Ann Patchett's Blog, page 33
March 12, 2019
Notes from Ann: The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty — An Introduction
Not long ago, I decided it was time to reread To the Lighthouse, or I should say it was time to read it. So many years had passed since I’d first picked it up that I remembered nothing but Mrs. Ramsey and the boat. The copy I bought had the words “with a foreword by Eudora Welty” at the top of the front cover in tiny white letters that all but disappeared into the skyline above the name Virginia Woolf. I didn’t realize the bonus I was getting until I opened the book.
“As it happened,” Welty’s foreword begins, “I came to discover To the Lighthouse for myself. If it seems unbelievable today, this was possible to do in 1930 in Mississippi, when I was young, reading at my own will and as pleasure led me. I might have missed it if it hadn’t been for the strong signal in the title. Blessed with luck and innocence, I fell upon the novel that once and forever opened the door of imaginative fiction for me, and read it cold, in all its wonder and magnitude.”
“Personal discovery is the direct and, I suspect, the appropriate route to To the Lighthouse. Yet discovery, in the reading of a great original work, does not depend on its initial newness to us. No matter how often we begin it again, it seems to expand and expand again ahead of us.”
There could be no truer account of my own experience with The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty, and since I’ve come to praise, it seems only fitting to use her praise of Woolf as the place from which to set sail. My introduction to Welty was the story “A Visit of Charity,” which I read in a seventh grade textbook for English class. I was twelve, slightly younger than the story’s Campfire Girl. Marian is an unsympathetic centerpiece, wanting only to deliver her plant to some old lady and get her credit points, but I was terrified for her nevertheless, as she is shoved into the tiny, sick-smelling room with two old ladies and their claw-like hands. They may have been mad or demented, but mostly they are desperate for her attention and her ability to disrupt the boredom of their day. I had lived enough at twelve to know there were old people out there who wanted to swallow you up, and so my heart went out to this selfish girl. But reading it again at an age much closer to the crones than the Campfire Girl, I find my sympathies shifted. God help those old women, stuffed away in a cheap care facility to wait out their deaths. They have no one to turn their frustrations on but each other. I look at Marian in her little red cap and think, kid, it wouldn’t kill you to sit there for a few minutes and brighten their day.
This is why we have to go back again, because even as the text stays completely true to the writer’s intention, we readers never cease to change. If you’ve read these stories before, I beg you, read them again. Chances are you’ll find them to be completely new.
When To the Lighthouse was published in 1929, Virginia Woolf was forty-seven. Eudora Welty read it a year later at twenty-one. The book you now hold in your hands was first published in 1980, when Welty was seventy-one. A year later she circled back to write the foreword to Woolf’s masterpiece. While I fully understand that this is nothing more than time at work, I find it moving to imagine Welty reading To the Lighthouse when Woolf was still alive, just as Welty was alive when I first found that story. When I was young, English textbooks were dominated by dead male writers, and Welty distinguished herself in my mind not only for her unsettling tale of charity, but for being neither a man nor dead.
[image error]The year The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty was published, my mother gave me a copy for my birthday. I was seventeen. Soon thereafter, Welty came to Nashville to give a reading at Vanderbilt and I arrived an hour early to sit on the front row. It was the first time I’d been to a reading. Welty was child-sized, sitting up on the stage behind a table with whoever it was that introduced her that night. I was a few years older than Marian the Campfire Girl at that point, and the great author seemed very close to the ancient women in the Old Ladies’ Home. Before the event began, I walked up on the stage with my book and asked her to sign it for me. I had no idea of protocol in those days but there should have been someone there to stop me. I opened the book for her and she shook her head. “No, no, dear,” she said. “You always want to sign on the title page.” Then she turned the page and signed her name, thereby stopping my heart.
Eudora Welty read “Why I Live at the P.O.” that night, and in doing so thrilled the faithful. It was exactly what we were hoping to hear, and yet in reading this collection again so many years later, I have to wonder if she ever felt confined by those anthologized favorites — “Why I Live at the P.O.,” “A Worn Path,” “Powerhouse,” “The Wide Net” — because while these stories are essential, they fall short in representing the darkness and depth of this book. Reading it now from beginning to end is an experience not unlike going to an artist’s retrospective, walking through room after room of paintings in order to see the full development of a vision. You may linger for an extra moment in front of the canvas most frequently reproduced on postcards and tee-shirts, but what you’re seeing over the course of the exhibition is a life played out in art. We have a tendency to lift out the pieces that are pleasing to us, or that best illustrate a particular point: a collection of stories about place or race or a particular moment in history, but none of that captures Welty’s extraordinary dexterity as she steps from comedy to horror to family drama to farce to the retelling of classic mythology. In the same way her narrative voice is capable of moving from character to character, her style shifts with allegiance to nothing but the compassionate truth. She could accomplish anything because of her complete understanding of the world in which she lived.
When I first read The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty I thought she was a fabulist, a writer endowed with a superior imagination and love of tall tales. Those things are true, of course, but Welty, who spent most all of her life in Jackson, Mississippi, in the house her father built when she was a child, was also telling the truth.
“The reason it’s so impossible to write about Mississippi,” Donna Tartt once told me, “is that everyone thinks you’re exaggerating.” It had never occurred to me that Welty was accurately representing a culture until I married into that culture myself. In the last twenty-five years in which I’ve been going to Mississippi regularly, I’ve come to believe that Welty was to her state what Joan Didion was to California: the clear eye of verisimilitude. I no longer read “Clytie” as Southern gothic because I believe in every member of Clytie’s family as I believe in her impossible ending. When the man and woman leave Galatoire’s in New Orleans and drive south in “No Place for You, My Love,” they might as well be going to the end of the earth. They cross their own version of the River Styx on a ferry and reach a place where the road peters out into a strip of crunchy shells. It may be a metaphor, but it’s also real. Throughout this book the characters speak of the incessant hell of the heat, of the need to lie down in the middle of the day because of it. “It was like riding a stove,” the woman on the ferry thinks. Anyone who’s passed a summer in Mississippi will tell you, it may be art but it’s also a fact.
There is no writer I know of who tells the truth of the landscape like Welty. The natural world is the rock on which these stories are built, and its overbearing presence informs every sentence. “There were thousands, millions of mosquitos and gnats — a universe of them, and on the increase.” I could take this book apart and type it up again, sentence by perfect sentence, to say, this is exactly what Mississippi is like: “Once he dived down and down into the dark water, where it was so still that nothing stirred, not even a fish, and so dark that it was no longer the muddy world of the upper river but the dark clear world of deepness, and he must have believed this was the deepest place in the whole Pearl River, and if she was not here she would not be anywhere.” Everything exists in layers, from the sun to the scorching sky to the highest leaves of the trees to rooftops and porches and grass and dirt, the muddy water in the river and the fish in the water and the quieter, truer place beneath even the fish.
This is the landscape into which Welty repeatedly places her characters. They interact first with the landscape and then, if there’s any energy left after that, with one another. What’s amazing when looking at these stories is how rarely the people speak to one another, or, when they do, how often no one seems to be listening. It’s more likely that the dialogue is interior, which is why “The Key,” a story about two deaf mutes waiting in a train station, is particularly deft. Even in that most verbal favorite, “Why I Live at the P.O.,” Sister can’t clear her good name despite her passionate monologues because no one in her family will listen.
Eudora Welty died on July 23, 2001. I was in my kitchen in Nashville when I heard the news on the radio. Without much thought, I put a black dress in a bag and drove south to Meridian where I spent the night with my mother-in-law. The next morning I drove over to Jackson. I got there hours early, thinking I’d be standing in the street with a throng of short story disciples, but I got a seat in the church. Everyone did. A storm of brief and terrible violence had swept through that morning and instead of making the weather worse, as summer storms are wont to do, it made things better. It was seventy-five degrees as we made our way to the cemetery after the service, something I doubt had ever happened in Jackson in July before. I doubt it will happen again. Greatness had come through once, which is really all that we could hope for, and the world that had been so justly represented took back the one who loved it best.
From the book The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty. Copyright © 2019. Reprinted by permission of Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All Rights Reserved. Get your copy HERE.
