I have to admit that this week was a bit of a struggle when it came to what I would blog about  (which is code for “the reading in my life has been slow-going lately”).  Thankfully I had an epiphany this morning while staring at my fiction spinner picks, contemplating how long I could make it without a cup of coffee and eating cheddar cheese rice cakes.

And that epiphany was Nicole Krauss’s The History of Love. I probably read this book in 2006 (and it’s past due for a second reading), but it’s been one of my favorites ever since.  The History of Love is a novel about a novel (also called The History of Love) and its effect on the lives of its author Leo Gursky, his lost love, and his dead son.  This same novel also touches another family, that of fifteen year old Alma Singer (named after a character in Gursky’s The History of Love), her quirky brother Bird, and their recently widowed mother, who has been offered the job of translating The History of Love from Spanish.   These two stories combine as Leo and Alma search for others who may be connected to Gursky’s The History of Love but eventually find each other.

I don’t want to give too much away, but here is one of the passages that has stuck with me for years, and I can’t resist sharing it. This conversation takes place between a young Leo Gursky and the woman he loves.

“If I had a camera,” I said, “I’d take a picture of you every day. That way I’d remember how you looked every single day of your life.” “I look exactly the same.” “No, you don’t. You’re changing all the time. Every day a tiny bit. If I could, I’d keep a record of it all.” “If you’re so smart, how did I change today?” “You got a fraction of a millimeter taller, for one thing.  Your hair grew a fraction of a millimeter longer. And your breasts grew a fraction of a–” “They did not!” “Yes, they did.” “Did NOT.” “Did too.” “What else you big pig?” “You got a little happier and also a little sadder. Every day you become a little more of both, which means that right now, at this exact moment, you’re the happiest and the saddest you’ve ever been in your whole life.” (pg. 90-91)

Lovely, yes?  I thought so too.  After you read The History of Love, look for Nicole Krauss’s new book Great House, which comes out on October 5.

P.S. Here’s some literary trivia for you.  Nicole Krauss is married to fellow fiction writer Jonathan Safran Foer.  Cutest literary couple? My vote is yes.  -Kaycie

The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie (Crown, October 19, 2010)

[Scruggs speaking at a panel discussion on legal venues, or so-called ‘magic jurisdictions,’ sponsored by Prudential Financial]:

“‘The trial lawyers have established relationships with the judges that are elected. They’re state court judges; they’re populists. They’ve got large populations of voters who are in on the deal. They’re getting their piece in many cases. And so, it’s a political force in their jurisdiction, and it’s almost impossible to get a fair trial if you’re a defendant in some of these places . . . The cases are not won in the courtroom. They’re won on the back roads long before the case goes to trial. Any lawyer fresh out of law school can walk in there and win the case, so it doesn’t matter what the evidence or the law is.'”(pages 179-180)

The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie goes on sale October 19th.

We hope to see you at the signing/reading event with Curtis Wilkie on Thursday, October 21st, but if you cannot attend, you can reserve a signed copy online.

Click here to open an account on our website and we can save your information for future visits to LemuriaBooks.com.

You can also call the bookstore at 601/800.366.7619 and we can put your name on our reserve list.

Read other excerpts from The Fall of the House of Zeus.

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No, it’s not the record temperatures! It’s our blog.

Lemuria Blog Readers have set a new record high!

Yesterday we hit a record high of about 900 hits for the day. Over the past year we had been averaging between 5 and 6,000 hits a month. This month, with increased interest in Neil White’s Mississippians, Ken Murphy and Scott Barretta’s State of Blues and Curtis Wilkie’s House of Zeus, we will break 10,000 hits for the month of September.

Lemuria’s blog began very humbly in 2007. Since then, with stops and starts, we have slowly built up commitment from all of the staff at Lemuria. And gradually we have built up our readership. We are always thinking of new ways to make our blog fun and interesting for you, a way for you to experience some of Lemuria even when you’re not here. Lemuria Blog is a great place to get new ideas for reading and even a place to shop one of Mississippi’s locally owned bookstores from the comfort of your own home when you can’t make it to the store.

