At the moment, it seems the only spines of books I’ve been cracking involve how to use the direct or indirect method in chemistry, or how the respiration cycle works best with glucose instead of pyruvate. Let’s just say I miss reading for fun. Sadly, I doubt such a thing will happen before my Christmas break.

To ease the pain of my reading rut, I’ve started to form a list of what I plan to read the moment I get a break from the demands of college life. One involves short stories, the other novels, and the third is a collection of both but for a younger audience. As this will be a three-part blog, here is the first section, in no particular order, of short stories.

Part One

Short Stories:

1. A Guide to Being Born, by Ramona Ausubel

This collection of short stories was recommended to me by my friend/coworker, Kelly. So far I’ve read the first story in this collection. Let’s just say it’s weird, like, really weird, but that kind of weird that’s incredibly wonderful and makes you wish you’re existence involved more weirdness. Does that make sense? (Oh well, if it doesn’t, then maybe you’re not weird enough. Ever think of that?)

2. The Color Master, by Aimee Bender

I can’t remember what made me grab this book in the first place (although, I believe it had a lot to do with the attention other Lemurians were giving it when it first came out), but I’ve been dying to try this author out for some time now. I mean it, as I write this sentence now, I can see her book on my desk––it looks so pretty. And while her other collection, Willful Creatures, didn’t necessarily make its way into my dorm room as of yet, you can bet I plan to read it just as much.

3. The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, by Lydia Davis

I started reading this collection last year at the beginning of my freshman year, and continue to pick it up from time to time. (Personally, I pair this collection with Damien Rice’s album, O.) I’m a fan. You can also ask Adie, she has some mad love for this author.

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

UGH. It practically kills me how long this book has been on my to-read list. I feel like barely a day goes by when someone isn’t telling how wonderful Karen Russell is, specifically this book. I want to be able to say these things too!

5. Coast of Chicago, by Stuart Dybek

I’ve read the first three works in this collection, and can already tell that this book is definitely worth reading the whole way through, not that it necessarily needs to be read in any certain order. I feel confident in this recommendation. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll get to finish it before the New Year.

6. The Elephant Vanishes, by Haruki Murakami

I’d be lying if I didn’t say that part of the reason as to why I picked this book up in the first place didn’t involve the title or the cover. (Like you don’t judge a book by its cover?) But I don’t think I could ever go wrong with this author, I haven’t met a Lemurian yet who doesn’t like him.

7. My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales, by Kate Bernheimer

I LOVE fairy tales, so imagine my excitement when I found this little gem in our anthology section. Aimee Bender? Neil Gaiman? Kelly Link? I believe it was Oliver Twist who said, “Please, sir, I want some more?”

8. Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov, by Anton Chekhov

I decided last year during my creative fiction class that I would like to read more Anton Chekhov than the one short story we were assigned. Don’t you also feel your life needs more Russian authors? I know mine certainly does.

Written by Elizabeth 

Being on facebook has at least one very good advantage. My friend from high school Becky H. Parrish is a recently retired art professor at the University of Texas at El Paso; she is a fantastic artist, an outspoken Democrat, and a bibliophile. When she posts on facebook about books she has read, I usually find them at Lemuria and read them, too. A few weeks ago, she posted that she was enjoying a day outside, under an umbrella, reading a great book that made her laugh and cry; and what’s more… it is fantastic. It’s Mona Simpson’s new creation Casebook.

A teenage boy named Miles and his friend Hector jerryrig a listening device in the basement that somehow (don’t ask me how) picks up the conversations on the upstairs phone. In the meantime, his parent’s marriage is quietly falling apart, a fact that wouldn’t be apparent if it weren’t for that piece of detective equipment in the basement. Miles has two sisters, younger twins he affectionately calls the Boops. As a matter of fact, there’s a lot of affection in this book even though marriages are dissolving and people are moving to new neighborhoods to live on divided goods once shared by the intact families.

The two self-proclaimed detective friends Miles and Hector start to notice new phone calls and grow suspicious enough to engage the services of a private detective who lives far enough away for them to jump on their bikes and cycle over. Of course, there’s the matter of money and how to pay when they are just in middle school. How they do this is part of the fun and pathos of the gentle story which, like the art professor from UTEP says, will make you laugh and cry in this well crafted book seen through the eyes of a boy coming of age in California.

Written by Pat

This article was originally published in the Clarion-Ledger on Sunday, November 9.  

Robert St. John may be a familiar household name in Mississippi as a writer of cookbooks, a chef, and a restaurateur. Now, “children’s book author” can be added to that list with his debut book for young kids, Fred the Red Frog. Robert collaborated with his artist mother, Dinny St. John, who created the illustrations for the book. A rhyming tale of a red frog that gets up to no good in a grocery store, Fred will be sure to delight families.