March 8, 2019
18 Great Reads for Spring Breakers, Staycationers, and Everyone In Between
[image error]
First — BREAKING NEWS: Did you hear? There’s a new Ann Patchett novel coming in September 2019! As fall gets closer, we’ll be sharing more about The Dutch House, a multigenerational family story about siblings, love, wealth, and memory. Meanwhile, trust us when we say you are going to LOVE IT. Here’s your peek at the cover, featuring custom commissioned art by Nashville-based artist Noah Saterstrom:
[image error] Can you pre-order your signed copies from Parnassus already? OF COURSE YOU CAN. Click right here.
Now, back to our regularly scheduled roundup of amazing reads: Whether you’re anxiously awaiting an upcoming spring break getaway or just counting down the days until winter’s officially over (12 days, in case you’re wondering), we’re happy to offer this reading list of bookseller-loved fiction and nonfiction titles perfect for enjoying beneath a beach umbrella or a cozy blanket. (If your spring break plans include some kind of outdoor adventuring, however, you might want to wait until you return to dive into Peter Heller’s The River.)
Have a browse:
FICTION
Recommended by Katherine
The RiverEver since I read Hatchet years ago, I’ve been drawn to survivalist narratives. The River follows the story of college friends Jack and Wynn on a wilderness canoe trip that takes a dangerous turn for the worse. Tense and propulsive. Think Jon Krakauer mixed with Cormac McCarthy.
Recommended by Catherine
Daisy Jones & The Six It reads like a Rolling Stone documentary, but it’s about a fictitious band, a singer, and their tumultuous collaboration, blinding success, fallout, and the aftermath decades later. Get ready to stay up all night bingeing this one.
(Fun fact: Daisy Jones & The Six is the #1 favorite of booksellers nationwide on the Indie Next List for March!)
Recommended by Kathy
The Only Woman in the Room Most people know Hedy Lamar the beautiful actress, but few know Hedy Lamar the brilliant woman who fled the Nazis, and who is credited by many with developing a communication system which became the foundation of our modern wi-fi. This novel is her fascinating story.
Recommended by Mary Laura
Leading MenIn a story that moves back and forth from Italy in the 1950s to New York in the 1960s to the present day, Leading Men takes us into the world of Tennessee Williams. But it’s not Williams this historical novel focuses on so much as the people in his circle: namely his longtime lover Frank Merlo and an actress they meet named Anja Bloom. It’s all very glamorous and enthralling. Take it on vacation.
Recommended by Sissy
The Stranger Diaries Do you love old British houses, literary quotes, and ghosts? Griffiths adds gothic elements to a contemporary thriller that’s perfect for cold nights by the fire.
Recommended by Katherine
Beautiful Bad Some thrillers are just plain twisted, and this is one of them. If you enjoy fast-paced, voyeuristic looks into other people’s messed-up lives, then Beautiful Bad is the spring break read for you. Plus, all the scenes set in Eastern Europe add an exotic flair.
Recommended by Kevin
Binstead’s Safari I call this a “reverse Hemingway.” That is, instead of a one-dimensional woman character dismissed by a self-serious jackass, the jackass is dismissed by his wife, Millie, whose rapid metamorphosis gets satisfyingly freaky and surreal.
Recommended by Betsy
A Place for UsFor several booksellers on staff, this gorgeous debut and new paperback release from Fatima Farheen Mirza was a favorite of 2018. When a Muslim Indian American family gathers for a wedding, each family member begins to reconcile family, culture, and religious heritage with identity and individuation. This novel has all the marks of an engrossing family saga.
Recommended by Joy
Arturo’s Island By Elsa Morante, Ann Goldstein (Translator)
This is a major new translation by Ann Goldstein, the translator of Elena Ferrante’s novels. Elsa Morante was one of Italy’s greatest post-war novelists, and Ferrante has said Morante’s writing has been an inspiration for her own work. If you loved the Neapolitan Novels, this will be a treat. It’s a beautifully written exploration of family and place and how the two are sometimes inextricably — and tragically — connected.
NONFICTION
Recommended by Karen
Cry of the KalahariIf you read Where the Crawdads Sing, you know that Delia Owens writes beautifully about nature. But did you know that she lived in Africa for 30 years doing wildlife research and that Crawdads is not her first bestselling book? First published in the mid-’80s, Cry of the Kalahari recounts Owens’ and her then-husband’s experiences living in Botswana.
Recommended by Mary Laura
The Book of Delights: Essays Treat yourself to this truly delightful book of short prose, in which award-winning poet Ross Gay observes and celebrates little moments of humanity. Each piece is an ode to something (or someone) delightful: a flight attendant who calls him “baby,” the sight of a mother and child each holding one handle of a shared shopping bag, the “blessed desecration” of a friend who misuses air-quotes with wild abandon. Read one every day, and it’ll be as good for you as taking a vitamin.
Recommended by Steve
The Good Immigrant: 26 Writers Reflect on America By Nikesh Shukla (Editor), Chimene Suleyman (Editor)
This would be worth the purchase price for any number of essays — Teju Cole’s “The Blackness of the Panther,” Fatima Farheen Mirza’s “Skittles,” Alexander Chee’s “Your Father’s Country,” to name just a few — but the sum here is incalculably more than its varied and beautiful parts. It’s an education full of exhales, a journey with many origins, many endpoints.
Recommended by Keltie
Together: A Memoir of a Marriage and a Medical Mishap This is one of those snapshot-of-a-moment memoirs that speaks volumes of truth about marriage: the impact of a crisis, the realignment of roles, the gut-level grind-it-out stuff that gets you through, and the love that just had to be there all along.
Recommended by Mary Laura
Under Pressure: Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls Lisa Damour is the guide every parent needs for the years when we’re raising teens. Seriously, I don’t know how I’d do it without her advice. In her latest book, she takes on the topic of stress in teen girls (although I’d say this is also useful for raising boys).
Recommended by Andy
Madame Fourcade’s Secret War: The Daring Young Woman Who Led France’s Largest Spy Network Against Hitler With extraordinary research and gripping prose, Olson recounts the dangerous and daring methods Madame Fourcade’s French network of spies used to provide crucial intelligence to the Allied war effort. Olson brings to life a person who put a cause above her personal welfare, beautifully illustrating the strength and tenacity Fourcade exhibited in the face of Nazi atrocities.
Join us when Lynne Olson visits Parnassus Books on Thursday, March 14, 2019.
Recommended by Katherine
Afoot and Lighthearted: A Journal for Mindful Walking My daily walks are really important to me, and I credit them in reducing my anxiety and improving my overall health. I am thrilled to add this guided journal to my routine. I love how it’s made with fill-in-the-blank dates so that you can flip through the pretty pages, choose which one suits you that day, and walk your way into well-being.
(Meet the author! Come see Bonnie Smith Whitehouse at Parnassus on Thursday, March 7, 2019, at 6:30 p.m.)
Recommended by Betsy
The Faraway NearbyTold as a memoir in essays, The Faraway Nearby takes scraps from Solnit’s life and pieces them with broader landscapes, such as fairy tales, environmental science, and the ominousness of Antarctica. In this merging, she shows how these landscapes, both old and ever-expanding, take us deeper into our selves, into our daily lives — the faraway with the nearby. This came out in 2013, but it’s a perfectly timely read right now.
Recommended by Mary Laura
Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls: A Memoir If you’ve been mesmerized by the excerpts coming out online from this gutsy memoir, go ahead and get the book — it’s 100% worth the buy. Lauren Groff called it “frank and funny and powerful and surprising,” and I’m not going to search for more adjectives because those are perfect.
Recommended by Steve
Heavy: An American Memoir Newly out in paperback, Heavy was my staff pick when it came out in hardcover last year. Here’s what I said about it then: What does a radically honest reckoning with the past look like? It looks like Heavy, a memoir that confronts trauma — both personal and political — and never turns away when the answers are painful. Beautiful, hard-earned, and illuminating.
First Editions Club: March Selection
The Parade
This month we have the extreme joy of sending you something truly special — a signed first edition of Dave Eggers’ new novel, The Parade.
Eggers is a giant in the literary world, and — regardless of whether you read his blockbuster novel The Circle or took Ann up on her recommendation of his latest work of nonfiction, The Monk of Mokha — we invite one and all to devour the intensely allegorical and sharp masterpiece that is The Parade. I don’t want to give away too much, so I’ll refrain from commenting on specifics, but rest assured that Eggers has brought his A-game.
The novel is short, so I’ll keep this note short as well this month and let the book speak for itself.
