Thanks to Shelf Awareness for sharing this article from Brooklyn Based, which nicely summarizes where a lot of indie stores stand with e-books and e-readers. Here’s a helpful excerpt: “Kindle is the main device we equate with e-readers, and it’s no secret that its manufacturer is notoriously competitive. Not only does Amazon sell books at …
“This month we are sharing our Top 40 list and have a display of the hot-selling titles from last year. I have an increasingly cranky view of this yearly exercise. It seems that all the press, media, blogosphere is focused on telling us what is most popular. What’s cool, what’s now, what everybody else is …
Unfortunately, bookstores close all the time, and we’re used to the list of factors that includes words such as Amazon, economy and eBooks. It’s something quite different when a neighborhood indie collapses when the cornerstone is removed from the inside. That is the lament of former Queen Anne Books (Seattle) employee Wendee Wieking, as featured in …
We’ve had our eye on her book since way back in the spring and are thrilled that Seattle cartoonist Ellen Forney is now garnering nationwide critical acclaim (Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, NYT, etc.) with her new graphic memoir, Marbles. Forney was the Shelf Awareness Book Brahmin last Friday, giving us a taste of her sensibilities without being …
Many of us love the smell of a good book, but the taste? Powell’s Books has teamed up with Oregon’s Rogue brewery to create a commemorative ale “infused with the seafaring spirit of Moby-Dick.” And we’re not talking about salt air infusion—we’re talking about an actual part of the story! White Whale Ale is available at …
The November issue of Bookslut features an ambitious multi-book review/essay that includes works from Portlanders Lidia Yuknavitch (Dora: A Headcase) and Blake Nelson (Girl and Dream School), and Spokane’s Gregory Spatz (Inukshuk). Who needs vampires when there’s so much real teen angst and real bad parenting to mine? Thanks, Judy Blume, you changed things Forever.
Nearly 50 years into her publishing career, Ursula K. Le Guin lives in a rare zone where she’s simultaneously iconic and contemporary. She has major literary awards dating back to 1968 and three new releases this fall that are at the forefront of indie bookstore holiday campaigns throughout the Northwest. One of those new titles is …
“So who might want to fall into the world of Little Century? Readers with some combination of these interests: historical fiction, coming of age stories, Northwestern history, settlers, cows, cowboys, native people, sheep, homesteaders, geology, printing presses, jokes about Swedes, jokes about chickens, jokes about horses, lupine, rabbitbrush, sage and juniper, moral quandaries, furtive kitchen …
As he told it, at 3 a.m., just five hours before he was to speak in front of a breakfast throng of nearly 200 indie booksellers, Jonathan Evison hailed a cab from the hotel and headed to Kinkos. He had made the decision that he didn’t want to cry. Evison needed help to tell his …
Yesterday on the public radio program The Writer’s Almanac, Garrison Keillor read from Oregon author John Daniel’s new poetry collection, Of Earth: New and Selected Poems. Listen here for the full five-minute program, which ends with Keillor reading Daniel’s lovely poem ‘A Prayer Among Friends.’ Of Earth, published by Lost Horse Press, is Daniel’s first …
