Poet Ross Gay tasked himself with what sounds like a job for a Hallmark greeting card writer: he spent a year looking for things that gave him joy, be they people, places, or events big or small. Unlike the sentiments usually found on schmaltzy greeting cards, though, the brief prose essays that Gay has written …
One silver lining from no travel and minimizing in-person contact is that event access is not geographically-dependent. This year, it means that the celebration of 2021 Pacific Northwest Book Award-winning the authors and books is online and open to all registered book lovers. The event will be presented as a Zoom webinar Wednesday, February 10 …
Author Pam Stucky is joined by booksellers from Madison Books (James Crossley), Queen Anne Book Company (Tegan Tigani), and Ballast Book Company (Suzanne Droppert) to discuss why and how we can support our local bookstores, especially now in this difficult pandemic season. Local bookstores have been facing growing challenges for several years, but the pandemic …
With social distancing guidelines in place, audiobooks, ebooks, and online orders from local bookstores are a way to keep your communities as healthy as possible. Libro.fm, the Seattle audiobook company that partners with many independent bookstores, is offering a new member incentive that is a big help to local, neighborhood shops. If you haven’t tried …
Ann Patchett’s newest novel gives us two separate portraits: one of a family and one of a house. Danny, the son of a self-made man, and presumptive heir to both his business and the luxurious Dutch House, narrates this story. I found I could never predict where the story was going to go. As soon …
Live from PAX West, a book review! There’s something to the notion of a time war, isn’t there? One faction wants This, another faction wants That, and time is the battlefield. There’s also something futile to the notion, but that’s another book (All of an Instant by Richard Garfinkle [out of print]). This book is …
Garth Stein, bestselling author of The Art of Racing in the Rain, has always been a storyteller. He went to graduate school for film and made documentary films for years before he wrote his first novel, which he did while also working on grant proposals. “It was almost accidental,” he says. “But I enjoyed the process, …
Gods and Generals by Jeff Shaara This is available as an abridged audiobook, if you have a drive or your bookstore is closed for the holiday. The Final Storm by Jeff Shaara This is #4 in the the World War II series. If you want to start right away on book one, here’s the audiobook; …
Perhaps you read Snyder’s bracing pamphlet, On Tyranny (or the Facebook post it was based on)—from its title, I had imagined this new, much larger book as an expansion of those ideas, but, while it’s written in the same level-headed-but-urgent tone (which Snyder’s voice for the audiobook perfectly represents), it’s doing something related but different, focusing less …
Audiobooks. More specifically, audiobook narrators and the ability of said narrators to make or break an audiobook experience. I was going to try to do this without naming names, but I’ve never before shied away from being upfront about what I don’t like, so why would I now? I think it stemmed from some …
