Lady Banks' Commonplace Book

Writer, Meet Reader.

Dearest Readers,

October is, among many other most worthy and interesting things, celebrated as “National Reading Group Month” by those who appreciate good literature and, more to the point, delight in the sharing of it.  Her ladyship, the editor admits that she has a somewhat checkered career of her own with book clubs. She has participated in some, advised many others, and has occasionally consented to attend a few as a guest in order bring her own personality to bear upon wayward discussions and put the group gently back on track.

Aside from the pleasure of discussing a truly excellent book, (while drinking a glass of truly remarkable wine) nothing seems to delight a book club so much as having a guest speaker come to discuss things of a literary nature. It is especially rewarding if the speaker is an author, to whom one can put all sorts of impertinent questions of a personal nature such as “is the main character in this book based on you?” and “what did your family think of your novel?”

Finding authors willing to submit themselves to such an interrogation is perhaps not so easily done. And finding authors who are both willing, and whose book is actually something your group feels inclined to read is harder yet. This is why her ladyship is most excited by the recent announcement of a new service for authors, bookstores, and readers: The Southern Traveling Authors Registration Service (which has the happy anacronym of "STARS"). 

STARS is a special type of speakers bureau created by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) and designed to build relationships between authors, their readers and independent booksellers. Authors who register for STARS create profiles, enter book information, and most importantly, list their upcoming travel plans and areas they are willing to visit. SIBA collates this information and forwards it to their member independent booksellers as potential events for their shops and their customers.  The bookstores, in turn, use STARS as a resource for finding authors, and promote the list to other organizations in their community that might be in need of speakers, presenters or guest appearances.
Book groups, civic organizations, libraries, schools and business alliances can all use STARS to discover authors in their area, or who may be coming to their area.

There are currently over 150 authors registered on the STARS site, including such well-known and beloved figures as Jill Connor Browne, Denise Hildreth, Kerry Madden, Ad Hudler, Robert MacComber and Mary Alice Monroe. A full list is available here.

Since the site was launched at the SIBA Trade Show in September, nearly 200 separate “trips” have been logged by listed authors to various towns the South and as far ahead as the middle of 2009. Each trip is a potential opportunity for a book club in the area to have the author as a guest or speaker.

Authors who are interested in participating in the STARS service should This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it for criteria.

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!

Michael Connelly, author of Brass Verdict at That Bookstore in Blytheville in Blytheville, AR	Wade Dudley, author of Historic Photos of Wilmington at Pomegranate Books in Wilmington, NC	Clyde Edgerton author of The Bible Salesman at Alabama Booksmith in Birmingham, AL	Johnnie Gabriel, author of Cooking in the South with Johnnie Gabriel at Book Exchange in Marietta, GA
Deva Gantt, author of A Silent Ocean Away at Page & Palette in Fairhope, AL	Hollis Gillespie, author ofTrailer Trashed: My Dubious Effort toward Upward Mobility at Bound to be Read in Atlanta, GA	Ward Larsen, author of Stealing Trinity at Muse Book Shop in Deland, FL	Dennis Lehane , author of THE GIVEN DAY at Square Books in Oxford, MS
Robert Morgan, author of Boone at Wordsmiths Books in Decatur, GA	Randy Russell, author of Ghost Cats of the South at Blue Elephant Book Shop in Decatur, GA	Anita Shreve, author of Testimony at Litchfield Books in Pawleys Island, SC	Dusty Smith, author of Haunted DeLand and the Ghosts of WEst Volusia Coun at Muse Book Shop in Deland, FL
Nancy Thomas, author of Moravian Christmas in the South at Old Salem Museums & Gardens in Winston-Salem, NC	Bill Thompson, author of Sweet Tea, Fried Chicken and Lazy Dogs at Fireside Books & Gifts in Forest City, NC	John Thompson, author of Armageddon Conspiracy at Fiction Addiction in Greenville, SC	Deborah Van Dyken, author of Choosing Right at Dee Gee s Gifts & Books in Morehead City, NC
Ronald Williamson, author of Volusia County's West Side at Family Book Shop in Deland, FL	Emily Herring Wilson, author of NC Botanical Garden Jenny Elder Fitch Lecture: at McIntyre s Fine Books in Pittsboro, NC

Book Festivals & Special Events

Southern Festival of Books, Nashville, TN (October 10-12): One of the larger book festivals in the South, it s put on by Humanities Tennessee and has been the model for many similar book festivals around the country put on by state humanities councils. More than 200 authors, including Rick Bragg, Sherman Alexie, Rheta Grimsley Johnson, and Ann Patchett.

