Chapter 16 - Part 557

Pedaling for Glory

In The Lost Cyclist, David V. Herlihy tells the true story of a bicycle, an adventure, and a murder

By Chris Scott | August 24, 2010

August 24, 2010 Like so many other young men of the Victorian era, Frank Lenz, a clerk from Pittsburgh, wished to make his mark on what was still a largely unexplored world. Lenz was a first-class bicyclist, and in that pre-automobile age, first-class cyclists were celebrities. It didn’t take Lenz long to realize he could trade that celebrity for lasting fame—if he were willing to take a calculated risk. In his new book The Lost Cyclist, bicycle historian David V. Herlihy recounts Lenz’s big gamble and the great adventure that cost him his life. Herlihy will appear at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on August 25 at 7 p.m. and at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on September 25 at 1 p.m.

The Naturalist

Celebrated nature writer Michael Sims talks with Chapter 16 about his memoir-in-progress, Kingfisher Days

By Margaret Renkl | August 23, 2010

August 23, 2010 If there’s any question about whether it’s still possible to be a Renaissance man in the digital age, the answer is Michael Sims. Though he would never describe himself by such a self-congratulatory term, the Crossville native is nonetheless a poet, photographer, essayist, critic, editor, biographer, and the acclaimed author of four books about science and nature. Today he speaks with Chapter 16 about his first autobiographical effort, Kingfisher Days.

Book Excerpt: Kingfisher Days

Each Page a Ghost

By Michael Sims | August 23, 2010

August 23, 2010 Michael Sims is a nonfiction writer, the author of several books about nature, including In the Womb: Animals (a companion to a National Geographic Channel series, National Geographic Books, 2009); Apollo’s Fire: A Day on Earth in Nature and Imagination (Viking, 2007); Adam’s Navel: A Natural and Cultural History of the Human Form (Viking, 2003); and Darwin’s Orchestra: An Almanac of Nature in History and the Arts (Henry Holt, 1997). Kingfisher Days is a work-in-progress, Sims’s first effort to write personally about his life and his own experience of nature. His blog of the same name is, he writes, an online “journal about one man’s response—half scientific, half aesthetic, mostly affectionate—to the natural world behind ordinary urban life. Some days I don’t know if I’d rather write a field guide or a poem.”

Toothache

Why do the crybabies get all the ice cream?

By Maria Browning | August 20, 2010

August 20, 2010 I’ve never had a baby, or a kidney stone, or even a broken leg; the brain-spearing throb of a bad tooth is about the closest thing to agony I’ve ever known. I’m not especially fond of agony, so all my adult life I’ve trotted off to the dentist every six months, in the naïve belief that check-ups would save me from ever again experiencing the dental nightmares I endured as a kid. But no. The tooth demon paid a call over the last long holiday weekend, which I spent gobbling Advil and watching with horror as the right side of my face puffed up like a bullfrog’s throat. Bright and early on the first day office hours resumed, I was reclining in the dental chair, contemplating my complicated relationship with authority and pain.

Kindle v. Paper

For this lifelong reader, it’s a false debate

By Serenity Gerbman | August 18, 2010

August 18, 2010 I am a reader, and this fact is as much a part of my self-image as being a mother, or a Southerner, or one who tans easily. It’s a proud kind of condition, that of the chronic reader, whose boasting that she can’t live without books is much like the lament of the genetically blessed that she can’t gain weight no matter what she eats. But I am a reader and not a collector, and that is an important distinction.

Beneath All the Sex and Violence

Eric Jerome Dickey talks with Chapter 16 about the hard work that goes into his stylish thrillers

By Maria Browning | August 17, 2010

August 17, 2010 Memphis native Eric Jerome Dickey has been turning out fast-paced, sexy, wildly popular novels since 1996. His latest, Tempted by Trouble, puts a timely twist on the thriller genre with a protagonist driven to crime by the economic downturn. Prior to his book signings this month in Memphis and Nashville, Dickey answered questions from Chapter 16 about the work that goes into his remarkably successful books, and about the mysterious appeal of his violent, morally compromised characters.