My ultimate comfort read is a memoir of sorts, but totally focused on the writer’s relationship with books and reading. I can’t get enough, especially when the author is from the UK. Lucy Mangan is the television critic for The Guardian and this is her second reading memoir, after Bookworm, which focused on her childhood …
Legs Hearts Minds by Chris Jones is a powerful pick for readers who love sports, underdogs, or deeply moving memoirs, offering a honest account of heartbreak and how the author’s devotion to his sons and an English soccer team (Burnley F.C.) becomes a path toward rebuilding his life and rediscovering the redemptive power of sports …
A “centaur,” in modern tech speak, is an individual who uses technology to be a more productive version of themselves. A “reverse centaur” is a person who is forced by technology to work at a pace that is thoroughly inhuman. Doctorow isn’t anti-AI, rather, he—like Pope Leo XIV—is all too aware of the cost hidden …
Can you recommend a book that makes you deeply sad about humanity, circa 2026? After Barragán, a young journalist in Madrid, learned his dentist mom had been scammed by a Nigerian romance con artist, he traveled to Lagos to see if he could track the scammer down. Instead, he was drawn, by equal parts empathy …
On Wednesdays, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Bestseller List is published. Every week, we love to see what books have been most popular in independent bookstores around our region. As we peruse the list, we look for something special to showcase. Then we present this weekly feature: Thursday Themes. Boating season is well underway– on the ocean, in …
Once you read Ben Goldfarb’s Eager you will forever look at landscapes differently. Goldfarb explains the history and impact of beavers, from their role in indigenous cultures to their near-extinction from excess trapping for the fur trade to their remarkable recovery across much of North America. Eager shows us the beaver as not only “Nature’s …
Every Wednesday, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association publishes the regional bestseller list. On Thursdays, we celebrate Thursday Themes to shine a spotlight on some of the books from the list and give our brains a different way of thinking about books. This week, we’re imaging a customer asking a bookseller about a book they’re interested in. The customer …
Well, let’s start with Isabel Klee’s Dogs, Boys, and Other Things I’ve Cried About: A Memoir. Klee is @SimonSits on the socials, where she regularly tells stories about rescuing dogs. Dogs, Boys, and Other Things I’ve Cried About takes us through the last decade or so of her life in New York City, dealing with—wait for it—rescue dogs, heartbreaking …
Every Wednesday, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association publishes the regional bestseller list. On Thursdays, we celebrate Thursday Themes to shine a spotlight on some of the books from the list and give our brains a different way of thinking about books. Yesterday, Seattle had dramatic lightning, thunder, hail, and downpours. Some of last week’s bestsellers sounded a little …
I am not a huge reader of nonfiction, but Patrick Radden Keefe writes his narrative nonfiction so compellingly that it reads a bit like fiction. I was completely drawn in by Say Nothing about the troubles in Ireland and Empire of Pain about the Sackler family and the opioid epidemic. In London Falling, Radden Keefe chronicles the search for answers by …
