Blue Bicycle Books

Since falling in love with Charleston while filming Vice Principals, Busy Philipps has returned with her family many times. Join us in welcoming her back to the Lowcountry, Sat., Oct. 20, 7 pm, at the Charleston Museum, as we celebrate the release of her book This Will Only Hurt a Little (Touchstone, Oct. 2018, hb., 320 pp).

Tickets include a hardback copy of This Will Only Hurt a Little, pre-signed by the author. 

Moderator TBA.

About the book: A hilarious, heartfelt, and refreshingly honest memoir by the beloved comedic actress known for her roles on Freaks and Geeks, Dawson’s Creek, and Cougar Town who has become “the breakout star of Instagram stories…Imagine I Love Lucy mixed with a modern lifestyle guru” (The New Yorker).

“You guys!! Busy is a legit writer with a voice as clear as a bell. This book is honest, funny, intimate, and well-observed by a person who has observed some sh*t.” —Tina Fey

“Judy Blume meets Karl Ove Knausgaard meets one brave woman from Arizona. On the page, Philipps’ toughness shines through—a rare and feminine ethical code; devoted and blunt. It’s a thrill to watch her stumble right up until the very moment she storms the f*cking gates.” —Miranda July

Busy Philipps is an actress best known for roles in cult TV classics like Dawson’s Creek, Freaks & Geeks, Cougar Town, ER, and most recently, HBO’s Vice Principals. She has appeared in fan-favorite films such as Made of Honor, I Don’t Know How She Does It, He’s Just Not That Into You, White Chicks, and The Gift. She also was one of the writers of the hit film Blades of Glory. Busy lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their two daughters.

Join us Fri., Sept. 21, 12 pm for lunch at Halls Signature Events (5 Faber St.), as we celebrate the release of Our Prince of Scribes (UGA Press, hb., 320 pp., $30), a new anthology of essays on Pat Conroy.

Tickets are $64 for the three-course luncheon and book.

Get tickets here.

Conroy’s was a messy fellowship of people from all walks of life. His relationships were complicated, and people and places he thought he’d left behind often circled back to him at crucial moments. The book’s contributors include Pulitzer Prize winners Rick Bragg and Kathleen Parker; Grammy winners Barbra Streisand and Janis Ian; Lillian Smith Award winners Anthony Grooms and Mary Hood; National Book Award winner Nikky Finney; James Beard Foundation Award winners Nathalie Dupree and Cynthia Graubart; a corps of best-selling authors like Ron Rash, Sandra Brown, and Mary Alice Monroe; Conroy biographers Katherine Clark and Catherine Seltzer; longtime Conroy friends Bernie Schein, Cliff Graubart, John Warley, and Walter Edgar; Pat’s students Sallie Ann Robinson and Valerie Sayers; members of the Conroy family; and many more.

Each author in this collection offers a slightly different view of Conroy. Through their voices, a vibrant, multifaceted portrait comes to life and sheds new light on the writer and the man.

Join us Sat., Sept. 8, 8 pm as Nicole Rivas will be here to read from her debut chapbook of short stories called A Bright and Pleading Dagger (Rose Metal Press, pb., 44 pp., $12).

A dazzling and incisive collection of twelve flash fictions illuminating the varied lives of women and girls, A Bright and Pleading Dagger immerses readers in its subjects’ complex experiences with desire, selfhood, and omnipresent danger. A pizza shop worker goes on a series of visceral dates with her gynecologist; a slighted lover coughs up a forgotten childhood toy; an artist unknowingly becomes the subject of an intrusive admirer’s lust; a woman has a heated staring contest with the world’s oldest man. Powerful and precise, Rivas’ stories highlight the unreality within the real, simultaneously evoking humor, outrage, and awe.

Nicole Rivas is from Los Angeles and the Inland Empire. A Bright and Pleading Dagger is her first chapbook. Her fiction has appeared in Passages North, The Journal, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere. She teaches writing at Georgia Southern University in Savannah. More information can be found at www.nicolemrivas.com. 

Join us Wed., Aug. 15, 6 pm, as Brooke McAlary will discuss her book Slow (Sourcebooks, hb., 288 pp., $26), hosted by the Ready Club and Jessica Murnane, author of One Part Plant.

Once upon a time, it became clear to Brooke McAlary that the key to happiness was discovering a simpler, more fulfilling existence. She put the brakes on her stressful path, and reorganized her life to live outside the status-quo, emphasizing depth, connection and meaningful experiences. Alongside Brooke’s affirming personal stories of breaking down and rising up, Slow provides practical advice and fascinating insights into the benefits and challenges of the slow life, such as:

―Decluttering to de-owning
―Messiness to mindfulness
―Asking why, to asking where to now?

Slow is an inspirational guide on creating a life filled with the things that really matter, and is meant for anyone seeking peace, meaning, and joy in their otherwise rapid lives. Slowly―of course.

Brooke McAlary is a slow-travelling, gutsy shiraz-appreciating writer who, after being diagnosed with severe post-natal depression in 2011, embarked on a one-woman mission to cut out the excess in her life and reconnect with what was really important. She is now immersed in the Slow Living philosophy, and makes it her mission to help others define and achieve their slow living goals.

She writes the blog Slow Your Home, and hosts and produces the podcast, The Slow Home Podcast. She is currently slow-travelling her way around North America with her family.

Join us Fri., Aug. 24, 12 pm for lunch at Halls Signature Events (5 Faber St.), as Issac J. Bailey discusses his new book My Brother Moochie (Other Press, hb., 304 pp., $26).

Tickets are $32 for the three-course luncheon, or $60 to add a signed copy of the book.

Get tickets here.

At the age of nine, Issac J. Bailey saw his hero, his eldest brother, taken away in handcuffs, not to return from prison for thirty-two years. Bailey tells the story of their relationship and of his experience living in a family suffering from guilt and shame. Drawing on sociological research as well as his expertise as a journalist, he seeks to answer the crucial question of why Moochie and many other young black men—including half of the ten boys in his own family—end up in the criminal justice system. What role do poverty, race, and faith play? What effect does living in the South, in the Bible Belt, have? And why is their experience understood as an acceptable trope for black men, while white people who commit crimes are never seen in this generalized way?

My Brother Moochie provides a wide-ranging yet intensely intimate view of crime and incarceration in the United States, and the devastating effects on the incarcerated, their loved ones, their victims, and society as a whole.

Issac J. Bailey was born in St. Stephen, South Carolina, and holds a degree in psychology from Davidson College in North Carolina. Having trained at the prestigious Poynter Institute for journalists in St. Petersburg, Florida, he has been a professional journalist for twenty years. He has taught applied ethics at Coastal Carolina University and, as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, has taught journalism at Harvard Summer School. He currently lives in Myrtle Beach with his wife and children.