Up at the front desk of Lemuria sits an ever-growing pile of newspaper articles on various book related subjects that John has so thoughtfully placed at our disposal (just in case we should feel the need to expand upon our already vast bookselling knowledge, right John?) As I was thumbing through this pile one afternoon, I came upon an article from the Wall Street Journal that caught my eye. The article reviewed two different books that have recently been published on the state of America’s public education system and the ongoing “reformer vs. traditionalist” debate. The first book is Steven Brill’s Class Warfare, which is the book I am currently reading. The second is Terry Moe’s Special Interest, which I have not read yet, but am interested in after reading the WSJ article.

So far, I am enjoying the easy, journalistic style that Brill employs to discuss both the reformist and traditionalist agendas. Although, I have to admit that Brill favors the reformers and their ideals over the traditionalists and the teachers unions. Let’s just say that he does not shine a favorable light upon the teachers unions and the political sway they hold over the very people who can make legislative changes to the currently broken system.

Using the stories of unknown grass roots educators and also some more well known names such as Wendy Kopp (the founder of Teach for America) and Randi Weingarten (the teachers-union leader,) Brill manages to keep the reader (me) captivated, which is sometimes not that easy with non-fiction. So, if you’re in the mood for an interesting work of non-fiction with a valid argument, go ahead and check out Class Warfare. Keep the articles coming John!

Class Warfare by Steven Brill (Simon & Schuster, August 2011)

by Anna

Dear Listener,

Recently I was listening to the NPR show On Point hosted by Tom Ashbrook.  The second hour of the show heard indie/pop songstress Ingrid Michaelson discussing her music and career.  Alexandra Patsavas was also briefly featured on the show.  She is a music supervisor for Chop Shop Music Supervision who helps television shows and movies decide what music to place in certain scenes.  You can hear that hour of On Point here.

One of the points that Alexandra Patsavas discussed was the amount of shame that musicians endured when they sold their music to television, movies, and advertisement.  Today’s market has shifted.  With the decline of album sales, musicians are finding new ways to make money, and the general populous has come to accept that.  Album sales weren’t always so atrocious, though.  There was a time, long, long ago in which people gave actual US Dollars for compact discs and records.  During these mythical times, it was actually more difficult to record and produce a record than it is today (ironic, huh?).  The vast majority of bands either signed to a major label, or (more commonly) ceased to exist.  By the late 70’s there were some people that were beginning to tire of the way the music industry was working.

Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azerrad profiles thirteen independent bands from 1981-1991.  All thirteen of these bands shared a common trait that was so common during those early years:  Doing It Yourself (hence the term independent).

Eric Weisbard said this in the New York Times Book Review:

“In the decade Azerrad covers, indie America proved that world-class rock could be created outside corporate structures….Our Band Could Be Your Life passionately resurrects thirteen indie groups…Azerrad is adept at drawing out musicians’ war stories — and this bare-bones movement was full of them.”

Please enjoy this song from one of the profiled bands Mission of Burma from their 1982 album Vs.

Even if you aren’t a fan of the Replacements, or Sonic Youth, or Black Flag, or Mudhoney, or Minutemen, this book is worth reading.  It is worth the knowledge that in the eighties there were people who worked as hard as they could to eek out a living making music.

The Guardian included it in the 50 best music books ever written.  Paste Magazine named it one of the 12 best music books of the decade. The Los Angeles Times listed it as one of the “46 Essential Rock Reads.”

Please read this book.  If you can’t afford it, find me; I’ll buy it for you.

by Simon

In my life, I’ve used reading as a way to change myself, and sometimes influence my loved ones, my friends and my community. My goal since the age of 24 is to give my place, Jackson, the very best bookstore that I could figure out how to operate. Reading Chuck Palahniuk has caused my present efforts to grow even more ambitious.

Reading adds to our actual life experience by giving us a safe place to dig into our own psyches. Through Chuck’s characters we witness aspects of life without having to experience them, experiences we wouldn’t even want to have. I believe a Chuck Palahniuk reading experience can remind us how much control we do have over our own life plots and how much of our lives just happen to us.

In the Hell presented in Chuck’s Damned, we view from the outside what many of us fear the most: death and coming to terms with our wrongful actions and life mistakes. Maddy, a thirteen-year-old-girl in Hell, becomes his source of inspiration, a muse for the reader to view Hell with a sense of humor.

Damned gives a reason to laugh at what scares us the most, and perhaps the biggest fear for us all is to be damned to Hell. Could Chuck’s Hell be our motivator to wake up, to cut through our malaise and angst? Chuck challenges us to have less fear of the unknown and live life boldly, allowing us to have more impact on the world we do live in.

With characters who make unbelievably poor choices that border on the absurd, Chuck demands our attention. Is he perhaps creating moments of chaos for us to become emotionally challenged? As our closet lights begins to come on, and our past experiences flash by, a moment of realization occurs. I’m not sure how Chuck’s writing causes our doors of perception to open, but it does.

Some Jacksonians may wonder why Lemuria, with our gang of supporters, are throwing a Damned Book Night of Sin. Well, Wake Up! It’s all in fun with exaggeration, at least as much as we can figure out how to provide. We encourage all who want to join in our 36-year “alarm clock celebration” to participate. All over 21 are welcome to step out there. Step over your own line in the sand if you want to. It’s cool by us. By exploring Chuck we are challenging ourselves and our community to address uncomfortable issues and create change.

Damned goes on sale October 18th. “The Damned Book Night” starts at 5:30 on Thursday, October 20th at Hal & Mals. Click here for details.

