by Kelly Pickerill

It’s a good day to be at Lemuria.

Karen Russell will sign and read this evening starting at five. I’ve been anticipating this event since months before Swamplandia! came out, when, to use Kaycie’s phrase, there was a “knock-down drag-out bookseller battle” over advanced copies of the book (yes, I was involved, and yes, I was victorious). We hadn’t yet booked the signing at that point, but I’m sure our enthusiasm over the book helped persuade our Random House rep, Liz, to make it happen.

The wait is almost over! Just a few more hours are left until we get to meet Russell, and if you’re coming to the reading, I can already tell you you’re in for a treat. I know this because my dad saw her a few weeks ago in Florida, at my “bookstore alma mater,” the Vero Beach Book Center.

Dad told me that Florida author Carl Hiaasen introduced her, heralding Russell’s sophomore work as the establishment of a great talent.

Dad says, “Ms. Russell read from chapter one to a hushed crowd. Though she has a soft, unassuming voice, the story held her audience in rapt attention. After she read, she answered questions and kept us laughing with her charming, witty banter. Many who attended the event were curious about her life, the book, her writing process and future plans. Despite all the attention she’s been drawing, she seemed so modest and expressed appreciation for the good response her book’s receiving. It was a wonderful afternoon with her.”

We took a lot of reserve orders for Wednesday’s event with Téa Obreht. In fact, we were worried we wouldn’t have enough unreserved books left for the great turnout we had. Nothing beats hearing an author read. Especially while drinking a beer and hanging out in the dot com building. And you can’t help but feel more jazzed about a signed book, too, when you’ve watched the hand that actually wrote the book put a pen to it.

Simply everything about author events makes me happy. Have I mentioned it yet? Today’s a good day.

Above: Téa Obreht talking with Emily after the event.

Next week is going to be a lot of fun at Lemuria – we have events for everyone and every reader. If you haven’t been to one of our events before and one of these sounds interesting then please come – they are really fun and easy-going.

Bringing Adam Home by Les Standiford and Det. Sgt. Joe Matthews

Monday, March 21 starting at 5:00.

I think people often think of Lemuria as a literary store or a store that features fiction – this is not always the case. Bringing Adam Home is great piece of non-fiction about the Adam Walsh case. Les is a great old friend to Lemuria who came here frequently when he was writing his Deal series in the 90’s. Non-fiction is not new for Les, but this new book is a new direction. The true story of the Adam Walsh story is compelling on its own – a sad story for any parent, but because it is also the back story for America’s Most Wanted it has an added dimension in our culture. This will be a great reading for people interested in law enforcement or for anyone who followed the tv show or remembers the case from the 80s.

The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht

Wednesday, March 23 starting at 5:00

Now this one is a literary event for sure. For those of you who like to be up on the hottest thing this is it. Téa has been all over the media for the past few weeks and Téa was named one of  The New Yorker’s 20 under 40. The book is ambitious and great and this is a guaranteed great event. Come by Wednesday night – you’ll regret it if you miss this one.

Georgia Bottoms by Mark Childress

Thursday, March 24 starting at 5:00

Looking for a good laugh? Mark is great friend of the store and the author of  Crazy in Alabama, Gone for Good, and One Mississippi. This will be a guaranteed entertaining event. Mark always has funny and interesting stories to tell. He spent a good chunk of his childhood in Clinton, Mississippi, so we consider him a hometown boy even though he lives in Alabama now. Georgia Bottoms is the story of a Southern woman who has lost her family fortune – her solution? discreetly “entertaining” a few of the gentlemen in town.

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

Friday, March 25 starting at 5:00

Another great literary event. Another of the 20 under 40 authors. Swamplandia! has been on the NYT bestseller list for the past couple of weeks, but Karen has been hot ever since the publication of her book of short stories St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves was published five years ago. If you’re interested in Southern authors who promise to be around for a while then this is the one for you.

Every Day by the Sun: A Memoir of the Faulkner’s of Mississippi by Dean Faulkner Wells

Saturday, March 26 at noon.

Finally after a week full of great events we have a real treat. If you don’t already know, Dean Wells father was William Faulkner’s youngest brother. Sadly Dean’s father died in a plane crash just before she was born. Every Day in the Sun is Dean’s memoir of growing up almost as a daughter to William Faulkner. This is a fascinating and passionate memoir and a really special event for Mississippians.

A couple years ago, my wife purchased this book at a local church book sale for $5. The lovely binding and cover design caught her eye, and she discovered that it was a volume of poetry from a set by Sir Walter Scott published in 1822. She has recently done some preliminary research on the book, but after reading Lisa’s blog about the books she’s discovered, I thought a little more in-depth research would be worthwhile.

