Lone Star ReviewsMichelle Newby, NBCC,

Contributing Editor

Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole

>> archive

A coffee table book for history lovers

The Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum presents an up-close look at 81 of its artifacts in a full-color coffee-table book, Seeing Texas History (University of Texas Press, $40 hardcover). The artifact photographs are arranged chronologically, beginning with an ancient tool made from a rabbit jaw and continuing through cultural and historical items from modern-day Texas. Each picture is accompanied by a short text block.

Just a few examples: Davy Crockett’s violin; the U.S. flag with twenty-eight stars; a saddle owned by Pancho Villa; Tom Landry’s trading card from his football playing days; the Civil Rights Act signed by LBJ in 1968; and the Congressional Medal of Honor presented to Roy Benavidez in 1981.

If you’re looking for a gift for that history buff on your list, Seeing Texas History would be a nice one.

Simone’s story: Simone Biles, the diminutive Texas gymnast who captured millions of hearts while winning four gold medals in last summer’s Olympics, tells her story in Courage to Soar: A Body in Motion, A Life in Balance (Zondervan, $24.99 hardcover, with co-author Michelle Burford).

“You might think that going from a girl in foster care to being an Olympic gold medalist in Rio de Janeiro is the most amazing part of my journey,” Biles writes. “It isn’t. It’s how I got there — or more accurately, who got me there — that is most miraculous.” Her story, she continues, is about “how my faith and my family made my wildest dreams come true.” She said she hopes her experiences can help others embrace their dreams and find the “courage to soar.”

Murals: Texas A&M University Press has published a flexbound edition of The Texas Post Office Murals: Art for the People by Philip Parisi ($29.95).

The colorful volume, issued in hardcover for $50 in 2004, describes the 106 works of art created for 69 post offices and federal buildings in Texas during the Depression. Many are still in good condition. The murals depicted colorful scenes and subject matter that people could relate to. A good many of the Texas scenes, for example, feature cattle, buffalo, horses, and Indians. The murals are listed and pictured alphabetically by city.

Body and spirit: Dr. Martha Hinman, a professor at Hardin-Simmons University, combines her scientific knowledge of anatomy and her Christian faith to produce a very readable collection of short two-to-three-page essays reflecting on God’s “amazing” creativity. Each of the fifty-two chapters or devotional essays incorporates the word “amazing” into its title -— as in Amazing Heredity, Amazing Agility (on David vs. Goliath), Amazing Flexibility, Amazing Productivity, Amazing Tranquility, and Amazing Purity. Amazing Grays ($16.99 paperback) is scientifically instructive and biblically inspirational.

Glenn Dromgoole’s latest book is West Texas StoriesContact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.

>> Check out his previous Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Literary Life

Meinzer and Chappel team up for another Texas ranch-history coffee-table volume

State Photographer of Texas Wyman Meinzer and outdoors writer and novelist Henry Chappell, who teamed up a decade ago to produce 6666: Portrait of a Texas Ranch (Texas Tech University Press, 2006), have debuted their newest book collaboration, Horses to Ride, Cattle to Cut: The San Antonio Viejo Ranch of Texas (Badlands Design and Production, 2016). The duo signed copies at the Candlelight at the Ranch event at the National Ranching Heritage Center in Lubbock Dec. 10 and have also held recent events at the George W. Bush Library and in South Texas. >>READ MORE

Above: Photographer Wyman Meinzer (left) and author Henry Chappell (right); Sylinda Meinzer (center) at the National Ranching Heritage Center Dec. 10.

LONE STAR LISTENS interviews >> archive

Kay Ellington, Editor and Publisher

12.11.2016 “Enough to provide any writer with a lifetime of material”: John Pipkin on historical fiction and resources — and poetry

Though the novel The Blind Astronomer’s Daughter takes places in late eighteenth-century Ireland, the current Texas connections are numerous. The author, John Pipkin, is a former executive director of the Writers League of Texas and the current writer in residence at Southwestern University in Georgetown. He did some of his research for the book at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin. You may have seen the author at the Texas Book Festival last month. Despite being extremely busy grading finals last week, Pipkin took time out of his schedule to be interviewed by email for Lone Star Listens.

LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE: Congratulations on your latest well-received novel, The Blind Astronomer’s Daughter. For our readers not familiar with your book, will you describe it for them?