JX///RX

*     *      *

cpcp

If you’ve been reading our blog over the last few months, you may have noticed references to our store Twitter account. We’ve had plenty of customers, booksellers, and book industry people follow us, but for those of you who haven’t signed up for Twitter (or are new to it) and have been wondering what it’s all about, I wanted to provide a brief explanation and a few suggestions for connecting with other book people.

Let me explain what Twitter isn’t. It’s not a bunch of self-obsessed people telling each other what they ate for lunch. Well, there are probably a few folks who still do that, but it’s pretty easy to avoid them. There was probably more of this kind of activity in the early days of Twitter, but pretty soon people figured out that no one else really cared what kind of coffee they ordered that morning.

Instead, Twitter became a place to write and pass along any thoughts that could be condensed into 140 characters — headlines, news, jokes, social commentary, basically anything that could be reduced to a pithy comment. Links and photos can be added to tweets (the individual posts on Twitter) when 140 characters of text just won’t cut it.

There’s plenty of how-to guides for using Twitter out there, so I’m going to skip some of the nuts and bolts. If you’re really lost, start by reading some of the Twitter help pages, and I’d also recommend reading this little guide that covers Twitter “etiquette.” It won’t hurt just to sign up and learn as you go along, however.

I like my Twitter timeline to be a mix of news, commentary, “famous people,” and people I know, but you can always follow and unfollow accounts till you are satisfied with your own mix. Here’s some suggestions.

Lemuria staff:
@LemuriaBooks — This is the main store account, where we post information about events, store news, and general info.
@Maggie4Lemuria — Maggie. Everyone that comes in to ask Maggie for suggestions and recommendations needs to follow her.
@JoeHickman — Joe. Good info on industry news and occasionally coffee beans.
@LisaANewman — Lisa, who also writes the tweets for the @LemuriaBooks account, and plans most of our social media efforts.
@emilyofoz — Follow Emily for all the news from Oz.
@petitchou — Kaycie will be missed when she leaves for Paris, but I expect we’ll still be able to find out what she’s reading.
@mgeoffriau — Me! I tweet about all kinds of stuff…sports, politics, movies, TV, news, and books too.

Industry and book news:
@PublishersWkly — Industry news from PW.
@PublishersLunch — More industry news.
@ShelfAwareness — Same folks that do the Shelf Awareness newsletter for sellers and readers.
@paulbogaards — PR guy at Knopf.
@yrstrulyREL — Director of Accounting Marketing at Random House.
@DonLinn — Publishing consultant.

Some of our favorite bookstores:
@SquareBooks — Our friends in Oxford.
@mcnallyjackson — McNally Jackson in NY.
@fightthestupids — Maple St. Book Shop in New Orleans.
@RainyDayBooks — Rainy Day Books in Kansas City.
@octaviabooks — Octavia Books in New Orleans.
@greenlightbklyn — Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn.
@lanora — Next Chapter Bookshop in Mequon, WI.

Some favorite authors on Twitter:
@chuckpalahniuk — Get ready for our Chuck event by following his official Twitter account.
@harlencoben — If you were here for Harlen Coben’s reading, you’ll understand.
@JackPendarvis — Jack Pendarvis
@escherx — Adam Ross
@Danchaon — Dan Chaon

Friends of the store:
@CATHEADVodka — Our favorite vodka, from Mississippi’s first legal still.
@beanfruitcoffee — Joe and Lisa go nuts for this locally roasted coffee.

And finally, possibly my favorite book-related Twitter account:
@NormsBookClub — Comedian and actor Norm McDonald hosts a monthly book club. This month Norm’s Book Club is reading Walker Percy’s “The Moviegoer” but the discussion ranges far and wide.

That’s only a fraction of the twitter accounts I follow, but it’s a good start and should include something for just about everyone. Now you tell me — what’s your twitter account? What great twitter account did I overlook? If you know of a great book-related twitterer, please share it!

Just like in the film industry, the fall is the season when some of the best books of the year are published. Publishers are gearing up for the holiday season, and slot all their brightest gems, from new authors to the old reliables, to come out during the last months of the year. So this week is an exciting one for Random House, and for us Lemurians, and for you readers, too, because The Night Circus has arrived!

I’m not sure why we haven’t talked much about the book publicly yet, because for months now we’ve certainly been talking about it in the store. We had a couple of advanced copies back in May, when John and Joe went to BEA (the big book conference in NYC), and came back telling us that everyone there was talking about the book. For a new author, whose book is months away from publication, to be buzzed about at a bookseller’s conference like BEA, that’s huge!

Lisa had already quietly read it in April (due to the savvy work of our Random House rep, Liz) and by the end of the May conference our advanced copies were hot as they passed from reader to reader. To date, these are the Lemurians who have read and loved this book:

Lisa, Kaycie, Zita, Emily, Kelly, Anna, Claire, Quinn, Ashley, Nan, Maggie. That’s just about everyone on our staff.

On Erin Morgenstern’s book tour you can expect some enthusiastic events. One reason for this is because the book lends itself so well to creativity. The circus is the foreground of a behind-the-scenes duel between two magicians who at first don’t know each other’s identities, so they have to be content to “one-up” each other through the medium of the circus attractions. They create an ice garden, an enchanted clock, a cloud maze, and many other nifty no-limit-to-the-imagination things.

Lemuria’s event with Erin, which is October 3rd, starting at 5, is no exception. Most everything is in the planning stages still, and it’s also hush hush, but suffice it to say that you can expect to walk into a circus in the Dotcom building that Monday evening.

The Night Circus is our September pick for First Editions Club. Though Erin won’t be here till October 3rd, some of the copies that arrived this week were pre-signed. Come pick up your copy of the debut novel that’s got everyone talking this fall — The Night Circus is a thrilling, magical tale from beginning to end.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (Random House, September 2011)