Language as Liberation: Reflections on the American Canon by Toni Morrison is a masterclass lecture collection from her tenure as a professor at Princeton University. She interrogates America’s most famous works and authors, and the way their black characters shaped the nation’s collective unconscious, and helped manufacturer American racial identity. A timely read for Black History …
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. Two of these books were on our bestseller list in 2021, too. Nevertheless, we persist. Lessons from …
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. We discovered a math-like theme to some titles this …
Here is Chuck Klosterman’s Football, a book about the singular force that shapes American life. That’s Chuck’s phrase, not ours, but it doesn’t take long to get swept up in his worldview. This is a book for both folks who like football—who will find much to agree with here—and those who don’t understand what the …
In January of 2025, about a month before One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This was set to be published in North America, I received an email from my editor. He said he was worried: we’d gotten no confirmed major media at that point. By this he meant national radio, morning TV, that …
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’s bestseller list has a Pacific Northwest Book Award winner at #1 on hardcover nonfiction. (Watch …
Some bookstores may be closed in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day on January 19, 2026, but many are open and ready to help you find inspiring and informative books about Dr. King and his fight for Civil Rights.
Maybe I was meant to live and write in Portland, Oregon. But first I had to get London out of my system. In 2014, I retired from the University of Hawaii and moved to London. I’ve lived in the city before, short-term, but this time, I settle in for two years. My agenda: to reinvent …
Seattle’s Madison Books shared this photo of staff favorites with a caption summarizing some of the booksellers’ favorite books of 2025: Amy’s favorites include Ioffe’s Motherland and Newitz’s Automatic Noodle. Meghan’s include Wynn-Williams’ Careless People and Greig’s The Book of I. Christina’s include Desai’s The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny and Alameddine’s The True True …
Susan Orlean has a lifetime of stories to tell. Her writing credentials include The New Yorker (22 years as staff writer), Vogue, Rolling Stone, Esquire and numerous nonfiction books. Shaped by a relentless curiosity and uncanny ability to dive deeply into any topic, Orlean now brings her immense writing talents to her own memoir, Joyride: …
