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In This Issue

• Southern Indie Bestsellers
• Lady Banks' Commonplace Book
• Book Gossip
• Author Gossip/ Stars Authors
• Bookstore Gossip
• The {book} trailer park
• Read This!/Okra Picks
• Special to the Southern List
• Authors Round the South

Special to the Southern List

(Books that appear on the Southern list, but not the national list)  Click on a book to purchase from a great indie bookstore!

Author Readings

Flyleaf Books is hosting the event All Is Calm performers on 12/11/2012 (13573)

Books & Books Inc is hosting the event Dan Leslie Bowden -- Reading of A Christmas Memory on 12/11/2012 (13588)

Luisa Valenzuela, author of La m?scara sarda, will be appearing at Books & Books Inc, 12/11/2012 (13589)

Quail Ridge Books & Music is hosting the event CD Christmas - John Brown and His Big Band/Nnenna Freelon on 12/11/2012 (13462)

Maria de Guzman, author of , will be appearing at Regulator Bookshop, 12/11/2012 (13466)

Blue Ridge Books & News is hosting the event Mountain Writers Group on 12/11/2012 (13470)

Buddy Valastro will be appearing at FoxTale Book Shoppe, 12/11/2012 (13481)

Parnassus Books is hosting the event Live music with Kristi Rose & Fats Kaplin on 12/11/2012 (13513)

Sharman Burson Ramsey, author of Swimming With Serpents, will be appearing at Fiction Addiction, 12/11/2012 (13536)

Sylvia Nissen, author of Gruau: Portraits of Men, will be appearing at Books & Books Inc, 12/12/2012 (13590)

John A. Powell, author of Racing to Justice, will be appearing at Books & Books Inc, 12/12/2012 (13591)

Undercover Books & Gifts is hosting the event Gallows Bay Holiday Festival on 12/12/2012 (13426)

John Shelton Reed will be appearing at Flyleaf Books, 12/12/2012 (13443)

Rachel Ray, author of My Year in Meals, will be appearing at Parnassus Books, 12/12/2012 (13514)

N.M. Kelly, author of White Truffles in Winter, will be appearing at The Bookstore in the Grove, 12/12/2012 (13303)

Manuel Diaz, author of Miami Transformed, will be appearing at Books & Books Inc, 12/13/2012 (13592)

Pamela Fiori will be appearing at Books & Books Inc, 12/13/2012 (13593)

Yawn's Books & More is hosting the event Yawns Book Club on 12/13/2012 (13395)

James Salzman, author of In Drinking Water: A History, will be appearing at Regulator Bookshop, 12/13/2012 (13467)

FoxTale Book Shoppe is hosting the event December's FoxTalk Book Club meeting on 12/13/2012 (13482)

Emily Ford, author of The Jews of New Orleans and the Mississippi Delta, will be appearing at Garden District Book Shop, 12/13/2012 (13506)

Jon Meacham, author of Jon Meacham will discuss and sign Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, will be appearing at Parnassus Books, 12/13/2012 (13515)

Laurance Daltroff Triplette, author of Gimme Some Sugar, Darlin': The Secret Lexicon of Southernness and One Old Bride's Guide to Cooking Southern, will be appearing at Barnhill's, 12/13/2012 (13523)

Buddy Valastro will be appearing at Fountain Bookstore, 12/13/2012 (13530)

Flyleaf Books is hosting the event My Heart is an Idiot: Found Magazine's 10th Anniversary Tour! With Davy and Peter Rothbart on 12/14/2012 (13444)

Mary Flinn will be appearing at Barnhill's, 12/14/2012 (13524)

James Kilgore will be appearing at Yawn's Books & More, 12/14/2012 (13525)

Tom Poland, author of Save the Last Dance for Me: A Love Story of the Shag and the Society of Stranders, will be appearing at Burry Bookstore, 12/14/2012 (13539)

Little Shop of Stories is hosting the event Little Shop's Annual Polar Express Party on 12/15/2012 (13572)

Charis Books & More is hosting the event Tall Tales and Real Man Adventures! Amy Ray, T Cooper, & Scott Turner Schofield at the Star Bar One Night Only! on 12/15/2012 (13500)

Daisy King, author of Miss Daisy Celebrates Tennessee, will be appearing at Parnassus Books, 12/15/2012 (13516)

Jim McFarland, author of The Potters of Orange- 100 years of Pottery, will be appearing at Yawn's Books & More, 12/15/2012 (13526)

John Carenen, author of Signs of Struggle, will be appearing at Fiction Addiction, 12/15/2012 (13537)

Anne Fiitten Glenn, author of Asheville Beer: An Intoxicating History of Mountain Brewing, will be appearing at Malaprop's Bookstore/Cafe, 12/15/2012 (13549)

Jana Oliver, author of Foretold, will be appearing at Peerless Book Store, 12/15/2012 (13560)

Sherye Simmons Green, author of Abandon Not My Soul, will be appearing at Turning Pages Books & More, 12/15/2012 (13565)