Yours in reading,
Catherine Bock
Inventory Manager
More about our First Editions Club: Every member receives a first edition of the selected book of the month, signed by the author. Books are carefully chosen by our staff of readers, and our picks have gone on to earn major recognition including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Plus, there’s no membership fee or premium charge for these books. Build a treasured library of signed first editions and always have something great to read! Makes a FABULOUS gift, too.
Parnassus Book Club — Upcoming Meeting Schedule
March – Tangerine by Christine Mangan
Monday, March 18 at 6:30pm
Wednesday, March 20 at 6:30pm
Thursday, March 21 at 10am
April – House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea
Monday, April 8 at 6:30pm*
Tuesday, April 9 at 6:30pm
Thursday, April 11 at 10am
*Date change for this month
Classics Club – The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
Monday, March 25 at 10am and 6:30pm
Are you a member of our store book club? Would you like to be? Parnassus Book Club and Classics Club meetings are free and open to anyone. Buy the book, read along, and join the discussion!
“It’s all about the book.” More thoughts on reading from Kathy Schultenover, Parnassus Book Clubs Manager:
Are you looking for a fun theme for your next book club meeting? This is a great activity for a busy month when you don’t have a designated book.
[image error]Start by giving this list of questions to each member well in advance, then ask everyone to bring their answers to share at the meeting. This list comes from a questionnaire in Shelf Awareness, a daily online publication for readers and book industry professionals which also features weekly interviews that probe into the reading lives of authors.
It never fails to elicit revealing — and often surprising — answers, which means some fascinating conversation can happen for your club. (I can even envision devoting more than one meeting to this, depending on how much discussion time you allow for each question.) What a great way to get to know your fellow book club members and share book favorites!
Here’s a sample of the questionnaire — and if you don’t already subscribe to Shelf Awareness, you should do that, too.
“By the Book”
1. On Your Nightstand Now
2. Favorite Book When You Were a Child
3. Your Top 5 Authors
4. Book You’ve Faked Reading
5. Book(s) You’re an Evangelist For
6. Book You Bought for the Cover
7. Book You Hid From Your Parents
8. Book That Changed Your Life
9. Favorite Line From a Book
10. 5 Books You’ll Never Part With
Is your club part of our book club registry? Local book groups can order and purchase their club’s reading selections at a discount! Your club’s chosen titles are also displayed in the store on the book club shelf with the club’s name, so members can come in and find their selections easily. Registered clubs also receive notices of special book-club-related author events and seminars. To register a club, simply stop by the store and fill out a short form at the counter.
Literary hors d’oeuvres: A Word on Words — the show-between-shows on Nashville Public Television — is back with new episodes, including chats with authors such as Tayari Jones, Silas House, Alexander Chee, Craig Johnson, and Rebecca Makkai. Watch for them on NPT, or view them online right here at AWordOnWords.org.
March 5, 2019
Six New Page-Turners for Growing Readers and YA Fans
[image error]
Have a growing reader ready for a new challenge? We have just the books for you. Check out three new Parnassus-staff-approved reads perfect for independent readers looking to spread their wings.
Or maybe you’re looking to stock the shelves before spring break for the YA reader in your life? If so, you’ll want to pick up our latest favorite YA titles, including this month’s can’t-miss ParnassusNext selection. Have a look:
FOR INDEPENDENT READERS
Recommended by Devin
New Kid By Jerry Craft, Jerry Craft (Illustrator)
Middle school is hard enough, but to be the new kid in an upscale New York neighborhood is an entirely different circumstance. However, Jordan leans on his family, his love of drawing, and finding common ground with other classmates to get him through the year. Great for fans of Raina Telgemeier.
Recommended by Katherine
To Night Owl From Dogfish By Holly Goldberg Sloan, Meg Wolitzer
Hands-down the funniest book I’ve read in recent memory. In this twist on The Parent Trap, Bett and Avery are sent to the same summer camp by their newly lovestruck dads in the hopes that they’ll form a sisterly bond. Told entirely in letters and email, this is for older readers in the 10-14 age range.
Recommended by Katherine
EventownElodee and her twin sister Naomi are moving to Eventown, where everything is seemingly perfect. But when Elodee begins to question Eventown’s mysterious rules, she uncovers truths about herself and her family — and why they came to Eventown in the first place. Imbued with magical realism, this is an age-appropriate version of Pleasantville that will spark meaningful conversation about what we lose when we strive to be “perfect.”
YOUNG ADULT
Recommended by Katherine
We Are Okay This is one of those books that breaks your heart but in such a beautiful way that you’re grateful for the experience. A winner of the Printz Award for excellence in Young Adult literature, this slim and extraordinary novel — now out in paperback — is one you won’t want to miss.
Recommended by Sarah
If You’re Out There This story is at once an unexpected thriller and a refreshingly honest ode to modern female friendship. Perfect for fans of David Arnold.
(Note: Loutzenhiser will be here on March 15 as part of the Epic Reads Meet-Up event featuring four YA authors. Click here for info and tickets!)
ParnassusNext — Our Latest Subscription Selections
Our March ParnassusNext selection is Printz Honor-winning author Julie Berry’s new novel, Lovely War, a sweeping romance set against the perilous backdrop of World War I in which the gods hold the fates — and the hearts — of four mortals in their hands.
Bookseller Rae Ann chose it for her staff pick this month and describes it as “a tale about the horrors of war, the joy of music, and the resiliency found in love and friendship.” It’s a must read, she says.
Perfect for fans of Ruta Sepetys, Markus Zusak, and Jennifer Donnelly, Lovely War has already received four starred reviews and is poised to become one of the most critically acclaimed books of the year.
Here’s just some of the praise it’s received:
“Julie Berry pens an utter delight in Lovely War, an effervescent confection of a novel filled with humor, tragedy, romance, and myth. Easily one of the best novels I have read all year!” —Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Alice Network
“An unforgettable romance so Olympian in scope, human at its core, and lyrical in its prose that it must be divinely inspired.” —Kirkus, starred review
“Julie Berry writes the past as if she lived it.” —Jennifer Donnelly, New York Times bestselling author of A Northern Light
Julie will be at Parnassus on Friday, March 8, at 6:30pm! Click here for details.
ParnassusNext is the book subscription box for YA lovers. Every member of ParnassusNext receives a first edition hardcover of each month’s selected book, signed by the author. There is no membership fee to join — and no line to stand in for the autograph. Not only will you have one of the best YA books of the month when it comes out, you’ll have it straight from the author’s hands, with an original, authentic signature! Set up a subscription for yourself or buy a gift membership for your favorite YA reader for 3, 6, or 12 months.
Need ideas for things to do over spring break? Check out our events calendar online and take your pick of storytimes and author visits!
February 27, 2019
Inspiring (and Useful!) Gifts for Writers
[image error]
Do you have a writer in your life? (Or are you the writer in your life?) Then you know it’s not an easy gig. Whether they’re lucky enough to do the job full time or they’re toiling away at a novel or memoir in the wee hours after their daily responsibilities are done, writers often pour their time and talents into projects for years without any guarantee of a payoff. Aim some generosity their way, and you could be the fairy godfriend who makes their big breakthrough possible. Some ideas:
Writing courses (like these at The Porch here in Nashville, or these online classes offered by Catapult) can be a wonderful way to develop skills, but they do come at a cost. Foot the bill for a class, gain a writer’s gratitude forever.
If the writer is a parent, offer a day of babysitting — which equals the priceless opportunity to work uninterrupted for hours at a stretch.
Do you have extra frequent flyer miles? Access to a vacation home or apartment somewhere? Help a writer get away to immerse themselves in their work for even just a few days, and we might all have a great new book to read in a couple of years!
Or show a writer you believe in them with a little care package full of gifts from their local bookstore. Such as…
[image error]The concrete candle bookends from Paddywax — a local Tennessee candlemaker — add a nice bonus.
[image error]STYLE (editorial style, that is) + SUBSTANCE (the substance being either coffee or tea, served in these mugs by Seltzer Goods)
If your loved-one-who-writes is just starting out, now’s the perfect time to stock their shelves with books about the craft. Pictured above: Between You & Me by Mary Norris (who’s coming to Nashville on April 28 for her upcoming book Greek to Me — more on that soon!); Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process by John McPhee; On Writing by Stephen King; The Writer’s Practice by John Warner; My Twentieth Century Evening and Other Small Breakthroughs: The Nobel Lecture by Kazuo Ishiguro; and Dreyer’s English by Benjamin Dreyer. We could go on and on with these.
