John Evans has always a very clear business plan, to make Lemuria the best bookstore he can for our community, the best bookstore for Jackson, MS. For us that has been a lot of different things – a great environment, a well chosen selection, first editions for the collector, and in recent years a dynamic website and blog. John’s goal to give Jackson a great bookstore is also why we have all of theses book signings and readings you’re always hearing about. The chance to meet and hear a great literary writer read from his or her book is a wonderful experience – we often have prize winning authors, but we also have lesser known authors who are up and coming or who have written great books and of course we have a lot of non-fiction book signings as well, history, philosophy, etc.

All of this to say that we are thrilled to be able to bring Dr. Timothy Keller to Jackson. It seems that everywhere I go someone asks me about this event, but for those of you who don’t know Tim Keller’s work he is the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York – a church that has more than 5000 in attendance each Sunday. He has also published 5 books in the last four years all with Penguin Putnam – the first, The Reason for God, reached number seven on the New York Times non-fiction bestseller list.

Lemuria has teamed up with R.U.F. (Reformed University Fellowship) and Belhaven University to bring Keller to Jackson. We set up the event with Keller’s Publisher, R.U.F. is helping with coordination and marketing, and Belhaven is hosting the event at their Center for the Arts. (click the here if you don’t know where that is) We will have copies of all of Keller’s books for sale and he will sign after his talk until everyone is happy. We are taking advance orders if you can’t make it or wish to place larger orders for signed books. The new book is King’s Cross and you can read all about it on our website right here.

Who: Dr. Timothy Keller

What: Speaking and Signing

When: Thurs., February 24 at 7:00 (doors will open at 6:00)

Where: Belhaven University’s Center for the Arts

Surprise! St. Valentine’s Day is this coming Monday! It’s not too late to run by the grocery store Monday evening and buy that big heart shaped balloon and some wilted flowers, but here’s a better idea . . . books. I could list all of the reasons why books are a great idea but I think you know all of that stuff.

Here’s another idea if you want to go all out. Have you heard about our First Editions Club? Here’s the deal – once a month we either send you (or in this case your loved one) our featured signed first edition, or you can come pick it up and present the special book personally every month. What are the books? Well, it depends, they are always something special though, a hot literary book like Cold Mountain or a huge bestselling mystery like John Grisham. Sometimes we have even picked great pieces of non-fiction like say Willie Morris or Curtis Wilkie. This month we’re excited to have a really great literary work by Irishman Joseph O’Connor, you can read all about his new book Ghost Light on our blog here.

To see what else we have picked so far for 2011, click here.

A review of 2010 picks and the stories behind each pick can be found here.

Several months ago, I smiled happily when John and Joe placed an advanced reader’s copy of Joseph O’Connor’s new masterpiece Ghost Light in my hands. In the fall of 2007, I had been one of the lucky ones to hear the Irish author read from his novel Redemption Falls. Those of us who were at the reading will never forget the mesmerizing and beautiful reading, which probably lasted for at least an hour, which is a very unusual and longer length of time than most of our authors read.

As I recall, John and the rest of us begged O’Connor to keep reading, for his melodious voice captivated us all as he read his own words exactly as he had intended with an author’s perfect expertise and dedication. So, it probably goes without saying that I had been eagerly awaiting publication of another novel by the author.

Ghost Light, set in and around Dublin and London, in the early 1900s and mid 1950s, respectively, will capture the heart of even the romantically challenged, as O’Connor slowly and beautifully winds out a masterfully created story of the historically renowned aristocratic Irish playwright John Synge and his much younger, common society love interest Molly.

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As the years go by, Molly believes that Synge will one day marry her, even though his mother haunts and persuasively directs his every move. The heart wrenching story, told by the feisty young actress, often employs the second person “you”, rarely used by many authors due to its challenge.

Told through a series of flashbacks, O’Connor allows the reader to view the actress throughout her lifetime with its tumultuous ups and downs as she yearns to be forever with Synge instead of only in hidden trysts nestled in the countryside. The Dublin and London settings superbly anchor the story and give the reader a perfected view of the two time periods. Add to this enticing mix a play director by the name of the famous poet William Butler Yeats, and the story gains even more intrigue. O’Connor’s superb character development ranks at the very top in this novel.

In addition, it was hard for me not to compare this brilliantly written fiction with the “other” Irish author James Joyce, for the writing, to me, often migrating into stream of consciousness, reminded me of some scenes in Ulysses, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners.  At any rate, I was glad to revisit Dublin for sure.

One more thing . . . of particular interest to me was the author’s note, labeled “Acknowledgments and Caveat”, which appears at the end of this short novel, in which he tells of his childhood home in Dublin and his acquaintance with the old house where the playwright John Synge lived. O’Connor states:

“Ghost Light is a work of fiction, frequently taking immense liberties with fact. The experience and personalities of the real Molly and Synge differed from those of my characters in uncountable ways. Chronologies, geographies and portrayals appearing in this novel are not to be relied upon by the researcher.”

