Here’s Susie Hodge and Amy Grimes with Artistic Places, the latest volume in the Inspired Traveller’s Guides series. This time around, we’re visiting famous artistic destinations around the world, where we’ll get a chance to understand what prompted a visual artist to do some art. Munch and his bridge. Constable and his landscapes. Vermeer and …
Important traveller tip: Dinner at the Bozeman airport after 5pm is either food at one or two unremarkable (and overly crowded) eateries or a microwaved Hot Pocket. We got the last two pockets. This is the sort of thing that Bourdain does not cover in his recent book. –Mark Teppo, A Good Book, Sumner, WA …
From A Good Book in Sumner, WA: It’s been one of those “making sh*t up” weeks. We do Blind Date books at the bookstore, and they’ve morphed from traditional blind date sorts of profile to Snark in a Brown Paper Wrap. It turns out that snark sells. Over the last few years, I’ve done more …
If You Go Down to the Woods Today is a marvelous book filled with delightful pictures by Hartas and charming quatrains by Piercey. Sure to delight the smaller folk in your house, as well as provide them with a reasonable checklist that they can attain without a significant budget and a passport. –A Good Book, …
Ah, here is Ava Barry’s Windhall, a deliciously dark murder mystery about the golden age of Hollywood. Back then, a leading lady’s dead body is discovered in her equally famous director’s rose garden. He’s charged with murder, but the case is thrown out before the trial, and the director vanishes. Now, sixty-nine years later, another woman …
Phung Nguyen Quang and Huynh Kim Lien have created My First Day, a delightfully illustrated children’s story book about the magic and excitement of the “first day.” In this case, An is leaving home for his first day of school. It’s also the first day his mother has allowed him to take a boat out on …
Shaun David Hutchinson’s A Complicated Love Story Set in Space follows three teens who wrestle with the comedic set-up of the title while escaping from a bathroom, fixing a leaking coolant conduit, and rebooting a recalcitrant computer. All of which leads to a lot of space folding, awkward conversations, and constantly thrilling set pieces that …
Matt Ruff is mercurial, and you never know what he’s going to do next. With 88 Names, he tackles the whole online persona/MMORPG thing (also known as “I Know What We’re All Doing This Summer”). Our protagonist is John Chu, who runs a sherpa business, which is a thing where neophytes get guided through the hard …
Here’s a mashup we weren’t expecting this year (oh, come on, this is a good surprise—not like, say, murder hornets): Perestroika in Paris, an equestrian fairy tale set in Paris. Written by Pulitzer Prize Winner Jane Smiley, no less. Perestroika is Paris is the story of a talking racehorse who decides to venture into the world beyond …
The gorgeous writing, vivid setting, compelling characters, and engrossing story aren’t even the best parts of this novel. Instead, I just keep marveling at how Jess Walter takes events from history to illuminate our present while keeping them rooted in their own time, from the labor movement to class, race, and gender equality and civil …