Gwinnett Reading Festival, Lawrenceville, GA (October 18): Put on by the Gwinnett County Public Library, this festival will include authors for all ages, including Steve Martini, Nathalie Dupree, Rick Bragg, Carmen Agra Deedy, Mary Jane Clark, and George Singleton. It s held on the Gwinnett County Fairgrounds in Lawrenceville.

The Pulitzer Legacy in Georgia, Jekyll Island, GA (October 27-30) The Georgia Review, the award-winning literary quarterly published from the University of Georgia and distributed nationwide, announces “The Pulitzer Legacy in Georgia” program—a four-day celebration of fine writing and writers hosted by the Jekyll Island Club from October 27-30. The event features four recent Pulitzer Prize winners, all of whom have an association with the state of Georgia, the University of Georgia, and/or The Georgia Review: poets Stephen Dunn and Natasha Trethewey, journalist and historian Hank Klibanoff, and historian Edward Larson.

Georgia Literary Festival, Bainbridge, GA (October 25): This festival is a unique one. It s put on by the Georgia Center for the Book, one of the most important planning partners of the Decatur Book Festival and one of the most active Centers for the Book in the nation. The Georgia Literary Festival is held in a different Georgia town each year, sharing the literary wealth around the state. Authors appearing include: Mary Kay Andrews, Douglas Blackmon, Frye Gaillard, and Cathy Cox.

The Book Festival of the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta, Atlanta, GA (November 8-22): This superb annual festival of the MJCCA will include authors Tony Curtis, Stephanie Klein, and CNN s Jeffrey Toobin.

Miami Book Fair, Miami, FL (November 9-16): The granddaddy of them all, and, with about 250,000 visitors each year, still the biggest. They have a particularly strong international component, especially, as you might expect, with Latino and Spanish-language authors. They haven t yet announced this year s line-up, but you can count on some of the biggest names in the country being there.

AUTHOR 2 AUTHOR

Gary Glass, proprietor of Book Balloon, talks to her ladyship, the editor about why he thought the Internet needed another book discussion forum.

Why did you create BookBalloon? What made you want to start a literary forum?

Basically I did it because there weren t any forums out there that I really liked. I wanted something that was uncluttered, easy to use, and had a certain kind of tone. Some of my online friends were saying the same thing. Then they double dog dared me, so I had no choice.

How is BB different from other online discussion boards?

I think one of the unique features of BookBalloon is the tone. Online communities tend to drift toward one or the other extreme: either they re an ongoing food fight or they re so clamped down that they re no fun. I try to set a particular tone on BookBalloon. We work at making people feel welcome and accepted. You don't have to find a way to fit in. Just be yourself. I know that sounds trite, but it really is not easy to pull it off!
 
The key to making it work is letting the members own the place. I work hard at that. I am constantly soliciting feedback, and I take that feedback seriously. It s a sign of how engaged people feel that they are always coming up with new ideas for ways to improve and promote BookBalloon.

Is  the forum moderated? What are your rules for moderating?

I don't pre-moderate postings. And I don't provide a way for members to report each other to the thread police. On the other hand I don't tolerate disrespect. Of course in any group people get carried away from time to time. It goes with the territory. If there were never any misunderstandings, that would be a sure sign that the place was dead, because nobody would really be speaking their minds.
 
All online communities develop core groups, and BookBalloon's core group is doing a great job of setting a welcoming and enthusiastic tone.

How are book discussions different in an online forum from a real-world book club?

I ve never been in a real-world book club, so maybe I m not the best person to answer that question! But I think one that thing that s different about an online group is that it s a slower form of communication than talking. And that encourages people to be more thoughtful and reflective. Also, because the medium of communication is text, I think that helps keep discussions focused on the actual work under discussion. It's not better; but it's different.

In BB, unlike some more free-wheeling, unmoderated forums, only administrators can create a new topic or “thread.”  How did you decide on your current list of topics? How do you decide when a new topic is needed?

Basically the founding members just brainstormed it together. We started out with a single topic thread for the express purpose of figuring out where to take the site, and everybody just hashed it all out right there online. It was very open and collaborative. From time to time now we talk about whether we need a new topic for “x” and everybody who s interested chats it out. A consensus develops. I try to play facilitator.

