Texas Pages

USA Today reports that the publishing industry, gathering at BookExpo America in New York, is contemplating life in a post-Potter world. Basically, they're reeaallly hoping J.K. Rowling writes another book someday (or even better, that she starts a new series of some kind. Any kind!).

http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2007-05-30-post-potter_N.htm

Yes, it's true: Warner Bros. and Universal Orlando announced it today. "The Wizarding World of Harry Potter" is expected to open in late 2009.

http://www.universalorlando.com/harrypotter/

Author J.K. Rowling says: "The plans I've seen look incredibly exciting, and I don't think fans of the books or films will be disappointed."

P.S.: I'm feeling better about "Deathly Hallows" already. How can JKR possibly kill Harry off if he's going to have his own theme park? It would be like Walt Disney killing off Mickey Mouse.

From the omnipresent Rick Barrick:

Former heavyweight boxing champion George Foreman jokes around with book lover Trisha Inge on Tuesday evening at Mardel Bookstore in Plano. Mr. Foreman signed copies of his new book, "God in My Corner." He greeted an estimated 400 to 500 people over 3 1/2 hours at the store.

It’s time for beach reads. The Salt Lake Tribune suggests that “life’s a beach read when you have a good summer book.” A forthcoming column will have some beach read suggestions, mostly my own favorites, but we’d like to hear from you. What’s your idea of a good beach read? Here are a couple of suggestions to get you going.
If you like westerns, look at the work of singer/songwriter/novelist Mike Blakely of Kerrville. He’s written about fifteen westerns, but he’s really come into his own with Moon Medicine, a 2001 novel that introduced frontiersman Honore Greenwood, known to the Comanche as Plenty Man, and the 2006 sequel Come, Sundown. Currently Blakely’s at work with Willie Nelson, co-authoring a novel set to appear in 2008 and be made into a movie, starring Nelson of course.
Want mysteries? It’s now several years into print, but you may never have heard of Isle of Misfortune, a first novel by Geoffrey Leavenworth. It chronicles one man’s efforts to save himself—and his family—from a stalker determined to kill him. And anything set on Galveston Island makes for good beach reading—the very setting can transport you from your armchair to Galveston’s beautiful beach.
Another first novel is Texas Wind, by now-seasoned author James Reasoner. His debut novel, set in Fort Worth, is a darn good hard-boiled private investigator novel, and all these years later, Reasoner still likes the novel. If he does, you will too. It’s back in print from Point Blank Press. Watch for more about Reasoner and his prolific output in a future Sunday column.
Okay, let’s hear your favorite beach reads. There’s still some room in my book bag.
Judy Alter

Today at noon, "Think" talks to Steven Livingston, associate professor at George Washington University and co-author of "When the Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina."

Harry won this round in a Georgia court.

Southwestern Nature Writing Series
UNT Press

Introduction:
The Southwestern states’ boundaries (Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona) create a unique situation of having large areas of varying landscape as well as ethnically and culturally diverse populations on each side of the 100th meridian, geographically considered the dividing line between eastern and western United States.
Not surprisingly, Southwestern nature writing is often lumped into either southeastern regionalist writing or the iconoclastic, visionary writing that typifies western American wilderness perspectives. What is needed is a nature writing series that recognizes the bioregional and cultural ecotone that best defines this transitional area. Ecologically, an ecotone is the transition area between two clearly defined habitats; however, because it possesses attributes of both defined habitats it tends to be biologically rich allowing species from each habitat to come into contact and serving as home to other species which can only survive in these transitional areas. The Southwestern Nature Writing Series will reflect this middle-ground quality by soliciting and publishing Southwestern nature writing from multiple ethnic perspectives and acknowledging the complexity of this natural heritage.

Scope of this Series:
The Southwestern Nature Writing Series will address an often neglected space in Southwestern letters since 1960. It will encourage nature writers to imbue their quality natural history observations with a strong narrative that reflects the ethnic, cultural, and regional ecotone that makes up this vast region. The series has a unique opportunity to use the border between east and west as a means to solidify a scope that has identifiable boundaries but will encourage authors to delve deeply into their local bioregion while also examining the complexities of diversity. In this way, the series will work with authors to go past traditional divisions of east/west and look more carefully at the blending and division that takes place along any natural, cultural, and ethnic boundaries. The series will specifically identify and encourage ethnic diversity among its authors as diversity has been a weakness in not only Southwestern nature writing but American nature writing generally. Terrell Dixon, a leading figure in nature writing and ecocriticism has pointed out that American nature writing generally and Texas nature writing specifically has lacked ethnic diversity.
The kind of book the series will welcome would be in the tradition and of the quality of John Graves’ Goodbye to a River; however, such a manuscript would also reflect a more modern sensibility and awareness of the environmental issues facing the region as well as considering questions of environmental justice, ecological restoration, and sustainable communities.