[image error]More candles! Honestly, candles have nothing to do with writing. But they smell nice. And sometimes just the tiniest enhancement of the atmosphere can help lift the mood of a struggling writer.
Outfit the writer’s desk with lovely accoutrements, and don’t forget a pack of pretty pencils and a bundle of Moleskine notebooks for jotting ideas down before they blow away. (Parnassus carries these in all sizes, including tiny notebooks that fit in a purse or pocket.)
[image error]You could also consider a subscription to any of these!
Literary magazines — or as we like to call them, “the mix tapes of literature” — are an inexpensive way to taste-test a variety of contemporary fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Give a stack to a writer looking to up their game.
[image error]OH, YES WE DID
Give a writer a new tote for carrying their metaphorical burdens AND all the books they’re reading.
[image error]Honesty.
And don’t forget a smaller bag for carrying all their riches. (On that note: make a freelancer’s day by forwarding along this hilarious spin on the woes of invoicing. It’s hard to get paid in this business, y’all.)
[image error]Hey, that’s our friend Donna Tartt!
It helps to have role models. Give a copy of photographer Beowulf Sheehan’s coffee table book, Author, a collection of portraits featuring 200 writers of all stripes — plus a great reminder that no two authors are exactly alike.
[image error](Cool sneaks courtesy of Fleet Feet, the running store next door to Parnassus Books in Green Hills.)
How about some walking or running gear? This idea’s a little outside-the-box, but research shows that moving your body can shake loose ideas and improve concentration. Nashville professor and writer Bonnie Smith Whitehouse believes so wholeheartedly in that concept that she has produced a gorgeous new book called Afoot and Lighthearted: A Journal for Mindful Walking (available in stores next Tuesday, March 5). Come see Whitehouse discuss this principle — and get your signed copy of this unique guided journal — at her event at Parnassus on Thursday, March 7, at 6:30 p.m.
[image error]One size fits all.
As any author will tell you, perhaps the greatest thing any working writer can do is keep reading. In that spirit, give a writer a gift card to their local bookstore and let them go pick out something new from the staff favorites section.
PS: If the writer in your life happens to live in Nashville, give them the gift of our events newsletter (sign up here). That’s how we let everyone know about all the great authors coming to town for readings and discussions. Most of these events are open to the public and free to attend, which means anyone who’s interested can come have a front row seat, join the Q&A, and learn from the best. It’s practically an MFA on a shoestring!
February 20, 2019
Dragons, magic, and “the things in life that can’t be changed” — Christopher Paolini’s new fantasy stories
[image error]
By now the story has become legend: how a decade and a half ago, author Carl Hiaasen and his wife stumbled upon a self-published fantasy novel called Eragon, written by a teenager in Montana named Christopher Paolini, and gave it to their son to read on a family vacation. The boy loved the book so much, Hiaasen brought it to the attention of his publisher, and thus was born a #1 New York Times bestseller. Paolini would go on to write three more books in the fantasy series he called the Inheritance Cycle. Now he’s back with The Fork, The Witch, and The Worm, a collection of stories set in the same world — and you can meet him when he visits Nashville on March 1!
Recently, we offered our social media followers a chance to submit their questions for Paolini, with one winning entry chosen for him to answer in today’s interview. Congratulations to Haley! Have a look at her question and Christopher Paolini’s answer — plus Paolini’s responses to our Authors in Real Life questionnaire — below. And join us next Friday for what promises to be an exciting event!
First off, our reader-submitted question, from Haley: They say every book is asking a question. What question would you say Eragon and the Inheritance Cycle were exploring? (And what about The Fork, The Witch, and The Worm?)
[image error]Christopher Paolini: Eragon and the rest of the Inheritance Cycle explore questions of responsibility, honor, and what it means to truly grow up. All of the main characters are in the process of transitioning from a state of childhood to that of adulthood, and they each deal with it in a different way. Additionally, Eragon wrestles with what I think may be the main question of the modern era: the relationship between the individual and society. What is your responsibility to society, and how much power should that society have over your life?
But let’s not forget that while exploring those issues, I also got to write about dragons, battles, magic, and other fun stuff!
The Fork, the Witch, and the Worm deals with a different set of issues. How does one move on with your life after you’ve already defeated the big, bad villain? How do you reintegrate into society after being (perhaps rightly) shunned and exiled? And greatest of all, how do we face and deal with the things in life that can’t be changed? It’s an issue all of us have to grapple with, and it’s no different for my characters (although they’re doing it in the context of an imaginary world, full of strange and threatening creatures).
And now the Authors in Real Life questionnaire…
I’ve been listening to: Movie soundtracks. Nothing with lyrics I can understand, though! Current top pick is the soundtrack to Tron: Legacy by Daft Punk. Perfect for writing sci-fi.
I love to watch: Everything and anything, but especially movies or shows that have a sense of earned wonder to them. Also, sometimes stuff with explosions, because explosions are cool.
Something I saw online that made me laugh, cry, or think: An article about magnetic monopoles. Super interesting.
Best meal I’ve had in the past month: Sushi with my editor and agent in New York, right before the launch event for The Fork, the Witch, and the Worm. Mmm, raw fish.
A creator who’s doing something I admire or envy: Stephen King. As a writer, I admire his work ethic and ongoing creativity.[image error]
A book I recently recommended to someone else: Wild Seed by Octavia Butler. Also The Worm Ouroboros by E. R. Eddison. You’d be hard-pressed to find two more different books, but they’re both incredibly well-written, imaginative, thoughtful, and beautiful. Epic, too.
The last event I got tickets to was: A production of Waiting for Godot that I saw in New York on my 30th birthday, courtesy of my sister, Angela. The play starred Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, and Billy Crudup, so it was a real treat to watch.
Most meaningful recent travel destination: Touring for my new book. It’s been quite a few years since my last novel was released, so I really enjoyed getting back out and meeting my readers again.
I wish I knew more about: Everything. My curiosity is insatiable, and there are too few hours in the day.
My favorite thing about bookstores: The smell, and how it’s possible to browse among the shelves and thus discover books and authors that I’ve never heard of before.
* * *
Meet Christopher Paolini
Author of Eragon and The Fork, The Witch, and The Worm
Friday, March 1, 2019, at 6:30 p.m.
Frist Hall at The Ensworth School
(Lower/Middle School Campus, 211 Ensworth Avenue)
Tickets are required for this event — click here to get yours!
February 13, 2019
Notes from Ann: An Interview with Elizabeth McCracken
[image error]
What’s the best reason I know to co-own a bookstore? It means I get to see my most beloved friends when they publish their books. Elizabeth McCracken is at the top of my list of people I’m always longing to see, so this is a double cause for celebration: first, the publication of her wonderful new novel, Bowlaway, and second, that she’s coming to Parnassus.
The big event happens on February 22, when we’ll be in conversation at the store. Here’s our warm-up. –Ann
Ann Patchett: There is so much going on in this novel, so many people, so many changing attitudes, so much time. I just wonder what the original idea was. Did you think, I really want to write a novel about candlepin bowling, or, I really want to write a multi-generational saga, or, I see this woman Bertha Truitt asleep in a snowy cemetery?
[image error]Elizabeth McCracken is the author of six books, including Thunderstruck & Other Stories (winner of the 2015 Story Prize), and also holds the James A. Michener Chair in Fiction at the University of Texas, Austin
Elizabeth McCracken: The first thing I knew was that I wanted to write across generations, something that felt like a genealogy — that was before I had even written a word. I went through my grandfather’s genealogies and I pulled out names; the names became the characters. And just before I started to write, I decided to put a bowling alley in it. I feel as though I always need a bit of weird material to wrap a novel around, or else I would just describe furniture and mustaches.
The opening, with Bertha in the cemetery, is one of the later additions. Nearly anything that reads as traditional plot came in towards the end (I think in the version you first read completely different people found her). I still don’t know how to write a novel with a clear idea of what happens ahead of time: I have to throw it on the page and see what kind of shape it makes and then make that shape clearer.
AP: Do you remember how we swooned over Carol Shields’ The Stone Diaries and the way she used old photographs in the book? I feel like going through your grandfather’s genealogies is like that. Does The Stone Diaries still resonate with you? What are some of the multi-generational novels you love?
