Shelves groaned from overpopulation. But it was this gaudy Shakespearean excess, the Mumbai crowds of jostling books, that made it such a heady experience to visit BookMan/BookWoman. It was the archaic opulence of it all, as if you might come home smelling of myrrh.
In 2011, Karen Hayes and Ann Patchett opened Parnassus Books, which celebrates its fifth anniversary today. During that time, the Nashville store has doubled its space, bought a bookmobile, and brought authors, hundreds of them, to town. And they’re just getting started. Drop by the store today for special anniversary discounts, giveaways, prizes—and birthday cake.
“First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare,” a new exhibit at the Nashville Parthenon, brings a four-centuries-old copy of the Bard’s first collection to Tennessee, and it is not to be missed. The rare book—on loan from the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., in commemoration of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death—will be on display from November 10, 2016, to January 8, 2017
In The Destroyer in the Glass, poet Noah Warren calmly considers the great mysteries of life and death. He will read at Vanderbilt University in Nashville on November 1 at 7 p.m. The event, part of the Gertrude Vanderbilt and Harold S. Vanderbilt Visiting Writers Series, is free and open to the public.
Rita Sims Quillen is the author of three poetry collections—The Mad Farmer’s Wife, Counting the Sums, and Her Secret Dream—as well as a novel, Hiding Ezra, and a book of essays, Looking for Native Ground: Contemporary Appalachian Poetry. Quillen will read from The Mad Farmer’s Wife at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on October 23 at 2 p.m.
Everything in the Universe is Amy Wright’s first full-length poetry collection. She is also the author of five chapbooks and Cracker Sonnets, a handbook of pop-culture Americana in verse, and is the co-author, with William Wright, of Creeks of the Upper South, a lyric reflection on changing waterways and cultural habitats. She will appear at the Southern Festival of Books, held in Nashville October 14-16. Festival events are free and open to the public.
