For me relationships are the most rewarding aspect of bookselling. A bookseller develops relationships with their books and their readers; both are rewarding. Perhaps the most special relationship is one of bookseller with author. The author writes and loves the books they share with their readers. Also, the author reads the books that enhance her life and work.

However, more importantly, the author chooses their bookstore to browse. They buy books and share reading experiences with their booksellers, creating a relationship built around reading and sharing the joy of experiencing the physical book.

Without question, of all the authors that have shared their gifts of reading and writing, the foremost friend of Lemuria and its booksellers was Jackson’s wonderful Eudora Welty.

As a young bookseller, I had no clue how special a reading/writing relationship could be. I could not have anticipated what a deep friendship could be developed over the sharing of books. Miss Welty taught me this specialness.

As her bookstore, I was in a rare place to get to know Miss Welty. She loved to browse Lemuria and listen to reading suggestions, especially from a young Lemurian bookseller, Valerie Walley. Valerie had studied literature at Belhaven College. Belhaven was across the street from Welty’s writing windows.

Miss Welty loved mysteries and shared her love of reading Ross MacDonald with me. She pegged me instantly and I read all his books. I even visited Ross’s hometown, Santa Barbara,  and stayed at the motel she stayed when visiting Ross. I read Ross’s books overlooking the ocean he tried to keep clean and the land he loved. I visited Ross’s bookseller Ralph Sipper of Joseph the Provider Books, and we became bookselling pals of sort. Ralph was a specialist and I, well you know, just a Lemurian. When Ralph eventually visited Lemuria, he shared as a gift a remarkable photo of Eudora on her last trip to see Ross. (see above photo)

My love for Miss Welty and the grace she shared with Lemuria can never be expressed in words. I just smile when she comes to mind. 

As a last word, in 37 years of bookselling, my relationship with Miss Welty has given me the meaningful and complete experience a bookseller can hope to have with the books she read, the books she wrote and the readers that loved her and her work.

Left: Miss Welty at Lemuria in the old Highland Village location.

This was her first public signing for the publication of The Collected Stories, November 7, 1980.

With this blog I celebrate my remembrance of this special lady and her beautiful soul.

We’ll be sharing more stories of Eudora Welty in honor of Carolyn Brown’s new biography, A Daring Life, from University Press of Mississippi.

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Richard Ford may well have been the first author reading I attended as a Lemuria employee. I know that I started here mid-January 2002 and his reading for A Multitude of Sins was mid-February. So I am certain that I was green when it came to bookselling, author events, and frankly just about everything. I don’t remember much but I do remember that I got off  work went home and then Wendy and I attended not as workers but more like customers. I remember coming into a jammed store where most people were already seated for the reading.

I don’t recall what was read but I do remember a specific answer that Ford gave to a customer question. I believe the question was what should a writer be reading – I could never pretend to imitate the eloquence with which Ford answered the question, but here’s how I took it: don’t read any bad books, but read as many good books as you can. Now I’m no writer – and have no desire to be one – but I am a bookseller and a reader so I took Ford’s answer and applied it to my own situation. If I want to be a good bookseller – a bookseller with credibility – a good reader – then I need to read a whole lot of really good books.

Fast forward ten years to the opening of Canada: First, I’ll tell about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later. Wow, that’s a heck of a sentence. From that moment on the book is pregnant with the suspense of what robbery, what murders? (I swear it took me half of the book to realize that he did NOT say that his parents committed the murders.) It is a suspenseful book, but it’s also a quiet book – full of nuanced character development. The kind of book where the descriptions of the clothes the characters wear turn out to be crucial to their development within the novel – how tall they are, what kind of cigarettes the smoke, etc. Check this sentence out:

Any different way of looking at our life threatens to disparage the crucial, rational, commonplace part we lived, the part in which everything makes sense to those on the inside — and without which none of this is worth hearing about.

Point is – you should read this book.

Join us on Tuesday, June 12th for a signing and reading with Richard Ford at 5:00 and 5:30.