EM: I do still adore The Stone Diaries and recently pressed it upon a student, and I can certainly see its imprint on this book. I remember just having my mind blown by the pictures in the middle, in a can-you-do-that-oh-I-guess-only-one-person-can way. It’s such an odd multi-generational book. The Stone Diaries is one of those books I read because I saw a pre-publication review when I worked as a librarian, and so it came to me pretty free of expectations and so is particularly dear to me.
As for other multi-generational novels: well, Commonwealth, of course. A Hundred Years of Solitude. Middlesex, which I really love.
AP: The thing about interviewing your friends is that they are legally obligated to mention your books. Did you know that The Stone Diaries is published without the pictures now? When I read it again there were no pictures.
You do a brilliant job letting major characters like Bertha and Nahum abruptly appear, while other major characters, like Margaret and Joe Wear and LuEtta, abruptly drop out of the narrative, only to circle back again. You’re juggling so many people here, and I wonder how much of this is planned in advance.
EM: No pictures? That’s terrible! I can’t even imagine it without pictures.
It is remarkable what I didn’t plan in this book. These weren’t meant to be major characters in any way — they became major as I wrote. Margaret, for instance, was just mentioned in an aside, and then while I was writing up to the scene in which Nahum came back married to somebody, I suddenly thought, Well, I’ll make his wife that minor character. Joe, too, was just a guy who worked in the alleys and then suddenly he wasn’t. I’d also gotten his name wrong — he was Jack Wear in the first draft, and when I realized it should be Joe Wear he came much clearer. What it felt like: when I had the idea for the novel, it was like finding an enormous, very dirty painting in a junk shop. I could see the shape of the two figures in the middle of the canvas, and then I began to clean it, and then I could see the figures all around them, first the shapes, then faces, expressions, clothing, etc. The plot as I first conceived of it was just genealogy. I only saw things happening as I wrote.
AP: That’s fascinating about the names! Jack Wear is so different from Joe Wear, and Margaret has her moments of being Meg and Meggie. There are some of the best character names ever in this book, including my all time favorite, Cracker Graham.
Your powers of language have always been extraordinary — you’re in the Pantheon with Allan Gurganus — but the balance between the beauty of your sentences and the dingy confinement of the bowling alley is genius. Talk about you relationship to bowling alleys, to the arcane and regional candlepin bowling, and the burden place has for the people in this book. (Or, to put it another way, the burden place has on people.)
[image error]Entertainment Weekly calls Bowlaway “an oddball masterpiece.”
EM: I was a childhood candlepin bowler — in elementary school I bowled two years on what was called a “league” but was really just a club, since we only competed amongst ourselves. I also joined a league in junior high school, but it petered out. In my early thirties I got serious for a couple of years about ten pin bowling, and had my own ball and bowling shoes. What I loved about it is that it’s a solitary sport that one would never pursue alone. I know that gym teachers across America like to talk about how being on a team teaches you how to be a team player, but it doesn’t: it teaches you where you are in the hierarchy. I was short and chubby and sedentary as a child. I was always going to let the team down. But when you bowl you can just bowl against your own last score, and you can still talk to your pals while you do it.
OK, this is an answer largely about bowling!
I don’t know why I have written two novels now in which a family business is a burden on the next generations. (It’s also true in Niagara Falls All Over Again.) I did not grow up in a family business. Or maybe I did, academia, and it appears I’ve gone into it. Anyhow, I liked the idea of a bowling alley, which is both very democratic — anybody can come in, no matter how good they are at the sport, and bowl next to a terrible bowler or a great one — and also extremely focused: you have to be interested in bowling. I’m also interested in those old-timey things that still exist, always.
AP: You were not too far past your candlepin bowling years when we first met. We were both fellows at the Fine Arts Work Center. You were in your early twenties and I was in my middle twenties and we spent the winter together in Provincetown, Massachusetts. There was no internet, no money, no people around. You now have a wonderful family, a huge job, and big presence in the literary world as a writer, teacher, mentor, and citizen (by which I mean you judge prizes and write people letters and are an all-around good egg). What’s the relationship between what writing was like for you when we met and what it’s like for you now?
EM: I think perhaps everything and nothing? In some ways the biggest difference is that I now don’t show a book to anyone, anyone at all, until I’m finished with a draft. I probably was sliding pages of books under your literal door that year in Provincetown, and your metaphorical door once you weren’t right around the corner. I think life is now loud enough that I need the quiet of being alone with the book. I don’t even tell anybody what I’m writing. I got this from Edward [Elizabeth’s spouse, writer Edward Carey], who did it with his Iremonger trilogy. I can’t imagine doing it otherwise now, and I think it also applies pressure on me to finish a draft.
I often tell my students that I feel sorry that they will never know what it feels like to have zero possibilities for distraction when they pull all-nighters. When we were in Provincetown, I often wrote very late into the night, having procrastinated all day, and everyone in the town was asleep, I didn’t have a television (but even if I did, there would have been nothing to watch), no email, only overnight radio, which I often listened to as I wrote. It was like being sealed in a little capsule headed for the moon, or the morning. These days I seal myself in my campus office with zero internet access and no smartphone, which is as close as I can get to the same thing.
AP: Last, best question: what do independent bookstores mean to you?
EM: When I think about it, I was really raised by independent bookstores. My brother, Harry, and I would take the bus into Harvard Square, where there were so many, though my favorites was Wordsworth, which had these benches upon which a child could sit and read all day. We also hit the Harvard Bookstore, and the Million Year Picnic, a fantastic comic book store, both of which are still there.
And one of the luckiest things that ever happened to me is that in grad school I won $500 worth of books from Prairie Lights in Iowa City, which was an unfathomable amount in 1990, and I can still remember a lot of the books that Paul Ingram loaded into my arms: Friend of My Youth, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Deadwood, Paris Trout, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, Geek Love. To read Geek Love for the first time! I knew that if I just asked for the books I would love, he would find them for me. Independent bookstores have done a lot for me as a writer, too — I have depended on them all my writing life — but it’s my reading life that I think of instantly. (And I cannot wait to come back to Parnassus. I have always wanted to be friends with the proprietor of a bookstore.)
* * *
Elizabeth McCracken presents Bowlaway
in conversation with Ann Patchett
Friday, February 22, 2019
6:30 p.m. at Parnassus Books
This event is open to the public and free to attend!
February 7, 2019
Jasmine Guillory, Galentine of Our Dreams
Advisory: If you hate having fun, our upcoming Galentine’s Night party featuring author Jasmine Guillory is not the event for you. However, if you enjoy laughing, reading books that feel like a vacation, and falling in love with characters on the page, call your girlfriends right this minute and make plans to meet up here at Parnassus on Thursday, February 14, at 6:30 p.m., where we’ll be celebrating with Guillory and her novel The Proposal.
[image error] Proposals: as the cover says, “not everybody wants one.”
Reese Witherspoon may have just selected The Proposal as her latest book club pick, but — no offense, Reese — we’ve been Jasmine Guillory fans for a while now. Specifically, bookseller Devin Rutland has been shouting about these joyful contemporary romances since discovering Guillory’s previous book, The Wedding Date, which she described like so: “I could not put this book down. Seriously. I intended to read a chapter or two before bed, but every time I tried to put it down and go to sleep, I jumped up 10 minutes later to read a little more. Flash foward to 3:30 a.m. on a work night and I’m reading the epilogue, grinning from ear to ear.”
In The Proposal, a writer named Nikole goes to a baseball game with her boyfriend of just five months, who decides to propose in front of a stadium full of people. (Tip: don’t do this.) Enter Carlos, who swoops in to rescue Nik from the camera crew and shortly thereafter becomes her new, no-strings love interest. Not surprisingly, Devin’s just as smitten with this one. She calls Guillory’s books, “smart, funny, and perfectly balanced, in that the characters’ lives apart from each other are as much a motivator to keep reading as their romance.”
Don’t miss this delightful evening full of books and friends (and bubbly and sweets, obviously). In the meantime, get to know Guillory as she answers our Authors in Real Life questionnaire:
[image error]Fun fact: This attorney-turned-novelist is a Stanford Law grad.
I’ve been listening to: Lizzo! Her newest song, “Juice,” is getting a lot of buzz (and I adore it), but “Good as Hell” has been an anthem for a few years now.
I love to watch: The Great British Baking Show and Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat.
Something I saw online that made me laugh, cry, or think: This piece by Tressie McMillian Cottom.
