A Living Being

By Maria Browning

March 25, 2013

March 25, 2013 Richard Tillinghast is a Memphis native and dedicated wanderer who has been visiting the city of Istanbul for nearly five decades. A veteran travel writer as well as an acclaimed poet, he has penned an insightful and entertaining guide to this ancient city. An Armchair Traveller’s History of Istanbul: City of Forgetting and Remembering combines a survey of Istanbul’s past with an insider’s tour of the city today to create a fascinating book for travelers and homebodies alike.

A Humble Mysticism

By Maria Browning

January 31, 2013

January 31, 2013 Using images of the natural world to convey a deeply spiritual vision, the poems in Jeff Hardin’s Notes for a Praise Book seem to speak directly to the reader. He has a knack for shaping phrases that capture the ordinary, fleeting impressions nature delivers, as well as the moments of beauty that usually go uncelebrated.

Coming Out of the Shadows

By Maria Browning

January 16, 2013

January 16, 2013 Vanderbilt professor Charlotte Pierce-Baker didn’t understand what was happening to her bright, creative son when he first began to behave erratically. As rages, delusions, and substance abuse made his illness obvious, Pierce-Baker and her husband struggled to help him. In This Fragile Life: A Mother’s Story of a Bipolar Son, Pierce-Baker recounts the family’s long ordeal and her journey to understanding that “bipolar is forever.” Charlotte Pierce-Baker will read from the book at Vanderbilt University on January 17 at 7 p.m. in Wilson Hall, Room 126. The event is free and open to the public.

God as an Interesting Character

By Maria Browning

December 12, 2012

December 12, 2012 In his most recent book, Mr g: A Novel About the Creation, Memphis native Alan Lightman takes on the ultimate questions of mind and spirit, writing a twenty-first-century creation story which features a God who works within the laws of physics. He answers questions from Chapter 16 about the genesis of the book, and he shares his thoughts on the troubling cultural rift between science and religion.

Life’s Most Overwhelming Love

By Maria Browning

December 3, 2012

December 3, 2012 In his second poetry collection, The Foundling Wheel, Blas Falconer writes about the complex emotions of new parenthood. Through rich and arresting imagery, he conveys a vivid sense of life’s most overwhelming love, as well as its effects and resonances within the family and beyond.

Imagination and Wit, with a Side of Conscience

By Maria Browning

October 23, 2012

October 23, 2012 Since her first novel, The Edible Woman, was published in 1969, Margaret Atwood has always seemed a writer very much of her time and yet prescient, with an almost uncanny ability to show us clearly who we are and where we might be headed. One of a tiny handful of authors who enjoy both critical respect and wide popular appeal, Atwood has used her prominence to advocate for the environmental causes that are her passionate concern. As the Nashville Public Library Foundation prepares to honor Atwood with the 2012 Nashville Public Library Literary Award, Chapter 16 surveys her body of work. Atwood will give a free public reading on October 27 at 10 a.m. in the auditorium of the Nashville Public Library downtown.