Chapter 16 - Part 513

Don't Chase It, And It Will Come Back

In Nightwoods, Charles Frazier has written a tender love story, a taut thriller, and a worthy successor to Cold Mountain

By Ed Tarkington | September 23, 2011

September 26, 2011 Charles Frazier catapulted to fame in the late nineties thanks to the unlikely and extraordinary success of Cold Mountain. All of his work since has been characterized by the same patient plot development and gorgeously meticulous period detail. At the center of each of his novels are pairs of lovers separated by time and circumstance, each longing for the other, convinced that the love between them can somehow heal a soul damaged by the random cruelty of an unmerciful world. His new book, Nightwoods, is no exception. Frazier will appear at the 2011 Southern Festival of Books, held October 14-16 in Nashville. All events are free and open to the public.

It's Not Me, It's You

A Chapter 16 writer makes a public break with Amazon

By Liz Garrigan | September 22, 2011

September 22, 2011 Amazon, my relationship with you feels like an illicit love affair because, I suppose, it sort of is. I want you, but I hate myself for it. I hide our relationship from my friends. You understand my needs—and happily meet them—and you anticipate my desires, teasing me with what else you can offer. But it’s time to confront the inconvenient truth: I’m cheating with a cheater.

The True Costs of Amazon's Savings

According to a new analysis of a study by UT, it’s even worse than we thought

By Margaret Renkl | September 22, 2011

September 22, 2011 Liz Garrigan’s Dear John letter to Amazon in today’s edition of Chapter 16 is an unvarnished call for book lovers to put their money where their mouths are and support their local bookstores instead of buying books online. Garrigan argues that Amazon’s refusal to collect the state and local sales taxes that other bricks-and-mortar stores collect–taxes that support local schools, police and fire departments, and other civic necessities–amounts to a “powerful incentive for customers to let their fingers do the clicking.”

A Dark Horse No More

After decades of writing brilliant novels that few readers could even find, National Book Award-winner Jaimy Gordon is now a literary star

By Susannah Felts | September 21, 2011

September 21, 2011 In 2010, when Jaimy Gordon won the National Book Award for her sixth novel, Lord of Misrule, small-press loyalists and below-the-radar-fiction lovers found good cause for celebration. The novel is now out from Vintage in paperback, along with a re-release of Gordon’s previous title, Bogeywoman—a very different but equally brilliant work in which Gordon’s talent for inventive narrative voice is on dazzling display. Gordon answered questions from Chapter 16 via email prior to her reading at Vanderbilt University in Nashville on September 22. The event is free and open to the public.

Hall of Famers

Friends of Literacy announce the 2011 inductees to the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame

By Margaret Renkl | September 21, 2011

September 21, 2011 Five writers have been tapped for the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame: journalist Jim Dykes, novelist Michael Knight, journalist Don Williams, poet Linda Parsons Marion, and blogger Katie Allison Granju.

The Image That Steals the Soul

Madison Smartt Bell considers the nature of celebrity and the role of the writer

By Margaret Renkl | September 21, 2011

December 9, 2011 In an essay for The Huffington Post, Nashville native Madison Smartt Bell recalls an incident in a French bistro that made him consider what it means to be a writer in an age when every reader, or potential reader, has a search engine in his pocket. When some Frenchmen Bell didn’t know Googled him as he stood before them, the novelist was a bit unnerved:

I Gotta Sing!

By Alice Faye Duncan
WaterBrook
40 pages
$14.99

“A whole barnyard makes noise ‘in the Spirit of joy’ throughout this raucous picture book, a sweetly heartwarming sing-along by Duncan. Kellam conveys comfort and happiness as the loved ones reflect sunny enthusiasm in this gladdening rendition of the Black American religious folk song ‘I’m Goin’a Sing When the Spirit Says Sing.’”

~Publishers Weekly