Submissions:

Please send a query letter prior to manuscript submission to:

David Taylor
Series Editor
Department of English
PO Box 311307
University of North Texas
Denton, TX 76203-1307

If you don't have Texas Pages bookmarked -- and really, we hope you will -- it now can be reached at this easy-to-remember address:

www.guidelive.com/texaspages

You can use that, or the old books.beloblog.com when you tell your friends about us -- and really, we hope you will.

Sam Houston was a war hero, had been president of a republic, governor of two states, U.S. congressman and now a senator, but the things the hero of San Jacinto said in his letters to wife make him sound a lot like the rest of us non-heroic husbands. From Washington, he wrote to Margaret Lea at least once, sometimes twice, a week. (I'm reading from The Correspondence of Sam Houston, compiled by Madge Thornhill Roberts and published by The University of North Texas Press in 1999.) Margaret was a preacher's daughter and a Daughter of Temperance. So his letters were often testaments to his new-found sobriety. “I was in the parlor,” he wrote, “and was greatly insisted upon to take egg nog, or apple toddy. Well, my dear, you can imagine my reply. `I am a Son of Temperance, and will not drink anything.’ So strong is my resolve, and my purpose so firm, that I would as soon take arsenic, as anything containing alcohol.” But he admitted that he dreamed of whiskey, and bathed in it once when he had influenza.

Though he asked her to write him once or more a week, she didn't. Between June and October of 1850, for example, they exchanged 50 letters, only three of them from her. She suffered from a lack of appetite, indigestion, anxiety, and was pathologically religious. She was “deprest” she wrote (maybe post-partumistically), and “the more I examine myself, the more I see my own worthlessness.” When she heard of the death of President Taylor, her husband’s rival, though, it was like Prozac. She wrote, “How wonderful are the ways of Providence!”

She was his third wife, only 28, half his age, and stuck in Rusk with five young children. But she wasn't “afraid” of the “charms” of competing women in Washington, she wrote. He answered with a real man's version of a romantic sentiment: “I need not tell you, my love, if you even weighed two hundred avoirdupois, that I would be willing that you should sit on my knees for six consecutive hours . . . .” If that didn't bring her out of her depression, he wrote that a certain Mrs. Graham “is good looking but you must know that she has two grand children, and must have faded much, from other days. You need not be uneasy, my Dear, for I assure you, even in our young days, I never made love to her.” Right after that, Margaret was indicted for beating a young girl who worked in the household.

His letters show him as a doting husband and father, worrying that Sam, Jr., might read too much (did I say that he was real man?) He believed in phrenology and mesmerism, justifying them biblically, of course), and wrote that he saw a clairvoyant who could describe Nacogdoches.

She wrote back that she would like a spirit that could look after the children.

The much ballyhooed premiere of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, an HBO film based on Dee Brown’s landmark volume to be broadcast May 27, 2007, is generating a great deal of enthusiastic excitement, particularly in the West, where the book is focused. But before buying a tub of popcorn and kicking back to watch the graphic rendition of Brown’s treatise, complete as it is with “grandfather bashing” philosophy that fundamentally boils down to an indictment of the white man’s conquest of North America, it might be well to step back a pace or two and take a harder look at the book itself. It’s not without problems.

Maybe I'm just over-ready for the holiday weekend, but I can't get enough of "The Pirate Primer" by George Choundas.

A simple list of pirate phrases would be cute. But a hardound dictionary on faux parchment that cites the novel each phrase came from -- AND includes an entire chapter on pirate grammar -- well, that's literary. And that means it's blog material.

So here are some examples that might actually have a place at your Memorial Day family reunion and barbecue:

Beezelbub himself could hardly desire better company. Used to describe someone as profoundly evil or objectionable. (From "The Coral Island" by R. M. Ballantyne.)

There is more fire in a small, dead fish than in all your slow body. (From "Martin Conisby's Vengeance," by Jeffery Farnol.)

You have the head of a chicken, the heart of a yellow dog and the bowels of a worm. (From "Black Bartlemy's Treasure," by Jeffery Farnol)

Here's to a good, hot fight ... and the best dog on top! (From "The Book of Pirates: Jack Ballaster's Fortunes" by Howard Pyle.)

