In which her ladyship can’t decide what to read, and so decides to read everything, Mr. Richard Howarth explains how a book is like a bicycle or a sailboat, one Susan speaks to another Susan about the necessity of Lance crackers on a book tour, readers are encouraged to eat their okra, a writer dreams of being an English teacher, Janis Owens explains the niceties of redneck polo (it involves the proper use and pronunciation of profanity), Ms. Shari Smith writes a touching ode to the town drunk, Mr. Allan Wolf pulls out all the stops (of his accordion) and the smell of night jasmine haunts a man’s dreams.

Arts Calendar | STARS |Gossip |Okra | The Blogs | Read This! | Found in Lady Banks' Commonplace Book | On her ladyship's bookshelf

Dearest Readers,

 This time of year her ladyship is wont to spend as much time in her garden as she is in her reading chair. But she still has her books. In a few more weeks it will be too hot to sit out on her unshaded back deck to read, (her deck umbrella was destroyed in a wind storm last year), but for now it is bright, warm and breezy.  Her ladyship’s books, at this time of year, tend to become coated in a fine yellow dusting of pollen, dirt and sand.

Like most avid readers, her ladyship is often reading more than one book at a time. Right now she is making her way through the books on the SIBA Book Award finalist list, as well as some of the recent Okra Pick titles. Sitting in a stack by her deck chair right now are Drew Perry’s debut novel, This is Just Exactly Like You (a story the author insists “is not about mulch.”) and Elise Blackwell’s fascinating An Unfinished Score. But she is also paging through Neil White’s In the Sanctuary of Outcasts, and Rick Bragg’s The Most They Ever Had.

So this morning, when she settled into her deck chair read for a few hours  while she had her morning coffee, which of these books did she pick up? None. Instead, she opened the one that just came in the morning mail: Becoming Elizabeth Lawrence: The Discovered Letters of a Southern Gardener, edited by Emily Herring Wilson.

Because like her ladyship’s own garden, where at the moment there are just too many things sprouting and blooming to look at just one flower, this time of year there are just too many good things to read to be able to pick just one book.

Her ladyship, the editor

Authors 'Round the South

Authors Round the South is the home of one of the most extensive listings of literary events in the South, including author readings & appearances, book club meetings, book & literary festivals, open mics, poetry slams and writing groups. No matter what part of the South you live in, you can find a bookstore and author appearance near you!

Ten years of great southern lit for $9.95!

How well do you know your Southern lit? We dare you to use a pen on these crossword puzzles, each inspired by one of the winning titles of the SIBA Book Award, honoring ten years of the very best in Southern literature as chosen by the people who would know...Southern Independent Booksellers! A great gift for your book club, for puzzle-lovers, and anyone who loves Southern literature.

$9.95 paperback. Available at Southern Indie Bookstores.

Play a sample puzzle online!

Reader, meet writer: STARS authors on the road

The following authors are traveling this month and open to meeting with book clubs, talking to schools and participating in library programs. Visit the STARS directory at Authors Round the South for more information.

Literary Gossip & News

Even her ladyship, who spends quite a considerable amount of her time in a non-electronic manner, (the only thing “electronic” she requires most of the time being a suitable reading lamp), has been aware of the changes in the industry with the growing popularity of ebooks, ebook readers, and most recently, the iPad device. She was most interested in Mr. Richard Howarth of Oxford Books’ thoughts on the subject, and especially concurs with his conclusion that “. . .the book, like the bicycle or the sailboat, is one of our few truly perfect inventions.”  Just so, Mr. Howarth.

There is also a most charming video of Ms. Paula Deen at a recent appearance at Park Road Books in Charlotte, NC. Her ladyship thinks the most charming thing about it is not Ms. Deen herself (who is, she acknowledges, quite a charming person), but the little girl who came bearing a cake with Ms. Deen’s portrait done in fondant icing.

