Back in print, The Nashville Sound is essential reading on country music’s upheaval and reinvention
July 2, 2015 Paul Hemphill’s 1970 classic, The Nashville Sound, tells the story of Music City at a pivotal time—when country-music tradition and market-savvy innovation clashed in ways that were both singular to the moment and resonant today. The book was recently reissued by the University of Georgia Press.
Sonja Livingston explores femininity and fertility in Queen of the Fall
July 1, 2015 Queen of the Fall: A Memoir of Girls and Goddesses by University of Memphis professor Sonja Livingston takes on themes of femininity and fertility in a direct and quietly fierce style. Livingston will discuss Queen of the Fall at the Mid-South Book Festival, held in Memphis September 9-13, 2015.
With Southern Cooking for Company Nicki Pendleton Wood demystifies the dinner party
June 30, 2015 As a critic and editor, Nicki Pendleton Wood has been writing about food for decades. Now she’s brought forth her own cookbook: Southern Cooking for Company is a compendium of Southern recipes collected from home cooks all over the region. Wood will discuss the project at two Nashville events: Parnassus Books on July 2, 2015, at 6:30 p.m., and Barnes & Noble Vanderbilt on July 9 at 7 p.m.
In It’s a Long Story, Willie Nelson expounds on the downhome zen of songwriting
June 29, 2015 Picking up just a short time after the end of his first memoir, 1988’s Willie: An Autobiography, It’s A Long Story is Willie Nelson’s examination of his own lifelong persistence and tenacity, as well as a rumination on the value of family, friends, and self-fulfillment through music.
Murfreesboro poet Gaylord Brewer whisks together recipe, memoir, and verse
June 26, 2015 With a subtitle—a “A Cookbook-Memoir, of Sorts”—Gaylord Brewer acknowledges that The Poet’s Guide to Food, Drink, & Desire resists easy categorization. And the “of sorts” quality is exactly what makes this collection of essays and recipes a must-read for home cooks who sometimes fancy themselves chefs who happen to have been spared the nuisance of a restaurant.
Killing Monica by Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell is an autobiographical comic novel
June 25, 2015 Anyone who lived in a cave between 1998 and 2004, when HBO aired Sex and the City—a series based on Candace Bushnell’s novel of the same name—might read Killing Monica with virgin eyes. Everyone else will find the sexcapades in Bushnell’s new book exactly what they bargained for. Bushnell will discuss Killing Monica at the Nashville Public Library on June 30, 2015, at 6:15 p.m.