Charis Books & More is hosting the event Tall Tales and Real Man Adventures! Amy Ray, T Cooper, & Scott Turner Schofield on 12/15/2012 (13055)

Park Road Books is hosting the event New Dress A Day - Marisa Lynch on 12/16/2012 (13449)

Avid Bookshop is hosting the event Find Frank, The Fabulous Fiction Fan: 2012 on 12/16/2012 (13475)

Malaprop's Bookstore/Cafe is hosting the event REMEMBER ME AS A TIME OF DAY POETRY READING on 12/16/2012 (13550)

Jerry John, author of Great Living - Every Day a Victory, will be appearing at Bookworks, 12/16/2012 (13563)

Carolina García-Aguilera will be appearing at Books & Books Inc, 12/16/2012 (13564)

Nightbird Books is hosting the event Fiction Book Club, Dec 2012 on 12/18/2012 (13492)

Bound To Be Read Books is hosting the event December Book Club reads Natasha Trethewey on 12/20/2012 (13399)

Carol Bjorlie, author of Behind the Cello, will be appearing at City Lights Bookstore, 12/20/2012 (13473)

Susan D. Reynolds, author of Secrets of a Successful Loser - The Problems People Have With Weight Loss and How We've Solved Them, will be appearing at Burry Bookstore, 12/21/2012 (13540)

Authors Round the South
www.authorsroundthesouth.com

Dearest readers,

For the first time in many years, her ladyship has decided not to put up a Christmas tree this holiday season. She is also forgoing other decorations, such as lights strung in the windows, paperwhites and amaryllis on tables, ribbons and candles on the mantel, long-leaf pine wreaths and sprays for the door and for the table center pieces.

The reason is not that she is lacking in holiday spirit, but rather that she is a pragmatic person who believes in choosing her battles. Her ladyship, you see, has a new puppy.  A wonderful, happy, and very excitable and energetic puppy. Lucy is not quite a year old, but she is  a fifty pound bundle of eternal motion, who loves to jump and to chew on things.  Her ladyship regarded this habit with some thought, and decided to forgo having glass ornaments and poisonous flower bulbs within easy reach this year.

Instead, her ladyship decided to indulge her holiday impulses in the kitchen, and has been marking up her cookbooks and cleaning up her pie dishes, cookie sheets, and cake pans.

And what cookbooks are lying cracked open on her counters?

Jean Anderson’s From a Southern Oven: The Savories, the Sweets

The Back in the Day Bakery Cookbook

and, of course, an extremely battered copy of Rose Levy Beerenbaum’s Christmas Cookies

Because books are better with cookies. Happy Reading!

her ladyship, the editor

Southern Indie Bestsellers

For the week ending December 2, 2012

- A STARS Author | - A SIBA Okra Pick 
Titles in red are SIBA Book Award winners and finalists!
Printable versions: Hardcover | Paperback | Children.

Hardcover Fiction

Hardcover Nonfiction

Trade Paperback Fiction

Trade Paperback Nonfiction

Mass Market

Children's Illustrated

1. Pete the Cat Saves Christmas
Eric Litwin, James Dean (Illus.), Harper, $17.99, 9780062110626

Children's Interest

Lady Banks' Commonplace Book

Noteworthy poetry and prose from her ladyship's bedside reading stack.

To my pearl of great price

Libba is forty-five the year Howard dies. Every morning before she leaves for the hospital, she dresses in a snug skirt and a freshly pressed blouse and fastens on the pearl necklace he gave her for their first anniversary. “To my pearl of great price,” he wrote on the tag in his elegant, beveled script. Three days earlier, coming up from under the anesthesia, he’d grabbed the pearls and held on so tightly she’d thought he would break them. It is one of the stories she will tell the grandchildren, who will know him only thorough stories: how she had to pry his fingers loose that day, else he would have broken her necklace, and that would have broken her heart.

—Pam Durban, The Tree of Forgetfulness (LSU Press, 2012) 9780807149720

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Book Gossip

Literary News & Gossip passed along from the readers, the writers, the reviewers, the resellers, the riff raff, and dutifully repeated here by her ladyship (who falls into the last category).

The removal of Alan Moore's graphic novel Neonomicon from the shelves of a library in South Carolina has been described as "censorship" by free speech campaigners.  The award-winning horror comic has been at the centre of a long-running row at Greenville County public libraries, after a 14-year-old borrowed the novel in June and her mother objected. Alan Moore’s Neonomicon pulled from library shelves

As someone who has often visited but never lived in the South, who am I to write a blog post about America's southern fiction? An appreciation of Southern Fiction

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Author Gossip

I did not always love Barry Hannah. In fact, there was a time when he scared the hell out of me. Barry Hannah friends refuse to have a bad day

Veteran stage and screen actor Bill Oberst, Jr. commemorates Southern writer and humorist Lewis Grizzard in this one-man tribute show. Like Mark Twain before him, Grizzard used the scenes of his youth to weave tales that told the truth, even if they weren’t always fact. Lewis Grizzard in his own words, a tribute show

STARS Authors on tour:

What are "STARS" authors? These are authors listing in the Southern Traveling Authors Registration Service--a directory of authors who live in, or are traveling in the South and are interested in meeting with book clubs, civic groups, classrooms, and readers of all kinds. The STARS directory is brought to you by Southern Indie Booksellers, who want to connect readers with their favorite writers.

see the full list online here and find the authors touring in your area here

Hester Bass  , Brandon, MS 01/16/2013 - 01/19/2013

Carole Bellacera  , destin , FL 12/24/2012 - 12/26/2012

Bookstore Gossip

Best Bookstore Christmas Tree? Quite possibly!