And among the winners of this year's Pannell Award, sponsored by the Women's National Book Association in honor of Lucile Micheels Pannell and given to a general bookstore and children's-only bookstore that "excel at inspiring the interest of young people in books and reading," was Little Shop of Stories in Decatur, Ga., which was cited for its "wide range summer camp concept."

In other literary news, Ms. Eleanor Ross Taylor, born in 1920 in North Carolina, has been given the American Poetry Foundation's Ruth Lilly award

Also, the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame has announced five writers to be inducted into its hallowed halls this fall: Journalist W. J. Cash; novelist Allan Gurganus; poet, novelist, and biographer Robert Morgan; journalist, publisher, and diplomat Walter Hines Page; and playwright and screenwriter Samm-Art Williams will be enshrined on Sunday, October 17, at a ceremony at the Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities in Southern Pines, where the NCLHOF is housed.

And noted Civil Rights Activist Dorothy Height has passed away. She was, among many other things, the only woman on the speaker’s platform with Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.

Author 2 Author : Susan 2 Susan

Meet Susan. And Susan. Susan Kelly and Susan Gregg Gilmore have more things in common than their first names. They are both Southern gals. They both like to garden. And they both have new novels out this summer. Susan (Kelly)’s new book is called By Accident. Susan (Gregg Gilmore)’s is The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove.

Susan Kelly to Susan Gregg Gilmore:

SK: I thought I'd start the conversation with no script whatsoever...

First of all, can you write me a phonetic pronunciation of Bezellia? In my mind, I massacred the name every time I came across it. As a Susan, it drives me wild if someone calls me Suzanne, so let's get it right for future readers. 
Depictions of recent history are tricky.

SGG: “BA - ZILL – YA.”

SK: Did you feel any trepidation in taking on aspects of the Civil Rights movement? 

SGG: I never felt that I was "taking on" the Civil Rights Movement. I was only wanting to tell the story of a young girl who was desperately trying to be loved and love other people and struggling to find ways to do that with some compassion and integrity.  Bezellia is not an activist or a hero, far from it.  She only tries to be more heroic than those who stumbled before her.

With that said, I do think it is my responsibility as a writer to bridge the gap between what I have observed and experienced and what I can put on paper.  In this case, I was writing about a period of history that I had seen firsthand as a child growing up in the South, specifically growing up in Nashville.  I was simply writing what I knew.

But I would never assume what it meant or means to be an African-American in the American South.  I can, however, honestly look at the culture in which I was raised and share that imperfect world with others.

SK: For that matter, and on a much smaller scale, did you feel any trepidation in taking on the social strata of Nashville? (laughing)

SGG: No, but then again I'm moving to Chattanooga this summer!  

Truthfully, I met a woman named Bezellia (although I believe she spells it differently) at a dinner party shortly after moving to Nashville.  I was intrigued, OK, a bit surprised by her name.  She quickly admitted that she was a fifth-generation Bezellia.  Even more impressive!  So yes, I stole her name, that’s for sure.  But I rooted this book in many people and many memories that are part of my personal story as well as the greater Southern narrative.

SK: After completing The Improper Life... it occurred to me that the novel can be read as a coming-of-age novel. Was this an intent or just a happy coincidence?

SGG: I never have any specific intent other than to write a well-told story, and I hope I've accomplished that here. I think as a mother of three girls, and one of three girls myself, I am always drawn to the journey of a young woman into adulthood. So I guess the correct answer would be coincidental intent.

SK: Of course, the question must be posed: what are the autobiographical bits? 

SGG: You know I think it would be hard to pluck those out. There are many small memories that are woven into the book, but this is NOT my story. It is truly Bezellia's.

Susan Gregg Gilmore to Susan Kelly:

SGG: Susan, your novel deals with a lot of loss — children lost, friendships lost, marriages lost. Would you share with me what led you to write this story?

SK: As usual for me, a confluence of events build organically into a full story. I was indeed travelling to the beach caravan-style with a child in another car beside me, and had a moment of panic during a storm when I lost sight of him in the rearview mirror. That was the first extrapolation of loss. Fiction gives you the license to imagine the unimaginable. I'm more boisterous than melancholy, but every one of my novels deals with a theme I've termed "necessary sadness," which I define as letting go while holding fast. Loss and sadness are endemic to living, but the characters are better, stronger people after they deal with or confront it. I actually include the term somewhere in every book. 