Over 20 years ago, I first met and became friends with John Grisham. We both had two joys that we shared in common: books and youth baseball. I’m not sure which mattered the most to us since they were both dear to our hearts. As John signed books, we talked mostly about reading books and baseball. We talked coaching, statistics, youth ball coaching humor, and ballpark trivia. We cared about our sons’ stats and their teams’ win/lose records. We dug our chatter and shared our love of the spirit of baseball and what it added to our lives.

When I received my inscribed copy of Calico Joe from John, I smiled. It reads: “Finally a baseball story” and indeed it is! Calico Joe is mostly set in 1973 and John uses real players and real team lineups to enhance the plot. At times this novel reads like a 1973 sports page enhancing the personalities through his fine, clever and very enjoyable plot.

As a longstanding Grisham fan, I must say this is one of his most enjoyable books. It reads with the heart and soul of a real baseball fan. Calico Joe feels like John wrote it for fans like himself–so much so that this might be the closest novel to his heart in a long time.

The relationship of a father and son through the spirit of baseball is an enduring link. In fact, countless hours of batting practice, all-star games and road trips are at the forefront of my lifetime memories. A window of time for father and son which so often lays the pathway and foundation for adult friendship. For the fathers of players, John has given us the perfect Dad’s Day present to share.

Not to be too sentimental, but I must note my heartfelt thanks to John. Lemuria can never repay the gifts of support John has given to our bookstore. With this in mind, thank you John for all you have done for Lemuria’s readers and booksellers.

I will, however, try to share your book with all baseball fans. I will hand sell Calico Joe to all who simply like a good story. I think this novel will stand the test of time and will remain on the top shelf of any baseball fiction bookcase.

John, I can only imagine the colorful comment that our ole pal Willie Morris would write on Calico Joe’s dust jacket.

I love the movies, or as I like to call them, the pictures. We should bring that term for the movie theater back—the pictures. Since I was a kid I’ve liked going to the movies: the being awake in the dark, the cold, sweet Coca-Cola and buttery popcorn, the air-conditioning, and of course above all, the storytelling. When I got to college, I took a couple of film classes that allowed me to become a better film-viewer. I learned about apertures, shot lengths, and camera angles. The professor turned our attention to pacing, make-up, and genuine drama. Watching film grew into an experience as literary as reading books, and as with books, I began wanting to watch only the best films. Before paying to see a movie, I’d first read a few reviews, but not by just any critic. I searched out the reviewers who had seen all the great movies, who wrote about film from an artist’s perspective, who viewed film as a sacred art of raw power—and film-viewing as something akin to church. There are many film critics that fit this description, but none better than Roger Ebert.

Calling Ebert a film critic is troublesome. The term “critic” has too much baggage, typically referring to someone who steps outside of a work of art to trash it or speak meaning on the artist’s behalf. A better word for Ebert is an essayist, and his essays are always cerebral, moral, and enlightening. Now, of course, Ebert has written vicious screeds on bad movies, but his negative reviews are well thought-out, and always humorous. Ebert has educated me on the many facets of film, filmmaking, and storytelling, and the need human beings have for this art. One of my favorite living theologians, Michael Frost, says the movie theater is where many people go in the 21^st Century to experience God. For many, the movie house has replaced the church. In his own way, Ebert affirms this idea: “Francois Truffaut said that for a director it was an inspiring sight to walk to the front of a movie theater, turn around, and look back at the faces of the audience, turned up to the light from the screen. If the film is any good, those faces reflect an out-of-body experience: The audience for a brief time is somewhere else, sometime else, concerned with lives that are not its own. Of all the arts, movies are the most powerful aid to empathy, and good ones make us into better people” (The Great Movies, xv). Ebert underscores great film’s ability to—as Flannery O’Connor once said—intrude upon the timeless. This is an ideal that Ebert carries with him into every essay, and his prose leads me into the practice of good stewardship of storytelling, film, and art in general.