In this interview, the St. Johns tell about their creative process, the inspiration behind Fred, and telling stories to children.

Robert St. John will be signing Fred the Red Frog at Lemuria 5 p.m. on Thursday, November 13.

Where did the idea for Fred the Red Frog come from? Tell me a little bit about the book.

Robert: When my children were young, my wife was in charge of putting the kids to bed most nights. She always read them stories from various children’s books. When I put them to bed, I told stories. Most of the stories were centered on a frog named Fred that lived by the back steps of my boyhood home.

In these stories that I told to my kids, Fred and a boy named Bobby went on wonderfully fun misadventures. The kids loved them and requested the Fred stories over the books we already had on the shelves.

One day I sat down and put one to rhyme. That is the story that made it into this book.

How did you decide that your mother would illustrate this book?

Robert: I love collaborating with people, whether it’s in business or creative pursuits. The greatest joys of my professional career have been the three books I co-authored with Wyatt Waters. Marshall Ramsey and I collaborated on a book several years ago and we had fun doing that.

My mom taught art for 50 years. She just retired this year at the ripe, young age of 81. I had a blast collaborating with her and am looking forward to the book tour as we travel around the state to different schools, kindergartens, and daycare centers.

What medium did you use to illustrate this book? Tell us a little about your involvement in the book.

Dinny: I used Prismacolor Coloring Pencil to create each illustration.

Robert brought me what he had written and asked me if I would do the illustrations. It took a while to do it! I remember our first test run. Robert let Holleman, my granddaughter, show the book at the school library for show-and-tell after the illustrations were painted. Robert read the book as Holleman showed off the photos, and her class loved it. They all wanted a copy.

Out of the many characters you illustrated in this book, who was your favorite character to draw?

Dinny: Fred has to be my favorite character because he has so many different poses that bring the book to life. Drawing Fred (the frog) really allowed me to get to know him.

You are a retired art teacher. How long did you teach, and what do you hope this book accomplishes?

Dinny: I have taught art for 46 years since 1968 at a number of places, including Hattiesburg Public Schools, Presbyterian Christian School in Hattiesburg, William Carey University, and The University of Southern Mississippi.

I hope that children really enjoy the book, as the story is different and interesting. I think that children who read it or have it read to them will enjoy the story of Fred the Red Frog.

Hopefully Fred doesn’t become frog-legs. Would you say your love of food is hilariously transformed into Fred’s adventures at the D&F grocery store?

Robert: Well, the grocery store in the book is based on a store owned by my lifelong friend, Forrest Roberts and his father, Doc. When I was a kid it was an A&P. Today it is a Corner Market. In the book it is named D & F for Doc and Forrest.

No frogs were harmed in the writing of this book!

What is your favorite children’s book?

Robert: I was a huge fan of Dr. Seuss when I was a boy. My maternal grandfather was also a great storyteller. I used the stories he told me as inspiration for the stories I told my own children.

Dinny: When I was a child my favorite children’s book and story was Peter Pan. Now, my favorite children’s book is Fred the Red Frog by Robert St. John!

Written by Paul Bonds, owner of Beanfruit Coffee Company 

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked, “What made you get into coffee in Mississippi–specifically Jackson?” When you think about it, Jackson doesn’t meet the typical market criteria for specialty coffee. It’s not cold and rainy, it’s pretty conservative, and doesn’t have a major university in the vicinity. So why did I begin BeanFruit Coffee Company here and not some other city?

When I was kid, I used to love the show In the Heat of the Night, a drama/mystery television series that was based in the small fictional town of Sparta, Mississippi. Most of the cases that occurred on the show were solved in the fictional town. However, when the cases got too complex, they would travel to Jackson to get a higher authority involved to solve the case. Jackson was considered the “big city” on the show, and because I grew up in a small town in Mississippi like Sparta, I could totally relate. I’ll never forget the first time I traveled to Jackson as a child. I was fascinated by the big buildings, shopping malls, colleges, etc. Growing up in the tiny “one-horse town” I’m from made downtown Jackson seem like Times Square. The potential of what could happen here just got me excited. I firmly believe that excitement still exists. I also think it’s great to be a part of all the things that are starting to happen here.

Great local restaurants like Parlor Market, La Finestra, and Walkers, just to name a few, are paving the way for Jackson’s high-quality cuisine scene. Who would have thought that a single coffee shop in Fondren would one day lead to a coffee roasting operation with 10 plus cafés all over Mississippi? Cups: An Espresso Café did it, and they started in Jackson over 20 years ago. All of those factors and so many other examples give me hope for this area’s future. Sure, I know Jackson isn’t without its problems but I truly believe this city’s best days are ahead, not behind.

