Two Cups of Joe
Roots Music in America and Lucky Joe’s Namesake, two new volumes from the University of Tennessee Press, collect the late folklorist Joe Wilson’s idiosyncratic writings on music, history, and life.
Book Reviews
Make a Mess of Things
Best known for his debut novel, Big Fish, Daniel Wallace is a master of wit and whimsy, gleaning both wonder and absurdity from the commonplace. In Extraordinary Adventures, Wallace delivers a modern variation on the picaresque, replete with madcap hijinks. He will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on June 7 at 6:30 p.m.
Redefining the Story of the South
A cast of visionaries and eccentrics populates The Potlikker Papers, from Fannie Lou Hamer, founder of the Freedom Farm and Pig Bank, to Edna Lewis, who could tell when a cake was done by listening to it.
Consciousness and Chaos
In Behind the Moon, Madison Smartt Bell takes readers on a complex, hallucinatory tour of human and animal consciousness in the course of a story about a mother’s search for her lost daughter.
A Satisfying Journey
In a new collection of essays, Journeys into the Mind of the World: A Book of Places, poet and inveterate traveler Richard Tillinghast revisits some of the locales that have spoken most profoundly to him, recalling his own experiences and exploring the history and culture that make each one unique.
Gut Reaction
A young scientist navigates the big questions of career, family, and self in the luminous debut novel, Chemistry, by Weike Wang. On June 1 at Parnassus Books in Nashville, Wang will join Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers, in a conversation moderated by Ann Patchett.
