Chapter 16 - Part 7

Unstoppable

Meg Cabot is famous for The Princess Diaries and other YA titles, but a new series for adults is the next big thing for this publishing juggernaut

By Fernanda Moore | June 30, 2011

June 30, 2011 Meg Cabot may be the hardest working woman in the book business. To date, she has published more than fifty novels (for teens, preteens, and adults) and shows no sign of slowing down. Her books beget sequels, spinoffs, and both Hollywood and made-for-TV movies. She blogs. She tweets. She maintains a dauntingly thorough website. Today she talks with Chapter 16 prior to her visit to Nashville. Cabot will discuss Overbite at the Nashville Public Library on July 7 at 6:15 p.m. as part of the Salon@615 series. The event—a reception, reading, and book-signing—is free and open to the public. Books will be available for sale.

Carrie, Before Blahniks

Candace Bushnell’s latest novel is the sequel to the prequel to Sex and the City

By Fernanda Moore | April 28, 2011

April 28, 2011 New York magazine once called Candace Bushnell “the patron saint of high-end power girls, the woman who got the ball rolling on the who-needs-a-husband-when-you-have-a-doorman mentality.” In her new YA novel, Summer and the City, Bushnell tells the backstory of Carrie and friends, before they swear fealty to fashion, friendship, and social climbing. Today Bushnell talks with Chapter 16 prior to her appearances in Memphis on April 29 at 7 p.m. at Barnes & Noble Booksellers.

The Forgotten Holocaust

Ruta Sepetys’s YA debut chronicles Stalin’s murder of millions

By Fernanda Moore | March 21, 2011

March 21, 2011 In 1939, the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were occupied by the Soviet Union. In the years that followed, Joseph Stalin ordered the deportation of millions of Baltic civilians to forced labor camps. More than twenty million people perished in the gulags, but even those who managed to survive and return home were forbidden to reveal the atrocities they’d suffered in the camps. Nashville author Ruta Sepetys, whose stunning debut novel Between Shades of Gray aims, finally, to tell the long-suppressed truth about Stalin’s mass atrocities, grew up in the culture of silence imposed on camp survivors.

The Love Song of Jericho Brown

Jericho Brown’s raw, lyrical poetry begs to be sung

By Fernanda Moore | January 19, 2011

January 19, 2011 Jericho Brown’s poetry affects the reader like a song that’s impossible to shake; his beautiful lyrics read like music, hitting the subconscious in the same direct and soul-inspiring way. Brown will read from his work at the Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center on the Vanderbilt University campus on January 20 at 7 p.m.

Crowned with Laurel

Elizabeth Hun Schmidt’s new anthology of work by America’s poets laureate is a treasure

By Fernanda Moore | January 10, 2011

January 10, 2011 As Howard Nemerov once quipped, America’s poet laureate would do well “to devote his tenure to explaining to others what exactly it is that the poet laureate does.” Fortunately for future laureates, The Poets Laureate Anthology, brilliantly edited by Elizabeth Hun Schmidt, clarifies the role of the nation’s poet on retainer and simultaneously provides examples of the best work of poets tapped for the job.

Epic Achievement

Tracy Barrett’s brilliant reimagining of the Odyssey is a treat for young-adult readers

By Fernanda Moore | December 24, 2010

December 24, 2010 With King of Ithaka, Tracy Barrett, a senior lecturer in Italian at Vanderbilt University, takes her place in a long line of Odyssey-tweakers. Writers as diverse as the Greek tragedians, James Joyce, and the Coen brothers have helped themselves to what Aeschylus called “slices from the banquet of Homer”—and with varying degrees of success. Barrett’s version turns out to be a wonderfully surprising, thoroughly delightful coming-of-age tale, which has been chosen on of School Library Journal‘s Best Books of 2010.

The Rise and Fall of Treason in English History

By Allen Boyer and Mark Nicholls
Routledge
340 pages
$180

The book “explores the reasons why treason coalesced around specific offences agreed by both the monarch and the wider political nation, why it became an essential instrument of enforcement in high politics, and why, over the past three hundred years, it has gradually fallen into disuse while remaining on the statute book.”

~the publisher