Best meal I’ve had lately: I went to Paris at the very end of the year with some of my closest friends, and we had a fantastic time eating and drinking our way through the city. We had a lot of great meals there, but one chilly, rainy night, we went to a warm and cozy bistro and drank lots of wine and ate lots of wonderful food and it was perfect.
A creator who’s doing something I admire or envy: Samantha Irby – her books are so funny, while also being thoughtful and full of so much I can relate to and learn from.
A book I recently recommended to someone else: I can’t do just one! Here are a handful I’ve recommended just in the past week: Becoming, Intercepted, All You Can Ever Know, When Katie Met Cassidy, and There There.
The last event I bought tickets to was: The live Call Your Girlfriend podcast in San Francisco!
[image error]Most meaningful recent travel destination: Guerneville, California. I rented a house up there for a weekend with three good friends, and we spent the weekend looking at the trees around us, celebrating our victories and working through our defeats, and laughing a lot. It was a great way to start 2019.
I wish I knew more about: Foreign languages! I would love to be able to speak another language (preferably Spanish) even moderately well.
My favorite thing about bookstores: Discovery! I’ve picked up so many books that aren’t of the genre or style I naturally gravitate to, all because bookstores made it easy for me to stumble upon them. And I get so much good advice from booksellers!
* * *
February 5, 2019
28 Reads for the 28 Days of February
[image error]
In honor of our shortest month of the year, here are 28 Parnassus-staff-approved reads for February. Whether you’re looking for a big new novel, a series you can dig into for the rest of winter, mind-blowing nonfiction, or some poetry, your next favorite read is probably somewhere on this list.
(We’d love to say we did this on purpose, but honestly, our favorites just happened to total 28 this time. You know what? Never mind. We did it on purpose.)
FICTION
Recommended by Karen
Golden State Golden State is set in a near-future where lying, even about the smallest thing, is a crime. Odd premise, but in the hands of the author who wrote Underground Airlines, it leads to a propelling and engrossing story.
Recommended by Katherine
The Last RomanticsI love big, sweeping novels like The Goldfinch and A Little Life that transport me into the lives of characters so vivid that I keep thinking about them later. I was completely swept up by story of the four Skinner siblings, narrated nearly a hundred years later by the youngest sibling Fiona, a renowned poet.
Recommended by Keltie
Golden ChildSet in the lushness of Trinidad, and written in the melodic lilt of the island, the story draws you in slowly, and then, without warning, confronts you with the violence that lurks just beneath the surface. Ever wondered if your parents loved one sibling more? Here, there is no doubt about who is the Golden Child. If you liked A Place for Us, try this one. You’ll find yourself asking: what the h@#% just happened?
Recommended by Mary Laura
The DreamersIf you loved Walker’s first novel, The Age of Miracles –– a coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of planetary disaster — you’ll love this one, too. (And if you’ve never read the first one, now you have TWO great new reads!) The Dreamers is also about everyday people whose lives are upended by crisis; but this time it’s a mysterious illness sweeping through a college town. I stayed up past 1 a.m. to finish it.
Recommended by Mary Laura
BowlawayElizabeth McCracken fans, rejoice! The novel we’ve been waiting for begins with Bertha Truitt, a mysterious woman who shows up one day in Salford, Massachusetts, with a bowling ball and a bunch of secrets. Bertha establishes herself among the locals and opens a candlepin bowling alley, which serves as the backdrop for this unusual and entrancing multigenerational family saga.
Recommended by Steve
We Cast a ShadowSet in an uncomfortably near future American South where overt racism has once again become the norm, this is the tale of a father, who is black, and who wants nothing more than to acquire enough money to “cure” his biracial son of the dark spots on his skin. It’s a witty and weird ride through thematic territory that might look familiar to fans of Friday Black.
Recommended by Rae Ann
The Light Over LondonTwo compelling storylines intertwine in this novel set in London: a modern-day antiques dealer trying to solve the mystery of a box of mementos, and a WWII teenager who joins the Gunner Girls in the British army.
Recommended by Stephanie
Saga (Series)By Brian K. Vaughan, Fiona Staples (Illustrator)
I inhaled all nine currently available volumes of this incredible series over the course of two delirious days, and… wow. Saga has incredible writing, ambitious storytelling on a scale that’s literally universal, and Fiona Staples’ breathtaking art. Its readership should not be limited to fans of the genre (science fiction) or the format (graphic novel). This is an epic story with something for everyone.
Recommended by Kathy
The Wife Between UsBy Greer Hendricks, Sarah Pekkanen
These authors have a new thriller out (An Anonymous Girl), but start with this last one, now in paperback. Whom do we believe? The ex-wife, the fiancée, or the devious man they both love? A page-turner to keep you guessing
Recommended by Rae Ann
The Weight of a PianoThis is a mesmerizing story of a piano’s journey — from 1962 Soviet Union to modern-day California — and the two families it connects. I loved it!
Recommended by Joy
McGlueThis short novel packs a serious punch. At first I didn’t know what had hit me until I realized that the disorientation was an integral part of the plot — because the protagonist is drunk for the entire book. It manages to be somehow high-minded and low-brow at the same time. If pirates, blood, and literary disillusionment are your thing, this little book is for you.
Recommended by Sissy
The Silent Patient I’m known for loving a good trashy murder mystery, but this thriller will also satisfy those who read on the more literary side. It’s beautifully crafted, not slow at all, with a thoroughly surprising ending.
Recommended by Sarah
The Hiding PlaceYou can usually count me out for all things scary and sinister, so I wanted an accessible, engaging read with just the right amount of creepiness to begin my foray into the thriller genre. This was the suspenseful, twisting story I was looking for.
Recommended by Catherine
The Far FieldIn this debut set in Bangalore and Kashmir, Vijay places the inner turmoil of her narrator amid the political and class tensions of her world so expertly you’ll completely lose yourself in the story.
Recommended by Kevin
The Fifth Season (#1 — The Broken Earth Series)After handing this book to every customer who entered the store at the end of last year and gushing praise until I lost my breath, it’s time to make my love for this series official. It earned an unprecedented three consecutive Hugo awards for three books, and the hype is totally justified.
And now in paperback…
An American MarriageOne of our First Editions Club picks from 2018 (not to mention an Oprah’s Book Club selection) is available in paperback! Catherine recommended this one last year and said, “An American Marriage is a story about love and marriage, but also about independence and becoming. It deals with injustice. It looks at the pressures that push us in one direction or another. It is a story about being a person in the world, but also specifically being a black person in America.” Pick up a copy in the new format!
NONFICTION
Recommended by Betsy
Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love To concur with all the buzz: Inheritance will be my favorite book of 2019. I inhaled it in one sitting. On a whim, Dani Shapiro takes a DNA test and discovers that her biological father isn’t the father who raised her. What follows is the stormy and expansive process to integrate her newfound origins with her identity. To know who we are, must we know where we come from? Be prepared to lock yourself away and read.
Recommended by Mary Laura
The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays Graywolf Press publishes some of the best memoir-ish nonfiction on the planet. (See also: Paul Lisicki’s The Narrow Door, Belle Boggs’ The Art of Waiting, and Leslie Jamison’s The Empathy Exams.) Wang joins those ranks with her new account of living with mental illness. If you enjoy medical memoirs — or just beautiful writing in general — this one’s a must-read.
Recommended by Mary Laura
Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style Get this for everyone you know who writes anything, from memoirs to memos. Then grab another copy for yourself, read it from cover to cover, and go forth knowing your emails will be snappier forevermore.
Recommended by Keltie
The Last Whalers: Three Years in the Far Pacific with a Courageous Tribe and a Vanishing Way of LifeYou have to love an author who commits in a big way. Doug Clark spent three years living on a remote Indonesian island with a tribe of subsistence whale hunters, the Lamalerans. Never heard of the Lamalerans? Me, neither. But this story has me rooting for their survival. Filled with the dynamics of complex families, encroaching modernity, and the violent beauty of the hunt, this book had me at “Baleo”!
Recommended by Steve
Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest Part cultural history, part memoir, part criticism, part eulogy, this book is like an all-night hangout session with a really smart friend. Abdurraqib writes about A Tribe Called Quest as a fan, but also as a thinker with a finely tuned sense of what’s at stake in their music. Brilliant.
