Lone Star ReviewsMichelle Newby, NBCC,
Contributing Editor
TEXAS COOKING
Paula Forbes, with photography by Robert Strickland
The Austin Cookbook: Recipes and Stories from Deep in the Heart of Texas
Harry N. Abrams
Hardcover, 978-1419728938, 240 pages, $29.99
March 20, 2018
Reviewed by Angelina LaRue
Good food and Austin are synonymous. We often think of little restaurants around Austin with brightly colored oil cloths covering the tables. Fajitas sizzling on a hot cast iron plate, or long lines outside popular barbecue joints and food trucks, are all part of the Austin experience, as well.
Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole
>> archive
5.20.2018 Photos capture grandeur of Texas scenes
If I were selecting the most elegant Texas book of the year published so far in 2018, two titles would be at the top of the list.
Last week I told you about Horses of the American West: Portrayals by Twenty-Four Artists by Heidi Brady and Scott White (Texas A&M University Press, $40 hardcover).
Well, the other one is As Far As You Can See: Picturing Texas, featuring the spectacular photographs of veteran Austin photographer Kenny Braun (University of Texas Press, $45 hardcover).
Measuring 10 by 13 inches, the full-color, 200-page volume is the quintessential coffee-table book, virtually commanding visitors to pick it up and savor the grandeur of Texas nature.
The photographs are organized by region, beginning with West Texas and continuing through the Gulf Coast, Central Texas, the Panhandle, East Texas, Prairies & Lakes, and South Texas, showcasing the state’s scenic diversity.
Sixty-five of the photographs receive magnificent double-page treatments, and most of the others get a full page in the boldly lavish layout.
If I had to pick a favorite from the book, I would go with the photo labeled “Twelve Feet Deep,” showing six pair of bare legs dangling from a bridge at Camp Tonkawa Springs in East Texas.
“Twelve Feet Deep” is one of the photographs from Kenny Braun’s book As Far As You Can See: Picturing Texas.
“I am continually awed, and surprised, by the natural beauty of Texas,” photographer Braun writes.
In As Far As You Can See, Braun shares the gift of nature with everyone who picks up and flips through his wonderful book.
Author S.C. Gwynne (Empire of the Summer Moon) contributes a foreword for the volume, part of the UT Press photography series sponsored by Abilene’s Bill and Alice Wright.
Midland A to Z: Three years ago Abilene Christian University Press published a children’s book, Abilene A to Z, that Jay Moore and I co-authored about Abilene history and culture.
Now ACU Press has published a similar volume featuring the history and culture of Midland, written and photographed by Jimmy and Karen Patterson. (A is for Airport; B for Bush Family; C for Churches; D for Downtown; E for Eating; F for Football, etc.).
The format is adaptable to other medium and large cities as well, as a way of introducing young readers to a community’s distinctive features. For more information, check out the press’s web site at acupressbooks.com.
Glenn Dromgoole writes about Texas books and authors. Contact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.
>> Check out his previous Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Literary Life
2018 TEXAS BOOKISH DESTINATIONS
Can you name this literary place in the Lone Star State?
Admit it: bookfans love traveling almost as much as they love reading itself. All year long we promote our annual list of Top Texas Bookish Destinations, for readers who want to visit the settings of their favorite books, the birthplaces and haunts of favorite authors, and hot spots for book buying, readings, and other literary activity.
But throughout Texas’s 268,597 square miles, there are also lots of out-of-the-way points of interest that we don’t always have space to cover in our Top Ten pages.
Watch this space each week for a new bookish place that you’ll want to add to your own travel list. Be the first to email us with the correct identification, and win a prize!
This week, we continue with a bookish place that’s located in 2018’s #1 Top Bookish Destination. Where in this city celebrating its tricentennial this year would you find a colorful reading corner inside one of its hometown retailers?
Email us at info@LoneStarLiterary.com with the specific right answer, and we’ll send you a free copy of Literary Texas.
LAST MONTH’S PHOTO (below) went wanting for a winner. We’ll reveal the place now — it’s the Poet Tree, in Houston (yeah, that would’ve been easy, for anyone who zoomed in).
Twig’s Top Ten Bestsellers
April 2018
What are Texans reading these days, you ask? Lone Star Lit’s newest regular feature is a monthly list of trending titles at the Twig Book Shop, a leading independent bookseller in San Antonio. Click on any title for the Buy link. And we’ll also include a hotlink to related content in Lone Star Literary Life.
