Predictable Success breaks down the business journey. Beginning with the early struggles of a business, the fun of fast growth and early success, reaching a plateau at status quo. Hopefully, you don’t find yourself in a rut filled with growing problems and the final big question: Could this could be the end?

It’s not easy to clearly recall my early business inclinations 35 years ago. Struggles long past flash by mixed with memories of “light bulb” moments–but it’s just too long ago to remember it all.

Both my children started new businesses in 2010.

My daughter Saramel has partnered with an early stage art gallery called SCOOP while my son Austin has partnered to launch Mississippi’s first legal distillery Cathead Vodka. I started reading Predictable Success to help me be more aware in offering helpful advice–if I were asked.

To my surprise, midway through the book, I was put in a Lemuria trance. I began to relive and reflect, especially on the grinding “treadmill” and the haunting “Big Rut” stages my business has progressed in and out of. Readdressing these times could be very important, as it seems a hazardous journey is upon us now. Every decision seems important in the book business of 2011.

Nevertheless, this year could be a great time to start a business and follow your dream. Opportunities abound, and our country needs small business more than ever. The unknown is waiting and it seems change is taking place in every aspect of business.

Predictable Success gives a clear grasp of ways to figure your own business place and evolution helping you know what to look for. Being very clear, the author presents ideas and examples that hypnotize the reader to search out the flaws in their own work. Any new business person would benefit from reading about McKeown’s experience of predicting success and understanding problems.

As my industry changes, the 2011 rules of success no one seems to know. Big ideas of e-book mania appear catastrophic to real book readers. However, I see this as an opportunity to redefine Lemuria as a better bookstore by readdressing my traps of the past. Applying McKeown’s understanding as a tool, I will try to not make the same mistakes again.

Whether you are thinking of starting your own business or feel the overwhelming challenge of staying afloat in a thunderstorm of change, reading Predictable Success will shed light onto your path.

Increasing awareness as your business journeys through these stages is a constant challenge at every moment. With awareness, creativity has the chance to emerge, giving advice for adjustment at all business growth and decline stages.

Predictable Success: Getting Your Organization on the Growth Track–And Keeping It There by Les McKeown (Greenleaf, June 2010)

Everywhere Siobhan goes readers echo their own experiences of military life as did many at her reading last night. However, there are those readers who have never been close to military life at all and read her book in one sitting.

A 10-city tour for a collection of short stories? Short stories as a Lemuria First Editions Club pick? Amy Einhorn, an imprint of Penguin, definitely has a remarkable ability for picking fresh new talent. It was just two years ago that Kathryn Stockett made her debut with The Help. In both cases, Lemuria was lucky enough to work with these authors.

Even though Siobhan is wrapping up her tour today, independent booksellers will continue the buzz just as we at Lemuria spread the word:

“I just read a great book . . .”

Joe writes about selecting You Know When the Men Are Gone for our January First Editions Club selection here. Lisa writes about the special appeal this collection of short stories will have to military families, and Lemuria customer Donna Evans shares her connection to the book–read all about it here.

Ellen is sitting in the waiting room of a doctor’s office on the army base of Fort Hood, waiting to hear the results of a test. The waiting is making her thoughts run wild; she fears that her cancer’s back, that insidious disease that has taken her breasts already, and that has in many ways derailed her family’s life.

Then she gets a phone call. Her teenage daughter and five year old son aren’t in school today, does she have a doctor’s note? She doesn’t. She sent them to school that morning.

This is how “Remission” begins, one of the most haunting stories in Siobhan Fallon’s book of short stories, You Know When the Men Are Gone, centered around the families at Fort Hood military base in Texas. I finished the book a few weeks ago, reading it through quickly in a weekend. There is something about each of the stories that pulls the reader along; they evoke emotions that we all experience and can relate to.

In one story, a sergeant’s widow continues living at Fort Hood after her husband dies, though she avoids the busy supermarket when it’s payday and isolates herself at home, begrudgingly hosting the supportive and concerned friends and colleagues of her husband who are dropping by less and less frequently. In another, a husband, a soldier on leave, is so suspicious that his wife is having an affair that he hides in their basement, stalking her in order to catch her in the act, though he doesn’t know what he’ll do if he does.

It is a testament to Siobhan Fallon’s artistry that she has told the stories of these families affected by our current war with such a subtle, sober hand as to make their world come violently alive.

Joe writes about selecting You Know When the Men Are Gone for our January First Editions Club selection here. Lisa writes about the special appeal this collection of short stories will have to military families, and Lemuria customer Donna Evans shares her connection to the book–read all about it here.

Siobhan Fallon will be signing today at 5:00 and reading at 5:30.

My parents have this great library in their house.  While I was in college and could not afford to really buy books I would ‘borrow’ books from them.  One of the authors that I happened upon was Reynolds Price.  My dad had his trilogy, A Great Circle, which includes– The Surface of Earth, The Source of Light and The Promise of  Rest. I was completely sucked into this saga of the Mayfield family.   This past week I was sad to learn that Reynolds Price had passed away from complications due to a heart attack.

Price was a wonderful Southern writer.  His books were mainly let in North Carolina where he was from.  Once when asked  why North Carolina was were he lived he said “It’s the place about which I have perfect pitch.”  Eudora Welty was one of his mentors early in his writing career in face she helped him get his first books published by sending some of his work to her own publisher. Reynolds Price was often compared to William Faulkner which annoyed him greatly because he always considered himself a literary heir to Miss Welty.   In 1984, Price was diagnosed with cancer which left him paralyzed for the rest of his life.  He continued to teach and to write including his memoir, Clear Pictures in 1989 which he was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.   There is no question that the literary world lost a giant last week and that Reynolds Price will be missed but his work will continue to please generations from now on.

Emily just returned from the Winter Institute book conference in D.C. and brought me a gift from one of the bookstores there: an old Yale Shakespeare copy of The Tempest. The book itself isn’t extremely rare or valuable or anything, but it has character, and best of all, it is small. I had been wanting to read the play again because of the Julie Taymor film that’s coming out soon, and all I had was a complete works that I was not about to put in my bag. I was in the play as a young high schooler — this was me:

I know, we had great costuming for a community theatre, right? Reading the play again brought back many great memories and faces that I hadn’t thought of in a long time.

There’s something about an old book that’s so different from a new — worn in, well worn, but not worn out. The “old books” at Lemuria are what I like to think of as vintage; they’ve been weathering the passage of time, getting better (read: more valuable) as they grow older. The best books at Lemuria are our signed first editions, rare and special books that you can’t find just anywhere, those books that are important because of more than just their content. I love seeking out these unique books. One of my favorite things to do while I’m traveling is to browse independent bookstores, those places, like Lemuria, where you can find first editions and old books.

Books I’ve happened upon at other bookshops: