Join Lemuria’s Book Club Registry and we’ll order your book club selections for you and let you know when they’re ready for pick-up!

Book Club Members will receive a membership card and receive a 10% discount on their book club’s reading selections.

We see members of Lemuria’s Book Club Registry as part of a reading community. Members will also have opportunities for exclusive sneak peeks at new releases and special author events.

To join have your book club leader fill out an application or stop by and talk to one of our booksellers.

Book Club Registry Application

Are you looking to join a book club? Lemuria hosts two book clubs that are open to our community.

The Lost Book Club of Atlantis

(open to the public)

The Lost Book Club of Atlantis began in 2006 and is facilitated by a Lemuria bookseller. Atlantis reads contemporary and modern fiction along with an occasional nonfiction selection chosen by a Lemuria bookseller.

This book club meets the first Thursday of every month at Noon in Lemuria’s Dot Com Building across the parking lot from Banner Hall. Feel free to bring your lunch. If you are interested in joining, stop by the bookstore and say hello to Lisa or e-mail her at lisa@lemuriabooks.com. Click here for more details and to see the reading list.

“A good book should leave you slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it.” -William Styron

The Cereus Readers Book Club

(open to the public)

The Cereus Readers Book Club was created in honor of Jackson writer Eudora Welty and her friends who gathered for the annual blooming of the night-blooming cereus flower and called themselves “The Night-Blooming Cereus Club.” In this same spirit of friendship and fellowship, this new book club is launched. The goal of the Cereus Readers is to introduce readers to the writing of Eudora Welty–her short stories, essays, and novels–and then to read books and authors she enjoyed herself or were influenced by her.

All meetings will held at the dot.com building adjacent to Banner Hall from 12-1 p.m. Feel free to bring your lunch. If you are interested in joining, stop by the bookstore and say hello to Lisa or e-mail her at lisa@lemuriabooks.com to be added to the e-mail list. Click here to see the reading list.

“I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them–with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself.” -Eudora Welty

Would you like to start your own book club?

Here are some points to consider:

Would you like members by invitation only or is the book club open to the public?

How big should the reading group be? Usually 6-12 members is a good number, ensuring that the book club does not fall apart if a few do not show up.

How will you choose the books? Will the books be chosen by a different member each time? Or will a leader choose the books?

Will there be a certain theme? Mystery, Culture, Classics, Contemporary Fiction, Non-Fiction, Science, History, Literature by Women, or Poetry? Also consider keeping the reading selections diverse with titles that your members might not normally read.

Who will lead the discussion? Will the discussion be open or more guided? Do you want your group to stay on topic or just have good time with food & drink & books.

If you have a practice that works well at your book club, please feel free to share it in the comments section below. Every book club is different!

“A book is not only a friend, it makes friends for you. When you have possessed a book with mind and spirit, you are enriched. But when you pass it on you are enriched threefold.” -Henry Miller

All of the book quotes were found in Book Love: A Celebration of Writers, Readers, and The Printed & Bound Book edited by James Charlton and Bill Henderson, Pushcart Press, 2011.

“A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face. It is one of the few havens remaining where a man’s mind can get both provocation and privacy.” -Edward P. Morgan

I had never read Sylvia Plath’s poetry before this week, and I was surprised, when compared to The Bell Jar, which is written in straightforward prose, by the complexity of her poetry. Like T.S. Eliot, who relies on a musicality and sound of the line, Plath writes poetry that is full of sound. Her images are quick, often formed in only a couple well-chosen words, and are rapidly arrived at in her work.

We are all familiar with Sylvia’s dramatic life (and death): the American girl with an ear and eye for poetry, her marriage to the British poet, Ted Hughes, her failure to maintain sanity, and her eventual suicide in her kitchen.

Sylvia Plath’s paints her lines with images like a surrealist (think Dali–melting clocks beside a Greco-Roman arch, a piece of meat decaying in the foreground while a kite flies overhead). She makes broad leaps from calm and gentle images—a tree—to violent ones—mottled and bloody necks—and back again. Unlike Charles Simic, for instance, who relies on the narrative power of the images, Plath uses the symbolic meaning of the image to unite her poem.

The yew’s black fingers wag;

Cold clouds go over.

So the deaf and dumb

Signal the blind, and are ignored.

 

I like black statements.

The featurelessness of that cloud, now!

White as an eye all over!

The eye of the blind pianist

 

At my table on the ship.

He felt for his food.

His fingers had the noses of weasels.

I couldn’t stop looking.

 

He could hear Beethoven:

Black yew, white cloud,

The horrific complications.

Finger-traps—a tumult of keys.

 

Empty and silly as plates,

So the blind smile.

I envy the big noises,

The yew hedge of the Gross Fugue.

 

Deafness is something else.

Such a dark funnel, my father!

I see your voice

Black and leafy, as in my childhood,

 

A yew hedge of orders,

Gothic and barbarous, pure German.

Dead men cry from it.

I am guilty of nothing.

 

The yew my Christ, then.

Is it not as tortured?

And you, during the Great War

In the California delicatessen

 

Lopping the sausages!

They color my sleep,

Red, mottled, like cut necks.

There was a silence!

 

Great silence of another order.

I was seven, I knew nothing.

The world occurred.

You had one leg, and a Prussian mind.

 

Now similar clouds

Are spreading their vacuous sheets.

I am lame in the memory.

 

I remember a blue eye,

A briefcase of tangerines.

This was a man, then!

Death opened, like a black tree, blackly.

 

I survive the while,

Arranging my morning.

These are my fingers, this my baby.

The clouds are a marriage dress, of that pallor.

Sylvia Plath opened the gateway for confessional poetry, yet she buries the personal implications of her writing deep in the text. This veiling enables her work to be overtly smart. The poem is more than just a personal confession, it is also a complex exploration into the pregnant power of symbols to convey meaning.

Since Jamie Quatro is a new name for many of us, I’d like to share an interview with her from The Leonard Lopate show on New York Public Radio. Jamie talks about her collection of short stories I Want to Show You More and the recent enthusiasm for the short story form. Her stories deal with infidelity in the digital age, individuals who “wrestle” with their faith and find grace amidst loss and struggle.

I love Jamie’s stories. I cannot remember feeling so much shock and comforting reassurance between two covers. I read them over a month ago and I am still thinking about them. Oh, and I think the cover is marvelous. (Rachel Perry Welty is the artist; You can see more of her work here and here.)

It certainly is a wonderful year for the short story: Lemuria is fortunate to have had George Saunders in January, Ron Rash in March and now we are honored to have Jamie Quatro. Join us Monday evening at 5:00 for a signing with Jamie. A reading will follow at 5:30.

Listen to the Leonard Lopate interview below:

Also see: Barry Hannah leads the way for a stunning new voice in Southern Literature

I’m happy to share a guest post by one of our publisher reps, Jon Mayes. He has been in the book business all of his adult life, both as a bookstore owner and as a publisher’s representative. Jon visits our store several times a year to keep us up to date on all the best books from Perseus. One of our favorites this year is Jamie Quatro‘s new book I Want to Show You More which is also our First Editions Club pick for March. Here’s what Jon says:

Since part of my job is to represent our publishers and authors to my accounts, I find it often helps if I can get to know the writers personally, especially if they live in the South. When I met author Jamie Quatro for coffee in Chattanooga, I asked her to tell me a little about herself and how it came about that Grove/Atlantic was publishing her new book. Little did I know then that magic was involved, and it was just meant to be.

“I was at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference—a dizzying and inspiring twelve days of workshops, panels, lectures, readings. One of the conference highlights was a panel in memory of Barry Hannah, the man whose work made me want to be a writer in the first place. I’d read everything; published articles about him in the Oxford American; gave a graduate lecture at Bennington on his “pornographic” syntax. Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens, Faulkner, Hannah: my literary hall of fame.

At the last minute, I invited Barry’s son Po (a friend) to drive down from Knoxville so he could hear the panelists—Bob Shacochis, Christine Schutt, Erin McGraw, William Gay, and Tom Franklin. Po hadn’t been to Sewanee in years, certainly not since his Dad had passed away. He told me he was heading down to Oxford that day anyhow, to attend Dean Faulkner’s funeral, but said he’d have a bit of time to show me some of his dad’s old stomping grounds.

Po walked in with William Gay and Bob Shacochis. The four of us stood in a circle; one of my Bennington mentors, Jill McCorkle, came over to join us. Po reached into his pocket and placed something in my hand. “I think Dad would want you to have this,” he said. I was holding Barry’s gold-plated cigarette lighter. It was a hushed and holy moment. Light from the magician on high.

I’m pretty sure that’s where the Grove magic started.

The next morning, as had become my habit, I walked to the Blue Chair Café for coffee. I sat at one of the small tables outside and started to read the day’s workshop stories. A few minutes later, this gorgeous woman – long, thick hair, big smile, slender, athletic build—sat down beside me. When she took a manuscript out of her bag, I figured she was a writer. We made small talk. I told her I was there for the conference, and she said she was too, but that was it. We both returned to the pages in front of us.

Later that morning, I went to the publishing panel and found out the woman was Elisabeth Schmitz from Grove/Atlantic. She and Gary Fisketjon from Knopf spoke on the panel together; it turned out they were both regulars at Sewanee. I ran into Elisabeth twice more that day. In both instances, we were alone—astonishing, given the number of writers at the conference. We never talked about my work, or hers. I don’t think she even knew I wrote fiction. I mostly wanted to ask her how she kept her arms so toned.

Two months later my agent, Anna Stein, was ready to go out with my collection. She sent me a list of editors she wanted to send the manuscript to. I told Anna how much I’d liked Elisabeth; Anna added her to the list. The day after she sent out the manuscript, I left for a two-week residency at the MacDowell Colony. I figured I wouldn’t hear anything for at least a few weeks. But in the Atlanta airport, waiting to board the plane to Manchester, I checked my email one last time—and found out the book was going to auction. It happened that fast.

A few days later I met my agent in New York City. We had meetings set up with the bidding houses—I wanted to meet the editors in person. Grove was our last meeting. We walked up the stairs (the Grove offices are above a Bikram yoga studio) and stood in the main office, looking at the books on the wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling shelves.

When Elisabeth came out and saw me, she looked slightly stunned. My agent introduced us; I shook her hand.

I met you at Sewanee, I said.

Yes, I remember, she said. So this book is yours?

I sat on the couch in Elisabeth’s office. And there was Hannah: a picture of him (and Jeanette Winterson, among others) on the wall behind Elisabeth’s desk; Long, Last, Happy on her shelves.

I’m in Barry’s house, I thought.

I just don’t understand why you didn’t tell me you had a collection, when we were at Sewanee, Elisabeth said.

I don’t remember how I answered her. I must have said something about how it felt uncouth to try to sell myself like that. But the mystic in me wants to believe I didn’t say anything because that would have ruined the surprise of that moment, sitting there in her office; Barry looking down, a fluke thunderstorm raging outside.

Of course, the rational part of me still says: coincidence.

By the time I left Grove, the storm had blown over. The village streets were wet and glinting in the late afternoon sunlight. Elisabeth walked me out, pointed me in the direction of the subway station, gave me a hug. Before heading uptown, I wandered around the Strand.

There was Barry again.

When Grove won the auction, it felt like coming home.

See the original post from Jon Mayes’ blog.

Don’t miss Jamie Quatro on Monday the 25th for a signing (5:00) and reading (5:30).

Also see: Short Story Champions: George Saunders, Ron Rash and now Jamie Quatro

I read and loved The Great Gatsby while in high school and then found out that F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of my Dad’s favorites too.  I went to his library and proceeded to ready everything I could get my hands on.  I even had two fair fish that I named F. Scott and Zelda.   I was absolutely thrilled when I found out this novel was coming out.  The pub date is March 26 so be ready to come by the bookstore and pick one up!! 

Therese Anne Fowler does a great job in  Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald of describing life in the “Roaring 20’s”.  You are invited to glamorous parties from New York to Paris with some of the famous names and faces of the time…Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Cole Porter and yes, the “golden couple”, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.  We also get a sneak peek into the behind the scenes lives of Scott and Zelda and soon learn that not everything is “golden”.  In the beginning everything was grand but then Scott’s excessive drinking soon overtakes his writing and Zelda’s feelings of repressed creativity comes between them and the marriage is soon in a downward spiral.

While this is a work of fiction, Therese Anne Fowler says in the afterward that she did do a lot of research into the lives of the Fitzgeralds but did have to come up with scenarios to explain what actually happened such as the animosity between Ernest Hemingway and Zelda Fitzgerald among others.  If you are a fan of the time period and/or enjoyed reading such books as The Paris Wife, The Chaperone and Loving Frank then I highly recommend Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald.