Book Reviews | Chapter 16

Weight Lost and Love Found

By Sarah Norris

April 30, 2012

March 30, 2012 When Ada Howard opens an invitation to her twenty-fifth college reunion, a year away, she is moved to step on a scale for the first time in as long as she can remember. Shocked to find that she’s ballooned to 220 pounds and inspired by the prospect of bumping into her former boyfriend, the five-foot-two-inch Ada sets out on a quest to shed a hundred pounds in twelve months. She starts by writing a list of fifty-three rules. Number one on the list: “Don’t keep doing what you’ve always been doing.” Alice Randall will read from and discuss Ada’s Rules at two Nashville events: Parnassus Books on May 8 at 6:30 p.m. and at Barnes & Noble at Vanderbilt on May 19 at 2 p.m.

A Recipe for Disaster

By Tina LoTufo

April 27, 2012

April 27, 2012 Teeny Templeton is back in the soup, and it’s not one of her own quirky recipes, like I’m-Scared-to-Try-New-Things Tilapia with Orange-You-Glad-You-Took-a-Risk Marinade. Teeny has witnessed a murder—or at least thinks she has—and now must solve the crime before the police pin it on her, again. A Teeny Bit of Trouble follows Michael Lee West’s hapless heroine from Charleston, South Carolina, to Bonaventure, Georgia, in search of the truth—and the perfect peach pie (recipe included). West will appear at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on May 5 at 6 p.m.

Gone but Not Forgotten

By Lyda Phillips

April 23, 2012

April 23, 2012 If any singer/songwriter nailed the deep pain and loneliness in the American heart, it’s Hank Williams. He also personified another American artistic tradition: live hard and die young. In Hank Hung the Moon … and Warmed Our Cold, Cold Hearts, former Memphis writer Rheta Grimsley Johnson pays tribute to the artist who wrote the soundtrack of her life.

A Titanic Love Story that Actually Happened

By Faye Jones

April 16, 2012

April 16, 2012 For most readers, a title like A Titanic Love Story will immediately bring to mind the image of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet embracing to a sound track by Celine Dion. These fictional characters may embody doomed shipboard love today, but at the time of the Titanic’s actual sinking, the public was gripped by a real-life love story that is now mostly forgotten: Ida Straus refused to leave Isidor, her husband of more than forty years, to take her place in a lifeboat, while he refused to leave the ship until all the women and children on board were safe. In A Titanic Love Story, Murfreesboro’s June Hall McCash writes their joint biography.

Without Spin

By Pablo Tanguay

April 11, 2012

April 11, 2012 In his new memoir, Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball (written with New York Daily News sportswriter Wayne Coffey), R.A. Dickey recounts his struggles to make it in the major leagues, achieving real success only after he transformed himself from a conventional pitcher into a knuckleballer. Dickey parallels that story with his real subject: how finally confronting the trauma of being sexually molested as a child freed him from self-centeredness and shame. For Dickey, mastering the knuckleball went hand-in-hand with mastering his own demons. Dickey will discuss the book on April 12 at Franklin’s LifeWay Christian Store at 4 p.m. and at Nashville’s Books-A-Million at 7:30 p.m.

Best of the Achaeans

By Fernanda Moore

April 10, 2012

April 10, 2012 Madeline Miller’s debut novel, The Song of Achilles, aims to uncover the passionate love story hidden inside the greatest war epic in Western literature. The romantic leads are Achilles, the Greek war-hero par excellence, and Patroclus, his tent mate and best friend. Whether the men were actually lovers or simply “boon companions” has been up for debate since Homer first composed his epic saga of the Trojan War, but the love story Miller tells is glorious, and the context in which it plays out is faithful to the original. Miller will discuss The Song of Achilles at Parnassus Books in Nashville on April 17 at 6:30 p.m.

“This book presents a well-thought-out argument explaining why Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have earned and deserve the moral and financial support of every American citizen for their contributions to establishing American democracy, providing the foundation of the American economy, and enriching American culture.”

~ the publisher