The Party Primer
October 13, 2014 Dinner-party mavens and newbie entertainers alike will find bright ideas in Martina McBride’s debut cookbook, Around the Table, which offers four seasons’ worth of themed gatherings. With recipes, decorating ideas, shortcuts, and even music playlists, each chapter guides the host through all the paces of pulling off a terrific, memorable party. McBride will discuss the book at the Harpeth Hall School in Nashville on October 13, 2014, and at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on October 14, 2014.
October 9, 2014 Redeployment—Phil Klay’s debut story collection, which has just been long-listed for the National Book Award—considers the complexity of modern warfare, where fighting units compete for glory; corpse-eating dogs have to be shot; and soldiers are counseled, patched up, or shipped home in a bag. Klay will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 10-12, 2014. All festival events are free and open to the public.
October 9, 2014 Rebecca Makkai’s new novel, The Hundred-Year House, reveals its secrets slowly, layer by layer, as the reader travels back in time from 1999 to 1900. At the center of the story is a house that becomes a character in its own right as Makkai combines straightforward narrative with snippets of poetry, telegrams, and letters to create a mood that is both modern and mysterious, historical and haunting. Makkai will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 10-12, 2014. All festival events are free and open to the public.
October 8, 2014 In evocative verse, Jacqueline Woodson, who has just been longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, shares the story of her childhood in Brown Girl Dreaming. Woodson will appear at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville on October 12, 2014, and at the Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on October 13, 2014. Both events are free and open to the public.
October 2, 2014 So much of what’s appealing about Lev Grossman is on display in the 400-plus fantastical pages of The Magician’s Land: his easy way with grandly deployed plotlines, his nuanced attention to the ways men and women communicate (or fail to), and his taut pacing. Lev Grossman will discuss the final volume in his fantasy trilogy at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 10-12, 2014. All festival events are free and open to the public.
October 1, 2014 Patricia Lockwood’s Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals is at times gut-punch funny, and it is wildly inventive throughout, but the book’s center of gravity is “Rape Joke,” the poem that went viral last year. Lockwood will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 10-12, 2014. All festival events are free and open to the public.