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Wednesday, 10 February 2010 17:04

Power struggle

Enemy of God by Bernard Cornwell. Saint Martins Press, 1998. 397 pages Several years ago, when I was reading everything I could find about mythical figures such as King Arthur, Lancelot, Guinevere, Tristan, Iseult and Galahad, I blundered on the…
Wednesday, 03 February 2010 15:01

Fitzgerald comes to life in Asheville

The Fitzgerald Ruse by Mark De Castrique. Poisoned Pen Press, 2009. 250 pages. Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, and magazines like Black Mask are the great-grandfathers of the American detective novel. Readers, for example, can open a Chandler novel and from…
Wednesday, 31 March 2010 15:01

Hill recreates horror that dad Stephen King perfected

Horns by Joe Hill. William Morrow Publishers, 2010. 370 pages. Ignatius William Perrish (“Iggy” to his friends) awoke one morning to find that, in addition to a headache, he had a very tangible set of horns sprouting from his forehead.…
Wednesday, 31 March 2010 15:01

Literary journal honors contemporary literature from the Cherokee community

Readers will be in for a surprise when thumbing through the pages of the all-Cherokee issue of Appalachian Heritage literary journal, which will be celebrated at Western Carolina University next week. The issue turns on its head every generalization about…
Wednesday, 24 March 2010 19:03

Exploring the legacy of Ayn Rand

In Ayn Rand and the World She Made (ISBN 978-0-385-51399-9, Doubleday, 568 pages, $35), Anne C. Heller has given readers an intimate look at the woman who wrote such novels as The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, works which had a…
Wednesday, 10 March 2010 16:12

A requiem for Cataloochee

Requiem by Fire by Wayne Caldwell. Random House, 2009. 335 pages Dear readers, if you have some slight respect for my opinions about Appalachian literature, I hope you will believe me when I say that Wayne Caldwell has written a…
Wednesday, 03 March 2010 16:12

A guidebook for raising boys

Wild Things: The Art of Nurturing Boys by Stephen James and David Thomas. Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2009. 368 pages. In Wild Things: The Art of Nurturing Boys (13-978-1-4143-2227-8, $14.99), Stephen James and David Thomas make clever use of Maurice…
Wednesday, 28 April 2010 17:37

Taking readers down a deep spiral

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Penguin Books, 2005. 487 pagesLet’s begin with a marvelous story — one of those timeless fables that is charged with mystery and magic — the kind that provides the basis for…
Wednesday, 21 April 2010 17:37

Bring poetry to the people

“April is the cruelest of months, breeding/ lilacs out of the dead land” — so wrote T.S. Eliot in the much-cited first two lines of “The Waste Land.” April is also National Poetry Month. Had he lived today, Eliot may…
Wednesday, 14 April 2010 17:37

A modern take on Chaucer’s classic

eoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales: a Retelling by Peter Ackroyd. Viking Press, 2009. 436 pages Being an old English teacher, I am aware of a literary tradition regarding classical works of literature: every generation of so, “masterpieces,” such as The…
Wednesday, 07 April 2010 17:37

Obsessing over grammar

Twelve years ago, while teaching Latin at a local high school, I was discussing a point of grammar — I think it had to do with the dative case and indirect objects — when one of the brighter students in…
Wednesday, 05 May 2010 15:14

In Next, life changes in a day

Next by James Hynes. Reagan Arthur Books, 2010. 320 pages. In The Lecturer’s Tale, previously reviewed in The Smoky Mountain News, James Hynes offered a withering satire of the academic world, in particular the Machiavellian machinations carried on in a…
Wednesday, 12 May 2010 15:18

Learning to play the Angel’s Game

The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Doubleday, 2009. 470 pages.A few days after completing The Shadow of the Wind, I discovered a copy of Carlos Zafon’s new novel, The Angel’s Game. When I sampled a few pages to see…
Wednesday, 19 May 2010 13:19

