Mark your calendars! Square Books and Off Square Books are hosting book signings on three different nights this week! Below are this week’s events and a synopsis of each of the books.
Note: Unless otherwise indicated, author events usually begin with an informal reception at 5 pm, followed by the author’s presentation at 5:30, with book signing both before and after the reading/talk.
Tuesday, March 18 at Off Square Books, 5 p.m. – Alexe Van Beuren and Dixie Grimes
B.T.C. OLD-FASHIONED GROCERY COOKBOOK: Recipes and Stories from a Southern Revival (Clarkson Potter, hd. 29.99)
Locals go to the B.T.C. Old-Fashioned Grocery in Water Valley, Mississippi, for its Skillet Biscuits and Sausage Gravy breakfasts, made-to-order chicken salad and spicy Tex-Mex Pimiento Cheese sandwiches, and daily specials like Shrimp and Grits. What started as a place to meet and eat is now so much more, as the grocery has become the heart of a now-bustling country town. The B.T.C. Old-Fashioned Grocery Cookbook shares 120 of the store’s best recipes.
“The B.T.C. Old-Fashioned Grocery Cookbook is charming. Alexe and Dixie share, so openheartedly, the story of one little market, and by doing so give readers a chance to revel in a rural small-town revival. Hoop and Havarti Macaroni, Sweet Potato and Green Chile Casserole, Peach Icebox Pies-the recipes inspire home cooks to remember the classics they cherish and draw their loved ones around the table for good, old-fashioned conversation.” -Martha Hall Foose, author of Screen Doors and Sweet Tea and A Southerly Course
Click Here for more information.
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Wednesday, March 19 at Off Square Books, 5 p.m. – Ben McLelland
LIFESAVING LABRADORS: Stories from Families with Wildrose Diabetic Alert Dogs (Koehler Books, pb. 17.95)
The stories in Lifesaving Labradors present an inside the family understanding of diabetes and the life transforming abilities of diabetic alert dogs. Known as DADs, these British Labradors use their keen sense of smell to notify the diabetic or the caregiver of low and high blood sugar levels, thereby allowing prompt corrections to avert the episode or lessen its severity. Each one the authors in this collection has experienced attacks that led to seizure, or coma, dangerously close to death. Lifesaving Labradors explains how the dogs do it, and how they are used to change and save lives.
Ben McLelland is an English Professor at the University of MS.
Click Here for more information.
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Thacker Mountain Radio (featuring two authors): Thursday, March 20 at Off Square Books, 6 p.m.
Bill Cotter
THE PARALLEL APARTMENTS (McSweeney’s, hd. 25.00)
Justine Moppett is 34, pregnant, and fleeing an abusive relationship in New York to dig up an even more traumatic childhood in Austin. Waiting for her there is a cast of more than a dozen misfits – a hemophobic aspiring serial killer, a deranged soprano opera singer, a debt-addicted entrepreneur-cum-madam a matchmaking hermaphrodite – each hurtling toward their own calamities, and, ultimately, toward each other. The Parallel Apartments is a bold leap forward for a writer whose exuberance for language and what a novel can do, marks him as one of the most exciting stylists in America.
“The Parallel Apartments is difficult to define. One part kooky comedy, one part family drama, one part exploration of womanhood, and one part gruesome catalogue of emotional dysfunction, Cotter’s second novel defies any particular genre, except, perhaps, Cotter’s own.” – The Texas Observer
Click Here for more information.
Matt Sakakeeny
ROLL WITH IT: Brass Bands in the Streets of New Orleans (Duke Univ. Press, pb. 23.95)
Roll With It is a firsthand account of the precarious lives of musicians in the Rebirth, Soul Rebels, and Hot 8 brass bands of New Orleans. These young men are celebrated as cultural icons for upholding the proud traditions of the jazz funeral and the second line parade, yet they remain subject to the perils of poverty, racial marginalization, and urban violence that characterize life for many black Americans. The gripping narrative moves with the band members from back street to backstage, before and after Hurricane Katrina, always in step with the tap of the snare drum, the thud of the bass drum, and the boom of the tuba.
Matt Sakakeeny is an ethnomusicologist and journalist, New Orleans resident and musician. He is an Assistant Professor of Music at Tulane University.
“A new essential in the post-Katrina history of New Orleans, Roll With It is, perhaps, the most astute and clear-headed assessment of how the musical essence of New Orleans is ingrained in the personal and political lives of those who live in that extraordinary city. “-David Simon, creator of the television series Treme
Click Here for more information.
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