Nonfiction

August 10, 2010 Memphis native Heather Armstrong didn’t invent the personal weblog any more than Al Gore invented the Internet, but she is definitely one reason the word blog has entered the English language. In fact, the very name of her own blog, Dooce, is cited in the Urban Dictionary as an intransitive verb: to be dooced is to lose your job because of something you wrote on your blog. But getting fired is not something Armstrong worries about any more: Dooce now gets more than six million page views a month, and last year Forbes magazine named Armstrong one of the thirty most influential women in media. She talks with Chapter 16 about her life, her enemies, and her bestselling book.

August 5, 2010 A tenant farmer’s son; an influential musician with more than thirty top-ten and fifteen number-one singles; a cornball, overall-wearing bumpkin who hosted a popular country-music television show; a cutthroat, razor-sharp business tycoon obsessed with dollars, sex, and power: this isn’t the latest cast description of Donald Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice. According to a new book by Eileen Sisk, all of these descriptions apply to one man: Buck Owens. On August 7, Eileen Sisk will sign copies of Buck Owens at Davis-Kidd Booksellers at 2 p.m., and at the Ernest Tubb Record Shop at 9 p.m. Both venues are in Nashville.

July 26, 2010 Greil Marcus isn’t simply a music critic. He is, as Nick Hornby calls him, “peerless, not only as a rock writer but as a cultural historian.” In Marcus’s writing, music is often the point of departure. Where the vehicle goes from there is anyone’s guess, but you can bet it will be an interesting, often thrilling ride. Marcus’s latest book, When That Rough God Goes Riding: Listening to Van Morrison, considers the indefinable moments in an enigmatic performer’s work where the artist transcends ordinary communication and reaches for the sublime.