The Arch. Constable and Co. Edinburgh publisher, who printed this eight volume set in 1822, was founded by Archibald Constable in 1795 as part of his antiquarian bookstore in Edinburgh. In addition to publishing Sir Walter Scott, Arch. Constable and Co. also published works by Bram Stoker, Henry James, George Bernard Shaw, Herman Melville, and numerous others. The publishing house continues over 200 years later as Constable & Robinson.

Volume VI contains Scott’s narrative poem Rokeby in its entirety, along with lengthy notes following the poem explaining each section. The inclusion of these notes was fortunate, as Rokeby is considered to be among Scott’s most difficult works. It is set during the English Civil War, and characters tend toward allegorical embodiments of abstract emotions and concepts.

This particular volume became doubly interesting when my wife noticed what appears to be a previous owner’s label on the front endpaper, which reads, “Major Geo. Gun, Munro, of Poynstfield.” It’s somewhat difficult to pinpoint who exactly this is, given the number of Munro’s (and even the number of George Gunn Munro’s) in Scottish history, but if we narrow it down somewhat by time period (around the publication date of the book), the best match seems to be Major George Gunn Munro (1788-1852), who was the fourth laird of Poyntsfield (also spelled Poyntzfield, located in Scotland near Jemimaville, Highland).

Now, what’s curious is that the label appears to be typewritten. Typewriters were not commercially available until about 1870, so it seems unlikely that Major Munro typed the label himself. It is possible that someone of his social status (and likely considerably-sized personal library) had labels printed professionally; it is also possible (and maybe more likely) that at some later point in history, perhaps when his library was being transferred or donated, books were labeled to record original ownership.

If one were to come across the complete eight volume set, it would be worth somewhere between $200 and $400, depending on condition. A single volume like my wife found seems to be worth between $20 and $30 based on recent market prices.

Books have many purposes. Yes, to some degree each book is created to convey some story or information to the reader. But they live on as investments, as reminders, as references, as tokens, and in this case, as a record of a writer, a publisher, and an owner.

For folks that grew up in the 80’s the America’s Most Wanted TV show was part of life. The Fox network was new and starting in 1988 we watched America’s Most Wanted most every Saturday night. We were also a generation that grew up with the fear of crime: kidnappings, murder, etc. We saw it on TV and in the case of AMW it was and is real, very real. We may have been the first generation that wasn’t let out of our parents’ sights.

To me John Walsh, the host of AMW, was just another TV host. My parents had introduced me to Dragnet years earlier and I saw a similarity in the shows – Walsh’s deadpan presentation. I didn’t know at the time where his passion came from. Maybe my parents told me, but I don’t think I knew until much later that Walsh’s crusade for bringing criminals to justice had a very personal origin. In 1981 John and Reve Walsh’s 6 year old son was kidnapped and murdered.

For me this story represents so much of why our childhood was the way it was and is an origin story for our own parenting paranoia. Now in Bringing Adam Home Les Standiford chronicles the crime and the police case surrounding the crime – telling the story of why it took until 2008 for the case to be officially closed. This story is one of police incompetence and mis-communication. It’s not a fun story, but an important story. Please consider coming to meet Les and Det. Sgt. Joe Matthews.

If you’ve been following our blog, you probably already know that I made a New Year’s Resolution to read 50 books this year.  And if you didn’t already know that, then you can read about it here.

One month has passed and I needed to read at least five books by the end of it.  Well, I’m going to go ahead and pat myself on the back because I ended up reading eight books by January 28. Since I had decided to make my progress on this reading resolution public, I thought I’d tell you guys about what I’ve read and also what my favorites were.

Here’s the list:

1. My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: 40 New Fairy Tales edited by Kate Bernheimer

2. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami (I talked about this book a little bit in my first New Year’s resolutions post.)

3. Penny Dreadful by Laurel Snyder

4. Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris (read my take on that here)

5. The Woman Who Wouldn’t by Gene Wilder (yes, that Gene Wilder, you know, Willy Wonka from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory)

6. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

7. My Horizontal Life by Chelsea Handler

8. Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin (read Ellen’s take on this book here)

I must admit that it was pretty hard to choose a favorite out of what I read last month since I read a few different genres–fiction, humor, and children’s literature.  So I have a tie.  And the winners are…We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and Penny Dreadful.  They’re all quite different from each other, but I finished both We Have Always Lived in the Castle and Penny Dreadful in one day.  I couldn’t put either of them down.  Shirley Jackson’s novel was perfectly constructed and delightfully twisted while Laurel Snyder’s Penny Dreadful was precious and heartwarming. And as for The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, well, it’s just hard to beat Murakami in my book.

