Book Reviews | Chapter 16

No Quitter

Shania Twain’s new memoir is a tale of passion and perseverance

By Anne Delana Reeves | August 11, 2011

Secrets are safe with Shania Twain. The five-time Grammy winner has sold seventy-five million albums, but she has also lived much of her life in silence, fiercely protecting her family’s “painful” and “embarrassing” past from public scrutiny. The decision to divulge some of those secrets in the hope that it might “be of help to others” is what gives her new autobiography, From this Moment On, its remarkable heart.

Timeless

In Myra McEntire’s YA thriller, Hourglass, two young sweethearts travel into the past to prevent a murder

By Tina LoTufo | August 8, 2011

August 8, 2011 When Emerson Cole discovers that she may have the ability to travel through time, she’s not particularly thrilled. As a high-school senior with exactly one friend, she’s actually far less interested in time travel than in avoiding the label of total freak. In Hourglass, Myra McEntire takes a twisting, turning journey through the physics of time, but the most important journey is Emerson’s discovery of her own surprising reserves of courage, love, and loyalty. Timeless qualities indeed. On August 8 at 6:30 p.m, McEntire will read at Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Brentwood as a part of the Ash2Nash Tour of YA authors.

This Land Is Not Necessarily Your Land

Will Kaufman’s political biography of Woody Guthrie teaches a lesson in homegrown radicalism

By Paul V. Griffith | August 4, 2011

August 4, 2011 Folk singer Woody Guthrie is best known for “This Land Is Your Land,” a patriotic travelogue that has become America’s second national anthem. Like Guthrie’s own image, however, the song has been gutted of its political importance over the years. In Woody Guthrie, American Radical, Will Kaufman reclaims Guthrie’s radicalism, painting a picture of an inconsistent yet passionate crusader who saw tyranny as the greatest of all evils. At noon on August 10, Kaufman will present a live musical documentary on the songs and politics of Woody Guthrie, American Radical at the Nashville Public Library as part of the Salon@615 series.

Potter 2G

Victoria Schwab grew up with her head in J.K. Rowling’s fictional world; now she’s writing fiction of her own

By Susannah Felts | August 2, 2011

August 2, 2011 In The Near Witch, the debut young-adult novel from Nashville author Victoria Schwab, an unfamiliar boy shows up in the insular village of Near, which has not been visited by strangers in decades. Soon, children are going missing from their homes, night after night. Only a young girl, Lexi, who narrates the story, is convinced that the strange boy is not to blame. Darkly atmospheric, this story by a twenty-three-year-old debut author is an accomplished take on the classic fairy-tale form. Victoria Schwab will read from The Near Witch as part of the “Ash To Nash Tour” of YA writers. They will be in Kingsport on August 6, Knoxville on August 7, and Brentwood on August 8. For details, visit the tour’s website here.

Hidden Costs

In Silver Sparrow, Tayari Jones explores the burden of secrecy

By Susannah Felts | July 22, 2011

July 22, 2011 In Silver Sparrow, the third novel from Tayari Jones, a girl named Dana Lynn Yarboro grows up a captive to her parents’ secrets: her father, James Witherspoon, who is married to her mother, has another wife and daughter. From an early age, Dana learns what it means to be an “outside child,” forbidden to tell anyone of her real father. But over time her desire to know her sister, and her desire to be known, gets the best of her, and she begins to pick away at the thin membrane of secrecy that keeps the girls apart. Set in the 1980s, Silver Sparrow is a thoughtful story about bigamy, but it is also a lovely, realistic portrait of two teenage African-American girls, and an exploration of the bonds between mothers and daughters. Tayari Jones will appear at the 2011 Southern Festival of Books, held October 14-16 in Nashville.

High-Country Song

In his debut work of fiction, Lime Creek, renowned lyricist Joe Henry pays homage to stoic lives molded by the unyielding landscapes of the mountain West

By Ed Tarkington | July 14, 2011

July 14, 2011 Joe Henry has made a career of his gift for penning unforgettable lyrics. He has worked with a variety of artists in multiple genres, from Vince Gill and Garth Brooks to John Denver and Burt Bacharach, and his songs have been recorded by artists as disparate as Frank Sinatra and Rascal Flatts. In Lime Creek, his debut work of fiction, Henry translates his gift for the transcendent insight and the unforgettable turn of phrase into an extended meditation on the lives of a ranching family in the high country of the mountain West.

The Rise and Fall of Treason in English History

By Allen Boyer and Mark Nicholls
Routledge
340 pages
$180

The book “explores the reasons why treason coalesced around specific offences agreed by both the monarch and the wider political nation, why it became an essential instrument of enforcement in high politics, and why, over the past three hundred years, it has gradually fallen into disuse while remaining on the statute book.”

~the publisher