I'll put an inch of my knife into you. (From "The Dealings of Captain Sharkey and Other Tales of Pirates," by Arthur Conan Doyle.)

It's a long weekend, yee-haw! And to help you get your yee-haw on, here's a look at Sunday's book reviews, which have distinctly Western flavor this week, but with international and surreal overtones ...


Public Cowboy No. 1: The Life and Times of Gene Autry, by Holly George-Warren. Finally, a biography worthy of a true Texas hero.

Sandhills Boy: The Winding Trail of a Texas Writer, gives us a different kind of Western star: It's a memoir from writer Elmer Kelton.

If you'd rather look further back in history, or a fictional version of it: Ghostwalk, by Rebecca Stott, is a "marvelously entertaining new novel" that will draw comparisons to "The Da Vinci Code." But better.

And on a whole different level of surreal, there's Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey, the latest offering from Chuck Palahniuk, who brought us "Fight Club."

George Kennan, by John Lukacs, examines an intellectual who had profound influence on the Cold War world.

City of Oranges: An Intimate History of Arabs and Jews in Jaffa, by Adam LeBor, gives personal stories of six families, Arab and Jewish, living in the the mixed, now-Israeli city of Jaffa.

Look for them Sunday in GuideLive.

(Rick Barrick photo)

Here's a book-signing scene captured by books page stalwart Rick Barrick:

Newt Gingrich takes time Wednesday to write out the five rules inside Mr. Gringrich's new novel "Pearl Harbor: A Novel of December 8th." The rules were for younster Chandler Groves, who was accompanied by his grandmother, Thetis Hilliard of Dallas. The former U.S. House speaker wrote the rules dream big, work hard, learn everyday, enjoy life and be true to yourself. The event by the World Affairs Council Dallas-Fort Worth was at the Fairmont Dallas hotel.

In honor of that pirate movie that opens this weekend (someone around here asked whether it was rated, "Arrrrrrrrr!"), here's a recap from the print edition of some interesting non-Disney pirate releases that have floated in with the tide:

Guide to Pirate Parenting, by Tim Bete (Cold Tree Press, $10.95). Why raise your kids to be pirates? “Cap'n Billy” suggests that “Divvying up booty is good quality time with the kids” and “Replacing 'family movie night' with 'family terrorizing the neighbors with cannons night' is a wonderful change of pace.”

The Pirate Primer, by George Choundas (Writer's Digest Books, $19.99): By my blood, this book will salt up your vocabulary with swashbuckling phrases carefully culled from classics such as Treasure Island, or you can watch me dance the yardarm jig. (Includes an entire chapter on “Arrgh.”)

The Republic of Pirates, by Colin Woodard (Harcourt, $27): Kirkus Reviews writes: “Disregard Robert Louis Stevenson's rowdy buccaneers, the Disney factory's lively rascals and those musical lads from Penzance: Here are the real pirates of the Caribbean, and the facts are as colorful and exciting as fiction.”

So Oprah's dad is writing a book about her.

Whom do you blame in an unsavory situation like this? The father, for cashing in without consulting Ms. O? The publisher, who will eagerly serve it up? Or the people who will fork over cash to find out that Oprah was a naughty teenager?

The comment lines are open ... click away.

A CELEBRATION OF ASIAN AMERICAN WRITING
THURSDAY, MAY 24
THE WOMEN’S MUSEUM
3800 PARRY AVE.
Get directions here.
FREE
7:00 P.M.

In celebration of Asian and Pacific-American Heritage Month, The Women’s Museum and WordSpace present a reading with Vietnamese-American poet Hoa Nguyen and Taiwanese-American poet Shin Yu Pai. Hoa Nguyen is the author of Your Ancient See Through (Subpress, 2002) and Red Juice (Effing Press, 2005). With her husband Dale Smith, she edits Skanky Possum Press, an independent publisher of poetry based in Austin. Shin Yu Pai is the author of Sightings (1913 Press), The Love Hotel Poems (Press Lorentz, 2006), Unnecessary Roughness (xPress(ed), 2005), and Equivalence (La Alameda, 2003).

... here's a peek at the Harry Potter stamps being released in Britain.

J.K. Rowling herself will be launching the planet's "Harry Potter: At World's End "festivities? (Did I get that title right? You know what I mean ...)

And if you do, there's a contest that could have you there ...

Details below.

As mentioned earlier (and in today's paper), Vincent Bugliosi is taking on any and all JFK conspiracy theories.

