Around 25 years ago, I met Larry Brown. My pal and great bookseller, Richard Howarth, had mentioned to me that he had met a great reader though his store (the incomparably fine Square Books), who wanted to write. Soon there after, he introduced me to Larry Brown.

At a party on a front porch in Belhaven, one block from Ms. Welty’s house, I met and talked books with Larry. Common reading tastes was the immediate doorway to begin our friendship. Over the years, we shared many books together, our fondness for authors as diverse as Louis L’Amour to Cormac McCarthy. We were reading buddies.

A bookseller’s relationship with an author can grow to be very special over time using books and reading as a bridge. The labor of these two professions can emerge into a natural bond tied together through love and deep friendship.

As I think about Larry’s passing on this anniversary of his death, I feel the loss of this short writing life. No more Larry books to read or book talk to be had.

However, so very fondly I reflect on Larry and Richard and value knowing both and understanding the meaning and fullness of a bond through books.

Click here to see all of “Lemuria Reads Mississippians.”

Mississippians is available now. Purchase a copy online or call the bookstore 601/800.366.7619.

Neil White will be signing copies of Mississippians Friday, November 26th.

xxxx

Since quite a few of you were interested in my last fairy tale post (which you can read here), this post is here to let you know that I am still very much into fairy tales and have been collecting quite a few more since we last spoke of them.

As of late, my bedside table has been home to a veritable tower of books.  (That’s not to say that I’m talented enough to read all of them at once, though I very much wish that I was.) Living in this book-tower are two books that I’m excited to let you know about right now in this very post, so without further ado….they are St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves and  My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me.

St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell

You may remember St. Lucy’s from an earlier post by Zita.  I believe she referenced it as “an awesome little book of short stories,” and that could not be closer to the truth.  I recently gifted this book to a friend of mine, who in the middle of writing her honors thesis and finishing up all of the other requisite undergraduate work, found time to read a bit and said that the stories really stuck with her.  Russell was named one of The New Yorker’s “Top 20 Under 40 Writers” this summer and with good reason.  I personally wish that I could crawl into the world she has created—a world of sleep-away camps for “disordered dreamers” where one of the remedies is to fall asleep in a hot air balloon, alligator-wrestling theme parks hidden away in swamplands, and cities made of large, abandoned shells.  I recently received an advance reading copy of Russell’s new novel Swamplandia!  (happy early Christmas to me)and can hardly wait to get started on it.

My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me edited by Kate Bernheimer

This book is a fairy tale anthology, but what Kate Bernheimer has done is asked contemporary writers like Aimee Bender, Michael Cunningham, Neil Gaiman, and Joyce Carol Oates (the list of wonderful authors goes on and on) to take a fairy tale “classic” (think La Fontaine, the brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson) and write a new version or spin-off inspired by that classic. It’s a fun book to read, and since it’s an anthology, it’s easy to just pick up and read one story whenever the mood strikes.

Bernheimer is an Associate Professor of English and Writer in Residence at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette and has written several books of her own.  She founded the Fairy Tale Review in 2005 and remains the editor.  Check out her website here.

Gregory Maguire (author of Wicked) writes in the Foreword:

Let’s open the door to the green room and peek to see who is waiting. A bevy of beauties…an evanescence of sprites…an abundance of adversaries…a passel of princes…Maybe we should have brought that bubbly; but there’s something being served here more deeply inebriating than champagne.  Hush.

What are some of your fairy-tale favorites?  The last time I wrote about fairy tales I received some lovely suggestions, and I’d love to add more books to the soon-to-be-toppling-tower on my bedside table.  -Kaycie

As John Grisham was signing many copies of his latest book for Lemuria, we all got to wondering how many he has signed over the years at Lemuria. So while Grisham signed, he and John Evans worked on the numbers. Using the list inside a copy of The Confession, Grisham figured it out by hand and has left that uniquely signed copy for the first person who comes up with the closest number.

Question: How many books has John Grisham signed for Lemuria bookstore since his debut novel, A Time to Kill?

The first to guess the amount closest to the number will win the signed copy of The Confession, a signed poster, and a bottle of Cathead vodka—Mississippi’s first legal distillery— signed by the distillers Austin Evans and Richard Patrick.

Stay tuned to the blog over the coming weeks: John Grisham will be answering 10 more of his own questions no one has ever asked him before. This first question will be answered at the end of Grisham’s question series.

All answers must be submitted as comments on this blog posting.

I have this thing with leaves and it’s kind of strange. It started two years ago when I was taking a few design classes and getting pretty arts-and-crafty at home. With the array of beautiful trees on the ole miss campus in Oxford, I began picking up more and more fallen leaves to and from class. I’m fascinated with leaves and the intrinsic design qualities they hold. It’s like each one is a little piece of symmetrical artwork. In a large way, they allow the trees different personalities. This leaf collecting became a problem when it ate up all my space. Delicate leaves that I didn’t want to crush were everywhere around my place. Leaves that I wanted to draw or paint on or epoxy.  But after a while most of these leaves got crushed.  This habit of leaf gathering has died down but not subsided. I’m sure springtime will be a different story.

With that in mind, you’ll understand why I found Allen J. Coombes’ The Book of Leaves so interesting. This “leaf-by-leaf guide to six hundred of the world’s great trees” is a great idea for anyone interested in the principles of design or those who love nature. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the layout, with each page containing an actual size leaf photo and easy-to-follow description of the trees species and history. This book may just have to be a present to myself this year!

-Peyton

Larry Brown wrote a most earnest essay on his aspirations to be a writer. I am not sure if it has been published before, but Sonny Brewer has included in his new book, Don’t Quit Your Day Job: Aspiring Authors and the Day Jobs They Quit.

Reading Larry Brown’s essay, I got all teary eyed and it reminded me of why I love to read so much. The essay should be read in its entirety in one sitting, but enjoy this excerpt from a much loved writer whose impact on southern literature will not be forgotten.

“It took me a long time to understand what literature was, and why it was so hard to write, and what it could do to you once you understood it. For me, very simply it meant that I could meet people on the page who were as real as the people I knew in my life. They were real people, as far as I was concerned, not just characters. Even though they were only words on paper , they were as real to me as my wife and children. And when I saw that, it was like a curtain fell away from my eyes. I saw that the greatest rewards could be had from the printed page came from literature, and that to be able to write it was the highest form of writing.”

“All of my work comes out of Mississippi, out of the dirt roads and the woods and the fields I drive my truck by. The people who live in this land are the people I’ve known best throughout my life, and together with the country we live in, they form a vast well that will never run dry.” (57)

Editor Sonny Brewer will have a signing and reading for Don’t Quit Your Day Job on Wednesday, December 1st.

Click here to read an excerpt from Pat Conroy. And here to read one from John Grisham.

See a complete list of Larry Brown’s work on our website.