peek at someone else’s dirty laundry, find out about that ill-fated relationship, read that story of hope despite the worst odds.