From the Sanibel Island Bookshop!

Lady Banks' {Book} Trailer Park

“Eleven-year-old Darwen Arkwright has spent his whole life in a tiny town in England. So when he is forced to move to Atlanta, Georgia, to live with his aunt, he knows things will be different--but what he finds there is beyond even his wildest imaginings.”

Darwen Arkwright and the Peregrine Pact by AJ Hartley

Read This!

Okra Picks and Recommended Reading from Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, NC Avid Bookshop in Athens, GA

Okra Picks: Teacakes for Tosh by Kelly Starling Lyons

A young boy helps his beloved grandmother remember an important family story.

Tosh loves listening to Grandma Honey tell family stories. His favorite is about the special tea cakes that smell like vanilla and sunshine. They were great-great-great-great-grandma Ida's specialty when she was a cook in the big house of a plantation. Unlike Tosh, the slave children weren't allowed to have any of the treats, though Grandma Ida always found a way to put the sugary sweetness into their hands anyway. It was a promise and taste of freedom to come. Tosh knows this is an important story and he takes care to remember every word. And when grandma Honey begins to forget, he can return the gift of tea cakes and stories. A touching family tale, Tea Cakes for Tosh celebrates the important bond between grandchild and grandparent and the stories that make a family strong.

Full set of Okra Picks here

Recommended reading from Tom Campbell at The Regulator Bookshop in Durham, NC

This is a time of years when certain traditions need to be upheld. For me these include decorating a Christmas tree, watching "It's a Wonderful Life," and re-reading "The Polar Express," and "A Christmas Carol."  This year I've come across a new book that I'm going to have to add to my short list of annual holiday reading: Donald Hall's marvelous, moving tale of Christmas at Eagle Pond.

Christmas at Eagle Pond tells of time Hall spent at his grandparents New Hampshire farm in 1940. This was a place where most of the food the family ate was grown or raised on the farm; where the farm provided all of the wood that was the only source of heat and fuel for cooking. Cut and split by hand. Ten cords a year.

Hall's grandmother's older brother Luther served as the minister at the small rural church where the family went for a Christmas Eve gathering. Born in 1856, Uncle Luther remembers neighbors "walking home from Virginia" when he was a nine-year old, and remembers folks talking of the "Poverty Year" of 1816, when there was a freeze every single month.

Donald Hall's storytelling combines a child's sense of wonder and enjoyment of life at the farm (he lived most of the year with his parents in suburban Connecticut), with his grandparent's matter-of-factness and kindness. The book is beautifully made, with woodcut illustrations by Mary Azarian. At age 84 former U.S. Poet Laureate Donald Hall has given all of us a Christmas gift to cherish for years to come. —Tom Campbell

The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook: Recipes and Wisdom from an Obsessive Home Cook by Deb Perelman (Knopf, hardback, $35.00) is showing up on all the lists of the year's best cookbooks. Our customers certainly seem to be taken with the book as well-it is easily our top selling cookbook of the season. Based on week-night friendly recipes and extending to inspiration for potlucks and the occasional "if you are daring, try this," there's an opinionated enthusiasm here that just makes you want to get cookin'.

A favorite of book of mine from earlier in the year, The Man Who Planted Trees: Lost Groves, Champion Trees, and an Urgent Plan to Save the Planet by Jim Robbins (Spiegel and Grau) just got a rave review as an "absorbing, eloquent and loving book" in the New York Times.

The book tells the story of a man who is going around the world taking cuttings of "champion" trees--especially large, strong, tall, old, resilient specimens-in order to plant protected groves of these trees. The idea is that someday humanity might need "seed stock" to replant our forests, and the best stock would come from the best trees. A straightforward enough idea. Each chapter of the book is about a different species of tree, and as the story of finding the "champion" is told, we learn about each tree.

But parts of this book are, marvelously, not so straightforward. The man who has undertaken this quest to clone champion trees is not a scientist, but rather a "redneck Northern Michigan farmer" named David Milarch. Formerly a hard drinker, Milrach's liver pretty much shut down about twenty years ago, and he almost died. On regaining consciousness, he announced that beings "on the other side" had sent him back to earth with a mission-to create a kind of Noah's ark of tree genetics. This book is his story as well as the story of the trees and his tree panting project.
A little bit out there, perhaps? Oh yes, but Milrach's quest, his persistence (and success), and the amazing trees themselves make for quite a story.

—Tom Campbell

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