Peter F. Drucker,1 HBR’s 10 Must Reads On Managing Yourself 978-1633694477 (reviewed in Lone Star Lit Jan. 21, 2018
Paulo Coehlo,The Alchemist, 25th Anniversary Edition 978-0062390622
Jen SinceroYou Are a Badass 978-0762490547
Lawrence WrightThe Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 978-1400030842
Ernest Cline,Ready Player One 978-0307887436
Octavio QuintanillaIf I Go Missing978-0941720359
Zora Neale HurstonTheir Eyes Were Watching God 978-0060199494
Laurie Ann GuerreroA Tongue in the Mouth of the Dying 978-0875656878
James DonovanBlood of Heroes 978-0316053747
Maya Angelou,I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings 0375507892
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Story Schmoozing Book Reviews, Marissa Marroquin
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Texas Book Lover, Michelle Newby
That’s What She’s Reading, Jenn Zavaglia
COMING UP ON TOUR: FICTION
The Widow’s Watcher by Eliza Maxwell Visit with Eliza through May 31, 2018
5/27/18 Deleted Scene Books and Broomsticks
5/28/18 Review The Clueless Gent
5/28/18 Author Interview Story Schmoozing Book Reviews
5/29/18 Top Five List Nerd Narration
5/30/18 Review Forgotten Winds
5/31/18 BONUS Review Hall Ways Blog
RECENTLY ON TOUR: FICTION
Sins of the Younger Sons by Jan Reid
RECENTLY ON TOUR: FICTION
What Lies Below by Barbara Taylor Sissel
RECENTLY ON TOUR: FICTION
Bonnie and Clyde: Dam Nation by Clark Hays & Kathleen McFall
RECENTLY ON TOUR: FICTION
Beyond Control by Kat Martin
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CHECK IT OUT: LONE STAR LIT’S NEWEST FEATURE
LONE STAR LISTENS interviews >> archive
Author interviews by Kay Ellington
5.27.2018 Big Bend’s “Rambling Boy” Lonn Taylor answers questions about Texas and his long literary career for the perplexed (and the merely curious)
Lonn Taylor’s Marfa for the Perplexed, published a few weeks ago by the Marfa Book Company, might be just the read you’re looking for this Memorial Day weekend as you envision your summertime wanderings.
Taylor is a familiar figure in the Big Bend region and the author of an eclectic array of books, including Texas People, Texas Places; Texas, My Texas: Musings of the Rambling Boy; The Star-Spangled Banner: The Making of an American Icon, and a two-volume survey of Texas furniture. Taylor, who retired to Fort Davis after nearly twenty years in Washington, D.C., knows firsthand about Marfa’s transformation from isolated West Texas town to international art and hipster haven. Lone Star Lit interviewed him via email for this week’s segment.
LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE: So, Lonn, start by telling us a little about yourself. Where did you grow up, and how would you describe that experience?
LONN TAYLOR: My father was a highway engineer for the Federal government, so I was born in Spartanburg, South Carolina, which is where he was stationed in 1940. If I had been born in Texas I would be a fifth-generation Texan. I grew up in the Philippine Islands, which is where Dad took us in 1946, and I finished high school and went to college in Fort Worth, which I consider my hometown, as my grandparents moved there in 1904. I was an only child and had a happy and secure childhood surrounded by books.
Did you always want to be a writer? What was your first big break as a writer?
