Next Thursday, August 5, Lemuria’s book club “Atlantis” will be meeting to discuss The Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick. Set in cold Wisconsin in the early 1900s, the novel’s extremely snowy and miserable setting accurately reflects the inner workings of the protagonist’s warped mind. After reading an advertisement in a Chicago newspaper for “a good, reliable wife”, Catherine sets off with one goal which will get her the money but delete the new husband! The reader slowly figures this out! What happens at the end is not only amazing, but remarkable. Take a look at what some of the reviewers have said:

“Astonishing, complex, beautifully written, and brilliant”…..Sara Gruen, author of Water for Elephants

“Engrossing and Addictive”….NPR’s Morning Edition

“A Thrilling, Juicy Read….A Real Page-Turner”…..the Today Show

“Good to the Riveting End”….USA Today

On September 2, we’ll be discussing Woodsburner by John Pipkin. Based on the life of Henry David Thoreau and a particular incident where he accidentally set fire to the woods around Concord, resulting in the unfortunate burning of many homes and businesses, as well as beautiful woods, this historically accurate novel creates a compelling, provocative, captivating read. Many fictitious characters help Thoreau fight the fire and become very endearing to the reader. Reviews have been great:

” An Exceptional debut. Pipkin tells his story with the verve and authority of a veteran novelist. “…..Ron Rash, author of Serena

“What a terrific tale John Pipkin spins! He has taken a dramatic episode in the life of Henry David Thoreau and transformed it into a gripping and profound work of fiction.”….Doris Kearns Goodwin

“Witty, bawdy, philosophical,touching, and humorous, Woodsburner is a novel I didn’t want to end. This book is packed with interesting ideas, vital characters, and vivid writing.”……Sena Jeter Naslund, author of Ahab’s Wife and Four Spirits

On Thursday, October 7, the book club will talk about a novel which was a finalist for he Pen/Faulkner Award, which did win the Orange Award: The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver. With a long list of superb publications, including Poisonwood Bible, Animal Dreams, Pigs in Heaven, and her last book which was non-fiction, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Kingsolver knows how to weave a tale! The Lacuna, set in Mexico and in the United States in the early 1950s, follows the life of the protagonist who grew up in an extreme environment in Mexico and then used his experiences to become an award winning writer in the D.C. area.Reviewers have had laudatory remarks:

“The most mature and ambitious novel she’s written….An absorbing portrayal of American life at a time when the country moved swiftly from Depression to World War to consumerism spun through with political paranoia…..A rich novel with a large, colorful canvas.”…..Washington Post

“The story is so seductive, the prose is so elegant, the architecture of the novel so imaginative, it becomes hard to peel away from the book.”…..Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“A work that is often close to magic.”….Denver Post

So, come join us for an invigorating look at these superb literary novels. We meet in Lemuria’s dot.com building just outside Broadstreet Bakery’s north door, at 5 p.m. on the first Thursday of each month for one hour. Readers, young and old, novice and expert, gather around a table and discuss great literature, and have fun while doing so! Email me at: nan@lemuriabooks.com to be added to our email book club list. I’ll be glad to add your name!

-Nan

Over the past while I have been hearing more about the name David Mitchell. He had a front page review in the Times by David Eggers that was really good for The Thousand Autums of Jacob De Zoet, Susie has written two blogs on him already having read Thousand Autumns and Ghostwritten, his first. The result has been this resounding thought in my head: “Read David Mitchell.” So I picked up Cloud Atlas, his most well-known work to-date, and started it a few nights ago.

When I first pick up a book by an author I’ve never read I’m not quite sure at what level/arena I’m going to relate. Will it be on the “entertaining storyline” level? the “this is well written” level? the “this was a really good book” level? or the “…um…uh…wow this book is blowing me away at a level I can’t quite put my finger on but my life is probably going to change by the time I get through it” level. The last is for a select few authors in my brief reading career: Melville (putting salt in my veins), Tolstoy and Dostoevsky (they might know me better than I do) , McCarthy (he just stuck his boot up my all-knowing arse and I’m so thankful), etc…It’s the same with musica: Shostakovitch, Beethoven, Bach, Part, and Messiaen….

I got about fifteen pages into Cloud Atlas and had a moment of, “wait a second…this is really good but I think this guy might be brilliant.” So I took a break, found the dictionary and encyclopedia app on my phone and had a little recap only to confirm, “yes…this man is in fact quite brilliant.” One really doesn’t put authors into that last category, they created it and then take it by force, never to let loose their hold on you. David Mitchell is already establishing himself on my conscious in this way. I hope he continues to stake his claim in this arena as I go through the work.

Cloud Atlas is composed of a series of stories that span time and are all wound into a beautiful novel. I have completed the first two. The first is an account of an American traveling from the New Zealand area of the Pacific back to America in the mid 1800s (Melville’s blood is pumping throughout). In the first twenty pages he is able to firmly establish a blender in which he throws Western Christian thought, the savage native, and the pure native. It was a nice stretch of the mind, having a incredible “zinga” of a passage in there. The second is about a wild young musician that is broke and running from debt collectors, finding refuge at the estate of an unsuspecting famous elderly composer. Here he dug a place in my heart with an incredible grasp and use of a musical education and temperament.