SGG: You can tell you have a great love and respect for the environment. And the more I thought about it, even though you write about this very gently, I'm wondering if it was your intent to represent the environment also as a victim of great loss?

SK: I'm indeed a gardener, hiker, bird watcher, rosarian... though I'll take my childhood BB gun to a squirrel on my feeders in a minute. What I wanted to represent is the randomness of nature. Feelings are not involved—nature does not love or respect us back — no matter how much love or respect we have for the environment. Hurricanes kill people, volcano eruptions strand people, people freeze to death in snowstorms. By Accident deals with human blame and fault and guilt after random events, but nature suffers none of those — and suffers no fools, either. 

SGG: We've both written about the cities in which we live — let me ask you the same question you asked me — any trepidation writing about your hometown?

SK: No trepidation, no. Once you decide to write, you pretty much take off all your clothes anyway, so the rest is just adjustment to being naked. Greensboro comes off pretty well. Mostly I feel sorry for my poor neighbors, who have to contend with assumptions that they're characters. My mother is an eternal good sport, claiming that she'd have "done a few things differently" if she'd known I was going to "grow up and be a writer." I have more people assume I'm a Midwestern writer than a North Carolina writer. Go figure.

SGG: And I imagine you're getting ready to hit the road. Tell me a little about life on the book tour. And specifically, what is your favorite fast food item - the one comfort food that keeps you going on the road??

SK: (Susan, put this in as one of my questions for you — since you've logged 18,000 miles, and since there's a question you don't want to answer — or is there another you had in mind that you'd like to get a word in edgewise?)

SGG: I love hitting the road, and having logged 18,000 miles with Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen, I can honestly say I know every truck stop, McDonalds and Starbucks on 81, 75, 59 and 40! But there is no better way to get to know the people who read and sell and buy your books. Some may disagree with me, but I really think writers have a responsibility to spend that kind of time with their reading family. Now, it does seem that I have an innate ability to attract thunderstorms and tornadic activity, but other than that I love every single mile of the book tour. And I have made some great friends along the way who have welcomed me into their communities and invited me into their homes. And when offered an invitation to dinner, I do come!

SK: I've done the jet-set in-house publicist book tour and the drive-myself-around book tour and prefer my own fire-engine red mini-cooper dodging 18-wheelers on the interstate to airports. I try to keep a few clementines and apples rolling around on the floor among the Google map printouts, but my go-to is the Lance White Cheddar Cheese popcorn and a Diet Coke - fountain, please. I'm so covered in chemical cheese when I arrive that I have to change clothes.

Susan Kelly’s new novel is By Accident (Pegasus Books, $24): By Accident portrays a year in the life of a woman after the accidental death of her teenage son. Laura Lucas is numbed by the loss, a loss that is paralleled in the spate of upscale construction-and attendant destruction-in her starter-home neighborhood. It's about Laura's relationship with a young tree surgeon who slowly becomes a replacement for her son-but also an object of desire. The story reveals the delicate nexus where solace becomes sex; the role of men and women as unmarried friends; and examines grief in a marriage. It portrays the pain of change and the poignancy of acceptance through Laura's eyes, and occasionally, through the quirky outlook of her ten-year-old daughter. And before the story ends, another brutal, random accident will redefine Laura's life once again.

Susan Gregg Gilmore is a STARS author. Her new novel is The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove (Shaye Areheart Books, $23 on sale August 17, 2010)

Lady Banks’ Commonplace Book

When it bloomed in the spring and it rained the smell . . . began to come into the house at twilight either it would rain more at twilight here or there was something in the light itself but it always smelled strongest then until I would lie in bed thinking when will it stop when will it stop . . . . Sometime I could put myself  to sleep saying that over and over until after the honeysuckle got all mixed up in it the whole thing came to symbolize night and unrest I seemed to be lying neither asleep nor awake looking down a long corridor of gray halflight where all stable  things had become shadowy paradoxical all I had done shadows.

From The Sound and the Fury by William Faulker, in
Yoknapatawpha: images and voices, A Photographic Study of Faulkner’s County by George G. Stewart

From the Blogs

The Authors

A Good Blog is Hard to Find  : I’m teaching my high school class The Great Gatsby. (In addition to being a world-famous and justly-beloved novelist, I teach high school. We all have little pet dreams, I suppose; mine has always been to be a high school English teacher; I just write novels to pay the bills until the teaching thing works out.) Anyway, you remember Gatsby, right? It was the book they assigned in high school only you just watched the movie and read the Cliff’s Notes. So we get to the part after Daisy, who is driving Gatsby’s car, runs down and kills Myrtle Wilson. Gatsby, who has been carrying a torch for Daisy for the last five years is naturally going to take the blame for the hit and run. And Daisy, that bitch – sorry, there’s no other word for it – is going to let him do it! She won’t tell a soul it was she, not he, behind the wheel, and she’s going to let him face, a legal expert tells me, five to twenty-five years hard time for a crime she committed. The thing about it is, Daisy is nothing more than ink spots on a page, but when they’re arranged in certain configurations, it still outrages me.
 read more

Janis Owens: Danny and Suzy Holder, my Cracker friends out Trenton-way, introduced me to the new great rage in modern Cracker sport: Cracker Polo. It is played with horse, beach ball and broom. I expect the gentlemanly rules of regular polo otherwise apply, though you’re allowed to shout: shee-et if you get hit in the face with a broom. Cowboy hats are requested but not required.
read more

Fried Chicken and Coffee: When I was five my dad took me on my first real fishing trip. He would have gotten to it earlier, but he had spent most of my life on the road building a pipeline to move natural gas across the country. We took his little flat bottomed row boat out to County Pit 23 and shoved off into the water. He rowed while I looked around at the oak and elm trees that lined the banks. I was trying to spot a sassafras tree so we could dig up some root and make tea that night. My best memories of my dad up to then were of boiling the root, straining it then adding just enough sugar before we huddled together on the couch and watched whatever mindless thing the TV had to offer.
Dad found a good spot and handed me my rod. It was a trusty Zebco 33. His was fancier. We were after catfish and flatheads so we used chicken liver as bait. Chicken liver is great for catfish. When it hits the water the blood spreads and swirls and the smell moves out like a signal. Catfish are drawn like sharks from hundreds of yards away. Shad works well too, but you can never get the stink off your hands. read more

Gunpowder Cowboy Boots and Mascara:The Police Chief likes to tell the story of running off a drunk in this town by making the competition known to the Official Town Drunk who knew, and made clear, that Claremont was, and is, only big enough for one of them. We got rules, you know. read more

The Booksellers

A Cappella: A little over a year ago, two young women who both lived in Atlanta but who didn't know each other both had debut novels published on the same day and both told the stories of strong young women grappling with the implications of their own privilege and their growing awareness of injustice around them, especially surrounding the issue of race, and both were written in highly original voices that reflected a forgiving and passionate spirit….
read more

A Reading Life: . . .As a kid, it never occurred to me that other preteen girls didn’t, as a rule, have pictures of the period table of elements alongside posters of kittens in their bedrooms. I grew up with a fundamental conviction that the universe was knowable. That understanding was never a question of if, but of when. The universe . . . life . . . was a place for endless discovery and delight. The only other thing I liked as much as learning how stuff worked was reading stories. Science and Story are the two stars that have guided my life.
Perhaps this is why I identified so strongly with author Rebecca Skloot when she relates the first time she ever heard the name Henrietta Lacks—sitting in a biology course in a community college, when her professor casually mentioned to the class that the HeLa cell line so fundamentally important to scientific research came from a black woman who died of cervical cancer in 1951.
“Wait, What?!?” she thought. But the teacher was unable to tell her anything more. Skloot knew, however, there was a story there. She could hear it. She would spend the next fifteen years of her life writing it.
read more