Somehow, reading this note at the end made the novel even more fascinating to me. I always like to try to figure out what is in the mind of the creator writer as I read.

I’m sure I will learn more when we Lemurians go to our dot.com building late afternoon on Friday, February 18th at 5:30 (signing at 5:00), to hear O’Connor read from Ghost Light, a novel to be read slowly and savored carefully. This is not a reading to be missed and all are invited. You are in for a treat! Ghost Light has also been picked for our February First Editions Club book.  -Nan

Some people confuse the practice of yoga for religion, or that it is somehow at odds with their own religion. I have never found a book more eloquent yet practical in illustrating the beauty and peace of yoga as a life philosophy. The book is entitled Bringing Yoga to Life: The Everyday Practice of Enlightened Living (Harper, 2005) by Donna Farhi, a western practitioner of yoga for more than 30 years. Farhi is one of the most well-respected and loved teachers of the western yoga community.

Through practical application, Farhi helps us to understand the basic tenets of yoga philosophy. Whether you are a eager beginner or an experienced practitioner, this book will help you navigate the ups and downs of life as well as enrich your daily yoga practice with your teacher or your own solo practice.

Farhi also helps clarify another misconception about yoga. Yoga is not about how perfect you do the poses. What is most important is that you are simply present and attentive to your body and breath. It goes back to what any good teacher says: Just do your best. And in striving to do your best, you can naturally improve your yoga practice without being a negative critic.

I was surprised at how much Farhi’s reflections inspired my own daily living off the yoga mat. I have marked and underlined and put so many exclamation points throughout the pages. I savored the words and would read this book again.

If you are looking for more help with your yoga practice, Farhi has written two excellent books: Yoga Mind, Body and Spirit and The Breathing Book.

I recently had a chance to sit down and talk to Dr. Steve Kistulentz, a local writer, about his new book of poems entitled The Luckless Age.

If you skim through the titles of the poems, you may find yourself laughing. Only a child of the 1980s with a PhD in English could write a poem called, “The Rick Springfield Sonnet.”

“The persona in the song Jesse’s Girl is really just a jerk,” Kistulentz explains to me. “I mean you tell me who screws who in that situation? In the poem I ask, ‘Is Jesse really your friend?'”

Kistulentz doesn’t stop with Rick Springfield; many elements of his youth are referenced throughout these poems. Evel Knievel, Hank Williams Sr, and Frank Sinatra are among the many cultural icons who receive a shout-out. For example, he adopts the narrative voice of the Skipper from Gilligan’s Island in “The Skipper Talks to His Therapist.”

By the time I’d been on the island

A year, I’d wasted maybe three months

Of it beating off to a torn magazine pages

Of an unattainable beauty, a redhead

Who was fading before my eyes, going soft

Like the bananas I ate every damn day.

But this book is not all throwback jokes about popular culture. In his first poem, “World’s Forgotten Twentieth Century Boy,” he opens, “Here is my century, as it actually was.” I’m going to pay him the highest compliment I can and describe some of his language as distinctly Joan Didion-esque. There is a sense of foreboding in the poems , a grisly fear of the overly-genial Reagan era and a distinct feeling that perhaps this is it, perhaps life can fizzle away at any moment. This is a book of poems with the fullness and scope of a novel.

Like everyone else, I wondered about the title of this collection. What is this so-called “luckless age?”

“The best answer that I can give is that it is the period of time bookended by the end of the Second World War through the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent anti-communist revolutions that swept through Eastern Europe,” Kistulentz says on his Web site.”I was looking for a title that could at least make the honest attempt to encompass both what the novelist and short story writer Richard Yates called the Age of Anxiety (he was referring to the post-hydrogen bomb and Sputnik escalation of the Cold War) and what I saw as the false optimism of the Reagan era. It’s a landscape populated by the forgotten and marginalized, reported from the mosh pit and the boardroom, the bedroom and the bar. Its voice emerges above the white noise of modern broadcasting to paint a portrait of America at once brutal, honest, and yet hopeful at its core.”

The book is split into three sections, but Kistulentz encourages readers to tackle the 80 pages of poems from start to finish. My personal favorite poem has changed multiple times, but I can’t stop reading “Wild Gift” and “Bargain.” I don’t want to try to explain what the poems are about because I’m still discovering new phrases throughout the collection that blow my mind. It takes a real gift to tell sardonic tales of teenage romance alongside stories of addiction and death. His voice is self-aware, connecting tales of adolescent floundering with a real grip on the rawness of loss. These poems express a complex longing for a era much deserving of such eloquent reminiscence. -Nell

Steve Kistulentz was at Lemuria Thursday, February 10, 2011.

The Luckless Age by Steve Kistulentz (Red Hen Press, 2011)