It is incredible when an author is able to lay such a broad foundation so naturally through the eyes of individuals that are no less than owned. So far, Mitchell seems to me a untamed literary beast that is able to wield not only his words and characters but also the styles and words of others, and moving them to a rhythm to say something purely his own. I am trying to hold on to this wave, and allow myself to continue to hear what he is saying. I’m sure I have rambled in extremes my whole way through this post as is my tendency, but–whateva man–I get excited and this is the best my unfiltered young mind could muster. Who knows, maybe I’m just impressionable. Great works, the likes of which this book is moving towards, in any artistic medium usually leave me with my mouth open only wishing to express my gratitude for their hard work and time they spent to give me this experience.

READ DAVID MITCHELL

-John P.

Y’all remember Robert, he used to work at Lemuria.  I think he goes by Bobby now but I still call him Robert.  I guess it’s a reverse nickname.  Well anyway, Robert works for LSU Press and he stopped by the bookstore and told me that Josh Russell, author of Yellow Jack, had a new novel coming out.  I told him he must send me one immediately.  My Bright Midnight arrived shortly thereafter on my doorstep.  I was off this past weekend and decided that it would be the perfect book to read.  I was correct!!!

Russell returns to New Orleans in My Bright Midnight albeit 100 years later and while mosquitoes are still bothersome, rations on butter and sugar and no Mardi Gras are what plagues New Orleans during World War II.  Walter Schmidt immigrated to the United States from Germany 20 years ago and is as happy as an American can be.  He loves baseball, pulp novels, gangster movies, enjoys a Jax Beer from time to time and likes his job at the bakery.  He has a wife, Nadine, who is still a little hung up on her deceased husband so much so that she talked him into buying a house on the same street as Bobby’s (no relation to Robert)  family.  He has a best friend, Sammy,who is loud and obnoxious but he introduced Walter to Nadine so he puts up with him.  Then one day, Walter comes home early and finds Nadine and Sammy in bed together and his world is basically turned upside down!!  Walter wanting to hurt Sammy accepts the $1000.00 he offers as an apology for sleeping with Nadine.  It all backfires in Walter’s face because the money puts them all in more danger than he could have imagined.

Josh Russell is an author that many of my customers come in and say “You know that guy who wrote Yellow Jack?  Has he come out with another book?  He needs to hurry up!”  Well now I can answer with ” As a matter of fact he has! My Bright Midnight and it was worth the wait!!!

Thanks Robert for remembering your friend the bookseller!!!

I spied a good looking book on Joe’s desk a few months back; it was the review copy of Howard Norman’s new book, not due out till July.  Well, it’s July!  And not only has his book arrived at Lemuria, but Howard Norman himself will be here on Friday, the 30th!

I really enjoyed reading this book.  At the start, Wyatt Hillyer sits down to write a letter to his adult daughter whom he hasn’t seen since she was very young.  Though Marlais doesn’t know her father and may never be close to him, Wyatt wants her to know what happened to him in the five years before she was born, the years when, during World War II in Canada, he participated in a violent crime that changed his life.

I loved the tone and texture of Norman’s novel more than any other aspect.  Because it’s a letter, the events Wyatt recalls are a mixture of memory and fact.  The dialogue can lack verisimilitude, though that’s forgiven because Wyatt is recalling conversations that took place more than twenty years previous.  But Wyatt is a careful wordsmith, meticulously choosing how he relates the events that eventually lead to his daughter’s birth — his parents’ simultaneous suicide, when he’s eighteen, because they are in love with the same woman, the secret infatuation Wyatt harbors for his cousin, Tilda, once he comes to live with her family, Tilda’s affair with a German student and the uproar their relationship causes in the small town of Middle Economy, and the events of the war which the citizens of Canada are finding more and more distressing, especially Wyatt’s uncle.

In the review in the Washington Post by Ron Charles, he points out that the epistolary style results in an “odd disconnect between the novel’s sober tone and its outrageous plot” making for a story that “seems shocking only in retrospect.”

At the time, you lean in, trying to catch every word, lulled by his voice as he describes the most ordinary lives that just happen to be punctuated by macabre accidents and bizarre acts of violence.

Come out to Lemuria on Friday starting at 5 to hear Howard Norman read from What Is Left the Daughter.

I love to look at cool photograph books about music I care about. It’s fun and brings back many memories, sights and sounds of good times shared with friends and family. Our music gives Mississippians so much to be proud of as it enhances the quality of our lives.

Blues, Booze, & BBQ is a full of the stuff that makes our Mississippi Delta special. Michael Young visited Lemuria last month and the bookstore found a new pal. He received the 2010 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for photography for his new blues book. As I visited with Michael, I learned that all book proceeds go to The Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, which has a show for this book hanging through August 2010.

A favorite photo of Pat Thomas close up captures the air of the artist/musician legacy wearing his ever slanted headgear.

.

.

New Roxy is a perfectly balanced Clarksdale Festival street scene.

T-Model with his Jack says what it’s all about.

.

Michael’s book makes you want to go party in the Delta. Sunflower Blues Festival next month in Clarksdale is a great time to hear music, catch Michael’s photo exhibit or just sit with a beverage in front of the always fun Ground Zero with these pals that I hope to join soon. During the Sunflower fest, be sure to catch Cathead’s Mini Blues Fest II starring Big George Brock, Jimbo Mathus and more on August 8th.

www.michaelloydyoung.com includes Blues, Booze, and BBQ signed photos Michael has for sale by request. (Again all proceeds go to The Delta Blues Museum.)

.

Support the Blues

Support Live Music in Mississippi

Support Cathead Vodka