Hello, friends.  I am one of the newest additions to the Lemuria staff, and this is my first time to ever post on our lovely blog. I thought I’d start out with a little introductory post about some of my current favorite reads.

At the top of my list is Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. This book is the story of  precocious nine year old Oskar Schnell who,after the death of his father in the September 11th attacks, searches the five boroughs of New York City to find the purpose of a key that his father left behind.  I laughed, I cried, and then I promptly started giving this book out as a gift to all of my friends who hadn’t read it.  If you’ve never read anything by Jonathan Safran Foer, give this one a try.  He has, after all, recently been named one of The New Yorker’s writers to watch in their “20 Under 40” summer fiction issue.

Besides quirky contemporary fiction, I also have a love for science fiction.  Neil Gaiman, Ursula Le Guin, and even C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy all have their places on my bookshelf.  My most recent venture into the science fiction genre has been Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves. The story is about a young family,who after moving into a new house, finds that it is bigger on the inside than the outside. It is completely without boundaries.  The fun of this book though is just flipping through it.  Danielewski’s composition, like the mysterious house, is unconventional and completely without boundaries.  Throughout the novel readers are given several narrators,  photographs, codes, and references to mysterious books that don’t exist.  I’m still working my way through it all, but if you’ve got some spare time on your hands, I’d definitely recommend picking up a copy and going along for the ride.

And finally I have to mention my adoration of children’s literature.  I may be  22 years old and a recent college graduate, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t still enjoy Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth. One of my favorites since elementary school, The Phantom Tollbooth is the story of young Milo who finds himself magically transported to an unusual land in which he learns the importance of letters and numbers.  This book is witty, fun, and illustrated by the wonderful Jules Feiffer.

-Kaycie

If, as one reviewer claims, the best criteria for judging a memoir is whether it’s as good as a novel, then Mary Karr’s latest memoir, Lit, definitely makes the cut. Displaying the precise insights of the poet that she is, along with her trademark wit, Karr once again proves what an amazingly gifted writer she is. Though not quite the wild ride that her first two (The Liar’s Club and Cherry) were, Lit manages to be just as compelling in its own way with a poignancy and depth that was perhaps lacking in her earlier works.

The book opens with Karr leaving her Texas roots and striking out on her own. It ends with her a successful writer and teacher. In between, the book follows her as she pursues a rather sketchy college career, becomes a graduate student and teacher, marries a fellow poet (whom she later divorces), has a child, and becomes an alcoholic. Eventually acknowledging her addiction, she joins AA where she manages to get sober and finally rather surprisingly (even to herself) embraces Christianity and converts to Catholicism.

Perhaps the most harrowing parts of the book come when she revisits the alcoholic daze she inhabited while raising her infant son, trying to hold together a failing marriage and at the same time pursue her career as a poet, teacher and writer. Never, however, through all of this does she portray herself as a victim, observing at one point that this would be quite a different story if told through the eyes of her husband. It is this brutal honesty and striking self-awareness that infuses her story with a freshness and life not seen in the usual shopworn accounts of addiction and recovery. Thus the redemption she achieves through her faith feels particularly solid and real, allowing her to finally make peace with her family and her childhood memories in a very moving and beautiful way.

Valerie Sayers writing for The Washington Post sums it up quite well:

“This is a story not just of alcoholism but of coming to terms with families past and present, with a needy self, with a spiritual longing Karr didn’t even know she possessed.”

-Billie

Mary Karr was at Lemuria on Wednesday, July 14, 2010 for a signing and reading.

My brother has been telling me to read Bret Easton Ellis for a long time now.  He has recommended that I read American Psycho, then teasingly taken back the recommendation – maybe it’s too gory for me, he says (I have seen the movie – surely not more gory than that? apparently it is?).   So sometime last fall I found a copy of The Rules of Attraction in my hands, and it took all of about one afternoon to read.  I wasn’t sure what I thought of the book, wasn’t sure what I’d taken away from it.  I’m still not?

