Are you just getting started in yoga? Or have you been practicing a long time and would like to practice some at home on your own? Do you have a little one you would like to share your yoga time with?

Yoga Pretzels is a simple box of 50 durable and beautifully illustrated cards  designed for young and old. On the front of each card is an illustration of one yoga pose with key words to help describe the energy behind each pose.

Warrior pose uses key words like “strong” and “focused”. On the back, illustrations and a small amount of text help you and your little one get into the pose. Usually two questions follow each pose to use with a more mature child. Warrior pose brings up trust with these questions: “What does it mean to be trustworthy?” and “Are you trustworthy?”

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I have used these cards with a kids yoga class. Laying the cards out on the floor, we worked together to pick out which yoga poses we wanted to do and then we decided on the best order for the poses. It worked well for kids who might other wise have a hard time getting focused on yoga. The partner poses were great for supporting interaction and simple fun. These cards also help to give meaning to each pose before you try to actually do them together. Breathing and a few moments of quiet? Yes, we did that, too.

If you are new to yoga classes and would still like to practice a little at home, these cards will remind you of poses you have already learned in class, some include meditation and breathing time as well. After practicing yoga for many years, I have also enjoyed them, practicing my own yoga at home. The cards are so cheerful and simple; they free the mind.

Yoga Pretzels by Tara Guber and Leah Kalish
 

Whenever I see the first example of a current events title arrive in the store, I tend to assume that it’s not a very good book. This probably isn’t entirely fair — I’m sure that some very good books have been written very quickly, and I have read enough of them to know they exist. Thomas Sowell’s The Housing Boom and Bust, for example, was released in May of 2009, just months after the collapse, and I found it to be an extremely well-written and important book, as did John. The books that hit the market later may be more comprehensive, but it doesn’t mean the first book can’t be excellent in its own right.

With that in mind, I wasn’t immediately impressed when the first copy of 33 Men arrived in the store. Mentally I categorized it as a hastily-written attempt to cash in before the Chilean mining rescue fell completely off the national radar, but I’m a sucker for the glossy photo inserts in nonfiction books, so I flipped through it anyway. As I did, something on the front dustjacket flap caught my eye — the author, Jonathan Franklin, is an American journalist who has been living in Chile for 15 years as a Guardian correspondent, and was the only journalist given a “Rescue Team” pass. That pass gave Franklin full access to the rescue operation as well as access to the trapped miners through the video system the rescue team had set up.

What we have here isn’t a cobbled-together rehashing of the same news headlines and reports everyone read in August of 2010 — this is a story, written by the one person that had both the necessary access and ability, the one person perfectly placed to record and deliver that story to readers who want something beyond 24-hour news-cycle headlines and TV melodrama.

We’ve got a couple copies of 33 Men faced out on the shelf in the Adventure section — if you see them, don’t make the same mistake I nearly did — go ahead and pick one up, flip through it and read a little.

On the surface, Kevin Brockmeier’s new novel might seem a bit weird and “out there”, but as the days pass since I turned the last page a few days ago, I am left with the warm, if rather unexpected, feeling that this is a love story, not presented in traditional form, but in Brockmeier’s original, unique structure. This is the first Brockmeier which I have read. Now, I’m thinking that I need to back up and read A Brief History of the Dead, the 2006 popular release.

Based around a journal, which was compiled from the contents of sticky notes, which were short love phrases and thoughts written daily by a husband to his wife, the short novel upholds the idea of keeping the love alive. However, tragically, the love is cut short by the wife’s untimely and young death from an auto accident.

The love journal switches hands throughout the novel many times, even once being stolen by a young child who takes it home, never telling his parents about his special treasure. Later, after the 10-year-old gives it to a door to door Christian evangelist, the journal serves as a way to remind him of his beloved deceased sister. Finally, the journal falls into the hands of the most unlikely bearer, a street person who makes his living selling used books off the street. While the reader is let into the lives of the diverse owners, he is all the while trying to find the meaning of the novel, essentially the thesis.

As I said earlier, this novel has captured my attention more now, a few days later, than it did while I was reading. If someone were to ask me, “What is that novel about?, I would have to say “love”. What becomes clearer and clearer is the even the most distraught, even the most socially unaccepted people, even the most unexpected people have the need to love and be loved, for the novel’s characters are captivated and mesmerized by reading the love journal over and over.

The Illumination by Kevin Brockmeier (Vintage, 2011)

-Nan

“At night, stray dogs come up underneath our house and lick our leaking pipes.”

I have read this sentence twice now: the first time as the opening sentence of Mark Richard’s short story “Strays,” the opening story in The Ice at the Bottom of the World; the second time as Mark Richard describes a crucial writing moment in his new memoir House of Prayer No. 2 using the unconventional second person.

“The door to the house finally opens, and a rough-looking guy lets Melvin out, and Melvin shakes his hand and comes out to the jeep. You’ve got one of your little notepads on your lap and you need to borrow a pen, and as you drive off he asks you what you are writing, and you don’t answer but what you are writing is: At night, stray dogs come up underneath our house and lick our leaking pipes.”

“. . . you are on your mattress in the hot attic going over At night . . . because you’ve learned that everything you need is in that first line, all you have to do is unpack the story, its metronome is already ticking back and forth.”