Like the book, film is also going through considerable changes. For many, seeing a good story in 2-D in a cinema is no longer enough. 3-D movies are becoming ever more popular, and most often, without any good reason. 2-D is old hat, not as entertaining as when an image leaps out at us. Those of us that prefer the 2-D experience can still be affected, since the lens for the 3-D movie—difficult to remove—often remains on the projector for a 2-D film, draining the color and light from the picture. About this, Ebert responds, “I despair. This is a case of Hollywood selling its birthright for a message of pottage. If as much attention were paid to exhibition as to marketing, that would be an investment in the future. People would fall back in love with the movies. Short-sighted, technically-illiterate penny-pinchers are wounding a great art form.” Along with the proliferation of 3-D, theaters are cropping up with simulation seats that bump and jar, rise and turn like a roller coaster. The movies appear to be heading towards the experience of inauthentic stimulation instead of sticking to the film alone, allowing the movie to close in around us and hold us in the delicate electricity of fine storytelling. Reading Ebert’s essays make me aware of the restorative and cathartic nature of film. These days, watching a good movie, like reading a book, purges my mind of the clutter that the average day accumulates, especially in this information age.

And what about movie stores? The chain movie store has vanished more quickly than the big box bookstore. Music stores have been dealt a similar blow. As of this year, the two movie stores I’ve been in have been independently owned, and if I had to guess, struggling. Establishments that deal in storytelling and art are essential to the health of a community. I won’t lie, I like Netflix, but when a film is recommended by someone who has dedicated their life to the viewing and recommendation of film, I pay closer attention. I hold out hope for my community, however. Lemuria is still here, struggling less than three or four years ago, and with the establishment of Morning Bell here in Jackson, the new record store, venue, and studio, the availability of art from local vendors is gaining traction. Books like Ebert’s The Great Movies nurture an appreciation for art and the power of storytelling, and such books at this point in history, are essential. If enough people purchased his essays and chose to watch great films, perhaps his reviews and those of his fellow critics would not be the main source of my discovery. I could also depend on the discussion of my community. Lemuria offers this kind of community through its events and Atlantis book club. I hope it continues to thrive on the power of storytelling.  -Ellis

Recently, while doing section work, I chanced across Parker J. Palmer’s gem of a book Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation. The title alone resonated with me. Being in my mid-twenties and still searching for a way to be self-sufficient as well as sustained both spiritually and temperamentally in my work, finding Palmer’s book was something like the still, small voice of God.

Discovering that he also had written a book considered a classic in the field of education—The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life—was even further evidence that Palmer’s was a voice I would be spending a good deal of time with in the coming months. Slated to teach my first class in the fall, I’ve been in need of some encouragement, insight, and awareness of the joys and pitfalls of teaching vocationally. After finishing Let Your Life Speak, I dove into The Courage to Teach, and have found Palmer’s wisdom enormously calming and enlightening. If there is only word one I could use to describe Palmer’s work, it is just that: wise.

Palmer is a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quaker), and he has dedicated his life to teaching, education, and writing about the necessity of our inner lives existing in harmony with our outward vocations. He also leads retreats for the Center of Courage and Renewal. Let Your Life Speak is Palmer’s personal account of his descent into depression and the awakening and insight gleaned from his journey out of that darkness. Ultimately, this experience had enormous implications on his vision of vocation. Let Your Life Speak is most definitely not a how-to book, which is one of the reasons why it is so appealing to me. Authors of how-to books too often promote their work as definitive for the human race and its problems, and nothing about such claims gets at the complexity and unpredictability of being alive. Palmer states:

“But what is true for me is not necessarily true for others. I am not writing a prescription—I am simply telling my story. If it illumines your story, or the story of someone you care about, I will be grateful. If it helps you or someone you care about turn suffering into guidance for vocation, I will be more grateful still” (58).

Such an approach proves that Palmer is conscious of the power of plain storytelling, and also aware of his limits.