If BB is like most groups, you have some very active members, and lots of “lurkers.” Do you have a sense of how many people lurk? What do you think BB offers people who read the conversations, but don t participate?

I've been in a lot of groups over the years, and have run several, and my experience jibes with what others have reported: about 10% of your community will be the most active. Maybe 20% of the rest will also participate sporadically. The rest lurk. I think lurking on BB is probably fun. Like being a fly on the wall at one of Truman Capote s parties. So many smart people with so many different interests who like to talk -- and are good at it.

Do you think of BB as a “book club”? Or as a literary community? Is there a difference?

BookBalloon is an online community for people who care about books and the arts, and one of the best features of that community is the reading club. But we also have lively discussions about movies and music, even television. And there is an active sub-group of writers too. These days the Current Events thread is always hopping.

Recently, there has been much publicity around the fact that space for book reviews and book coverage is shrinking in the print media—in newspapers and magazines. But it has exploded on the Internet in blogs, discussion groups, forums, etc. Do you think the online coverage of books has replaced print reviews? Is this coverage an effective replacement for print reviews?

I'd put it like this: it s not that book coverage is shrinking in the print media, it's that the print media itself is shrinking. As online access grows, print media becomes less and less cost competitive. This is the biggest change in our media environment since the advent of television. The wonderful thing about it is that it makes the written word more easily available. You can get the feeling from the print media that the printed word is dying. I don't think so. I think print is dying. But the written word is really booming because the price barrier to publication is so much lower. Of course that also means that there is little or no bar to people who have nothing to say but won't shut up about it. Some worry that the good stuff is getting drowned in an ocean of drivel. But I think what we see developing now is a new kind of filtering process. You don't have to have access to capital, in the form of a printing press or the owner of a printing press, to get your words out, because everyone has access to this medium. So the barrier now is the noise level. To stand out you have to have something worth paying attention to.

What would be your top suggestions or tips for people interested in joining an online forum like BB?

That's easy: Have fun. There are people like you out there. People who want to talk about the things you want to talk about, and want to do it in a cordial atmosphere. We're all sick of the obscenity and harangues we have to endure on so many sites. To say nothing of television. But it doesn t have to be that way.

What are some of the plans you have for the future of the site?

I want to change the world. I really do. What passes for public discourse in this country is disgraceful. It's bad for our nation, for our planet, for our sanity. I'm not the only one who thinks so. If we don t find a way to really communicate with one another, we re all going to go down with the ship. My vision for BookBalloon is for it to continue to be a place where people who really care about things and want to communicate with others about those things, who want to have healthy debates and learn things , who want their thought-horizons expanded – where those people can find others who want to do those things too and can help one another. Is that crazy idealism? Maybe. So what?
 
I think literature and art matter. Because communication matters. Because we are eminently social beings. The modern world divides us too much. I believe that two-way communication is far more important than like-mindedness.
 
I just read a terrific book called “Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life” by Wynton Marsalis. It s about why jazz matters. Jazz matters as an art form because it is collaborative. Because you can t do it unless you are willing to fully participate in the give and take on the bandstand, unless you're willing to really listen to what other people are saying with their music, and to respond to them with the best thing your talent can muster. I think that what Marsalis says about jazz is true for all the arts, and indeed for all worthwhile human endeavors.
 
There, see? You hang around on BookBalloon too long and you'll run into people who'll dare you to think about stuff like that.

Literary Gossip & News

From Southern booksellers, her ladyship, the editor has received the unhappy news that the Happy Bookseller in Columbia, SC will be closing its doors for good in October. Also, sadly, Ms. Adelaide Trigg, former owner of The Haunted Book Shop in Mobile, Alabama, passed away at her home on September 29 after a lengthy illness.

More encouragingly, The Hall Book Exchange in Gainesville, GA, is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a Banned Books Readathon, which her ladyship hopes will be as entertaining as this one.   Bienville Books of Mobile, AL has expanded and installed a “haunted book loft” above their shop. Mr. Mitchell Kaplan from Books & Books in Coral Gables, FL has gone into the movie business, while two ambitious young women have decided to embark on a bookselling adventure. Her ladyship finds herself both full of admiration for their indomitable and adventurous spirits, and rather concerned for their lack of health insurance.

