“Taxidermy has been a particular fascination of mine ever since I was a small child. My family’s favorite pizza parlor was covered with nature’s lifeless bounty, as was Marsh’s Free Museum in Long Beach, Washington, where we had a beach house. With Jake the Alligator Man as a close personal friend, it is no wonder …
Today’s Face Out is a two-title theme set pulled from Powell’s Books’ 2012 Staff Top 5s feature. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain. “One-third of the world’s population are introverts, and we are quietly going to take over the world while you extroverts are busy yapping it up and …
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 …
Pauls Toutonghi’s second novel, Evel Knievel Days, takes Khosi Saqr, a quirky, OCD-prone boy out of his comfort zone in Butte, Montana to Egypt in hopes of finding his estranged, compulsively-lying dad. It’s a novel worth celebrating, and that’s exactly what Toutonghi will do after his reading at Powell’s Books tomorrow night. The after-party will be …
When you publish a book, if you’re lucky, people will ask you lots of questions. They‘re curious about what you’re reading, your writing space, your life. There’s a sudden demand to be thoughtful and present about your habits and attitudes. In thinking about how I spend my time, writing, reading, cooking, I realized that the …
“Lucia Perillo has aready won (& broken) hearts through her poetry, but now she takes it up a notch, blossoming into a flawless collection of incredible short stories. This collection is raw, yet so polished . . . Not since Donald Ray Pollock’s Knockemstiff has a gathering of stories packed themselves into one powerful punch.”—Donna, Powell’s …
In the Beginning: I sell my first piece of writing when I am in the second grade. It is a screenplay for the TV series Star Trek. Proof of my precociousness is written across the title page in my father’s neat, bold uppercase hand: “PURCHASED FROM THE AUTHOR: 25¢.” To this day, it is one …
Our Day 15 author bookends her list in the smart, poetic, alluring way of her memoir, The Chronology of Water. The Chronology is on the shortlist for a Pacific Northwest Book Award from the indie booksellers of this region; a good number of other year-end lists and non-lists; and was recommended by authors on Day 7 and Day 12 …
It’s Day 11 at 28 Authors, 28 Variations on a List, and we’ve got Jonathan Case, who writes and draws books in Portland, as a member of Periscope Studio, the largest cooperative of comics creators in America. His first book, Dear Creature, came out this fall from Tor/Macmillan to critical acclaim, local and beyond. Case …
In a major ruling for bookstores and libraries, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals today struck down two Oregon statutes that criminalized the distribution of sex education and other non-obscene materials. The Media Coalition in New York issued a press statement at about 1:30 pm on Monday, September 20 that said in part: “The State …