The idea of our human limits is one thing that Palmer stresses in his approach to vocation. All of us possess gifts, and all of us have limits. When we ignore our limits and pursue work unsuited to our authentic selves, we cause “violence…to others and ourselves by working in ways that violate our souls” (The Courage to Teach, 30). For a long time, Palmer worked in such a way.

He says, “I was in my early thirties when I began, literally, to wake up to questions about my vocation. By all appearances, things were going well, but the soul does not put much stock in appearances. Seeking a path more purposeful than accumulating wealth, holding power, winning at competition, or securing a career, I had started to understand that it is indeed possible to live a life other than one’s own” (2). It was during this period that Palmer came across the Quaker saying, “Let your life speak.”

Palmer admits that his initial thoughts on letting his life speak were misguided:

“I found those words encouraging, and I thought I understood what they meant: ‘Let the highest truths and values guide you. Live up to those demanding standards in everything you do.’…So I lined up the loftiest ideals I could find and set out to achieve them. The results were rarely admirable, often laughable, and sometimes grotesque. But always they were unreal, a distortion of my true self—as must be the case when one lives from the outside in, not the inside out.” (2-3).

Much of Palmer’s focus is on our inner selves—a place he feels we are consistently failing to do much necessary work, be it with our families or in the workplace. Inner work allows us to acknowledge our limits as well as our gifts, to become more secure and aware of our authentic selves and our imperfections:

“When we are insecure about our own identities, we create settings that deprive other people of their identities as a way of buttressing our own…[H]ow often I phone a business or professional office and hear, ‘Dr. Jones’s office—this is Nancy speaking.’ The boss has a title and a last name but the person (usually a woman) who answers the phone has neither, because the boss has decreed that it will be that way” (86).

Such passages from Palmer not only encourage us to discover and live out our authentic selves, but also induce us toward compassion—a characteristic we are desperate for in a 21st century wracked with greed, despair, and a need for purpose and meaning.

Let Your Life Speak has encouraged me to continue pursuing and working toward those avenues of work I feel are suited to my authentic self: writing, reading, thinking, and soon teaching. Being in my mid-twenties, the pressure has increased to be making more money, to do work considered more “professional” or “grown up.” Being the son of a lawyer, there have been times when I’ve felt pushed to fall in line and join the “family business.” I am certain that to separate my work from my heart would lead to what Palmer deems a violence against myself and ultimately others.

“There are times when we must work for money rather than meaning, and we may never have the luxury of quitting a job because it does not make us glad. But that does not release us from continually checking the violence we do to others and ourselves by working in ways that violate our souls…What brings more security in the long run: holding this job or honoring my soul?” (The Courage to Teach, 30).

For anyone who cares about the impact and meaning of their work, I hope you will give Palmer’s words a chance to seep into your heart, and perhaps enhance your ability and desire to live from there outward, instead of the other way around. Though Palmer is adamant in his claim not to have a monopoly on some universal truth, I am certain his words speak to our basic human needs. We would do well to listen and apply.  -Ellis

Feeling like too many other responsibilities are pulling you away from reading? I just dusted some of the dirty furniture in my house and arranged them there. That will have to do for today.

What inspired this collection of books? A new temptation has just been moved into the fiction room: Memoir–a section long-loved by fiction room booksellers!

This photo features these brand new memoirs, essays and letters: Wild by Cheryl Strayed (Cheryl took a 1100-mile hike after life got to be too much!); Farther Away by Jonathan Franzen (loving this!); Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake by Anna Quindlen (We have signed copies!); Living, Thinking, Looking by Siri Hustevedt (look for these reflections on philosophy, neuroscience, psychology & literature in June); This Is How by Augusten Burroughs (He claims to rid us of the need for any other self-help book!); The Other Walk by Sven Birkerts (I would read anything Birkerts writes.); Against Wind & Tide (letters by Anne Morrow Lindbergh–always an inspiration for women who feel compelled to do everything in life plus dusting).

Lemuria is proud to support the Annual Jackson Public School Summer Reading Book Drive–Pages of Promise.

Lemuria has been working hard the past year to instill a love of reading in our young people by setting up book clubs, bringing children’s authors directly to schools, and now we’re gearing up to help area schools and parents with summer reading lists.

