August 2011

I'm so excited to welcome Jay Varner, author of Nothing Left to Burn, to On the Bookcase! Jay's memoir eloquently tells the story of a son’s relationship with his father, the fire chief and a local hero, and his grandfather, a serial arsonist. Jay returns home after college and lands a job at the local newspaper writing the police and fire beat. Three men of the same family share a passion or obession with fire. In digging into the past, Jay's story reveals layers of family secrets, lies, and half-truths about fire-fighting and arson. It is only when he finally has the truth in hand that he comes to an understanding of the forces that drove his father, and of the fires that for all his efforts his father could never extinguish.

In this post, Jay shares his high school struggles to get a girl and be accepted.

Author On the Bookcase
Alan Cheuse

I'm so thrilled to welcome Alan Cheuse -- writer, professor, NPR book reviewer -- to On the Bookcase! I met Alan at the 2011 Virginia Festival of the Book, again at the 2011 Gaithersburg Book Festival and then at the St. John's College The Art of the Book. We keep bumping into each other!  

What does the word "browsing" mean to you? A computer term? Alan shares his idea of browsing -- "a form of dreaming."

The Pleasures and Necessity of Browsing 

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a browser. But it didn’t begin for me with books.

Author On the Bookcase
Susan Gregg Gilmore

Thrilled to welcome Susan Gregg Gilmore, author of The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove, to On the Bookcase. Susan novel's tells the story of Bezellia Grove, the daughter of Nashville's most prominent families. She is expected to embrace her position in high society. Nobody in Nashville has a bigger name to live up to than. In 1960's Nashville, relationships are complicated, where society remains neatly ordered by class, status and skin color. Bezellia and Samuel, son of her nanny, and the family's handyman, have a clandestine affair. Their romance is met with anger and fear from both families. In a time and place where rebelling against the rules carries a steep price.

" . . . I don’t look forward to a future in which my Kindle (or whatever device inevitably succeeds it) is the only book on the shelf. But it’s a future I’m fairly convinced is awaiting us, and it’s one that I, as a consumer, am playing my part in advancing us toward. There are moments when I wish I could follow the lead of Borges’ retired librarian and bury my book of sand on some obscure shelf in a library basement and just forget all about it. But then I realize that the thing is just too useful, too crazily convenient a tool to not embrace. And then I tell myself that it’s not possible, anyway, to shelve the advance of technology, and that history is filled with examples of beautiful things being supplanted by more efficient versions of those things.