The photo section in Lemuria has always been above par for sure. There is a vast array of well known photographers and then some not well known who maybe should be. Recently we have gotten some incredible photography books in and I just have to spread the good word, as it were.

The first I have to mention is a retrospective of the amazing Michael Kenna’s career. I was first introduced to Michael Kenna by my amazing photography professor Gretchen Haine. Kenna’s photographs are what I would call , environmental portraits. His photos are completely devoid of human or animal life. I’m serious folks these photographs are not what the normal human eye sees. They are stunning and totally simple.

The complexity lies within the frozen moment in time that Kenna has somehow captured just at, what seems to be, the truly magical moment. I had a friend come over to my house a few weeks ago and he is a fellow photographer. I put this book in front of him and as he started to flip through it actual tears began to form in his eyes. Yeah it’s like that.

Michael Kenna: Images of the Seventh Day (Skira, 2010)

Book number 2 is a documentary style book by someone I have never heard of before. I just happened upon this book during Christmas when a customer asked about it. Well I looked it up and the computer showed that we indeed have a copy. I went to get it and was completely in love upon seeing the cover of the book.

The Projectionist by Kendall Messick is a photographic record of a year in the life of Messick’s childhood across-the-street neighbor. Gordon Brinckle appeared to be your everyday husband and father. He was the night projectionist at the local movie theater in his hometown of Middletown, Delaware for years.

However, during all that time he Gordon was constructing a miniature version of the movie palaces of times past. There was no detail that went unnoticed in Brinckle’s “picture palace of renown,” as he referred to it. This book is amazing and beautiful in every way a book can be. It tells an amazing story through rich, intimate photos.

The Projectionist by Kendall Messick (Princeton Architectural Press, 2010)

And finally for the third book. This book is a collaboration between the photographer Michael O’Brien with poetry by Tom Waits. I, personally, can get behind anything that has Tom Waits’ name attached to it. Just the cover of his book will suck you in. The photograph of the homeless gentleman on the front is completely haunting.

Upon opening the book you find that all the photos are of this same intensity and are accompanied by poems from Tom Waits. It’s good stuff. I found a little snippet of a review that could describe the purpose of this book much better than i can:

Waits and O’Brien’s 184-page book, Hard Ground, seeks to create “a portrait of homelessness that impels us to look into the eyes of people who live ‘on the hard ground’ and recognize our common humanity.”

Hard Ground with photos by Michael O’Brien, poetry by Tom Waits (University of Texas Press, 2011)

There are many many more fantastic photography books in this store. I have merely scratched the surface with this blog.

-Ellen

This week at Lemuria we’ve got some great events. The books, one about an Episcopal priest who was an integral force in the civil rights movement, another a collection of letters between one of Jackson’s most beloved authors and the editor of The New Yorker, and the third a chronicle of the blues people and places that shaped Mississippi music, are all worth checking out. The events themselves, however, are what will be most exciting. They’ll all be in our Dot Com building, and each will be a unique experience, featuring either a guest speaker, great food and fun, or live music.

First up, on Tuesday, May 10th starting at 5pm:

Araminta Stone Johnson presents And One Was a Priest: The Life and Times of Duncan M. Gray Jr.

Duncan M. Gray Jr. served various Mississippi parishes from 1953 to 1974, when he was elected bishop of Mississippi. But the story of his life is more than a story of his religious commitment to the Episcopal Church in Mississippi. Gray was a devotee of civil rights and a great player in the fight for racial equality. During our event, not only will Araminta Stone Johnson speak about her book and the life of Gray, but Bishop Duncan M. Gray Jr. will also be here to answer questions and sign the book. Book Friends of the University Press of Mississippi are hosting the event.

Then on Thursday, May 12th starting at 5pm:

Suzanne Marrs presents
What There Is to Say We Have Said: The Correspondence of Eudora Welty and William Maxwell

Marrs is best known as Eudora Welty’s friend and biographer, and her new book contains never before published letters between Welty and William Maxwell, the editor of The New Yorker, of whom Welty wrote, “For fiction writers, he was the headquarters.” Reading their letters gives one a personal peep into the life of writers of the time, including James Thurber, William Shawn, Katherine Anne Porter, J. D. Salinger, Isak Dinesen, William Faulkner, John Updike, Virginia Woolf, Walker Percy, Ford Madox Ford, and John Cheever.  There will be food and wine and lots of good literary talk.

And to end the week with a bang, on Friday, May 13th starting at 5pm:

Roger Stolle presents
Hidden History of Mississippi Blues

Stolle’s book focuses on the blues musicians who shaped our music heritage and those who keep it alive. Cathead Vodka, born in Mississippi and a proud supporter of live music, is co-sponsoring the event, which will include performances by Jimmy “Duck” Holmes before and afterwards. Come out to hear the blues, talk about music, and drink our famous $1 beer.

so i received our advanced readers copy  of palahniuk’s newest novel, damned, that will be coming out in october the other day.  this man knows how to market himself.  the advanced readers copy doesn’t just come in a box with several others from the publisher like most do.  he sends us a big box filled to the brim with candy, a greeting card, some sort of toy (this time a plastic devil’s mask) and the book.

i haven’t started reading it yet as i am unable to read more than one book at a time without getting seriously confused.  however, once i do get into it i’m sure a blog will follow shortly after.

here’s a blog that i did about palahniuk quite awhile ago that was a part of a series of my favorite authors favorite books.

by Zita

Last time I said I would be back with a post all about the new baseball books this year. I’ve decided to postpone that for another week or two – there are just so many new baseball titles that it’d be a shame to leave any out, and I want to read and check out as many of them as possible before revisiting the topic here.