Book Witches Blog Allan Wolf gave us a behind the scenes look at the writing of Zane’s Trace, winner of the North Carolina School Library Media Association Young Adult Book Award for Middle School. Reading, discussion, slides, amazing Hors d’Oeuvres … this man pulls out all the stops to get readers engaged. read more

Book Chik: She was one of my favorite kinds of readers: she'd find out about an author and then immediately have to have all of the author's collected works. Loved series writers, excellent taste in mysteries. Her orders and the obvious thirst behind them always made me smile. I'll miss her. read more

Bound to be read: has been doing  a “30 days of poetry” series in honor of National Poetry Month. Each day someone—often a favorite writer, but also a booksellers and other people in the community, reads a poem in front of a video camera, which then gets posted to YouTube and the store blog for your daily dose of verse (blank and otherwise).

Burry Bookstore: A young mother and her infant child are ruthlessly gunned down while returning to their car in the garage of a shopping mall. There are no witnesses, and Detective Lindsay Boxer is left with only one shred of evidence: a cryptic message scrawled across the windshield in bloodred lipstick. read more

Consuming Books: What happens when a bored Stanford computer science major signs up to play Fortuna, an online role-playing game set in Renaissance Florence?  More than Jason Lind could ever imagine.  Swept up into the highly addictive game, Jason soon loses interest in his mundane surroundings.
Combining high-tech computer gaming with the mystery of who is behind the game, Fortuna (2010, Oceanview) is a virtual reality thriller written by Michael Stevens. What starts as a great escape may only leave Jason trapped in both the virtual past and the real present. read more

Regulator: We're sponsoring a contest in conjunction with Elizabeth Berg's reading at the Regulator on May 20th. Her new novel, The Last Time I Saw You, centers around a high school reunion; so we're looking for brief (one page or less) high school or college reunion stories. Funny, sad, startling, warmhearted, whatever. We'll pick the winning story and Elizabeth Berg will read it aloud at the start of her own reading. The winner will also get a bottle of champagne and a $25.00 gift certificate! read more

Page 854:  The New York Society Library recently discovered that two overdue library books checked out long ago had never been returned. Sadly, it's a bit late now, since they were checked out on October 5, 1789, by a patron who was simply identified as "president." As in the President. As in George Washington.
Hope George enjoyed them. read more

Pomegranate Books: The great thing about indie bookstores is that you never know who you're going to run into. Someone running for office, a well-known local public radio host, a classmate from a community Spanish class four years ago-the list goes on. Wilmington is a pretty small town, for its 150,000 metro size. If you get out much, you're almost guaranteed to run into friends and neighbors a few times a week. Over the past couple of weeks at Pomegranate, it's been "famous local author drop by week." read morel

Read This!
recommended reading from your neighborhood southern booksellers

The Hypnotist (The Reincarnationist, Book 3) by M.J. Rose
(Mira, $24.95, 9780778326755)
"Rose spins one incredible yarn with living, breathing characters. The shifts in perspective add to the overall story -- like being able to see a sculpture from all sides. It adds dimension and depth and makes the entire story more enjoyable!" -- Maura I. Benton, Ravenous Reader, Charleston, SC

The Creation of Eve by Lynn Cullen
(Putnam Adult, $25.95, 9780399156106)
"The story of Sofonisba Anguissola, the Renaissance painter, has long been forgotten. Michelangelo's tutelage and recommendation send her to Spanish Queen Elisabeth as a lady-in-waiting. While each endures heartbreak from men they love but can never have, Cullen takes us into the world of painting and political stratagems. This masterpiece is beautifully heartbreaking and impossible to put down." -- Lauren Denham, The Alabama Booksmith, Birmingham, AL

31 Bond Street: A Novel by Ellen Horan
(Harper, $25.99, 9780061773969)
"This engaging mystery of 1850s NewYork explores the death of prominent dentist and businessman Harvey Burdell and the subsequent trial of his housemistress Emma Cunningham. Based on actual events, Horan creates an inventive and compelling story that will keep you turning pages to the last." -- Meaghan Beasley, Island Bookstore, Corolla, NC