Sometimes it’s best to know nothing of an author. Sometimes it’s best not to be anticipating but to simply be open and ready for anything. Reading House of Prayer No. 2 and the stories in The Ice at the Bottom of the World happened simultaneously just because of my innocent curiosity. I was rewarded with the stellar writing style of an author I had never read before and Mark Richard’s account of how The Ice at the Bottom of the World came to be published and then its termination followed with the Pen/Hemingway award in 1990–not to mention the reader reward of learning the story of a “special child” who grew up, realized his passion in life and found his faith.

Bynum writes in The New York Times Book Review that she now understands Richard’s unusual use of the second person in his memoir:

“. . . suddenly the memoir’s reticence, its desultory movement, its use of second person, revealed their purpose to me. To understand the mystery of faith, you cannot be told it; you must experience it yourself.” (Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, The New York Times Book Review, February 11, 2011)

And I say, too, that you must experience House of Prayer No. 2 for yourself just as I did and let Mark Richard set the metronome with that first line– “say you are a special child . . .”

Join us Tuesday, February 22nd for a signing (5:00) and reading (5:30) with Mark Richard.

Mark Richard is the author of two award-winning short story collections, The Ice at the Bottom of the World and Charity, and the novel Fishboy. His short stories and journalism have appeared in the New York Times, The New Yorker, Harper’s, Esquire, Vogue, and GQ. He is the recipient of the PEN/Hemingway Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and a Whiting Foundation Writer’s Award. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and their three sons.

“I think that there will be a 50% reduction in bricks-and-mortar shelf space for books within five years, and 90% within 10 years. Bookstores are going away.” (Mike Shatzkin, Ideal Logical Co., The Wall Street Journal)

Obviously with Borders bankruptcy, much shelf space will be eliminated quickly. Now when you go into B & N you see book shelf space already vanishing into other non-book products. The new kid on the block, the e-book, seems to be growing up fast.

It’s tough to contemplate the price point of the physical book in the future. Lemuria, being a small bookstore, has little control over the list prices we can charge. Instead, our mission is to add value however and whenever we can by offering first editions, signed copies, and author appearances, etc. When price is discussed, I have very little control if I want to stay in business. Regarding Lemuria’s participation in the discount wars between big box bookstores and Amazon, I cannot even consider entering that competition.

Lemuria introduces the not-so-well known but award-winning author Mark Richard on February 22nd. To complement his new memoir, Lemuria has collected first editions of his early short stories, compared to Flannery O’Connor yet not widely read.

With the present climate change, Barnes & Noble, the T-Rex of the brick-and-mortar war, and the virtual Amazon, thriving in its own dimension selling an endless variety of products, are now in a Dino Dawg fight. (In the main ring, ladies and gentleman, the Nook vs. the Kindle!) I ask why should physical books continue to be discounted?

Can and will the retail price of physical books come down? Will the publisher begin to determine real value retail pricing on the books they present to be sold?

If retail prices come down and our book product can be valued properly, could we as an industry reinstate a more legitimate physical book value point? Can the price wars now be fought over the e-book? As real book selling space shrinks, we can offer more product legitimacy with more real value marketing for physical books. With cheaper retail list prices, can we create more customer confidence, causing more physical books to be sold?

Amazon is selling Kevin Brockmeier’s Illumination at 48% off the list price. Building on a years-long relationship, Lemuria hosts Kevin Brockmeier on February 23, supporting one of the most original voices of contemporary Southern literature.

When the discounting of retail list prices increased, many local community bookstores were squeezed out of the market and forced to close. For 18 years, I’ve been across the road from a box store which is erasing the value of the physical book. (I was told by mutual sales reps that the box was located across the street “to put me out of business.”)

Revaluing retail book prices could level the playing field again. Less discount influence from the big box bookstores would open the door for Lemuria to grow faster out of the “Great Recession” and our customers would see Lemuria improve more quickly in terms of becoming a more solid “reader” bookstore.

Lovers of Southern literature can buy Swampandia at Ridgeland’s Barnes & Noble for $19.96 or they can buy a signed first edition at Lemuria for the list price of $24.95 and meet one of the hottest new voices in Southern Literature, Karen Russell.

Projection: Suggested e-book prices may level off between 7 and 10 bucks. With e-book values so cheap, will book publishers begin to lower retail prices of the physical book so readers of the physical book won’t feel ripped off? By lowering retail prices, the marketing strength of the word “discount” will be lessened. Publishers please remember what too-high CD prices did to our community music stores.

Also, what about net pricing, where bookstores would get to mark up like most retailers? Our existent antiquated mark down from the retail price structure, helped caused our industry to get into this Amazon “loss leader” mess in the first place.

John Grisham books are a typical “loss leader” choice for big box book stores and Amazon. One use of a loss leader is to draw customers into a store where they are likely to buy other products. The vendor expects that the typical customer will purchase other products at the same time as the loss leader book and that the profit made on these items will be such that an overall profit is generated for the vendor, prostituting the book.

Such complexity won’t be solved soon. I believe that with retail price adjustment and fair valuing for retail pricing within our industry, Mr. Shatzkin’s forecast can be proven wrong. For the present, Lemuria will continue to add value to our books we sell, providing our community with the best services we can offer. I believe that with more legitimate retail pricing from the publishers, our bookstore can exist indefinitely.

The Bookstore Key Series on Changes in the Book Industry

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)

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