In the meantime, I figured I would cover a book that I nearly included in the last post. I’m glad I didn’t, as it covers a broader spectrum of topics than just baseball and it’s worth devoting a separate post to it. The title is Scorecasting, and it’s squarely in the pop-economics genre popularized by “Freakonomics” a few years ago – this is confirmed by the cover blurb by Steven Levitt declaring it to be the “closest thing to Freakonomics I’ve seen since the original.”

That’s a pretty fair comparison – it’s a similar brand of behavioral economic analysis, but applied to a host of sports and sports-related issues. The first chapter, for example, is entitled “Whistle Swallowing,” and examines the phenomenon of referees and umpires preferring to err on the side of failing to make a call, than actively making an incorrect call. In terms of influence on a basketball game, there isn’t much difference between an actual foul that goes uncalled, and a phantom foul that is mistakenly called, but referees openly admit they’d rather not call an actual foul, than mistakenly call a foul where there isn’t one.

Likewise, it’s been determined (using Pitch f/x) that baseball umpires call a much smaller strike zone for an 0-2 pitch than they do for a 3-0 pitch – essentially, they are more comfortable making the passive mistake (failing to call the ball or strike that results in the at-bat continuing), than making the active mistake (mistakenly calling the ball or strike that results in a walk or strikeout). Examples abound across all sports – the officials, in their desire not to mistakenly affect the outcome, strongly prefer errors of omission to errors of comission.

What makes this revelation doubly interesting is that it seems fans as well as officials prefer this inherent bias. The loyal fan may complain when his favorite player is fouled and it goes uncalled, but not nearly so loudly as when he complains that the referee has changed the outcome by calling his favorite player for a non-existent foul. Fans know that referees will make mistakes, and it seems that they are more comfortable with the officials occasionally failing to make a call when they should, than if they change the outcome by actively making calls they shouldn’t.

I couldn’t help but think about Armando Galarraga’s near-perfect game when I read this chapter, as it stands as possibly the most striking and tragic counter-example in recent memory. On June 2nd of 2010, Galarraga was one out away from completing the 21st perfect game in Major League history. The 27th batter, Jason Donald, hit a slow infield roller that first baseman Miguel Cabrera fielded and flipped to Galarraga for the (apparent) final out at first base. Umpire Jim Joyce signaled that Donald was safe, but replay confirmed that Donald was in fact out by half a step.

Perhaps Joyce really was convinced that Donald was safe. But somehow, I can’t help but think that somewhere, in the back of his mind, he was worried about falsely awarding a pitcher with an undeserved perfect game. Joyce, an umpire widely regarded for his professionalism and class, was inherently biased against creating an historic outcome with a mistaken call – one can imagine him steeling himself to make the unpopular “safe” call if the circumstances demanded it. He was so concerned over this possibility that when the seemingly inevitable split-second play occurred, he was more ready, more willing, to make the unpopular “safe” call, even in error.

The easiest thing in the world would have been to call the 27th and final out on any close play – even if replay proved him wrong, nobody would have complained too loudly. But in his desire to make the correct call, in any situation, he was willing to risk taking away a perfect game from a 28 year old journeyman pitcher, to take away the historic moment of glory from a pitcher who would be demoted and then traded away for two minor leaguers in the offseason. Jim Joyce bucked the inherent bias; he did not swallow his whistle.

I first read this collection three or four years ago–I’m guessing when it first came out in paperback, but I can’t say for sure (I really need to start dating my books after I’ve finished them).   Well, at the time, let’s guess that I was probably a naive freshman  in college, I remember being shocked by some of these stories, maybe even a little repulsed by some of the characters.  I didn’t dislike the collection, but I finished it, thought it was weird, and put it back on my shelf. Let’s chalk that up to my naivete and the fact that I probably bought it because my 18 year old self  thought it’d be cool to read a book by indie filmmaker and artist Miranda July.

Last Sunday when I was getting ready for work, I spotted it above my desk and suddenly felt the urge to pick it up and re-read it.  So I did.  I re-read the entire collection in one afternoon, and I’ve re-evaluated my college freshman assessment.  Certainly July’s characters are quirky, as anyone who knows her work might expect.  And no doubt there is something a little bit repulsive about some of them, but then you realize, that what’s repulsive are their faults, and those faults are so human–things like the inability to leave your house sometimes no matter how much you want to, miming happiness with your significant other, having a birthmark removed because everyone says “she’s so beautiful except for…” and then missing that part of yourself that you got rid of because of some silly societal standards that you’re not even sure you agree with.  These are struggles that I think we usually internalize and because we so rarely see them outside of ourselves, maybe we recoil a little when someone has put them out in the open as July does in this collection.

But to put it simply, I think these stories are wonderful and weird and sad. They make you feel a little bit lonely, but they also make you feel like you’re not alone in your loneliness and so it’s okay.

Miranda July is a performance artist, writer, actress, musician, and film director (yes, she does it all).  She starred in and directed the film Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005) as well as The Future, which debuted at Sundance this year. July is also one of the founders of the online arts community Learning to Love You More. Find out more about her and her work on her website here.  -Kaycie