well…have you?  no?  why not?  i’m willing to bet that i haven’t gone a day without touching at least one book in over ten years.  i wouldn’t have it any other way.

i’m not one of those folks who can read from a screen for very long.  if there is something on the internet that i want to read i have to print it out.  i may not be saving the environment in that way but my eyes sure do thank me.  like i said in my last blog, there’s not much out there that tops the smell and feel of a book.

it may take me several lifetimes to read all of the books that i want to read.  i have an entire bookshelf of books that i have yet to read (this doesn’t include the books that i haven’t brought home from work yet so as to not scare my boyfriend even more).  non book lovers may not understand why someone would have such a massive collection of books they haven’t read yet.  they just don’t get it.  i love surrounding myself with books.  a house built of books is a dream of mine.

by Zita

When I read You Know When the Men Are Gone, I was impressed with Siobhan Fallon’s writing alone. The stories could have been about anything. It was clear Fallon knew how to write a good short story.

But since her stories are about military family life, there is no doubt many readers who are part of military families will find special meaning in this debut collection. We happened to learn that a customer of Lemuria is not only part of a military family but is also acquainted with Siobhan Fallon through her son-in-law.

Donna Evans’ son-in-law became life long friends with Siobhan’s husband, Major Evans, while they were both living in Hawaii. Major Evans was actually a groomsman in her daughter’s wedding. As a wedding gift, Siobhan gave her daughter and her husband an advanced copy of You Know When The Men Are Gone.

Donna shared these thoughts with us:

“After our daughter read it she quickly handed it off to me, knowing I’d like it. We have a number of military men in our family and we are very patriotic. Our son in law Captain Lowell Goldman was deployed to Afghanistan during his courtship with our daughter (Ellie Evans Goldman). Of course, I loved getting to read these wonderful stories which also happened to teach me some things I could not have known about the intimate issues of military families.”

“Siobhan has described family life at Ft. Hood before, during and after deployment during the early 21st Century. The book is so contemporary. I don’t think it would have been written quite this way in the Viet Nam or World War II eras. The type of warfare, the roll of women in society, the use of email and telecommunications from the battle front are all current. These colorful stories include tales of love, strength, longing, worry, jealousy, anger, and forgiveness. There are acts of sisterhood among the wives, heroism and humanitarianism from the soldiers, misbehaving children who don’t fully understand their parents’ problems, and passionate love. Any American citizen would benefit from reading about the sacrifices made daily by our ‘families in uniform.'”

In the video below, Siobhan Fallon speaks candidly about her book and life on a military base.

Joe writes about selecting You Know When the Men Are Gone for our January First Editions Club selection here. Siobhan Fallon will be signing at 5:00 and reading at 5:30 on Tuesday, February 1st.

Were you one of the lucky ones who came to hear Jeannette Walls speak last night? If you’re like me, maybe you’re still in the wow-phase.

What a classy, genuine woman.

Here are a couple of things that stood out in my mind:

In response to those who say memoirists are exhibitionists Jeannette said that her readers can read about her life and maybe learn something without actually having to go through it. And isn’t that why we all read? A good book is a good book–whether it is fiction or nonfiction.

She reminded us of the age-old tradition of story telling and urged us to tell our own stories, the stories of our grandparents and great grandparents as these earlier generations were true pioneers where hardship was the norm.

Writer Susan Cushman wrote in her blog this morning:

“Don’t you love it when you get more than you expected? That’s what happened on Wednesday, when I drove down to Jackson . . . First of all, I loved Walls’ first book, The Glass Castle, but I hadn’t gotten around to reading her second one, Half Broke Horses yet, although I purchased it when it came out in 2009. But the fact that she was still touring and reading (to packed houses, like she did at Lemuria last night) fifteen months after the book’s debut is a tribute to its staying power—and hers.”

