Congratulations from the Lemuria Bookstore Staff!!!!!
Martha Foose won the James Beard Award for Best Cookbook: American for Screen Doors and Sweet Tea! We are so excited for her and love her cookbook. Don’t miss getting a signed copy of this award winning cookbook!
John T. Edge, our favorite food writer, was inducted into the Who’s Who of Food and Beverage in America by the James Beard Foundation.
Hello everyone. As of yesterday, I am officially done with college. I am very much stoked; however, between studying for and taking my finals, I haven’t had as much time as I would like to read. This will change in the coming days for sure.
Nonetheless, I have been as busy as possible flexing my nonfiction muscles with Chris Hedges’ most recent book When Atheism Becomes Religion, and the already highly praised Woodsburner by John Pipkin.
Chris Hedges is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and wrote for the New York Times for a number of years. Prior to reading When Atheism Becomes Religion, I read his book War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning for a sociology class I took my sophomore year of college. Hedges lived in the Middle East for a number of years, documenting the conflicts taking place there from each perspective involved. I thought he had an interesting stance regarding the futility and necessity of war, as he has studied the history books of the winning and losing perspectives. He proclaimed the truth that all of humanity is in need of “mercy and forgiveness,” and that when a nation chooses to go to war they should do so with the perspective that what they are doing is at best “slightly less immoral” than the problem they are trying to eradicate. I enjoyed the book immensely, and purchased his book American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America sometime later.
In American Fascists, Hedges writes about the Pat Robertson’s and Rod Parsley’s that are invading the political mentality of the United States. He believes that these men are attempting to create an official Christian nation out of the U.S., an idea that is most definitely contrary to the constitution, as well as the basic tenets of Christianity. The book called for self-reflection, for the right of all tolerant people to be, and declared that tolerating the intolerant is a dangerous feat.
When Atheism Becomes Religion focuses on the opposite side of the perspective covered in American Fascists. Hedges focuses on the ideology of the “new atheists” such as Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens. He draws connections between the mentality of the Christian fascists and the new atheists. Each group seeks to create a utopian society of perfection, believing that if they can convince the world to conform to their ideology that humanity can progress into a higher state of thinking and living. A world of perfection.
Hedges vehemently argues against the absurdity that humanity can progress past our natural, broken state, conjuring the words of great literary figures, psychologists, philosophers, and thinkers to back up his argument. He also makes the distinction between the new, fundamentalist atheists, and the atheism of those that were involved in the Enlightenment: an atheism that can involve positive change. Of the latter Hedges writes, “[such atheists] have often been a beneficial force in the history of human thought and religion. They have forced societies to examine empty religious platitudes and hollow religious concepts. They have courageously challenged the moral hypocrisy of religious institutions. The humanistic values of the Enlightenment were a response to the abuses by organized religion, including the attempt by religious authorities to stifle intellectual and scientific freedom.” Hedges view is balanced, intelligent, and humble. The book poses many great questions that do not have easy answers.
I highly recommend the book to anyone regardless of their affiliation with a religious tradition or abstinence from one. Hedges makes it clear that all of us, regardless of our differences in faith or disbelief, must come together in the battle against fascism. I enjoyed the book immensely.
Moving forward, John Pipkin’s debut novel Woodsburner is a must-read. It takes reading only a few chapters of the novel to know right away that Pipkin is a wordsmith. The language of the novel is absolutely gorgeous, and the character development is excellent.
As previous posts from my co-workers will reveal, the novel provides an interesting historical fiction account of Thoreau’s mistake of setting fire to the woods. I’ve yet to read a novel quite like this one, where an author creates a character out of one of the most important literary voices in American history. The novel has the potential to be an important work in American fiction, providing insight into a little known occurrence in Thoreau’s life.
Most interesting to me is the fact that this very incident quite possibly spurred Thoreau into his Walden experiment. Had he not set fire to the woods, perhaps Walden would not exist presently. To hear Thoreau voice his regret over his actions in this novel is moving. No longer is Thoreau simply a figure of high school and college textbooks, he is a character in a work of excellent fiction. We see his world through his eyes.
The novel allows the reader to watch Thoreau combat nature: a perspective rarely associated with Thoreau. I agree with my co-worker Lisa wholeheartedly when I say that the fire is a character in this work. It is brooding, consuming force of nature that shapes the characters it encounters. Read it.
for those of you who don’t know, face rocking is a good thing…
often when i read a book that is particularly good i can’t help but to go on to read all that the author has written. such is the case with joe meno. demons in the spring was the first of meno’s books that i read followed shortly there after by the great perhaps. demons in the spring is a collection of short stories that are all illustrated by different artists.
click here to check out more of joe meno’s work
by Zita
Mary Oliver is one of my favorite poets. Her poetry seems simple at first read–using unadorned language she paints pictures of the natural world without much pomp or frivolity–but her poems have a way of getting under the skin, leaving the reader with a feeling of reconnection to a world that, in this age of SUVs, TVs, day planners, and Wall Street, can begin to look like another planet if we’re not careful.
Influenced by Whitman and Thoreau, Mary Oliver’s world is peopled with forests and herons, dogs and wetlands. Her poetry speaks to the part of us that craves communion with nature and a deeper understanding of our human selves.
One of my favorite poems, from Why I Wake Early:
“Where Does the Dance Begin, Where Does It End?”
Don’t call this world adorable, or useful, that’s not it.
It’s frisky, and a theater for more than fair winds.
The eyelash of lightning is neither good nor evil.
The struck tree burns like a pillar of gold.
But the blue rain sinks, straight to the white
feet of the trees
whose mouths open.
Doesn’t the wind, turning in circles, invent the dance?
Haven’t the flowers moved, slowly, across Asia, then Europe,
until at last, now, they shine
in your own yard?
Don’t call this world an explanation, or even an education.
When the Sufi poet whirled, was he looking
outward, to the mountains so solidly there
in a white-capped ring, or was he looking
to the center of everything: the seed, the egg, the idea
that was also there,
beautiful as a thumb
curved and touching the finger, tenderly,
little love-ring,
as he whirled,
oh jug of breath,
in the garden of dust?
Oliver’s newest collection, Evidence, begins with a short poem, “Yellow,” that simply yet profoundly contrasts human convention with the natural order of things:
There is the heaven we enter
through institutional grace
and there are the yellow finches bathing and singing
in the lowly puddle.
