Chapter 16 - Part 35

The Constancy of Goodness

Robert Goolrick, author of the bestseller A Reliable Wife, talks with Chapter 16 about writing as the path to something resembling peace

By Tina LoTufo | March 8, 2012

March 8, 2012 Robert Goolrick’s forthcoming second novel, Heading Out to Wonderful, begins with the arrival of a mysterious stranger, Charlie Beale, in a quiet Virginia town during the summer of 1948. Beale brings with him two suitcases—the first filled with knives and the second with money—and a powerful desire that “things would finally turn out better, and that this would be the place he could feel at home.” The book isn’t due in stores until June, but Goolrick will read from it on March 15 at 6 p.m. as part of Algonquin Book Club Night at Parnassus Books in Nashville.

Ecstasy in the Knowing

Mycophilia, Eugenia Bone’s exploration of the funky world of fungi, reveals the beauty and interconnectedness of all life

By Tina LoTufo | March 5, 2012

March 5, 2012 Eugenia Bone’s Mycophilia is the perfect “did-you-know” book. For instance, did you know that the largest single living organism on the planet is a fungus? Located in the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon, this particular specimen of the wood-decaying fungus Armillaria gallica is the size of 1,666 football fields and is more than two thousand years old. It’s been nicknamed “the humongous fungus.” Bone’s delightful book is full of such fascinating facts, as well as vivid portraits of the unique mycophiles (or “fungus-lovers”) who inhabit the tremendously diverse and often surprising world of mushrooms and their fungal relatives. Readers will enjoy the science but stay for the story of the author’s growing awareness of and appreciation for the world around her—and us. Bone will discuss the book at The Booksellers at Laurelwood in Memphis on March 7 at 6 p.m.

A Valentine to Books

For Tina LoTufo, a trip to the bookshelf is a way of rereading her own love story

By Tina LoTufo | February 14, 2012

February 14, 2012 I am the lone reader in a house full of philistines. My youngest child will still pick up the occasional book, but at sixteen she has so many other interests that each year reading seems to fall lower down her list of priorities. Not me. I don’t have a list of priorities. There is only reading.

Our Own True Selves

In a novel for middle-grade readers, Silas House and Neela Vaswani invent a pair of pen pals whose letters bridge their cultural divide

By Tina LoTufo | February 9, 2012

February 9, 2012 Same Sun Here, a new middle-grade novel by Silas House and Neela Vaswani, examines what happens when people find a way to overcome social barriers and make a real connection to another person—no matter how “other” the other may seem. In the process, the authors suggest, they might find that the things which unite them—love for family, dreams for the future, and a belief in the necessity of justice and compassion for all—are greater than the circumstances which separate them.

Every Picture Tells a Story

William B. Jones Jr. presents the second edition of his exhaustive history of Classics Illustrated

By Tina LoTufo | January 10, 2012

January 10, 2012 The publication of the first edition of Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History in 2001 was met with great appreciation among fans of mid-century comic books and comic-book artists. In the second edition, William B. Jones Jr. has incuded more than a hundred additional pages of historical facts, interviews, photos, and illustrations from the original comics, including full-color plates of iconic covers in the series. Jones calls them “as much a part of growing up in postwar America as baseball cards, hula hoops, Barbie dolls, or rock ‘n’ roll.”

The Triumph of Rationality

Michael Sims introduces a fascinating cast of Victorian detectives—both real and imagined

By Tina LoTufo | January 4, 2012

January 4, 2012 Michael Sims’s new collection of Victorian detective stories, The Dead Witness, is a cornucopia of dastardly delights and surprises. Watching the characters patiently unravel knots and ingeniously solve puzzles provides the delight. The surprises are the depth and breadth of variety represented in Sims’s overview of the genre. Humor and pathos, moralism and mercy, parody and tragedy, horror and retribution—the full spectrum of the human psyche is on display in this collection. The international cast of characters features authors and protagonists alike from England, Scotland, Australia, Canada, France, and the United States. They include a mild-mannered Catholic priest and a tough-talking Virginian, a folksy Canadian tracker and a wide-eyed teenaged boy, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, a blind man, a Musketeer, a bumbler, a dilettante, and, of course, that curiously observant Englishman with a penchant for violins and opium.

Camilla and the Caterpillars

By Frances Figart, illustrated by Matt Brass
Smokies Life
68 pages
$14.95

A young girl’s encounter with an extraordinary caterpillar in the Great Smoky Mountains leads her and her family on a quest to plant a national park right in their own backyard.

This environmentally themed chapter book for ages 6 through 11 introduces young readers to important ecological concepts including habitat loss and the interdependence of native species and offers a compelling grassroots solution through native-plant gardening that invites anyone to take part in addressing the growing biodiversity crisis.

~the publisher