I knew that I wanted to be a writer from grade school on, because writing always came easily for me, but I was a late starter in getting published. I fooled around in Austin for nearly ten years after graduating from college, writing speeches for politicians and sending articles to the Texas Observer and the Village Voice, but I could not concentrate long enough to get a book done. >>READ MORE
Texas’s only statewide, weekly calendar of book events
Bookish Texas event highlights 5.20.2018>> GO this weekMichelle Newby, Contributing Editor
SPECIAL EVENTS THIS WEEK
- Elena Gallego Rare Books Pop-up Shop, San Antonio, May 19-June 3
- Comicpalooza, Houston, May 25-27
DALLAS Mon., May 28 The Wild Detectives, Carlos Velázquez, el “enfant terrible” de las letras mexicanas, en la presentación de su libro de relatos, La efeba salvaje, 7:30PM
SAN ANTONIO Mon., May 28 Dead Tree Books, Memorial Day Poetry, 11AM
AUSTIN Tues., May 29 Central Presbyterian Church, MICHAEL POLLAN speaking and signing How to Change Your Mind, 7PM [ticketed event]
AUSTIN Wed., May 30 LBJ Library, a conversation with author and journalist Jake Tapper, speaking in conversation with Mark K. Updegrove, president and CEO of the LBJ Foundation, about his debut political thriller, The Hellfire Club, 6PM [a Friends event]
HOUSTON Wed., May 30 Ballroom at Bayou Place, Brazos Bookstore and the World Affairs Council of Greater Houston present former national security director James Clapper, speaking about his new book FACTS AND FEARS: HARD TRUTHS FROM A LIFE IN INTELLIGENCE, 7:30PM
ALSO SIGNING IN DALLAS Thurs., May 31 Parish Episcopal School- Midway Campus, the World Affairs Council of DFW, 7PM
AUSTIN Thurs., May 31 BookPeople, Julia Heaberlin reading and signing Paper Ghosts, 6:30PM
SAN ANTONIO Thurs., May 31 Carmens De La Calle Café, Jazz & Poetry w/Purpose, 7:30PM
AUSTIN Fri., June 1 Malvern Books, celebrate the launch of Take To The Territory, Jim Trainer’s fourth collection of poetry and prose, 7PM
NACOGDOCHES Sat., June 2 Nacogdoches Public Library, Texas Writers’ League workshop: The Craft + Business of Writing with WLT: Nacogdoches Edition featuring Michael Noll and Becka Oliver, 3PM
News Briefs 5.27.18
SA Reads annual Summer Book Drive kicks off June 8
SAN ANTONIO — The annual SAReads Summer Book Drive benefits the SAReads Book Bank, which has provided more than 300,000 books to date to Bexar County nonprofits and teachers.
Anyone can donate new or gently-used children’s books at more than 50 locations across greater San Antonio, including all San Antonio Public Library branches, all Firstmark Credit Union locations, all area YMCAs, Whole Foods Market (Blanco Road location), The Twig Book Shop and Dead Tree Books.
Book collection dates run from June 8 to August 15, 2018. >>READ MORE
Storybook capital plans colorful Children’s Art & Literacy Festival for 2018
Seventh annual event celebrates “The Day the Crayons Quit” illustrator June 7–9
ABILENE — The official Storybook Capital of Texas is celebrating all things Oliver Jeffers at the seventh annual Children’s Art & Literacy Festival (CALF), from lost penguins to a moose named Marcel to fed-up crayons who quit and travel the world!
The festival is June 7–9, 2018, in downtown Abilene and takes places at fourteen venues. One of those is the National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature (the NCCIL), where the original artwork of Jeffers will go on display for the summer.
————— A D V E R T I S E M E N T —————
Lone Star Listens compilation available summer 2018, for readers, fans, and writers everywhere
The present generation of Texas authors is the most diverse ever in gender, age, and ethnicity, and in subject matter as well.
Week in, week out, Lone Star Literary has interviewed a range of Texas-related authors with a cross-section of genre and geography. To capture this era in Texas letters, we’re pleased to bring you
Lone Star Listens:
Texas Authors on Writing and Publishing
edited by Kay Ellington and Barbara Brannon; introduction by Clay Reynolds
Available in trade paper, library hardcover, and ebook Summer 2018
360 pages, with b/w illustrations and index
Featuring novelists, poets, memoirists, editors, and publishers, including:
Rachel Caine • Chris Cander • Katherine Center • Chad S. Conine • Sarah Cortez • Elizabeth Crook • Nan Cuba • Carol Dawson • Patrick Dearen • Jim Donovan • Mac Engel • Sanderia Faye • Carlos Nicolás Flores • Ben Fountain • Jeff Guinn • Stephen Harrigan • Cliff Hudder • Stephen Graham Jones • Kathleen Kent • Joe R. Lansdale • Melissa Lenhardt • Attica Locke • Nikki Loftin • Thomas McNeely • Leila Meacham • John Pipkin • Joyce Gibson Roach • Antonio Ruiz-Camacho • Lisa Sandlin • Donna Snyder • Mary Helen Specht • Jodi Thomas • Amanda Eyre Ward • Ann Weisgarber • Donald Mace Williams
As a collection of insights into the writing and publishing life, the book will be useful in creative writing classes (not just in Texas alone) and other teaching settings, as well as for solo reading and study—and a great Texas reference volume.
- Examination and review copies will be available fall 2017 in watermarked pdf format.
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