But when Imperial Bedrooms came out earlier in the month, I bought a copy, along with a copy of Less Than Zero, which is Ellis’s debut novel, and the novel to which Imperial Bedrooms is the sequel.  Incredibly, Ellis wrote Less Than Zero (also a movie I haven’t seen, but which is referenced in Imperial Bedrooms) when he was 20.  I read it yesterday in a few hours.  If American Psycho is disturbing, well, I can’t see how Less Than Zero is much less disturbing; without the gore, perhaps, but disturbing nonetheless.  It’s a window into this alien world (to me, and I felt so naive reading it, my cat curled in my lap and a cup of tea next to me – all rather distant from Ellis’s characters, who snort mountains of cocaine first thing in the morning), which is set in LA, where everybody’s young and tan and rich and nobody has any sense of what is right, or if they do, they don’t show it, and they all seem so horribly bored and drugged and indifferent – I’ve never read anything like it.  It is one thing to imagine being so indifferent to the world; it’s another to read Ellis’s brilliantly-crafted dialogue and realize that it had to have come from SOMEWHERE.  Creepy.

Anyway, I finished Less Than Zero and wondered if, as the author of the book, Ellis had experienced, even fractionally, the life in LA he set out for his characters – and if he had, then how, um, was he still alive? hadn’t he died of a drug overdose yet? or crashed a car while driving drunk? or contracted some sort of disease from…anything, needles, strangers?

Well: not only is Ellis still alive, but lots of his characters from Less Than Zero are too – and Imperial Bedrooms is all about them.  It’s a much more plot-driven book than its predecessor.  I like that.  It’s a thriller, too (apt that he quotes Raymond Chandler at the beginning of the book).  Once again, it’s set in LA, and all our morally decrepit characters from L.T.Z. are middle aged but, in many cases, surgically altered so that they don’t look like it.  They’re still tan, maybe not doing as much cocaine?, and at various stages either are or are not talking to each other over issues pertaining largely to sex and drugs.  Nothing’s changed for these guys except now they use iPhones instead of payphones.

Ellis’s characters are bad people.  And bad things happen to them.  But Ellis writes great dialogue and his books are revealing and exciting.  Imperial Bedrooms utilizes the same formula of sex, drugs, and ambivalence as Less Than Zero (and The Rules of Attraction, for that matter), but what keeps it from being tiresome is the thrill of its plot.  It’s just a pity that it took Ellis four years to write – and isn’t quite 170 pages long.

Susie

A copy of Men and Dogs has been buried in a stack by my bed for a couple of months now while I read the long and wonderful The Invisible Bridge. So, last weekend, I opened Men and Dogs and was immediately pulled in. This is a good summer read. I would not say it is a “light” summer read, but I would say it kept my attention and that I enjoyed reading it.  The character development ranks high, the plot shows natural unforced movement, and the setting of Charleston, South Carolina, is depicted accurately. (I was there a few summers ago and loved the way the author Katie Crouch used the factual street names and places, such as names of churches.)

The main character, Hannah, suffers  from the inability to move on from her father’s disappearance in the Charleston sound, most likely due to drowning, when she was a pre-teen. His dog was with him and the dog was found, but not the body of her father.  Now a young married adult, Hannah is obsessed with the fact that she thinks her father is still alive. This obsession leads to marital disharmony in her San Francisco home and depression which shows itself in various ways. Hannah’s husband decides a month’s “vacation” at her childhood home, complete with her crazy stepfather, and truly Southern tennis playing mother, is just what Hannah needs to recover.  Hannah reconnects with her teenage boyfriend, now an Episcopal priest, and that move, of course, causes sparks. All of the Southern mores and customs are examined and put on the page in this new novel.

Katie Crouch already cultivated a following around here for her first novel Girls in Trucks in 2008. I liked that title as much as I like the title: Men and Dogs. This new novel worked for me, and I thank Pat for recommending it!  -Nan

Since 2006, many of us have read the The Blind Side by Michael Lewis, and since this past fall, many of us have seen the movie “Blind Side” with Sandra Bullock, Tim McGraw and Quinton Aaron.

Many of us have also followed the amazing football career of Michael Oher as he played for Ole Miss and continues to play offensive tackle for the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens.

Finally, we’re going back to the start and learning the story firsthand from Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy.

In a Heartbeat: Sharing the Power of Cheerful Giving is an inspiring and humorous story of how the Tuohy family welcomed a homeless African-American boy, Michael Oher, into their hearts and home.

Leigh Anne and Sean were committed to making their home a place where faith, love and giving provided a strong foundation for life. The Tuohys were so true to this faith in their daily lives and in raising their two children that they knew exactly what to do when Michael Oher came along.

We’re so excited that Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy will be at Lemuria on Wednesday, July 21st from 4:00-6:00 for a signing. Come out and join us for this inspiring event!

Please click here to read the rules for the event!

Click here to read Joe’s blog about In a Heartbeat.