It is widely known that reading is one ability that affects every part of our lives. We empower our children by giving them access to books and even further by sitting down with them to read.

Pictured Below: The enthusiasm of these students at last year’s Summer Reading Press Conference held at the Eudora Welty Library was amazing!

United Way & JPS have set of a goal of collecting 4,000 books for the JPS summer reading list. These books will then be collected and donated to Jackson-Hinds Public Libraries so that all JPS students have easy access to summer reading books.

When you purchase a book for donation, it comes with a variety of summer reading activities and workshops at our local libraries. And having a library full of kids in the summer is certainly a “win” for the Jackson-Hinds Public Library System.

Here’s how it works:

When you buy books for the JPS  drive at Lemuria, you will receive a 20% discount on those books. We will then add them to our collection for donation to the Jackson-Hinds Public Library System.

You can purchase books for donation two ways:

1. Stop by the store and let one of our booksellers help you make a selection.

2. Give us a call and we can set up an order for you: 601.366.7619.

We accept donations of one single book to a classroom set of books. For example, you could donate enough copies of Brown Bear, Brown Bear for a classroom of kindergartners or a whole set of K-12 books.

All of us at Lemuria couldn’t be happier to reinforce the habit of reading for the young people of Jackson. We encourage all Jacksonians to read books on the summer reading list, engage in dialogue and encourage students to read the books.

Be a partner with United Way, JPS and Lemuria and help us reach our goal of 4,000 books!

Required Summer Reading Price List for Donation Books from Lemuria Books

Click Here for the Required Summer Reading Price List for Donation Books

The Real Cool Book of the Day for last Friday was the 1977 Franklin Library Edition of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Not only is it a favorite novel for many but it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961.

When I choose the Real Cool Book, it is often a first edition, but sometimes it is a brand new book. Sometime it is signed, sometimes not. The Real Cool Book of the Day must be something unique, something to treasure. I’ve done over 20 Real Cool Books of the Day so far. They appear on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (LemuriaBooks). I don’t always do one every single day. Sometimes I am too busy with customers to share it with you. But if you came in the store, I promise that I would be able to show you one beautiful book that you might not find on your own. All of the Real Cool Books are for sale. I usually don’t list the price but you are welcome to inquire or check our website. (Our online inventory includes only some of our first edition books.)

There was such a great response to To Kill a Mockingbird on Lemuria’s Facebook page that I wanted to mention it again today and give you a little more information about this beautiful edition.

The Franklin Library edition of To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1977 and illustrated by David Millman. Our red leather-bound copy is in very good condition with some minor fading to the green satin paste-down. This is an unread copy with tight binding. The price is $300 and the book is available for in-store or online purchase. We are also happy to assist you over the telephone: 601.366.7619.

The Franklin Press was founded in 1973 and was one of the finest and largest publishers of leather-bound books. Sadly, the press closed in 2000, but book lovers continue to admire and collect these books. These leather-bound classics  include such authors as Raymond Carver, John Steinbeck and Kurt Vonnegut. We have quite a few at Lemuria and Joe is always looking for Franklin Library books to add to our inventory. All of our Franklin Library books are used and found on the out-of-print market.

Having been interested in the craft of writing and the writing life for around five years now, I’ve set out to collect and read as many good books on the topic as I can. Some books are fairly indispensable on the subject, such as John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction, Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life, Robert Boswell’s The Half-Known World, and Dorothea Brande’s Becoming a Writer.

There are other books that are not so good, and plenty that while helpful, tread the same territory as those that have come before them, not adding anything new or memorable to the discussion. Saying anything with originality and genuine beauty is difficult, but creating a work that instructs while also stamping itself onto the reader’s mind like good poetry is something altogether more challenging and uncommon.