Self-help without the sugar

Seven Pleasures: Essays on Ordinary Happiness by William Spiegelman. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2009. In Seven Pleasures: Essays on Ordinary Happiness (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, ISBN 978-0-374-23930-5, $23), William Spiegelman, an English professor at Southern Methodist University and editor of…
Wednesday, 26 May 2010 12:34

The tannery and the Green Fly

During my first year at Western Carolina Teachers College (now Western Carolina University) in 1953, I managed to offend my grandfather so severely that he banished me. “Out of my sight!” he said, and sent me to Brevard to spend…
Wednesday, 26 May 2010 12:34

Reading Nina Simone’s tragic life

Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone, by Nadine Cohodas. Pantheon Books, 2010. 449 pages. The first time I ever heard Nina Simone sing, I was in one of those pretentious “high fi” stores in Atlanta back in the…
Tuesday, 31 August 2010 20:14

WCU Authors Hal Herzog and Anna Fariello at City Lights

Western Carolina University psychology professor Hal Herzog will celebrate his new book, Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It’s So Hard to Think Straight About Animals, with an appearance at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 7, at…
Tuesday, 31 August 2010 20:11

Choice of victims makes this a disturbing read

Stephen Hunter’s I, Sniper (ISBN 978-1-4165-6515-4, $26) brings to readers once again that intrepid sniper, now old and aching from his lifetime of combat, Bob Lee Swagger. As in previous novels in this series, the government entangles itself into the…
Wednesday, 30 June 2010 15:27

O’Connor’s life and characters

Two weeks ago, a friend and I traveled down into Central Georgia looking for Flannery O’Connor. My friend, whom I will dub Lucky for this piece, had never heard of Flannery O’Connor nor read anything written by her. She didn’t…
Wednesday, 30 June 2010 15:16

Government is in need of a little belt-tightening

Most Americans are surely aware our economy is still in trouble. The downswing in the last year of the Bush administration has not yet seen an equivalent upswing. Frightened by the state of the economy, the massive public debt, and…
Wednesday, 23 June 2010 14:32

Slow corruption

The Death of Sweet Mister by Daniel Woodrell. Plume/Penguin Group, 2008. 196 pages. Several years ago, I read an amazing novel by Daniel Woodrell entitled Winter’s Bone, and after the review was published, I found that Woodrell’s narrative style lingered…
Wednesday, 16 June 2010 14:24

Holding on to an identity

Someone Named Eva by Joan M. Wolf. Clarion Books, 2007. 208 pages. On May 27, 1942, resistance fighters who had parachuted into Czechoslovakia attempted to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, deputy Reichsprotector of the Nazi Germany Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the…
Wednesday, 09 June 2010 13:28

Yearning for ancient ties

The Memory of Gills by Catherine Carter. Louisiana State University Press, 2006. 59 pages. Recently, when Catherine Carter was asked for a bit of biographical information that could be used to publicize her appearance as a participant in the Gilbert-Chappell…
Wednesday, 02 June 2010 20:17

Juggling through books

In Spite of Myself: A Memoir by Christopher Plummer. Knopf, 2008. 656 pages. Like most readers, I usually have a stack of books going beside my bed and in the living room. In addition, the books in my permanent collection…
Tuesday, 24 August 2010 19:41

New “Blue Ridge” Anthology features local authors

A reading and book signing for the new anthology Echoes Across the Blue Ridge will take place from 1 to 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 28, at Blue Ridge Books in Waynesville.   The anthology includes a variety of stories,…
Tuesday, 24 August 2010 19:40

A fascinating murder story

On a hot July night in 1935, a young Wise County, Virginia, school teacher named Edith Maxwell came home late. Her father Trigg, who did not approve of his daughter’s late hours, confronted her and a violent argument (which turned…
Tuesday, 17 August 2010 20:26

