What better way to spend a Saturday night than to share favorite songs with my Open Salon friends? It has taken a completely frivolous open call like this to get me to actually post. Here, on the eve of April Fool's Day, it's about time I posted in… Read full post »

Box of books by Lucy Mercer.

I’ve loved bookstores since I was a little girl, so it's no wonder I would grow up to work in both independent and chain bookstores. The small town in upstate South Carolina where I grew up had a Carnegie library, but not… Read full post »

Photo by Lucy Mercer

This weekend, I’ll pull my last shift as a bookseller, and if God is with me, my last retail shift ever. My Borders store hasn’t flatlined yet, but it’s just a matter of days, and I’ve decided to hang up my… Read full post »

Open Salon is a valuable forum for writers, but you reach a point where you need to find audiences beyond the hallowed OS doors. This is where StumbleUpon may be useful. See the little icons above each of your posts on your blog page? The squiggly SU… Read full post »

Apple Cheddar Pie by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Today, March 14, is Pi Day, a day to celebrate the mathematical constant, the one snippet of higher math that geeks and non-geeks can talk about together. Pi is 3.14, and today is 3/14, March… Read full post »

Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

When I last wrote, I was in the first day of what became known as either Snowpocalypse or Snowmageddon, catchy words the Atlanta weather gurus came up with to describe the week. The snow fell for just a day, but the subsequent low… Read full post »

The weatherman was right: the predicted snowy apocalypse arrived overnight and I woke up in a winter wonderland. Our little corner of the woods is pristine when covered in snow.

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Visit my mom’s house on New Year’s Day and you will be treated to simple, humble fare – a black-as-midnight cast iron skillet sizzling with buttermilk cornbread, a pot of black-eyed peas and a bowl of greens, usually collards. The peas and greens are usually cooked with pork… Read full post »

For my Open Salon friends, a plate of cookies, and a partial re-post of a story that includes my favorite Christmas carol.

 I truly love Christmas and Christmas songs, both sacred and secular. Some of my dearest childhood memories are of turning out the lamps in the… Read full post »

Way back when, in 2000, life was giddy and good and I decided to write my first Christmas newsletter. Except, I didn't want it to be like every other Christmas newsletter out there. You know the ones I mean. The travelogues:  "In March, we had an audience with… Read full post »

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Christmas music is the mood-setter as we gear up for the holidays. I look forward each year to the familiar and funny, as well as the sacred and serious songs of the season. Before I tell you about my favorite song, I will tell you what I… Read full post »

“Oh Buddy, I think it’s fruitcake weather,” goes the opening line to one of the best short stories ever written (and certainly a sentimental Southern favorite), “A Christmas Memory” by Truman Capote. Capote based the story on his own memor… Read full post »

Last week, I wrote about  Bake It Forward, a program of the Imperial Sugar Company (makers of Dixie Crystals sugar) to encourage home bakers to share treats with friends. I sent a tin of ginger cookies and oatmeal raisin cookies to Lisa Kuebler and she's now sending pound/… Read full post »

I’ve never set a place at the Thanksgiving table for my father-in-law. He died a few years before I met my husband., so I know him only through pictures like these here, and the stories he told his children, tale… Read full post »

Christmas and cookies are synonymous in my house. I bake throughout the year, but when the frost is on the pumpkin, the unsalted butter and eggs go on the counter for a day (and ok, maybe a week) of cookie baking. Each holiday season, I make my mom's buttery, crisp… Read full post »

 Once the calendar flips over to November, we seem to be in a Thanksgiving tizzy. I love the holidays, but in recent years have taken a relaxed approach. It helps when the feast is located at a house other than mine. We’re… Read full post »

The frost on the pumpkin is a phrase that weathermen and old timers toss about this time of year, but I've never been too sure what it means or the origin of the phrase until recently. If I'd been raised in the Midwest, I may have known it… Read full post »

Atlanta's "Phantom of the Fox Theatre," Joe Patten, will be able to stay in his Fabulous Fox Theatre apartment until a new lease is negotiated, according to a Fulton County Court.

On Wednesday, Judge Jerry Baxter granted an injunction preventing Patten's eviction from his home o… Read full post »