In other news:
Readers with a fondness for Children s literature and illustration will be interested to hear about a new traveling exhibit that will be tourning the South. Storybook Look: Illustrations by Southern Artists has been added to the Southern Arts Federation s (SAF) Southern Visions traveling exhibits program. The exhibit, which is available to museums and galleries throughout the country, will make its debut in the spring of 2009. Storybook Look includes 28 works in a variety of media from 10 of the South s most notable children s book illustrators. SAF will develop adjunct educational materials for families and educators that will be made available free online and from host venues.

The New York Times has profiled the hometown of Zora Neale Hurston, Donna Tartt has moved from Random House to Little Brown, Publishers for her next book –her ladyship is pleased to learn that there will be a next book, and that it will, apparently, be published sometime before 2025.  Her ladyship was sorry to hear that, after surviving 200 years, a house that Kate Chopin once called home has burned to the ground.

Recommended by Your Neighborhood Southern Booksellers

Second Violin: An Inspector Troy Thriller by John Lawton
(Atlantic, $24, 9780871139917 / 087113991X)
"Second Violin is the work of an accomplished author who draws you into the story through fully developed characters and plot twists that keep you engrossed. I m not sure how I missed Lawton s earlier Inspector Troy titles, but I will make up for it by recommending them to anyone who loves historical fiction, thrillers, or just a good yarn." --Ann Carlson, Harborwalk Books, Georgetown, SC

The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It by Tilar Mazzeo
(Collins, $25.95, 9780061288562 / 006128856X)
"The story of how -- in 1800s France -- this brave and cunning woman emerged from small-time broker to dominate the international luxury market is intoxicating. Mazzeo s prose is appropriately effervescent as she explores the secrets and science of wine making and the numerous factors that contributed to champagne becoming the world s most powerful symbol of celebration and the good life. A toast to Mazzeo for capturing the essence of a radical life -- cheers!" --Melba Major, Square Books, Oxford, MS

Conspiracy of Silence by Martha Powers
(Oceanview, $24.95, 9781933515182 / 193351518X)
"Mystery lovers are in for a treat. Martha Powers  character, Clare Prentice, a Chicago journalist, begins to unravel secrets of her past ... and discovers that her whole life is a lie. A compelling, fast-paced story set in a small town determined to keep its secrets, Conspiracy of Silence is a must-read, not-to-be-missed mystery." --Melissa Wade, Vero Beach Book Center, Vero Beach, FL

The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens s A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits by Les Standiford
(Crown, $19.95, 9780307405784 / 0307405788)
"Les Standiford gives us the chance to understand Dickens not only as an author, but as a person struggling to save his career, who, in the process, reinvigorates the Christmas spirit. Standiford excels at telling the story of historical figures in a way that reads like a novel, so we learn almost in spite of ourselves. This is an irresistible read for the holiday season!" --Rona Brinlee, The Book Mark, Atlantic Beach, FL

Bookseller Blogs

A Reading Life: The Cure for the Common Meal
“I have an endless fascination with cookbooks from far away countries, of unfamiliar cuisines. Which would explain why I own cookbooks—note the plural—devoted to the cooking of Eritrea and why I felt inclined once to buy an entire volume devoted to traditional recipes of Kenya. But as fascinating as these books are, they can rarely be found cracked open on my kitchen counter before dinner. The problem with books devoted to exotic dishes is that they usually require rather exotic ingredients. The local Hampstead Food Lion, my current supermarket, is a wonderful place but has not, as yet, taken to stocking things like kaffir lime leaves or “taff” (a small, specialized eastern African grain). Usually these books are for dreaming, not for using….read more

Consuming Books: Stealing Trinity by Ward Larsen is set at the end of World War II, before the first atomic bomb is dropped on Hiroshima.   Maj. Michael Thatcher, a tenacious British officer whose job it is to hunt down Nazi spies, is intrigued when the words “Manhattan Project” come up in one of his interrogations. Meanwhile, in Germany, Col. Hans Gruber knows that a sleeper spy, Die Wespe, who s been working on the atomic bomb project in Los Alamos, must be smuggled out of the U.S. with his stolen plans so that those Nazis who survive the war can rearm and continue their goal of world domination. Charged with this mission is Capt. Alexander Braun, an American fighting in the German army. Braun is clever and ruthless, but once Thatcher catches his scent, he won t rest until Braun is captured or killed. … read more