Coffee with poet Bill Everett

Poet Bill Everett, author of Red Clay Blood River, will appear at 10:30 a.m. Thursday, Aug. 19, as this month’s guest at City Lights Bookstore’s Coffee with the Poet. After a break for lunch, attendees can come back to enjoy…
Tuesday, 17 August 2010 20:25

Authors release photographic history of Waynesville

Michael Beadle and Peter Yurko have published a new photographic history of Waynesville in honor of the town’s bicentennial this year. Their first book signing will be held 3 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 28, at Blue Ridge Books in downtown…
Tuesday, 17 August 2010 20:25

Authors of two new mountain memoirs speak

Jean Boone Benfield, of Asheville, will read from her new book, Mountain Born: A Recollection of Life and Language in Western North Carolina, at 7 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 20, at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva. The book recalls her…
Tuesday, 17 August 2010 20:23

A grim look at Appalachia

Authors often dig into their childhood to mine for the coal and diamonds of their books. Sometimes they use the picks and shovels of fiction; Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, and Thomas Wolfe come most famously to mind as writers who…
Tuesday, 10 August 2010 20:36

‘Moonshiner’s Daughter’ author at Blue Ridge Books

Mary J. Messer, author of the newly published Appalachian memoir Moonshiner’s Daughter, will be at Blue Ridge Books at 3 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 14. In the book, Messer wrote about her memories growing up in the Smokies during the…
Tuesday, 10 August 2010 20:28

Memoir project a mixed bag

The design of this book’s cover, in addition to being visually attractive, quite possibly serves as an inadvertent assessment of this book’s contents: Judaculla Rock, in all of its ancient splendor, serves as a backdrop for a diverse collection of…
Tuesday, 03 August 2010 20:15

Searching for God and the self

Home. The word is as twisted with complications and mystery as all those other household words we use every day: wife, mother, father, son, daughter, family. Home slips from our mouth easy as air, yet only in our hearts and…
Tuesday, 03 August 2010 20:13

Free writers workshops in Waynesville

Upcoming free workshops at Blue Ridge Books in Waynesville will offer writers behind-the-scenes tips on getting published and provide guidance to women writers over 50. • “Don’t murder your mystery — or any other manuscript,” will be led by seasoned…
Wednesday, 28 July 2010 13:00

Tales of alienation and horror

For the past few years, internet literary critics of fantasy/supernatural novels have been raving about about a writer of “punk rock prose” named Caitlin Kiernan. The praise has been excessive, comparing her to H. P. Lovecraft, Poe and Clive Barker.…
Tuesday, 20 July 2010 20:48

Storytime with puppets

Jackson County resident Josie Williams will be guest storyteller at a special children’s storytime at 11 a.m. on Saturday, July 24, at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva. Williams is co-creator (with her sister-in law Kim Williams) of Shert: The Helping…
Tuesday, 20 July 2010 20:47

An official Star Wars party

Join the fun at a Star Wars party at 2 p.m on Saturday, July 31, at Blue Ridge Books. The bookstore in Waynesville is one of only 70 in the United States hosting a 2010 DK Star Wars Event. The…
Tuesday, 20 July 2010 20:47

All about the Carltons

Dr. Barbara Carlton will autograph copies of her book, This Nearly Was Mine: A Journey Through Carlton Country at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, July 28, in the Friendship Garden at the Albert Carlton-Cashiers Community Library. In June 1994, the Albert…
Tuesday, 13 July 2010 18:49

Piecing together a picture of home

Although Americans are known for their wandering ways, traveling to California in Conestoga wagons, taking the train to find a place in Broadway’s spotlight, many also retain in their hearts a deep affection for a particular place. Whether that place…
Tuesday, 06 July 2010 20:47

My Mountain Granny author appears in Franklin

Tuesday, 06 July 2010 20:41

Shakespeare still valuable in space

Muse of Fire by Dan Simmons. Subterranean Press, 2008. 105 page In recent years, it has become fashionable for writers who have “cult followings” to issue limited editions of handsomely packaged and extravagantly priced short works. Somebody like Stephen King,…
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