While bedridden by an illness, a friend brought Bailey a gift of wild violets and a tiny forest snail. Bailey gave her new companion a bedside terrarium, then observed its daily behaviors and educated herself on the life of gastropods. Her memoir is a gift to the scientifically curious, to nature lovers, to anyone who …
University of Oregon professor Michael Copperman recalls his experiences serving with Teach For America in the Mississippi Delta. Copperman’s descriptive prose walks the reader through two years teaching the fourth grade in one of the poorest and most educationally disadvantaged regions in the United States. His language allows the harsh realities of educational inequality, institutional …
This book is such an empowering tale of what is possible when you don’t give up. Jahren beautifully weaves the story of her success with the story of who she is as a person, resulting in an all-at-once heartbreaking and inspiring tale. Not only did she break through the barrier of being a female in …
In 2008, when I went back to work at Powell’s Books after maternity leave, I took whatever sections needed a keeper. I had been the head of Young Adult and Fairy Tales and other sections in Children’s books for a few years. I considered myself an expert, a harbor of knowledge about out-of-print editions and …
Carrie Fisher isn’t just Princess Leia. In The Princess Diarist, though, she takes us back to her Star Wars days with a look at her diaries during filming. They’re replete with her signature humor, but they also provide a fascinating look at life behind one of our most iconic films. — Ashleigh B., Powell’s Books, Portland, …
I like to know a thing or two about the world around me, so I read widely and watch a lot of film. However, when I write, I write for myself and I don’t do fiction. That’s not because I don’t like it, but because I can’t manage it. I’ve made a sad attempt or …
When Michael Copperman left Stanford University for the Mississippi Delta in 2002, he imagined he would lift underprivileged children from the narrow horizons of rural poverty. Well-meaning but naïve, the Asian American from the West Coast soon lost his bearings in a world divided between black and white. He had no idea how to manage a classroom or help …
The 2016 Washington State Book Awards Winners were announced Saturday, October 8, 2016 at a celebration at the Central Branch of the Seattle Public Library. Fiction: The Sasquatch Hunter’s Almanac by Sharma Shields History/ General Nonfiction: Dead Wake by Erik Larson Poetry: Reconnaissance by Carl Phillips Biography/Memoir: Road Trip by Mark Rozema Picture Book: Boats …
It’s usually the case in books that the story takes place when people are not working: that’s when life, apparently, begins. Gill’s memoir flips that on its head: there is almost nothing in the book outside the work she did, along with troops of others, for almost twenty years: planting trees to replace logged clearcuts …
Oh, this is a good one, the sort of book you feel has been welling up inside its author, waiting to burst out. An unlikely but wonderful amalgam of plant science (Jahren’s specialty and passion) and memoir, Lab Girl is both finely crafted and raw: Jahren is a star scientist with a gift for explaining the …
