I’ve unintentionally been on a magical realism kick here lately and mostly with books that Kaycie has suggested to me, the latest of which is Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link. This lady has got one amazing imagination.

A handbag that contains an entire village if opened in a certain way.

Zombies who live in a chasm and spit up pajamas.

A witch’s son who wears a suit made of cat skins.

Living people who can be married to the dead and have children.

What?  Yes, these short stories are amazing.

Now let’s throw into the mix Karen Russell whose latest book, Swamplandia, was picked for our first editions club last month. This is pulled from an article written by Karen Russell on NPR’s website  :

“Pity the poor librarians who have to slap a sticker on Kelly Link’s genre-bending, mind-blowing masterpiece of the imagination, Stranger Things Happen. Are these stories horror or fantasy? Science-fictional romances? Travelogues to nonexistent countries: a nightmarish North America and a very weird New Zealand? Some read like detective manuals for solving crimes in the afterlife; others could be topographical maps of the unconscious. At least one has a naked ghost. This is a book that would probably cause the old wooden card catalog to catch fire.”

You can take my word or Karen Russell’s that Kelly Link is incredible or find out for yourself.

by Zita

In the last several years I have become fascinated with the contemporary English novel. I love reading English dialect and enjoy the descriptions of  the English countryside and often of London. I also find the English authors have an authentic voice which appeals to my literary cravings.

In the spring of 2009, I read Little Bee by Chris Cleave, which is set in London and Nigeria. See my blog written on Little Bee here. (You may simply click on “Nan” on the right hand side of our blog page and read my previous blogs by continuing to scroll down.)

In August of 2009, I read what has become one of my all time favorite novels, The Forgotten Garden, written by Kate Morton, whose previous success was House at Riverton. The Forgotten Garden is set in a ancient castle on the cliffs of England, as well as in the castle’s beautiful garden. At last count, I had “hand sold” about 44 copies of The Forgotten Garden to many  good Lemuria readers. Many have come back to tell me how much they loved it! You can read more about Forgotten Garden here.

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand written by Helen Simonson is an English novel of manners. This novel makes its mark. A very proper Englishman serves as the main character who owns a handsome English cottage and garden. Read more about Major Pettigrew here.

Maggie O’Farrell’s The Hand That First Held Mine grabbed my attention immediately. First opening at a family’s home  and garden out from London, the novel soon takes the reader to London where the action remains. As a new young mother and her business minded husband learn their way with a new b0rn, a mystery of their pasts starts to emerge which takes the reader on quite a hunt. Read more here.

C by Tom McCarthy is set in England and parts of Germany. This very unique and excellently crafted novel was nominated for last year’s Man Booker Prize. I thought it should have won! Read more here and here.

A  very recently published novel, 22 Britannia Road by Amanda Hodgkinson, has become one of my favorites for 2011 so far! I recommend it to those readers who liked The Invisible Bridge and The Glass Room. Set during and after WWII, the last part of 22 Britannia Road takes place just outside of London, and, yes, there is a garden. Read more here.

Come in the store and let us show you these and other English novels. We have an impressive collection of English literary fiction. If you don’t live in or near Jackson, we can always mail the titles above or others.  -Nan

Yep, sent my suit to the cleaners and picked out a new pair of flip flops, we’re going to the big city to meet with the publishers. As John said in his last blog the two of us are hopping on a jet airplane Monday at dawn – heading to New York in an attempt to make our store better, find authors for the fall, and explore the future of our industry. It’s our book industry trade show – Book Expo America or BEA.

John asked me to give a round-up of the authors we’re excited about this fall,  he mentioned three “big fish” – Jim Harrison, Michael Ondaatje, and Paul Hendrickson – here are a few more:

Authors we think we have a pretty good chance of scoring:

Charles Frazier is firmly in the category of bookstore friend. He’s been here for both of his books and is truly a wonderful person. The rumor is that Frazier’s new book is going to be great – a page turner set in the 60s so a bit of a departure.

Our new friend Karl Marlantes of Matterhorn fame already has another book coming out. This is non-fiction, the title says it all: What It Is Like to Go to War. Read all about his visit to Lemuria last year here.

I’m pretty sure we’re going to be able to get Jeffrey Eugenides. The author of The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex‘s first book since winning the Pulitzer in 2002.

A few authors that have been to Lemuria before, but we would love to have back include: Daniel Woodrell of recent Winter’s Bone fame, Tony Horwitz author of Confederates in the Attic and A Voyage Long and Strange, Hillary Jordan who wrote Mud Bound, Tom Perrotta, and, it’s been a while, but we can always hope for James Lee Burke to come back to Lemuria.

A couple of new up and comers that we’re excited about are:

Erin Morgenstern author of Night Circus. A bunch of folks on staff have already this book and really really want to meet Erin.

Jesmyn Ward grew up in DeLisle Mississippi and is currently the Grisham writer in residence at Ole Miss. We’re hearing a lot of good buzz about this one.