Recommended by Keltie
Love in a Tuscan Kitchen: Savoring Life Through the Romance, Recipes, and Traditions of Italy In the spirit of St. Valentine, I recommend this sweet (and tasty!) memoir. Despite not speaking Italian, Sheryl fell in love with Tuscan chef Vincenzo over his decadent Hot Chocolate Cake. If you’ve ever had or ever hoped for a later-in-life BIG love story, this book will warm your heart. (Plus it includes a recipe for Lavender Ginger Biscotti that I sometimes dream about.) That’s amore!
Recommended by Sissy
High: Everything You Want to Know About Drugs, Alcohol, and Addiction This is the best combination of fact, memoir, science, and anecdote I’ve ever seen when it comes to addiction. A father and son discuss drugs and alcohol openly and frankly, and share just how explosive they can be when mixed with genetic or emotional risk factors. For parents and teens.
Recommended by Kevin
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power I’d been feeling guilty about chucking my sister’s new Alexa out the window into the backyard on Christmas morning, but then I read this book. Turns out smart-home tech is one of many “hooks” being used to collect unprecedented data about us — and for purposes more troubling than targeted ads. Zuboff reveals the disturbing underlying economic theory with beautiful writing and impressive scope.
Recommended by Andy
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present Treuer calls his book “counternarrative” to Dee Brown’s classic Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. He writes, “I came to conceive of a book that would dismantle the tale of our demise by way of a new story… making visible the broader and deeper currents of Indian life that have too long been obscured.” Treuer points out that more survived the massacre than died; this is their story.
Recommended by Andy
In the Company of Trees: Honoring Our Connection to the Sacred Power, Beauty, and Wisdom of TreesA beautiful book that illustrates how trees connect to our lives. Through stories, facts, and quotes as well as incredible photographs, Fereshte writes of rare, historic, and majestic trees from around the world — as well as some from our own backyards.
POETRY
Recommended by Steve
The Twenty-Ninth YearAs the title implies, this collection is a reckoning with time. It’s an almost recklessly lyrical procession of poems about coming apart and trying to make yourself whole again, whatever that might mean. Intense and rewarding.
First Editions Club: February Selection
The Falconer
There’s something special about a debut novel. It’s a literary rite of passage of sorts; the author is making an entrance. The book is a product of years (if not decades) of hard work and creative energy, all wrapped up and bound as an offering to readers. An author publishes a debut novel only once, and while sometimes that leads to a lot of hype, who can help but get caught up in the excitement?
Thinking of the debut novel as a “coming of age” is especially apt in this case. Dana Czapnik’s poignant first novel, The Falconer, is an astonishing and unflinching coming-of-age story. I wish I could have read it in high school, yet it feels just as valuable now. Czapnik has created something timeless and magical.
So we at Parnassus are doubly delighted: to share this magic with you and to welcome a bold new talent to the literary family.
Yours in reading,
Catherine Bock
Inventory Manager
More about our First Editions Club: Every member receives a first edition of the selected book of the month, signed by the author. Books are carefully chosen by our staff of readers, and our picks have gone on to earn major recognition including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Plus, there’s no membership fee or premium charge for these books. Build a treasured library of signed first editions and always have something great to read! Makes a FABULOUS gift, too.
Parnassus Book Club — Upcoming Meeting Schedule
[image error]February – Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly (the 2019 Nashville Reads selection!)
Monday, February 11 at 6:30pm
Wednesday, February 13 at 6:30pm
Thursday, February 14 at 10am
March – Tangerine by Christine Mangan
Monday, March 18 at 6:30pm
Wednesday, March 20 at 6:30pm
Thursday, March 21 at 10am
Classics Club – The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
Monday, March 25 at 10am and 6:30pm
Are you a member of our store book club? Would you like to be? Parnassus Book Club and Classics Club meetings are free and open to anyone. Buy the book, read along, and join the discussion!
“It’s all about the book.” More thoughts on reading from Kathy Schultenover, Parnassus Book Clubs Manager:
“Reading is no good unless it is fun…the one quality I look for in books (and it is very hard to find). But I love that childhood quality of gleeful, greedy reading, can’t get enough of it, what’s happening to these people, the breathless kind of turning the pages. That’s what I want in a book.” –Donna Tartt
I’ve been thinking about this quote from a bookmark passed on to me recently by a book friend and what it means to me as a book club leader. I don’t think I always achieve this quality in my book selection — that of making readers feel the “gleeful, greedy reading” we all crave in our book club life. Sometimes I think I look for the literary fiction work that seems “appropriate” for a book club, and it doesn’t necessarily turn out to be a good read. Sometimes it’s hard to know what will make us feel “the pull of the book.”
Sunburn by Laura Lippman definitely fits that bill. We read it in the Parnassus Book Club last fall, and if your club hasn’t picked it yet, now’s a great time to consider this suspenseful psychological thriller that will have you trying to guess the truth about each character. The story involves two people with shady pasts and big secrets. After drifting into a small Delaware town one summer, Polly and Adam fall into a passionate affair. Their backstories and hidden agendas are slowly revealed as you begin to suspect that both people, despite loving each other, are capable of violence to get whatever they want. Elements of noir fiction — the femme fatale, the handsome suitor, the electric connection between lovers, the inexorable sense of doom — make this such an effective work of suspense. I strongly recommend this for a book club! You’ll feel the pull of “gleeful, greedy” reading, and you’ll love debating the choices Polly and Adam make as their love story plays out to its end.
Is your club part of our book club registry? Local book groups can order and purchase their club’s reading selections at a discount! Your club’s chosen titles are also displayed in the store on the book club shelf with the club’s name, so members can come in and find their selections easily. Registered clubs also receive notices of special book-club-related author events and seminars. To register a club, simply stop by the store and fill out a short form at the counter.
Want to meet the folks who write your favorite books? Check out the special author events coming up on our online calendar — click here!
January 30, 2019
16 Reads We Love for Kids and Teens
[image error]
Welcome to the season of chicken soup, hot chocolate, and lots and lots of time to read. We’re not doctors, but if we were, we’d prescribe BOOKS as your remedy for winter. Luckily, our staff’s latest favorites for tots, kids, and teens include a refreshing array of voices and perspectives guaranteed to warm your soul and lift your spirits. Take two and call us in the morning.
PICTURE BOOKS
Recommended by Joy
P Is for Pterodactyl: The Worst Alphabet Book Ever By Raj Haldar, Maria Beddia (Illustrator), Chris Carpenter
When a rapper writes a picture book about silent letters, not only do kids get excited about language, but bedtime becomes seriously fun. I love this book so much and have no doubts that your little budding word nerd will love it too.
Recommended by Katherine
Lovely Beasts: The Surprising Truth By Kate Gardner, Heidi Smith (Illustrator)
Perspective matters! An honest look at first impressions in the context of the animal kingdom. For fans of They All Saw A Cat.
Recommended by Kevin
Potato Pants! By Laurie Keller, Laurie Keller (Illustrator)
Don’t let the cover mislead you — this is not just another silly book of potato-based humor. OK, it IS another silly book of potato-based humor. But it’s also a book about apologies, which are important. And it really is very funny.
Recommended by Stephanie
Chicken Talk By Patricia MacLachlan, Jarrett J. Krosoczka (Illustrator)
I love every last wry and affectionate detail in this story of a farm family, their twelve chickens, and the mysterious messages that begin to appear scratched in the dirt. Chicken Talk deserves a special spot in the pantheon of children’s books in which farm animals communicate with humans, right next to Charlotte’s Web and Click Clack Moo.
FOR BEGINNING READERS
Recommended by Kevin
The Major Eights (A Series) By Melody Reed, Émilie Pépin (Illustrator)
If Jasmine and her friends win the Battle of the Bands, they can prove to everyone they’re a real band. But first they have to learn a real song — or do they? This is a sweet series about friendship and music that’s sure to nurture the inner rockstar of any child.
FOR INDEPENDENT READERS
Recommended by Rae Ann
Pay Attention, Carter Jones A butler arrives unexpectedly when Carter’s family needs help the most, sort of like a non-magical Mary Poppins. In true Gary D. Schmidt fashion, this book is full of humor, heartache, and ultimately hope. (Available for pre-order now; comes out February 5.)
Recommended by Joy
Wundersmith: The Calling of Morrigan Crow (Nevermoor #2) A worthy sequel to the Nevermoor fantasy, book two delivers on everything that made the first book so loved: a likable and imperfect protagonist, a reminder that being who you are is everything, and a good bit of humor combined with magical fantasy elements that every kid will love.
