CBS greenlights David Hornsby’s pilot based on a book by Nashville author John Bridges
February 11, 2011 David Hornsby was in high school when his mother gave him a copy of John Bridges’s etiquette book, How to Be a Gentleman: A Contemporary Guide to Common Courtesy, for Christmas. She gave his brother a copy, too; scroll down for a picture of the two of them pretending to be thrilled by the gift.
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Mary Hance releases a new book of marriage advice, and there’s not a coupon among the tips
February 10, 2011 There is probably no other Tennessean columnist—nor any journalist in Nashville, for the that matter—who is more connected to the daily’s readers than Mary Hance, known to the masses as Ms. Cheap. After all, everyone wants to save a buck. Hance, author of several previous books, has now parlayed her popularity into a new title, Love For a Lifetime: Daily Wisdom and Wit for a Long and Happy Marriage, a sort of Life’s Little Instruction Book of wedlock. Hance will discuss the book on February 13 at 2 p.m. at Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Cool Springs, at 6 p.m. at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis, and at 5:30 p.m. on March 3 at the Belle Meade Plantation in Nashville.
Read moreIn motherhood, Amy Greene followed in her own mother’s footsteps, and it’s worked out just fine
February 10, 2011 Like many girls in the mountains of East Tennessee, including her own mother, novelist Amy Greene married young and had a baby soon thereafter. But her story does not feature the failed dreams or tragic unhappiness many readers might expect. Instead, Greene remains the happily married mother of two children, and her novel, Bloodroot, was one of the most highly acclaimed books of 2010.
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In her debut novel, Pamela Schoenewaldt tells a vivid story of hardship and hard work
February 9, 2011 In her first novel, When We Were Strangers, Knoxvillian Pamela Schoenewaldt tells the story of Irma Vitale, a young Italian woman who comes to America, as all immigrants do, in the hope of making a better life for herself. The book is a vivid account of not only Irma’s own story but also that of America itself. Pamela Schoenewaldt will discuss When We Were Strangers at 7 p.m. on February 10 at Borders Books in Nashville.
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In Asleep, Molly Caldwell Crosby examines the human side of an epidemic
February 8, 2011 When Molly Caldwell Crosby’s first book, The American Plague, appeared in 2006, critics praised the way it wove individual tales of horror and heroism into a broader scientific framework. The book recounted how the population of Memphis, where Crosby lives, was decimated by a yellow fever epidemic in 1878, and told the stories of doctors fighting to identify the disease and halt its spread. In her second book, Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic That Remains one of Medicine’s Greatest Mysteries, published last year and now out in paper, Crosby used a similar mix of memorable characters and scientific detection to follow a chilling epidemic of sleeping sickness in the wake of World War I, a disease that left most of its victims dead or brain-damaged. Prior to her appearance at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on February 8 at 6 p.m., she answered questions from Chapter 16 about the process of combining very human stories and scientific research.
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In The Illumination, Kevin Brockmeier imagines a world in which suffering becomes incandescent
February 7, 2011 In the world we wake up to every day, even when the sight of a body in pain is riveting, the image nevertheless arouses a compulsive cringe. But what if we woke up instead to a world in which bodily trauma was somehow made, literally, beautiful? In The Illumination, novelist Kevin Brockmeier imagines a world in which all pain glimmers and shines, transforming the very nature of suffering. Brockmeier will read from and discuss The Illumination at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on February 7 at 6 p.m.
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