JOHN PIPKIN: The Blind Astronomer’s Daughter is set in late-eighteenth-century Ireland and England, and it interweaves the stories of the real-life brother and sister astronomers William and Caroline Herschel (who discovered the planet Uranus and numerous comets), as well as the fictional stories of Arthur Ainsworth, an astronomer obsessed with finding a new planet near the sun, his daughter, Caroline Ainsworth, who is determined to escape her father’s obsessions, and a talented blacksmith, Finnegan O’Siodha, inspired by the emerging pseudo-science of galvanism. The novel unfolds against the backdrop of science and astronomy, changing perspectives on the natural world, and the political upheaval of the Irish Rebellion of 1798. >>READ MORE

Texas’s only statewide, weekly calendar of book events

Bookish Texas event highlights 12.11.2016
>> GO this week Michelle Newby, Contributing Editor

DALLAS Mon., Dec. 12 Kettle Art Galley, Wordspace Dallas presents the Pegasus Reading Series featuring Amy Bernhard, Andy Briseño, Alex Lemon, and Sanderia Faye, 7PMAUSTIN Tues., Dec. 13 Austin History Center, book discussion with Texas Monthly Executive Editor Skip Hollandsworth, author of the recent book The Midnight Assassin, 6:30PMSAN ANTONIO Wed., Dec. 13 The Hotel Emma, the San Antonio Book Festival (SABF) presents an evening with Paulette Jiles, author of the National Book Award-nominated News of the World, in conversation with SABF literary director Clay Smith, 6PMFORT WORTH Thurs., Dec. 15, B&N – Hulen Center, Fear No Evil: Tackling Quarterbacks and Demons on My Way to the Hall of Fame book signing with Charles Haley, 7PMAUSTIN Fri., Dec, 16, Paramount Theatre, The Moth stories and storytellers, 8PMSAN ANTONIO Fri., Dec. 17, The Twig Book Shop, E.R. Bills will read and sign Road Kill: Texas Horror by Texas Writers, 2PMDALLAS Sun., Dec. 18, Deep Vellum Books, Poetry March and Readings: We Will Not Be Silent, 2PM

Visit our annual catalog of great Texas reads in these gift categories!

News Briefs 12.11.16

December “Professor’s Corner” to focus on poems by Texas poet laureate Larry D. Thomas, Dec. 14, Denton

Dr. Stephen Souris, professor of English at Texas Woman’s University, will lead a presentation and discussion of poet Larry D. Thomas’s work Wed., Dec. 14, 2016 from 7:00 to 8:30 pm at the Denton South Branch Library.

“Professor’s Corner: A Literary Discussion Group” started in 1999, to meet a public need for high quality presentations on literary topics aimed at the general public with an emphasis on discussion.

Right: Larry D. Thomas (from author’s website)

All the sessions this season will be devoted to Texas poets laureate. >>READ MORE

Writers Resist events slated for Jan. 15, 2017, in three Texas cities

Writers Resist, a literary collective born of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election that publishes creative expressions of resistance by diverse writers and artists, has prompted the grass-roots organization of events around the nation, including those organized in Austin, Houston, And San Antonio for Sun., Jan. 15. >>READ MORE

Lone Star Lit’s Literary Tour of Texas: Burnet, San Antonio

The Texas Hill Country is a treat any time of year — but the opportunity to travel to San Antonio and the rolling, wooded country north of it in early December, when towns are a-twinkle with holiday lights, is a real treat.

Kay Ellington and Barbara Brannon were the guest presenters at the monthly Coffee Talks series at the Herman Brown Free Library in Burnet, a historic town with a good many dedicated readers and writers. (Above, library director Betsy Engelbrecht, right, with library supporters and Paragraph Ranch authors Brannon and Ellington, far right). The library welcomes visitors not only to its author presentations, but to its J. Frank Dobie Geneaology Room, its superb collection of Texana, and its main circulation room (below), with a striking portrait of Comanche chief Quanah Parker.

San Antonio is the nation’s seventh largest city, and it offers destinations for writers and book lovers commensurate with its size and rich culture. We visited only a few during our one day in the Alamo City, including the San Antonio Central Library (above), an architectural lodestone that houses world-class art — such as the Chihuly sculpture at left — as well as books and media; across the street, the Southwest College of Art, where student work is on display in the circa 1851 former Ursuline Convent Gemini Ink, the center for writers and readers that has occupied four differ San Antonio locales since 1992.

At Gemini Ink, founder and board member Nan Cuba joined current development director Bernadette Smyth to provide a history and tour of this groundbreaking literary arts program that serves diverse local audiences. Their upcoming events include readings from their own class members, presentations by visiting authors and, in May 2017, a lecture and reading by U.S. poet laureate Juan Felipe Herrera.

Above, from right: Barbara Brannon, Kay Ellington, Bernadette “Bernie” Smyth, Nan Cuba

The Twig Bookshop is another must-visit bookish stop. Not only did owner Claudia Maceo (at right, top right) show us around the store, but through the latest additions to the renovation of the Pearl Brewery complex, including the Hotel Emma and its own library, open to guests and for special events.