Sam Pickering pens a delightfully meandering memoir about his angst-free boyhood
June 29, 2010 A Comfortable Boy is essayist Sam Pickering’s twenty-third book, but the message is the same one he’s been offering since he first began writing relatively late in life. For Pickering, ambition and conformity are overrated, paling in comparison to a life led not so much for purpose as for finding pleasure and passion in the most quotidian occasions.
Read moreIt was a hard winter, and the horse had lived a long time
June 28, 2010 It was a late winter day in February when Bruce and I were sitting in the Country Boy having lunch. Laura Weaver came in looking for Bruce and told him that it looked like a horse was down over at the Big Farm. Bruce is an old-timer himself, and he knew that people often mistook sleeping horses for sick or dead ones, but he also knew that Laura was a good judge of horses and was not apt to make a mistake. He was calm, but he looked worried.
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Graphic novelist Scott Christian Sava has ten million readers to keep happy every day
June 25, 2010 After Franklin, Tennessee, graphic novelist Scott Christian Sava accomplished his childhood dream of illustrating an issue of the Spider-Man comic, he set his sights on creating an epic fantasy narrative of his own. The result, The Dreamland Chronicles, is now one of the most popular web comics in existence, read daily by more than ten million readers worldwide. And that’s not even counting the audience for his books.
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Scholar Larry May examines the legal questions around genocide
June 24, 2010 The word “genocide” evokes thoughts of the worst horrors humans can inflict on each other. In Genocide: A Normative Account, Vanderbilt law professor Larry May dissects the surprisingly complex legal and philosophical questions of genocide, and argues that the special harms caused by this crime have little to do with bloodshed.
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Karin Slaughter’s latest thriller combines two series and a dozen very human characters in a rich, satisfying read
June 23, 2010 David Baldacci. Stuart Woods. Lisa Gardner. Besides churning out at least one thriller a year, all have created a series featuring a particular set of characters, only to move on to a whole new series at the height of their bestselling success. Once the second series wins fans, the writers merge the two worlds, with new books in which protagonist A meets protagonist B, sidekick C competes with sidekick D, and the bad guys are all over the place. Plots and past histories weave together like the final season of Lost, and only dedicated fans can follow the nuances. But with a crime writer as sophisticated as Karin Slaughter, the collision of two worlds can blossom into something as complex as a Bach fugue—something that is ultimately just as beautiful and satisfying. Slaughter will sign copies of her new book, Broken, at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville on June 23 at 7 p.m.
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With Mr. Peanut, Nashville author Adam Ross transforms the crime genre into a searing meditation on the hazards of marriage
June 22, 2010 When Alice Pepin is found dead of anaphylactic shock, the result of a catastrophic peanut allergy, it’s not clear why she ever sat down in front of a plate of peanuts in the first place, or why all the EpiPens in the apartment are missing. Why did Alice die? Did she commit suicide? Or was she murdered—by her husband, or, even more incredibly, by marriage itself? This unconventional premise is only one reason that Adam Ross’s Mr. Peanut—a dark examination of sex, marriage, and murder—is already this year’s most talked-about fiction debut, though it hits stores for the first time today. Ross will discuss Mr. Peanut at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Nashville tonight at 7 p.m., and at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on June 24 at 6 p.m.
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