Walking around the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association trade show this year, I had a task at hand. I needed to corner my fellow book-loving cohorts and ask “What’s the one book you read this year that floored you?” If you want to see a book lover stopped in his tracks, just ask that question. He’ll …
“Kurt Vonnegut has long been in the standing of the only author who wrote a short story that not only left an impression on me, but made me fall in love (See “Long Walk to Forever” from Welcome to the Monkey House). Of course I should’ve known that Sherman Alexie could join those ranks. This …
NW Book Lovers’ North-North-West columnist George Carroll also authors a Young Bookseller Focus series for Shelf Awareness, and his latest piece just happens to be about another contributor from the NWBL roster, resident interview queen Lindsey McGuirk, Village Books’ Digital Marketing & Publishing Coordinator. She does briefly attempt to turn the tables but, in the …
“Cheryl Strayed is not the first person to have an advice column. But she’s the first to treat people like people, and to stand in line with these people, rather than above them. She doesn’t pat them on the back and say “there, there.” She stares them square in the eye and states “You have …
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 …
Read the opening paragraphs of Kim Barnes’ latest novel, In the Kingdom of Men, and your breath is knocked right out of you. Barnes immediately packs a punch that leaves you reeling to the end. The story, set in the 1960s, follows Gin McPhee and her husband, Mason, as they leave their Oklahoma small town …
Welcome to the revamped NWBookLovers.org! As you take a look around the new site, you’ll see that it feels more like a traditional blog than the old version and that we’ve got a bunch of new voices—all while hanging on to the best of the old site: the Face Outs, the author interviews and essays, …
To get an idea of the genius behind Jess Walter, follow him on Twitter, where you’ll find treasures like: “I once saw, in a used book store, a book I’d signed and given to a friend. I bought it and gave it to him again. ‘Last time,’ I said.” Fortunately, Walter goes beyond the 140 …
Nancy Pearl is a librarian with an action figure modeled in her likeness; author of the Book Lust series; a regular commentator about books on NPR’s “Morning Edition” and a former bookseller. She recently joined forces with Amazon to create the Book Lust Rediscoveries series, which will bring out-of-print books back into circulation. The partnership …
Trying to describe Matt Ruff’s writing in one sentence is akin to trying to recap the entire series of “Lost” in one minute. Walk your way through his oeuvre and you’ll meet up with a manipulating Greek god, a resurrected and enslaved Ayn Rand, an imaginary house inhabited by the multiple souls of one man …