Here's the space to discuss it. Hit the comment button.

After writing Book Lust, More Book Lust and Book Crush, Nancy Pearl may be America’s most well-known reader. After all, she has gigs on the radio — and even an action figure modeled after her. (She’s a librarian, and the figure makes a shushing motion.)

I just discovered her wiki, booklust.wetpaint.com. For the uninitiated, a wiki is a collaborative Web site. Usually, anyone can add to its body of knowledge — or even edit it.

So, imagine the possibilities with a wiki about books. Favorite books, links to blogs, author interviews, more favorite books, book reviews — to name a few topics. So the only problem readers searching for the next book to savor should have is sorting through too much information.

If you read our review of The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall, this might interest you:

The publisher is using an Internet-wide scavenger hunt of sorts to promote the book, according to Publishers Weekly.

The Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library have given their June Franklin Naylor Award for the Best Book for Children on Texas History to author Eric Kimmel and illustrator Susan Guevara for their book "The Lady in the Blue Cloak: Legends from the
Texas Missions."

According to the group's press release, judges "were pleased that the positive portrayal of mission life makes accessible a part of Texas history through storytelling that is true to facts and the spirit of an earlier age, part of the diverse heritage that Texans share. The timeline of Texas mission history and an author’s note citing the written source of the legends place the stories within the broader mission history."

Honorable mention to went to Marion Hale’s "Dark Water Rising." Susan R. Gregson’s "Sam Houston, Texas Hero" was commended.

A new book on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, "Reclaiming History," rolls in at more than 1,600 pages, prompting a book reviewer in The New York Times to wonder if it's the longest title ever published.The author, Vincent Bugliosi, also co-authored "Helter Skelter," a book about Charles Manson, whom he also prosecuted three decades ago. "Reclaiming History," also has a whopping price tag: $49.95 (although you can get it on Amazon for a mere $29.97.) According to the reviewer, Bugliosi spent 21 years on the book, and this is what he learned after all that time and work: accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald....acted alone. Sigh.

Here are some authors you'll be able to hear on "Think" this week:

Monday noon: Nancy Mathis discusses "Storm Warning: The Story of a Killer Tornado." (See below for more on this book.)

Noon Tuesday: Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Dean's Professor in the Sciences of Uncertainty at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, talks about "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable."

1 p.m. Tuesday : John Haslett discusses "Voyage of the Manteño: The Education of a Modern-Day Explorer." (See below.)

Noon Wednesday: Vincent Bugliosi discusses "Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy."

1 p.m. Thursday .: Aurelia Scott discusses "Otherwise Normal People: Inside the Obsessive and Thorny World of Competitive Rose Gardening."

John Graves, Writer, a new scholarly work on Graves, is now available from UT Press. It is a collection of a panel discussion, interviews, personal tributes, and scholarly essays. John Graves, Writer reminds me why I have been so deeply moved by Graves’ work. His narrative voice are like those Texans who told me stories as a child, resonant with King James’ rhythms and as in love with the land as any environmentalist ever imagined. What Graves did was to place this voice in an educated and artistic prose. Graves’ clarified an ethic about the land which our stories spoke of indirectly, and our hell-bent sense of private property rights and greed has all but destroyed. While Graves himself may be reluctant to call himself a “nature writer,” there is no more important voice about our place for Texans to consider in the coming years. Maybe in the subtle, humble and compassionate voice of Graves’ works, we can begin to value how it grounds us with what matters and come to a wiser value of our “homeland.” jdtaylor@unt.edu

The 7th Annual National Get Over Your Love Hangover Conference includes a segment on writing called "Do the Write Thing – Answering God’s Call." from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. June 16 at Christian Chapel Temple of Faith CME Church, 14120 Noel in Dallas. It's $25, including meals.

Their site contains a quote that even secular writers can appreciate: "If one waits for the right time to come before writing, the right time never comes." - James Russell Lowell

In the wake of The Da Vinci Code's omnipresent success, imitators and inspirees are ransacking the past for all kinds of cleverly hidden literary and artistic treasures. A few weeks ago I reviewed Michael Gruber's The Book of Air & Shadows, in which a mysterious cache of letters leads our heroes to what may be an unpublished Shakespeare play lost lo these many centuries.

In June comes another Bard-inspired treasure hunt, Carol Goodman's The Sonnet Lover, which seems to involve a search for some hitherto unknown WS sonnets, a suicidal student, and a rekindled romance. Here's a bit more on the book.