“What I also didn’t expect was the powerful, inspirational talk she gave after her book signing. She didn’t read from either of her books, but talked about both of them and answered questions. Her enthusiasm reminded me of my friend, River Jordan, especially when she talked about “the power of storytelling.”I didn’t expect her to look up from the books she was signing for me and listen—as though there was no one else in line—to my brief personal story of trying to write a memoir and now a novel. She encouraged me on several personal and professional levels, like a life coach and mentor might do.”

I imagine many of you who were there are still running over fragments of the evening in your mind, feeling inspired, too.

Hey Guys–

Since girls and girl reading selections now dominate the fiction room, we guy Lemurians have to decided to launch our certified guy reading club monthly selection. Suggestions will be picked only by the male Lemurians (now Mark, Joe and John). Each month one of us will pick a favorite to feature, with the hope of providing a good fun reading experience.

Our monthly guy book fix will be called Martini Soup. We hope as you read our list, your stew pot will be full of some good meaty reading. Also, we suggest these fine books to be read with a stiff martini (straight up or on the rocks) by your side, and of course, Cathead vodka to be the beverage of choice.

Without question, Jim Harrison is our first author of choice. Our baptism fiction is his 1978 novella Revenge included in his immortal Legends of the Fall. What more can I say to kick this club off, but–

“Revenge is a dish better served cold.”

-Old Sicilian adage

To read or reread is our proposition. While following our club, find new jewels or revisit old favorites. John picked first, Joe and Mark will follow and then the list will grow as it will. We welcome your suggestions and comments. Let’s have some fun.

P.S. We welcome you gals to read along if you like stiff drinks while you read.

-John

This link will lead you to all of our editions of Legends at Lemuria. The one pictured above is a first edition signed (1979).  To get his memorable voice in mind, enjoy the audio file of Jim Harrison reading from The Beast God Forgot to Invent and a poem, “In the Old Days,” at Lemuria in 2000.

For the first time in a long time, I felt like I was somewhat caught up on my work this past Saturday. After lunchtime traffic, I decided to check out Borders. In response to my Tuesday local market Bookstore Key blog, I thought I might start relaying my perceptions.

I don’t know much about the Borders national restructuring yet. However, I can make some observations about the present local business model.

When entering Borders, I was immediately greeted by a vanity author welcoming me to the store. She seemed determined to intercept all visitors. I’m not faulting the author but the store management. At times, I feel I’ve let Lemuria be taken advantage of by dominating-self-centered authors “hawking their books.” I’ve always considered this rude to my regular reader customers. So now, I promise we will do a better job of keeping this sales tactic under control within Lemuria.

Back to my analysis. In January, bookstore inventory is usually light (returns begin and inventory replacement can be cumbersome). However, it’s not too difficult to keep your prime picks and your customers main desires on hand.

At the end of December, Borders announced it was going to suspend payment to publishers of their owed bills. Some publishers responded by suspending book shipments. My impression of Borders inventory, as I walked around, was that it was very light. Knowing that analyzing publishers book representations in such a big store is difficult, I was still struck by the lack of dominating store presence by local market titles. The Help (Penguin) was in quantity. However, I did not see Bush or Zeus (Random House) stacked up in the front.

Trying to figure out which publishers were playing hard ball with Borders was also difficult, but I began to form inclinations. I suspect the wholesalers, Ingram in particular, are supplying Borders, demanding immediate payment. My guess is the withheld publisher payments are being used to buy negotiating time and channeling those funds to the wholesalers. Publishers are not being paid while wholesalers are?

Saturday at 6:30 on my way home from work, I browsed Barnes & Noble. It seems down scaling of the physical book inventory is well underway. Already, I see expanded children’s activity sections, larger product displays, puzzles and multiple sideline gimmicks. I don’t think I’m deceiving myself but it seems in a short month’s time since Christmas, the B & N transition to less real book inventory is well underway.

Please understand this observation is just a limited Saturday viewpoint on the local market. I can tell you with certainty, however, that we at Lemuria are more proud than ever of our standards. We have to started to make our real book selection better edited than it has ever been: from paperback to hardback to signed first edition. We are striving to be more interesting and surprising to our browser while adding increased value to the book purchase. We hope our hard work over the next few months defines our goal.

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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