Everyone in the store is really looking forward to Monday, March 22, 2010. Chang-rae Lee is coming to Lemuria!!  He will be signing (5 pm) and reading (5:30 pm) his new novel, The Surrendered.  He has never been to the bookstore before so I thought I would take a little time and introduce him to you.

Chang-rae Lee was born in Seoul, Korea in 1965 and immigrated to the United States in 1968 with his family.  Lee was raised in the suburbs of New York and graduated from Yale University in 1987.  He began his career as a equities analyst on Wall Street but quickly realized that writing was his passion.  He soon finished an unpublished novel, Agnew Belittlehead, and was accepted to the creative writing program at the University of Oregon where he earned his MFA in 1993.  He has since published four novels, Native Speaker (1995), A Gesture Life (1999), Aloft (2004) and The Surrendered (2010).  He has won various awards throughout his writing career including: “New Voices Award,” Oregon Books Award, ALA Notable Book Award, American Book Award, and the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award.   In 1999, The New Yorker named him one of the 20 best American writers under the age of 40.

Here is a video of Chang-rae Lee discussing The Surrendered with WNYC on the The Leonard Lopate Show:

You don’t want to miss this event and we look forward to seeing you on March 22!!

I heard The Girl Who Fell from the Sky reviewed on public radio; the review whetted my appetite. This novel is not for the faint of heart, but for those who read it, a powerful experience emerges.  The author, Heidi W. Durrow, a graduate of Stanford, Columbia School of Journalism, and Yale Law School, received  a Bellwether Prize of Fiction for this her debut novel.

As the novel opens, the reader meets Rachael,  a bi-racial young girl, whose mother is Danish and father is African American. Because of a horrific accident, which left her as the only survivor,Rachael has recently  gone to live with her very strict African American grandmother. Having been reared as a “white girl” in Europe where her father was a serviceman, she is now thrust into an American black community and quickly learns that her very blue eyes will constantly be an attention getter, for good and for bad. Set in the early 1990s in Oregon, the novel flashes back and forth in time, and the reader slowly learns about Rachael’s past while cringing with her about the  unfamiliar social norms and customs which she encounters in the black community. She knows there is a mystery behind her mother, s0 Rachael tries to fit pieces of a missing puzzle together.

Friendships with positive and negative people, both old and young, develop for the adolescent girl as she grows from year to year. Unbelievably a childhood friend who met her father and witnessed first hand the horrific accident, appears in Rachael’s neighborhood and a renewed friendship develops. Filled with sadness, pangs of adolescent development and experience, heartbreaks of love lost, and limited hopefulness, this provocative novel will make its mark on readers as they decipher their own views of our newly changing American culture.

See Heidi W. Durrow’s website.

-Nan

The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When To Quit (And When to Stick)

by Seth Godin

Portfolio (2007)

Yesterday, I was asked, “Are you going to close Lemuria?” I smiled back and simply said, “No.”

Of course, no one knows the future, but as I reflect on Godin’s The Dip, I’m reinforced by his concepts of using a big picture view of building small business. Using a big picture view, small businesses must have resources laid up ahead of time in order to deal with unsuspecting problems. This recession has produced many problems for small businesses, forcing us to question our focus and judgments.

Godin emphasizes that difficult times create difficult work. However, opportunity for more profit exists as we give our best effort to oppose a severe dip. Ask yourself, “Is this dip my greatest ally?” Remember shortcuts are not the answer. Investing time and money into something that can get better is adding value. Don’t play the game if you can’t give it your best effort. Keep in mind who decides what’s best. You do!

Now is a great time to start a new business or refortify or renew an old one. On an individual level, it is also an advantageous time to contribute one’s labor to a place with a quality vision.

Lemuria = A good bookstore? We are being tested. We hope to be authenticated by this process. As we confront this “dip” we want more of the better books in our inventory, and we are striving to be better booksellers. We want to practice good customer service (which is easier with fewer customers). Our readers are our judge and jury. You decide the success of our book-selling. Compare us to our competition as they work through their “dip,” too. Furthermore, book-selling as an industry is changing. Lemuria wants to change in light of all this and become something better in the process.

Seth’s Dip questions sticking with or moving on, striving for excellence whichever the decision.

Click here to read other blogs on Seth Godin’s books.

The Story Behind the Pick: Safe from the Neighbors by Steve Yarbrough

Steve Yarbrough is a long time friend of Lemuria and has been to the bookstore on all of his book tours.  Safe from the Neighbors is the fourth of Yarbrough’s books to be a First Editions Club pick.  When we found out that he was putting out another novel there was no question as to whether we would use if for the First Editions Club or not.

Oxygen Man-June 1999

Visible Spirits-June 2001

The End of California-June 2006

Steve Yarbrough was born in Indianola Mississippi to John and Earlene Yarbrough in 1956.  After graduating high school he went to Ole Miss then to the University of Arkansas where he got his M.F.A. in creative writing.  His southern style of writing has been compared to Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner and Willie Morris.  Yarbrough has been quoted as saying: “I think Mississippi is the best place in the world for a writer to grow up.  It’s not a bland place, and people there tend to be very passionate about life.  And despite what a lot of people outside of the state might think, it’s a place where books still matter; people read there and they’re proud of their writers.  I wouldn’t trade my childhood there for anything.” (Mississippi Writers and Musicians)

As Nan said in her blog about Safe from the Neighbors “…when I did not have it in my hand, I was thinking about it and could not wait to pick it up again.”  If that’s not a sign of a good book, I don’t know what is.

Steve Yarbrough was here for a signing and reading on February 11 2010.  Safe from the Neighbors had a initial print run of 17,500 copies.  It was published by Alfred A Knopf.

First Editions Club: January 2010

First Editions Club: March 2010

First Editions Club: April 2010

by Zita

Have you ever witnessed actions of random people in your life, and wondered, “What planet are they from?” Have you seriously considered someone’s actions so bizarre and alien to you that they might indeed be an alien? 

I just finished reading Brad Watson’s new collection of short stories entitled Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives. I had never read Brad Watson but knew that he was from Meridian, Mississippi, and that his only novel, The Heaven of Mercury, was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2002. Fortunate for those in the First Edition Club, Mercury was the selection for August of 2002, and from what I hear, the  novel was a wonderful read.

With all of this information logged away in my brain, I was not disappointed with the short stories in Aliens.

Most of the stories are set in contemporary times with families dealing with problems we are all too familiar with–a couple who cannot seem to quit arguing; a divorced and distanced father who must spend his visitation time with his son in a hotel instead of a home; in an effort to escape the memories of his ex-wife, a newly divorced man leaves their home to find an apartment of his own.

I must warn you that the first story is different from the rest. In my opinion, this story was disturbing, a little shocking even. It is, however, a story that I want to talk about with someone else who has read it. It raises many issues, but the most interesting to me is the character development of children.

While these stories are dark, I did not find them depressing. Brad Watson’s talent lies in his ability to portray a humanity that might seem alien to us with astonishing sensitivity.

Brad will be at Lemuria Friday, April 2nd at 5:00 p.m.