Fiction Addiction: As I was riding back from the SIBA trade show, I randomly reached into one of the many boxes of ARCs and signed books we had accrued and pulled out The White Mary by Kira Salak (Holt, hardcover, $25.00). I found this debut novel to be a very readable retelling of Heart of Darkness using a female war correspondent as the protagonist. For reasons of her own, Marika Vecera sets off on an arduous trek through the jungles of Papua New Guinea to learn whether the award-winning reporter who inspired her career, Robert Lewis, has faked his own suicide and is in fact still alive…. read more

Little Blog of Stories: In anticipation of Halloween
The Graveyard Book “Justin: Let me kick off this conversation by saying flat out I think the book is great. The amazing thing about the book is not just how exciting it is as a premise (boy grows up in graveyard, raised by ghosts), but how well Gaiman builds on that premise. I can t think of another book that delivers quite as precisely and as completely on the ideas it churns up as this one. I could go on and on, but how about you--What did you think of it Dave?... read more

Page 854: Aa terrible tribute to Banned Books Week
“This year, September 28 - October 4 marks the annual observance of Banned Books Week, an event sponsored by the American Library Association, to promote awareness of issues surrounding censorship and intellectual freedom. It thus seems sadly appropriate that the controversy surrounding an American novel called The Jewel of Medina reached a new level when the office of its British publisher was firebombed early Saturday morning. The Jewel of Medina was recently published in this country by Beaufort Books after its original publisher, Random House, dropped the book for fear of inciting violence… read more

UrbanThink! Eminent Domain? “…The problem is that the city of New Brunswick threatened to use its power of eminent domain to “clear out” an independent bookstore to make room for the Barnes & Noble.  The motivation was undoubtedly higher projected tax revenues from the re-developed site and the big box store.  In theory the power of eminent domain reflects the will of the people, which begs the question, is this the will of the people?  Goodbye independents and hello big box bookstores?... read more.
 
Wordsmith Books: Short on Gas? Try Grease!
“In Greasy Rider, Melville tells of his experiment-to both build a car powered solely by used vegetable oil and prove its  functionality by packing up one of his childhood friends and driving cross-country in the grease car, stopping along the way to take in noted eco-friendly or environmentally-important sights. Part travelogue, part environmental essay on the truth-sometimes painful, sometimes positive, always optimistic-of the current ecological situation in America, Greasy Rider is a book that s both fun and crucial, with the pervasive message that if Greg can do it, any and everyone can find ways to improve their impact on the environment on a daily basis. It s a message Melville continues to muse upon in his hilarious and eye-opening blog.. . . read more

Yikes and Away! Hawk divebombs puppet! “A red-tailed hawk, apparently confused by a puppet shaped like a bird, swooped into a Midtown Atlanta parking lot Friday sending two workers ducking for cover.Jeff Domke and Alan Louis, employees at the Center for Puppetry Arts, were in the facility s parking lot at 1404 Spring Street taking pictures of a puppet designed to look like a brown thrasher, the state bird of Georgia.The brown thrasher puppet must be pretty realistic because the hawk, a respected hunter, tried to turn the puppet into breakfast.The hawk, which can reach speeds up to 120 mph in a dive, made contact with Domke on the hand and head before realizing its target wasn t a real bird."I suppose the hawk paid us a compliment on Jeff s design," said Louis.No human, hawk or puppet was injured…” read more

Lady Banks’ Commonplace Book

It was over the Edisto River in South Carolina that I saw my first swallow-tailed kite. My memory is etched with a clear image of how that bird swumg into biew and hung over me, suspended like an angel, so starly black and white, with its wide scissored split of a tail. I rushed to grab binoculars, to take a closer look, almost cliping the canoe. The bird drifted on a breeze too subtle to sense, its breast a center point for the sleek maneuver of wing and tail, as if a kite string actually were attached to the deeply muscled breatebone. As suddenly as it appeared, the bird was gone.

If my grandmothers had still been alive all those years ago, when that first kite wheeled over the sunny run of the river, they might have translated for me the unfamiliar, inexpressibly pwerful sensation I felt in my body. They might have told me this was the origin moment of my relationship with that rare and beeautiful bird and the beginning of my own journey toward wholeness—not only for myself, but also on behalf of my mother, my grandmothers, and my unborn children (for I was only twenty-three years old at the time, and most important, for the living mantle of our beautiful and imperiled planet.

--Susan Cerulean, “Origin Moment” from Elemental South: An Anthology of Southern Nature Writing (University of Georgia Press, 2004)

Lady Banks’ Bookshelf

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