Chapter 16 - Part 508

Committed

Every year the Mountain Heritage Literary Festival in Harrogate attracts dozens of people who are crazy about writing

By Sarah Norris | July 7, 2011

July 7, 2011 Founded six years ago by author Silas House, then Lincoln Memorial University’s writer-in-residence, the Mountain Heritage Literary Festival is packed with lectures; workshops in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry; readings by teachers as well as students; a play; and multiple concerts. This year, Chapter 16’s Sarah Norris was there, and sends this report from Harrogate.

Growing Up with the Joneses

In a new memoir, Georgette Jones writes about her relationship with her parents, George Jones and Tammy Wynette

By Paul McCoy | July 6, 2011

July 6, 2011 Not many infants receive recording contracts from legendary producers on the day they’re born, but exceptions are made when the child in question is the only daughter of George Jones and Tammy Wynette, country music’s “First Couple.” In her new memoir, The Three of Us: Growing Up with Tammy and George, Georgette Jones offers an intimate portrait of her life with her storied parents and on her own. She will discuss the book at Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Brentwood on July 12 at 7 p.m.

Blessed by Oprah

O magazine recommends The Typist by Michael Knight

By Margaret Renkl | July 6, 2011

July 6, 2011 Michael Knight’s transcendent novel The Typist won’t be out in paperback till next month, but O magazine is recommending it for the beach bag nonetheless. In the summer-reading guide, Tiffany Sun praises its “quiet, spare prose,” noting: “With The Typist, Knight paints a picture of military ennui in a city facing desperate economic times, giving us beautifully drawn characters who are at once vulnerable and unknowable as they seek solace, diversion—and eventually, purpose—amid instability.”

Requiring No Motive

The characters in Adam Ross’s new story collection confront the human impulse to cruelty

By Maria Browning | July 5, 2011

July 5, 2011 In Ladies and Gentlemen, the follow-up to his critically acclaimed novel, Mr. Peanut, Adam Ross employs beautiful, glittering prose to tell tales of boys and girls behaving badly. Ross will discuss and sign the story collection at the Nashville Public Library on July 5 at 6:15 p.m., as part of the the Salon@615 series.

Still There

In Memphis, the Booksellers at Laurelwood (the store formerly known as Davis-Kidd Booksellers) is open for business–and planning to grow

By Margaret Renkl | July 1, 2011

July 1, 2011 The sign isn’t up yet, and the news was grim for a long time, so it’s perhaps understandable that Ashley Dacus, public-relations and events coordinator at the Booksellers at Laurelwood, keeps getting asked when Davis-Kidd Booksellers will close. In fact, it isn’t closing; it’s growing. According to a feature in this week’s Memphis Flyer, owner Neil Van Uum has big plans for the new/old store:

The Hopeful Pessimist

A biography of famed attorney Clarence Darrow describes a man of conflicting alliances and steadfast principles

By Paul V. Griffith | July 1, 2011

July 1, 2011 In Clarence Darrow: American Iconoclast, historian Andrew E. Kersten focuses on the legendary attorney’s inconsistencies and his uncanny ability to reconcile sometimes contradictory impulses. Darrow championed many unpopular causes, dumbfounding his progressive friends and empowering his conservative enemies, but he remained at heart an attorney of the people, concerned more with preserving individual liberties and tilting at institutional windmills than with maintaining a consistent philosophy. Kersten shows Darrow to be a gifted jurist who isn’t afraid to get his hands muddy in the service of his clients.

Isabel and the Invisible World

By Alan Lightman, illustrated by Ramona Kaulitzki
MIT Kids Press
40 pages
$18.99

“In simple, engaging language, complemented by luminous artwork from best-selling illustrator Ramona Kaulitzki, author and physicist Alan Lightman unveils the hidden world of light waves—the ones you can see and the ones you can’t.”

~ the publisher