“I was honored to talk. I was smiling the rest of the day at the interesting mix of speakers—the different speeds and approaches. I take refuge in the inarguable fact that I am not a speaker at all, not a performer or a lecturer or a wise person, which is hugely freeing, because I can …
As I read this wonderful novel I was reminded of things forgotten, like rivers singing and time spent alone on river banks in mossy shade dripping with salmon berries, our family crow who also spoke (one of the main characters in the book is a very philosophic crow), and northwest characters that are both familiar …
Susan Blackwell Ramsey is not a Northwest author. She’s a Michigander. But she heavily praises Brian Doyle and Marilynne Robinson in this interview with Foreword Reviews, so we’re going to adopt her for the moment. She’s also smart, funny and charming, dropping a great Neil Gaiman advice quote for writers, an invitation to the interviewer …
We have to pass on this essay from Brian Doyle commemorating Broadway Books’ 20th anniversary. It was made into a broadside by Letterary Press, and it’s pretty wonderful, a tribute to all indie bookstores, really. Broadway Books’ co-owner Sally McPherson tells us the store’s celebration Sunday was fabulous—that they were “mobbed all day long—sort of …
Broadway Books is having a party this Sunday, May 6 to celebrate its 20th birthday. Co-owners Sally McPherson and Roberta Dyer have a lively celebration planned, for the day and for the next year, to thank their customers for “helping us to ride the waves that have carried us up and down over the years.” …
My favorite book of 2011 was Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese.
Brian Doyle’s first novel, Mink River, published to critical and bookseller acclaim earlier this year, is set in a small town on the Oregon Coast called Neawanaka. An unusual novel, it has no main character but is rather a woven narrative encompassing the stories of many characters, including Irish-Americans and Native Americans, as well as …
We were surprised and intrigued (not to mention briefly taken with the dramatic possibilities of uncovering a literary scandal) when we stumbled upon news about a new book the other day. Rodale has published The Sublime Engine: A Biography of the Human Heart by Stephen Amidon and Thomas Amidon, M.D, a book that is receiving …
“Brian Doyle loves words; big words, small words, fancy words, plain words, exotic words, domesticated words, adjectives, verbs and nouns especially, and because he loves words he piles them up in great juicy heaps of phrases and paragraphs and sentences and pages and whole books and makes delicious stories with them, stories about impossibly possible …
Sylla McClellan at Third Street Books in McMinnville, OR, mentioned this piece by Brian Doyle in her blog yesterday, and we thought it was pretty nice. Don’t ALL booklovers read in bed?!?! But would we dare call doing so a “grim responsibility?” Doyle goes where few have gone before.