L.L. Barkat’s latest book Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity and Writing achieves the latter, and with great reward to the reader. Along with Rumors of Water, Barkat is the author of the spiritual memoirs God in the Yard: Spiritual Practice for the Rest of Us, and Stone Crossings: Finding Grace in Hard and Hidden Places, as well as the book of poetry InsideOut, and she is the Staff Writer for The International Art Movement’s The Curator. As someone who also wants a life dedicated to art and faith, I find Barkat a kindred spirit.

Growing up in church while also attending a private Presbyterian elementary, I became well-acquainted with instruction on faith and life. There were those in the classroom and pulpit who could actually tell a story, and make God and the teachings of Jesus more tangible and applicable to the life, thus capturing my attention and influencing my perspective. And there were others who, sadly, left me bored and more inclined toward rebellion. I draw this parallel to Barkat because the essays in Rumors of Water remind me of sermons in every best sense, making the characteristics of the writing life and the discipline necessary to live one more concrete and lucid, and she does so in such a way that makes the artist want to create.

Barkat’s writing urges the reader to uncover all that is glowing in the given day, to hear “the orchestra of life” as Barry Hannah once put it. Earlier in the year, I read Marilyn Chandler McEntyre’s excellent book Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies, wherein she states that we read literature because literature gives us “equipment for living.” I can think of no better way to describe Rumors of Water than as a book that provides the hopeful creative with equipment for living, and subsequently, material for creating. Barkat underscores an important truth: the way in which the artist lives will most definitely determine the way in which the artist creates.

Like any good sermon or work of art, Rumors of Water is a lesson in paying attention. Each essay is full of sharp images, rendered with a poet’s heart and eye, but the book isn’t reduced only to how an artist’s eyes need to be wide open. Rather, the work also deals with the issues of forming right habits, finding voice, grappling with rejection, networking genuinely with other artists and editors, and even the benefits of taking such publishing routes as Print on Demand–a means that we booksellers know may be finding more traction as the industry continues to change. In each essay Barkat illustrates the many correlations between her own deliberate living and the creative process: correlations available to every artist with the patience, faith, and willpower to create. In probably my favorite piece “Watering the White Moth: Writing Takes Time”, Barkat states:

As I water the garden, I think of my dark-haired girl–Sara, who weeded and planted and worked this ground. I think of the spray from the hose, how it sometimes stirs a white moth from the grass. The moth might rise into the arc of the temporary rainbow made by my watering. But there is no moth today.

…I believe a writer can make writing happen, sit down and stir from grass or leaves or snow. But I also believe it takes time to write. Each book I’ve written, in some sense, could not have been written before its time. The white moths were not ready to rise.

There is no hurry. The things we cannot write about today, we will surely find we can write about tomorrow. We should not worry about the process, but simply trust it and move on. After all, we contain fields upon fields of stories we’ve rehearsed over time. We must recognize that these are the ready ones, the now-stories.

When I stand at the edge of the garden, I water with a certain kind of faith–that the water I am spraying now will make Sara’s basil grow, that this rainbow in my hands is beautiful and is enough for today, that somewhere between clovers and strawberries is a white moth that may yet rise. (151-153)

Passages like these are what make Barkat’s work so much better than the average book on craft. She provides careful insight to unraveling the snags that every writer encounters, providing illustrations from her own life, illustrations that not only are authentic, but genuinely hopeful, finding collation in the life of the reader: again, the stuff of good sermons. We are not only informed about craft; we are invited to find our own rising moths, to, as Frederick Buechner says, “listen to our lives,” and then with faith and determination, go and do the work.

With Rumors of Water I am pleased to discover one more indispensable book on craft. It is indispensable for its wisdom, for its understanding that good stories are crafted from a life well lived. I will return to Barkat’s work often. Even if you have no interest in the writing life or craft, I encourage you to purchase Barkat’s book simply for its ability to rustle things from the heart: awe, vision, and appreciation for creation and existence—characteristics our culture desperately needs to recover. In a world where the authentic well appears to have run dry, Barkat intrudes upon the prophetic: for those who have heard rumors of water, she points us to a river of life.

Visit L.L. Barkat’s blog here.  -Ellis