William Faulkner very recently became one of my favorite Southern writers.  I somehow managed to complete all of high school and three years of college in Mississippi without encountering Faulkner. My first taste of his writing finally came during my senior year of college in a survey of contemporary American literature.  It came in the form of The Sound and the Fury, easily one of the most difficult texts I’ve studied because of the stream of consciousness technique used in the first three parts.  Needless to say I had to make detailed notes of character names, which events happened in which years, which of Benjy’s caretakers were present for different events in his life, etc.  It amounted to the most tedious note-taking of my college career.

But you know what?  At the end of the class I chose The Sound and the Fury as the novel for my final research paper. I loved it.  For me, Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury is a beautifully tragic story in which the Compson family clings to the deteriorating aristocracy of the Old South, and their daughter Caddy’s boldness, sexual awakening and self –sufficiency collide with her family’s languishing Southern ideals.

What’s your favorite piece of Faulkner writing?

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

Editor Neil White will be signing at Lemuria on  Thursday, October 28th.

Reserve your copy online or call the bookstore 601/800.366.7619.

-Kaycie

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The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie (Crown, October 19, 2010)

“Scruggs’ relentless stalking of the insurance companies brought him into conflict with two statewide elected officials he once supported: Insurance Commissioner George Dale and Attorney General Jim Hood. Both men were running for reelection in 2007, and each felt his political career had been threatened by Scruggs. The trouble with Dale was predictable. The commissioner had long been too cozy with the industry he oversaw.” (page 165)

“He felt that Dale took a laissez-faire approach toward the insurance industry, and Scruggs wanted an activist in the office. So he decided to try to drive Dale from the post he had held for eight terms. Before the 2007 campaign was finished, Scruggs committed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the effort. He retained a public relations firm to conduct an all-out assault on Dale that reached its peak in the full-page newspaper advertisement titled ‘Lipstick on a Pig.’ In a cartoon, George Dale’s bespectacled face, painted with pink lipstick and given porcine ears, appeared on a pig’s body with cloven feet. The beast, labeled, ‘Georgie Dale,’ lounged in a tub, pampered by attendants at a ‘State Farm Beauty Salon.'” (page 165-166)

“Scruggs approved of the ‘Lipstick on a Pig’ idea and paid for the ad, but did not see it before it ran. He thought the pig would symbolize State Farm and didn’t realize that Dale’s likeness would be used in the caricature. But he laughed anyway when he saw the finished product in the Sunday morning paper.”

“Diane Scruggs was not amused. She thought the ad in poor taste, and she wondered about her husband’s decision to underwrite the anti-Dale campaign. She felt Dick had been unduly impressed by his PR team from Washington. He had bragged of their talents. Some of his advisors were sophisticated practitioners of ‘black ops,’ he said, with experience overseas, working on contract for the U.S. government to destroy the credibility of foreign opponents. One of Scruggs’s contacts appealed to him precisely because of the whispers about his agency’s operations. The head of the group, John Rendon, had been profiled in Rolling Stone in 2005 as ‘The Man Who Sold the War’ on Iraq. The article described Rendon as ‘a secretive and mysterious creature of the Washington establishment’ who was ‘in charge of marketing’ the war for the CIA and the Pentagon. Scruggs was intrigued by such credentials.” (page 166)

The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie goes on sale October 19th.

We hope to see you at the signing/reading event with Curtis Wilkie on Thursday, October 21st, but if you cannot attend, you can reserve a signed copy online.

Click here to open an account on our website and we can save your information for future visits to LemuriaBooks.com.

You can also call the bookstore at 601/800.366.7619 and we can put your name on our reserve list.

Read other excerpts from The Fall of the House of Zeus.

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