We’re thrilled to announce that we already have Chuck Palahniuk on the Schedule!

Authors who have never been to Lemuria, but we’re shooting for are: Mark Bowden, Ha Jin, and Haruki Murakami. Murakami’s 1Q84 is said to be his Magnum Opus and is certainly a huge book for this fall – think Cormac McCarthy big or Jonathan Franzen big.

and last but not least a few Children’s authors that we’re working on:

Christopher Paolini, Anna Dewdney (Llama Llama), Loren Long (Otis the Tractor), Rick Riordan, Jane O’Connor (Fancy Nancy), William Joyce, Mem Fox, and Kate DiCamillo (again!).

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The Bookstore Key Series on Changes in the Book Industry

Lemuria’s Headed for NYC (May17) Barnes & Noble Bankrupt? (April 28) Decluttering the Book Market: Ads on the latest Kindle (April 14) Independents on the Exposed End of the Titantic? (April 6th) Border’s Bonuses (March 30) The Experience of Holding a Book (March15) 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)

With the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Riders next week in Jackson, I thought I would share a couple of books with you about the Civil Rights Era here in Mississippi and nationwide.

Breach of Peace: Portraits of the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders by Eric Etheridge

Eric, a native Mississippian, has put together a fantastic book with the mugshots, current photos and interviews with over 80  Freedom Riders of 1961.  These brave people came to Jackson in the spring and summer of 1961 determined to bring civil rights to the state by challenging the segregation laws that were in place.

Over 300 people were arrested and convicted of the charge ‘breach of peace’.  The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission whose purpose was to “perform any and all acts deemed necessary and proper to protect the sovereignty of the state of Mississippi” recorded the name, mug shot and personal details of each Freedom Rider that was arrested.  Of course, by doing so they unintentionally but luckily for us, created a treasure trove of information about these heroes of the Civil Rights Movement here in Mississippi.  This information is collected here in Breach of Peace and is a wonderful source of information about a chapter in Mississippi and U.S. history that has yet to find closure.

Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi by John Dittmer

John Dittmer, who was a professor of history at Tougaloo College from 1967-1979, has written a history of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi in shocking detail.  While he does mention the national figures, Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, he mainly focuses on the largely forgotten grass root civil rights workers.  Dittmer’s point is that these national leaders were forced to act because of the determination of the ‘local people’ and their refusal to give up the struggle for racial justice.

If you would like to know more about the reunion events for the Freedom Riders, check out their website.

The Great Night by Chris Adrian is one of my favorite books this year.  The story is a contemporary re-telling of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and in this version three people, each of them weighed down by a failed relationship, stumble through San Francisco’s Buena Vista park on their way to a party. Adrian has broken the novel into five parts (Acts, rather, like Shakespeare’s play) and the reader gets to glimpse into the past of each of the lost, lovesick mortals.   On this same night Titania, queen of Faerie, and her subjects are also posed for a celebration—that is, until Titania unleashes the monstrous Puck out of grief and desperation over the loss of her Boy and also to bring back her husband the Faerie king Oberon.  And of course A Midsummer Night’s Dream would not be complete without someone playing the part of Bottom.  Adrian’s version is Huff, the ridiculous, overconfident leader of a band of homeless actors who are preparing to put on a musical version of Soylent Green.

In my opinion the most beautiful part of the novel is Adrian’s twist on the royal Faerie couple. Titania and Oberon occasionally steal a mortal boy, as faeries do, and he becomes a changeling.  It just so happens that the royal Faerie couple becomes particularly attached to one of these changelings and he becomes more than an amusement–he becomes their son, their Boy.  Sadly he is diagnosed with cancer, and Adrian’s portrayal of Titania’s and Oberon’s foray into the world of mortal grief and loss is touching and wonderfully imagined.

The Boy’s stay in the hospital was published as the story “A Tiny Feast” in The New Yorker in 2009 (and you can read the whole excerpt online here, if you’d like), and below I’ve included a piece of Adrian’s imagination from that very excerpt that I particularly enjoyed.

“This place is so ugly,” Titania said. “Can anything be done about that?” She was talking to the oncology social worker, one of a stream of visiting strangers who came to the room, and a woman who had described herself as a person to whom one might address problems or questions that no one else could solve or answer.

“I don’t mean the room,” Titania said. “I mean everything else. This whole place. And the people, of course. Where did you find them? Look at you, for instance. Are you deliberately homely? And that Dr. Blork—hideous!”

Alice cocked her head. She did not hear exactly what Titania was saying. Everything was filtered through the same normalizing glamour that hid the light in Titania’s face, that gave her splendid gown the appearance of a tracksuit, that had made the boy appear clothed when they brought him in, when in fact he had been as naked as the day he was born. The same spell made it appear that he had a name, though his parents had only ever called him Boy, never having learned his mortal name, because he was the only boy under the hill. The same spell sustained the impression that Titania worked as a hairdresser, and that Oberon owned an organic orchard, and that their names were Trudy and Bob.