Spring Warren
Thursday, March 20,
7 p.m.

Whooo hoo!
March is buy-one-get-one-free month at Lyon Books.
All of our used books in stock are BOGO. We will be replenishing our stock throughout the month, so shop again and again.

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March is Women's History Month Check out our great selection books about women who have changed our lives or try a new title from the women writers who continue to do so.

The idea is that we'll gain a more empathetic understanding of this complicated and tumultuous region by reading biographies and fiction about its people. (I'm interested to hear from anyone who thinks this sounds interesting.) heather@lyonbooks.com 

Nim Chimpsky: the Chimp Who Would be Human is a remarkable biography of a chimpanzee by Elizabeth Hess. Project Nim was a psychologist's experiment to refute Noam Chomsky's claim that language is an exclusively human trait. Nim was adopted by a human family living in a New York brownstone, and taught American Sign Language.
A great deal was learned over the course of Nim's life, not the least of which is that chimps, though very intelligent, make terrible pets. This is a fascinating look at academia through the '70s, '80s, and '90s and the studies of linguistics, psychology, and animal science.

 

My fiction pick for March is The Senator's Wife, by Sue Miller. An unexpectedly pregnant newlywed becomes the next-door-neighbor of an elegant wife of a famously philandering retired senator. They share a bond of strong women who compromise to accommodate babies and husbands' careers, and they form a complicated friendship. Reading about the life of the wife of a campaigning senator is an enjoyable peek backstage during this election season. Through gifted storytelling and bright use of language, Sue Miller brings these interesting women to life.

 

 

 

Turpentineby Spring Warren, is a sweeping saga of the western frontier in the 1870s, filled with colorful characters, stark images, and absurd situations. Edward Turrentine Bayard III ("Turpentine"), a tubercular easterner, is sent to a Nebraska sanitarium to heal his lungs. Instead, through a series of mishaps and coincidences, this wide-eyed innocent is launched on a cross-country odyssey, involving wealthy entrepreneurs, Mormons, Indians, and a variety of rustic frontier types. There's no shortage of sudden death and grim gore, all of which remains comically on the surface. Characters come and go, often violently, but astonishingly, the sweetness of the story keeps it afloat.