Recommended by Katherine
The Whispers An exploration of love, loss, and self-discovery, The Whispers handles issues of identity in a new and refreshing way. A touch of magic and plenty of witty narration round out this winning novel about 11-year-old Riley, whose mother has gone missing and who fears his “difference” (he has crushes on boys instead of girls) may be the reason. An unforgettable and wholly unique reading experience. Signed copies available while they last!
(Read Katherine’s interview with the author here.)
Recommended by Rae Ann
1919: The Year That Changed America Headline news from 1919 is traced through the past 100 years to today. Fascinating stories and archival photos make this a great read for young history buffs.
Recommended by Stephanie
Stephen McCranie’s Space BoyWhen Amy’s dad loses his job on the interspace mining colony, she and her family have to move back to Earth. But lightspeed travel means that when they arrive, all her friends back home have aged 30 years — and she doesn’t know anyone on the planet. This is a beautiful and intriguing twist on a familiar story that left me eager to read the next volume.
YOUNG ADULT
Recommended by Devin
Genesis Begins Again Colorism is infrequently discussed, but it exists even in the most subtle of ways (check out the lack of darker foundation shades in drugstore brand makeup). At 13, Genesis has been experiencing it her whole life. We watch her go through a cycle of self-loathing while making strides toward self-acceptance, with the help of a teacher who encourages her and two friends who challenge and accept her.
Recommended by Devin
Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America Multiple authors, edited by Ibi Zoboi
I want each short story in this collection to be a full novel RIGHT NOW. Wishful thinking, but this anthology is one of my favorite books I’ve read in the last few months. Ibi Zoboi edited these stories — written by many of our favorite YA authors — of diversity within the black community to remind everyone that we are not a monolith.
Recommended by Devin
On the Come Up Angie Thomas brings us back to Garden Heights with a story about 16-year-old Bri, who puts all her energy into being a rapper. Following in her father’s footsteps and sorting through the influences and situations around her, Bri must choose who she’s going to be on her come up. I’d 100% recommend this for the rap history alone, even if it’s not your thing. (Available for pre-order now; comes out February 5.)
Note: The Salon@615 series presents Angie Thomas for a special evening with readers on Tuesday, February 12, 2019, at 6:15 p.m. War Memorial Auditorium! For more details about tickets, click here.
Recommended by Stephanie
The Gilded Wolves Six of Crows meets The Da Vinci Code, with a dash of National Treasure, wrapped up in deliciously glittering Belle Époque Paris: Hotelier and thief Séverin and his crew must steal a magical artifact that could restore Séverin to his long-lost inheritance and place in Parisian magical society. Full of hijinks and heart, and completely unputdownable. Get your signed copy while supplies last!
ParnassusNext — Our Latest Subscription Selections
[image error]In January, ParnassusNext subscribers received Ben Philippe’s The Field Guide to the North American Teenager, a hilarious fish-out-of-water story featuring one of the most memorable narrative voices we’ve ever encountered. It’s a perfect book for readers who love achingly funny but solidly crafted coming-of-age stories from writers like Morgan Matson, David Arnold, or Becky Albertalli. It’s the story of Norris Kaplan, who thinks he has it all figured out — until his mom tells him he’s moving from Canada to Austin, Texas, for his senior year of high school. At his new school, Norris finds himself cataloging everyone he meets: the Cheerleaders, the Jocks, the Loners, and even the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. But as Norris gets to know the real people behind the labels, he’s forced to stop hiding behind his snarky opinions and start living his life beyond the labels.
[image error]Our February selection will be Gita Trelease’s Enchantée, an intoxicating fantasy set during in the tempestuous world of Paris on the cusp of the French Revolution. Enchantée is one of 2019’s most anticipated debuts and will be published to a chorus of praise on February 5. Here’s just some of the great buzz it has generated:
“Deliciously addictive. Enchantée is a lit firework crackling with treacherous magic, decadent romance, and disguises that take on lives of their own. I adore this gorgeous book.” —Stephanie Garber, New York Times bestselling author of Caraval
“A heady, sparkling dream of a book. I tumbled head over heels into Enchantée’s dark and sumptuous magical Paris and wanted to stay there forever. One of the best fantasies I’ve read in years.” —Margaret Rogerson, author of An Enchantment of Ravens
“Enchantée is a sparkling, decadent confection of a book, one with a hidden bite. Its sumptuous and evocative Paris has magical depths that will enthrall you. Be careful. Once you start reading, you won’t stop until the final page.” —Jessica Cluess, author of A Shadow Bright and Burning
ParnassusNext is the book subscription box for YA lovers. Every member of ParnassusNext receives a first edition hardcover of each month’s selected book, signed by the author. There is no membership fee to join — and no line to stand in for the autograph. Not only will you have one of the best YA books of the month when it comes out, you’ll have it straight from the author’s hands, with an original, authentic signature! Set up a subscription for yourself or buy a gift membership for your favorite YA reader for 3, 6, or 12 months.
Want to get out of the house? Check out our events calendar online and take your pick of storytimes and author visits!
January 22, 2019
How to Reboot Your Book Club This Year
I can’t tell you the number of people who have told me, “Book club saved my life.” They’ve cited reasons such as being shut in at home with a baby or infirm spouse, feeling loneliness or depression, moving to a new city and knowing no one, or needing somewhere to turn for intellectual stimulation. I truly believe book clubs provide a vital sense of community, and I love helping clubs get started and stay active with fun, interesting reads.
Often I hear from groups who say they’ve run out of steam and ask how they can get back on track. From time to time, that stale feeling creeps in for most longstanding clubs. If your book club has gotten into a rut — or if you’re simply looking to reboot your club in 2019 with a fresh sense of enthusiasm — consider a few tips I’ve found helpful:
1. Does your group usually read fiction? It seems most do! Perhaps you could make this the year you explore other genres like memoir, history, essays, and even cookbooks.
2. When life gets busy, it’s easy to fall into a skimming habit. Commit to reading more thoughtfully and mindfully this year. Take notes, underline, or highlight as you read, and you’ll be amazed at how having these passages handy during a book club meeting improves discussion.
3. Assign someone the task of doing some research each month before each meeting — or have everyone get online and dig up a little background material on the book. Book reviews and online book club discussion guides can also prompt great conversation. (LitCharts, BookBrowse, and Reading Group Choices are just a few of my personal favorite sites for this purpose. Now’s also a good time of year to peruse “most anticipated” lists.)
[image error]Could this be the year of nonfiction for your club?
4. Change your format this year! For example…
Create a designated pre-meeting (or post-meeting) social hour for chit-chat. If your club’s discussions have wandered away from books and onto jobs, families, and the news, breaking the evening into book-talk and non-book-talk may help get things back on track.
It can feel like a real novelty to have a month without a common book, in which everyone brings two recent reads to talk about and briefly share.
If you usually have a designated discussion leader, try going leader-less and ask each member to bring two thought-provoking questions or topics to stimulate conversation. This can bring out quieter members and get the whole group back into the mix.
5. Try a session designated to this very topic — fresh starts. Ask each member to bring one suggestion for a change she thinks might improve the club. Nothing personal (this is not the time to tell Janet no one likes her spinach dip)… just objective, positive ideas that could be fun to try or produce long-lasting improvements.
I think you’ll be impressed at how even small changes can bring about a whole new attitude in your club. Here’s to a re-invigorated book club experience for 2019! –Kathy Schultenover
Join us here in the store for these upcoming book club discussions. Anyone is welcome, and reservations are not required. All you have to do is show up!
[image error]February – Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly — the official 2019 selection of Nashville Reads
Monday, February 11 at 6:30 p.m.
Wednesday, February 13 at 6:30 p.m.
Thursday, February 14 at 10 a.m.
March – Tangerine by Christine Mangan
Monday, March 18 at 6:30 p.m.
Wednesday, March 20 at 6:30 p.m.
Thursday, March 21 at 10 a.m.
Classics Club – The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
Monday, March 25 at 10 a.m. and 6:30 p.m.
Have a book club of your own? Remember to register your club with Parnassus, so your members can get their reads at a 10% discount. And if your company or organization would like help getting started with group reading, let us know! Email parnassus@parnassusbooks.net and put “book club” in the subject line.
Ann Patchett's Blog
- Ann Patchett's profile
- 27431 followers
