Blue Bicycle Books

Thurs., Sept. 12 — Terry Hamlin, Building a Better Runner

Tues., Sept. 17 — Corrie Wang, City of Beasts

Tues., Sept. 17 — Jennifer Berry Hawes, Grace Will Lead Us Home

Fri., Sept. 20 — Colin Egglesfield, The Agile Artist

Tues., Sept. 24 — Curt Mercadante, The Five Pillars of Freedom

Wed., Sept. 25 — Vincent Musi and Callie Shell at the Charleston Music Hall

Sat., Sept. 28 — Patricia Lockwood and Jillian Weise at Redux

Wed., Oct. 2 — Derrick White, Blood, Sweat, and Tears

Fri., Oct. 4 — Peter Zheutlin, The Dog Went Over the Mountain

Fri., Oct. 11 — Nathalie Dupree, Nathalie Dupree’s Favorite Stories and Recipes

Thurs., Oct. 17 — Witold Rybczynski, Charleston Fancy

Sat., Oct. 26 — Author Luncheon with Karen White, The Christmas Spirits on Tradd Street

Tues., Oct. 29 — Cinelle Barnes, Malaya: Essays on Freedom

Fri., Nov. 8 – Sat., Nov. 9 — YALLFest!

Thurs., Nov. 14 — Deborah Burns, Saturday’s Child

Fri., Nov. 15 — Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

Thurs., Nov. 21 — Author Luncheon with Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

The party of the fall might just be Tues., Sept. 17, 5-7 pm at Babas on Cannon (11 Cannon Street), celebrating the release of Corrie Wang’s new young adult novel City of Beasts (Freeform, hb., 384 pp., $18). There will be drink specials and raffle prizes, including giftcards to Jackrabbit Filly, the restaurant Corrie and and her husband Shuai own.

Can’t make it? Order a signed copy here.

In City of Beasts, fees and beasts live separately. The division of the sexes has kept their world peaceful for seventeen years. Glori Rhodes, like most fees her age, adores her neighborhood’s abandoned Costco, can bench her body weight, and knew twenty-seven beast counterattack moves by the time she was seven. She has never questioned the separation of the sexes or the rules that keep her post-nuclear hometown safe. But when her mother secretly gives birth to a baby beast, Glori grows to love the child and can’t help wondering: What really is the difference between us and them?

Corrie Wang owns and operates Jackrabbit Filly, a friendly neighborhood restaurant in Charleston, South Carolina. She is passionate about libraries, recycling, and eating all the food everywhere. Her debut novel, The Takedown, received much love from the New York Public Library and YALSA. She and her husband Shuai live in a cozy yellow house with their pups Moose and Olive. You can find out very little about her at corriewang.com or a bit more on Instagram @corrie_wang.

Sat., Sept. 28, at 7 pm, poets Patricia Lockwood and Jillian Weise will be reading at Redux Contemporary Art Center (1056 King Street). The event is free and open to the public, and Redux is accessible and inclusive to all people.

Jillian’s new book, Cyborg Detective, came out in early September. After the reading, there will be time for audience discussion with the authors, followed by a meet-and-greet and booksigning.

Patricia Lockwood is an American poet and essayist. In addition to her memoir Priestdaddy, which was named one of the 10 best books of 2017 by The New York Times, she has published two poetry collections and is notable for her trans-genre poetics.

Jillian Weise is a poet, performance artist and disability rights activist. She is the author of four books: three poetry collections and a novel. Her first book, The Amputee’s Guide to Sex, was recently reissued in a 10th anniversary edition with a new preface. Cyborg Detective is just out from BOA Editions. Weise co-edited a feature on disability poetics with Khadijah Queen for The New York Times. Her work has also appeared in A Public Space, Granta and Tin House. Her web series, “Tips for Writers by Tipsy Tullivan,” has been profiled by BOMB, Electric Lit and Inside Higher Ed. She teaches at Clemson University.

Thurs., Sept. 12, at 6 pm Terry Hamlin, founder of the Charleston Running Club, will be here to talk about his new book Building a Better Runner (Vertel Publishing, pb., 199 pp., $22).

Building A Better Runner is your ultimate guide to distance running. Whether you are a teenager who enjoys running the mile, a hobby runner who wants to be fitter and faster, or a high-level athlete aiming for Olympic gold, this book has training tips and plans to suit your needs. There is a specific way that the body improves. If the right phases of training are used at the right times, then an athlete (from a beginner or hobby runner to an elite, high-level runner) can benefit from this scheduling. By using a scientific method developed by author and runner Terry Hamlin, this book utilizes physiology, biochemistry, and periods of stress and recovery to create the most effective program for runners looking to better themselves athletically. Hamlin wants runners to understand how the body works on a kinetic and cellular level. Additionally, he hopes to help runners understand that it’s possible to remove your frustration with not improving and make the sport of running an exciting, lifelong pursuit.

