How a Chapter 16 writer’s great-grandmother befriended—and betrayed—J.D. Salinger
December 8, 2011 Who owns the story of a friendship? A Chapter 16 writer considers her great-grandmother’s decision to sell the letters J.D. Salinger had written during their twenty years of friendship—and the great, reclusive writer’s final letter in response.
Read moreThe new Barnes & Noble at Vanderbilt throws open its doors, and Nashville readers are wowed
November 10, 2011 Maybe this is simply five months of deprivation talking, but walking into Barnes & Noble at Vanderbilt for the first time feels a bit like visiting the Sistine Chapel. It is, frankly, grand. The new campus store is only 7,000 square feet larger than the old Rand location, but the place feels, for many reasons, about a million times bigger. Inside the new Nashville bookstore, 67,000 trade titles are waiting, along with a total of seventy-nine employees to help readers find new books they’ll love.
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Sewanee grad John Jeremiah Sullivan has all the critics hunting for superlatives
November 2, 2011 NPR says John Jeremiah Sullivan is “the best magazine writer around.” Time magazine names him “the New Tom Wolfe.” The New York Times Book Review calls Sullivan’s new collection, Pulphead, “the sort of essay-world you just want to dwell inside.” Sullivan will read from and sign copies of Pulphead at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on November 5 at 1 p.m. He will also read in Nashville on November 19 at 1 p.m. at the Nashville Public Library as part of the Salon@615 series. Both events are free and open to the public.
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Erin Morgenstern’s debut novel, The Night Circus, is a spellbinding read
October 11, 2011 Erin Morgenstern, the debut author of one of this fall’s most anticipated novels, is drawing widespread comparisons to both J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer. With The Night Circus, the thirty-three-year-old multimedia artist has not only crafted a story of epic proportions but also turned her own life into a fairy tale, replete with what looks to be a very happy ending.
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In Diana Abu-Jaber’s new novel, a teen leaves home for no reason—and upends her family’s future
September 13, 2011 Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber is structured like literary Chinese handcuffs: no character in this book can be free without first moving closer to the others, and no reader can finish it without looping backwards, too, through her own history. Abu-Jaber will discuss and sign copies of Birds of Paradise at the Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on September 21 at 6 p.m.
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James Whorton Jr.’s third novel, Angela Sloan, unfolds at breakneck speed
August 24, 2011 With a derelict, fourteen-year-old narrator whose voice is a cross between Holden Caulfield and Ramona Quimby, James Whorton Jr.’s Angela Sloan is structured like an essay on how the eponymous protagonist spent her summer vacation. But instead of a school report, it’s a 200-page letter addressed to the CIA. And instead of recounting Angela’s adventures at sleep-away camp or pedaling a Schwinn ten-speed around the block, it tracks her father’s recent ensnarement in the Watergate burglaries and their decision to hit the road with fake IDs. In fact, it’s more or less the furious story of one crazy-making event after another.
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