Claudia Gray is a young adult author originally from Mississippi. Author of the Evernight Series and Spellcaster Series, she wraps up her whirlwind tour in the Philippines, where she was kind enough to answer these questions about her first book from the Firebird Series, entitled, A Thousand Pieces of You. Gray speaks about her influences, favorite books, and gives us a taste of her newest novel, available at Lemuria on November 4.

First of all, describe where you are from, where you live now, and how it influences your writing.

I’m from Marks, Mississippi—from Jackson, that’s about two-and-a-half hours north on I-55, then another 25 minutes west on Highway 6. These days I live in New Orleans, and I couldn’t ask to be in a more creative, original, or stimulating place.

You describe this book as Orphan Black meets Cloud Atlas in the first book of this epic dimension-bending trilogy about a girl who must chase her father’s killer through multiple dimensions. Describe the inspiration behind A Thousand Pieces of You.

The inspiration came to me while I was on a book tour, actually. Dan Wells, Lauren Oliver, and I went on a group tour of the United States together, and it was one of those tours that crisscrosses the country daily—mountains, then desert, Pacific Northwest, Miami, etc. After that, I left directly from Los Angeles to tour in Australia, where I went all over, accompanied only by my publicist. So the people traveling with me on each tour were my only constants in a rapidly shifting landscape. At some point, I began thinking about a story that would involve different worlds, but always the same people—and somehow the rest fell together.

In A Thousand Pieces of You, when Marguerite leaps into a new dimension, she leaps into another version of herself—another person she might have been. Sometimes the other dimensions are very similar to her own, but sometimes they’re radically different. She has to figure out immediately what this world is like, and who she is there. As the same people are often drawn together in many dimensions, Marguerite also encounters alternate versions of those she loves the most. I think we all wonder how much of our identity is essential and eternal, and how much is shaped by circumstance or chance. Would you be different if you’d grown up someplace else, in a time of war versus a time of peace, in a larger family, without your family? Marguerite actually gets to discover the answers.

There are parallels between your book and Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time. Both books have feisty heroines who travel through different dimensions in space, and both girls are trying to rescue or avenge their father from evil. Was L’Engle’s book influential? 

Definitely. A Wrinkle In Time was a childhood favorite of mine, and the fact that both heroines have brilliant, eccentric scientist parents is no doubt linked. They’re not very similar past that—but I’m glad my love for L’Engle’s book shines through. It’s a story so wrapped up in the love of science and the infinite possibilities it offers.

Is dimension-travel the same as time-travel? If you move to another dimension, are you also traveling through time AND space? Maybe this is a question for Marguerite’s parents, the physicists.

No, it’s not the same. Technically, I don’t think it’s even traveling through space; your body remains in the dimension you left, albeit no longer observable. Your consciousness is the only thing that moves. At any rate, every place Marguerite goes, it’s the same year, month, day, and hour. However, not every dimension has developed at the exact same rate ours has. Marguerite visits some universes where technology has developed faster (making them feel futuristic) or slower (making them feel historical), but it’s not actual time travel.

(Undoubtedly Marguerite’s parents will get around to time travel next.)

Why did you make Marguerite an artist? She could have also been a scientific genius, like her parents, but I think making her an artist creates a nice counterpart to the scientists in the book.

In all honesty, the book is easier for me to write and easier for others to read if Marguerite isn’t a scientist; if she were, there would be pages and pages of math about parallel dimensions/quantum realities. Nobody wants that! Since Marguerite is an artist, she doesn’t dwell on the technical minutiae, and the story can move forward. That being said, it wound up being an interesting character element to play with. Marguerite is bright and creative, but tends to underestimate herself because she’s surrounded by people who represent a very different kind of intelligence and accomplishment. Since she has this very different perspective, she’s able to pick up on elements of what’s going on that the scientists missed…

When did you start writing?

I always wrote, even back when I was writing with crayons. But I didn’t get serious about pursuing publication until about ten years ago.

Favorite book when you were a child:

A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. No villain is as evil as Miss Minchin.

Your top 5 authors:

Oh, this question is so impossible to answer! If you’re an avid reader—and I am—that’s kind of like being asked, “So, what is the best oxygen you ever breathed in?” So much of it is so vital. But I can break it down like this: The authors who have impressed me the most would be A.S. Byatt and Vladimir Nabokov. The authors who I would most like to emulate would be J. K. Rowling and Suzanne Collins. The authors I’ve been most moved by would be Margaret Atwood and C.S. Lewis. The authors I’ve been most entertained by would be Robertson Davies, Jacqueline Winspear, P.G. Wodehouse, Margaret Mitchell, and Robert Graves.

If you could be a character from a book, who would you be?

Hermione Granger, I think!

Favorite line from a book:

From “The Color Purple”, after Mister tells Celie she’ll walk out on him over his dead body: “It’s time to leave you and enter into the creation. And your dead body just the welcome mat I need.”