SIBA Book Award Finalists

He was known as Eli the Good, but he still had to Shiver when he saw The Secret World of Walter Anderson. “Scat!” he shooed the strange-looking cat, “A Good Mule is Hard to Find and there’s Hard Work to be done In The Sanctuary of Outcasts.”  It was The Most They Ever Had, but hey, You Can’t Drink All Day if You Don’t Start in the Morning. And Zeitoun always had A Quiet Belief in Angels to Help him resist that Devil’s Punchbowl. He was The Last Child to carry that Dead Weight down to the South of Broad, because The Lee Brothers might be Simple, Fresh Southern, but the Southern Farmer’s Market only made him dream more often of My New Orleans.

SIBA Book Award Finalists: The Best Books of the Year, as chosen by the people who would know. . . southern indie booksellers

Children’s & Young Adults

Eli the Good by Silas House (Candlewick)
Scat by Carl Hiaasen (Knopf)
Secret World of Walter Anderson by Hester Bass (Candlewick)
Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater (Scholastic)

Nonfiction

A Good Mule is Hard to Find by Kirk Neely (Hub City Writers Project)
Hard Work by Roy Williams (Algonquin)
In the Sanctuary of Outcasts by Neil White (Morrow)
Most They Ever Had by Rick Bragg (Macadam/Cage)
You Can't Drink All Day if You Don't Start in the Morning by Celia Rivenbark (St. Martins)
Zeitoun by David Eggers (McSweenys)

Fiction

A Quiet Belief in Angels by R.J. Ellory (Overlook)
Dead Weight by Batt Humphreys (Joggling Board Press)
Devil's Punchbowl by Greg  Iles (Scribner)
The Help by Katheryn Stockett (Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam)
The Last Child by John Hart (Minotaur)
South of Broad by Pat Conroy (Nan Talese)

Cooking

The Lee Brothers Simple Fresh Southern by Ted and Matt Lee (Clarkson Potter)
Southern Farmer's Market Cookbook by Holly Herrick (Gibbs Smith)
My New Orleans: The Cookbook by John Besh (Andrews McMeel)

& Winter/Spring 2010 Okra Picks

Popeye might swear by his spinach, but down south we’re all about the Okra. These are the books from this year those same booksellers want you to watch out for:

Fiction

Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives by Brad Watson
W.W. Norton, March 2010
9780393057119 $23.95

An Unfinished Score by Elise Blackwell
Unbridled Books, April 2010
9781936071661, $24.95

Burning Bright: Stories by Ron Rash
Ecco, March 2010
9780061804113 $22.99

Fireworks Over Toccoa by Jeffrey Stepakoff
St. Martin’s Press, April 2010
9780312581589, $22.99

Hold Up the Sky by Patricia Sprinkle
New American Library,  March 2010
9780451229144, $15.00

How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly by Connie May Fowler
Grand Central Publishing,  April 2010
9780446540681, $23.99

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman
Pamela Dorman Books/Viking, January 2010
9780670021390, $25.95

This is Just Exactly Like You by Drew Perry
Viking,  April 2010
9780670021543, $25.95

Nonfiction

Confessions of a Rebel Debutante by Anna Fields
Harpercollins, April 2010
9780399156311, $24.95

Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming by Rheta Grimsley Johnson
New South Books, April 2010
9781588382504, $24.95

Gullah Cuisine: By Land and Sea by Charlotte Jenkins and William Baldwin
Evening Post Publishing Company with Joggling Board Press,  March 2010
9780981873596, $36.95

I Love You, Now Hush by Melinda Rainey Thompson and Morgan Murphy
John F. Blair, February 2010
9780895873781, $16.95

Lincoln on Trial by Burrus M. Carnahan
University of Kentucky Press, February 2010
9780813125695, $30.00

Lady Banks’ Bookshelf