I hope your own New Year’s resolutions are coming along nicely.  Please do let me know if you have any suggestions for my reading quest. I would love to hear from you (in fact most of this month’s books were suggestions from my fellow Lemurians).  -Kaycie

Everywhere Siobhan goes readers echo their own experiences of military life as did many at her reading last night. However, there are those readers who have never been close to military life at all and read her book in one sitting.

A 10-city tour for a collection of short stories? Short stories as a Lemuria First Editions Club pick? Amy Einhorn, an imprint of Penguin, definitely has a remarkable ability for picking fresh new talent. It was just two years ago that Kathryn Stockett made her debut with The Help. In both cases, Lemuria was lucky enough to work with these authors.

Even though Siobhan is wrapping up her tour today, independent booksellers will continue the buzz just as we at Lemuria spread the word:

“I just read a great book . . .”

Joe writes about selecting You Know When the Men Are Gone for our January First Editions Club selection here. Lisa writes about the special appeal this collection of short stories will have to military families, and Lemuria customer Donna Evans shares her connection to the book–read all about it here.

My parents have this great library in their house.  While I was in college and could not afford to really buy books I would ‘borrow’ books from them.  One of the authors that I happened upon was Reynolds Price.  My dad had his trilogy, A Great Circle, which includes– The Surface of Earth, The Source of Light and The Promise of  Rest. I was completely sucked into this saga of the Mayfield family.   This past week I was sad to learn that Reynolds Price had passed away from complications due to a heart attack.

Price was a wonderful Southern writer.  His books were mainly let in North Carolina where he was from.  Once when asked  why North Carolina was were he lived he said “It’s the place about which I have perfect pitch.”  Eudora Welty was one of his mentors early in his writing career in face she helped him get his first books published by sending some of his work to her own publisher. Reynolds Price was often compared to William Faulkner which annoyed him greatly because he always considered himself a literary heir to Miss Welty.   In 1984, Price was diagnosed with cancer which left him paralyzed for the rest of his life.  He continued to teach and to write including his memoir, Clear Pictures in 1989 which he was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.   There is no question that the literary world lost a giant last week and that Reynolds Price will be missed but his work will continue to please generations from now on.

by Kelly Pickerill

Emily just returned from the Winter Institute book conference in D.C. and brought me a gift from one of the bookstores there: an old Yale Shakespeare copy of The Tempest. The book itself isn’t extremely rare or valuable or anything, but it has character, and best of all, it is small. I had been wanting to read the play again because of the Julie Taymor film that’s coming out soon, and all I had was a complete works that I was not about to put in my bag. I was in the play as a young high schooler — this was me:

I know, we had great costuming for a community theatre, right? Reading the play again brought back many great memories and faces that I hadn’t thought of in a long time.

There’s something about an old book that’s so different from a new — worn in, well worn, but not worn out. The “old books” at Lemuria are what I like to think of as vintage; they’ve been weathering the passage of time, getting better (read: more valuable) as they grow older. The best books at Lemuria are our signed first editions, rare and special books that you can’t find just anywhere, those books that are important because of more than just their content. I love seeking out these unique books. One of my favorite things to do while I’m traveling is to browse independent bookstores, those places, like Lemuria, where you can find first editions and old books.

Books I’ve happened upon at other bookshops:

A 1963 edition of Herman Melville’s Typee, illustrated and in a slipcase, found in a bookstore in Champaign, Illinois

A dustjacketless first edition of Clock Without Hands by Carson McCullers found on my most recent trip to Chicago

well…have you?  no?  why not?  i’m willing to bet that i haven’t gone a day without touching at least one book in over ten years.  i wouldn’t have it any other way.

i’m not one of those folks who can read from a screen for very long.  if there is something on the internet that i want to read i have to print it out.  i may not be saving the environment in that way but my eyes sure do thank me.  like i said in my last blog, there’s not much out there that tops the smell and feel of a book.

it may take me several lifetimes to read all of the books that i want to read.  i have an entire bookshelf of books that i have yet to read (this doesn’t include the books that i haven’t brought home from work yet so as to not scare my boyfriend even more).  non book lovers may not understand why someone would have such a massive collection of books they haven’t read yet.  they just don’t get it.  i love surrounding myself with books.  a house built of books is a dream of mine.

by Zita