Set in Alaska in the 1920s, a husband and wife are drifting apart. Unable to have their own child, they create one out of snow one night, and it changes their whole lives. This novel is full of rich imagery and wonderful characters. Eowyn Ivey has written a beautiful fairy tale that really reaches out …
We don’t consider it often, but writing about the past, even in the most straightforward way, makes time elastic. Take The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis, for example. It’s a 1983 novel that’s having a renaissance due to Netflix’s acclaimed screen adaptation. (Side notes: I’ve seen one episode so far and agree with the accolades. I …
Ken Kesey and fellow Merry Prankster Ken Babbs bring us a “real American Western” based upon events from the 1911 Pendleton Round Up, which he first heard around campfires as a child in eastern Oregon. Filled with real life colorful characters and great, snappy dialogue, the Kens craft a wonderful American Tall Tale, exaggerated and …
Before she was known for her memoir Wild, Cheryl Strayed was writing advice columns under the pseudonym Dear Sugar. The essays collected in this book are unlike any other advice pieces I’ve ever read; they’re filled with empathy and gut-wrenching honesty and are the perfect thing for someone who might be feeling a little (or a …
Before I start celebrating all of the festive holiday-themed Romance novels you can curl up with as the weather tuns cold and the nights grow longer and you need a break from all of the forced cheer, I need to address a huge, huge mistake in last month’s column. I forgot to include My Fake …
This is a book about family secrets and a ghost. Not new ideas, certainly, but Stein’s story of a young boy returning to the family mansion with his dad during a trial separation from his mother is, at times, gut-wrenching in the discomfort that dredging up the past brings. And this family has a particularly …
The headline to a review I wrote of this book when it came out in 2004 read, “Caribou Hair Everywhere,” and I can’t think of three words that better describe it. Raised by a father who moved from the Midwest to a sod igloo in remote, northwest Alaska, young Cutuk grows toward an inevitable choice …
This is a link we’ve had in the files for quite some time now… Even though the titles aren’t quite so fresh, it’s still a fun tool. The Seattle Times created interactive book recommendations based on reviews from the paper. You know what’s even more fun, though? Visiting a local independent bookshop to ask a bookseller …
Outlander is a timeless tale about Claire Randall — a 1946 WWII nurse who travels back in time through a circle of stones in the Highlands of Scotland. The year is now 1743: English soldiers hunt Highlanders and Claire lands in the hands of Clan Mackenzie, and is forced to marry the young Jamie Fraser for …
This is one of my absolute favorite books that I have ever read. It gets pretty dark towards the end, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. Victoria has never had parents. She’s moved from foster home to foster home and eventually from group home to group home until the age of 18 when …