Terry Hamlin began to run to stay in shape for surfing. He went on to the University of South Carolina, where he was offered a partial scholarship in his sophomore year and accepted. He has always considered himself a road racer. Two friends, Frank Shorter and Steve Prefontaine, were having great success on the track and road, so Hamlin upped his mileage in 1974. When another friend, Bill Rodgers, won the 1975 Boston Marathon, Hamlin began to focus on the sport even more and learned all he could through his biochemistry/psychology dual major about what made him and other runners “tick.” Hamlin was ranked in the top twenty distance runners in America in 1979. He won dozens of races from the mile to the marathon. In fact, a team he put together in 1978 still holds the US Twenty-Four-Hour Relay Record. In 1977, while working full-time as a chemist at the Medical University of South Carolina, Hamlin and Dr. Marcus Newberry put together the famed Cooper River Bridge Run. That same year, Terry created the Charleston Running Club, one of the best running groups in America. Hamlin is a full-time realtor in Charleston, South Carolina, and he coaches runners interested in “becoming the best runner within.” He has coached five runners to the US Olympic Trials and has two more on the way, as of the release of this book. Hamlin lives outside his hometown with his wife, Dolly, and their two schnauzers, chickens, and assorted animals on his horse farm in the Francis Marion National Forest.

The Year of the Dogs Live with Vincent J. Musi

Special Guest Callie Shell presenting Hope, Never Fear: A Personal Portrait of the Obamas   

Charleston Music Hall (37 John Street)

Wed., Sept. 25, 7 pm

Get tickets HERE.

Charleston-based photographers Vincent Musi and Callie Shell speak about their life, work, and new books.

As a National Geographic photographer, traveling the world to photograph lions, tigers and bears was a regular day’s work for Vince.  All that changed when his son turned sixteen–he decided to try something different; to spend some quality time at home and open a hometown studio to photograph dogs.

The result is The Year of the Dogs, a book chronicling his work in the studio matched with witty ‘dogographies’ gleaned from his time spent with each subject.

From a Labrador that likes opera to a kleptomaniac miniature golden doodle, and a loveable one-eyed Jack Russell to a farting bulldog, Musi captures the unique character and personality of these everyday dogs with evocative images and a gently comic mash-up of his own life experiences that have captured the hearts of many on his wildly popular Instagram feed.

In 2004 Callie met a first-term Illinois State Senator named Barack Obama. The two struck up a friendship, and she began photographing him for Time Magazine. Her new book Hope, Never Fear presents a unique look behind the curtains following the journey from the Obama’s family home in Chicago to the most powerful house in our nation.

Join us Thurs., Aug. 29, 6 pm as David Slucki, a Jewish Studies professor at the College of Charleston, will be here to discuss his new memoir Sing This at My Funeral: A Memoir of Fathers and Sons (Wayne State Press, pb., 280 pp., $28).

Sing This at My Funeral tells the story of David’s father Charles and his grandfather Jakub, and the grave legacy that they each passed on. This is a story about the Holocaust and its aftermath, about absence and the scars that never heal, and about fathers and sons and what it means to raise young men.

In Sing This at My Funeral, tragedy follows the Slucki family across the globe: from Jakub’s early childhood in Warsaw, where he witnessed the death of his parents during World War I, to the loss of his family by the hand of the Nazis in April 1942 to his remarriage and relocation in Paris, where after years of bereavement he welcomes the birth of his third son before finally settling in Melbourne, Australia in 1950 in an attempt to get as far away from the ravages of war-torn Europe as he could. Charles (Shmulik in Yiddish) was named both after Jakub’s eldest son and his slain grandfather-a burden he carried through his life, which was one otherwise marked by optimism and adventure. The ghosts of these relatives were a constant in the Slucki home, a small cottage that became the lifeblood of a small community of Jewish immigrants. despite having been shaped by the ghosts of his father’s constantly hovering sorrow. This book interweaves the stories of these men with that of Slucki’s own upbringing, showing how traumatic family histories leave their mark for generations.

Blending the scholarly and literary, David grounds the story of his grandfather and father in the broader context of the twentieth century. Based on thirty years of letters from Jakub to his brother Mendel, on archival materials, and on interviews with family members, this is a unique story and an innovative approach to writing both history and family narrative. Students, scholars, and general readers of memoirs will enjoy this deeply personal reflection on family and grief.

David Slucki is an assistant professor in the Yaschik/Arnold Jewish Studies Program at the College of Charleston. He is the author of The International Jewish Labor Bund after 1945: Toward a Global History and co-editor of In the Shadows of Memory: The Holocaust and the Third Generation.