Kittens in vending machines, hippos rising out of dark water, broom handles made of gold: in his first novel, King of Joy, Seattle writer Richard Chiem blends comforting absurdity with the most profound reaches of grief. The result is a strange, unsettling harmony that is typical of his writing. Drawing from themes also present in …
Griffith, the author of bestselling fantasy novel Hild, gives us a compulsive psychological thriller and an important contribution to disability literature in her new novel. In the course of a week, Mara’s wife leaves her and she is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. To keep herself from spiraling, Mara launches herself to the front lines of …
Willy Vlautin has never written a cheerful book in his brilliant writing career, and Don’t Skip Out on Me is no exception. Young Horace Hopper, half-Paiute, half-Irish, wants to be a championship boxer. Abandoned by his birth parents, he’s been taken in by an elderly rancher and his wife who love him like a son. They would like …
One of my favorite books from last year was the Booker-longlisted Reservoir 13. Although it didn’t win, it was such a phenomenon in Britain that the BBC commissioned McGregor to write a series of companion stories that were read by different actors on Radio 4. Now in book form in the States, The Reservoir Tapes introduces new characters …
I’d earlier read [Welsh writer Cynan Jones’s] novels The Dig, about a face-off between a violent misfit and a family man over a badger den, and The Long Dry, a chronicle of life on a cattle farm during a difficult summer. Both were terse and quietly potent, minimalist epics of elemental conflict between men and …
by Cila Warncke for frugalportland.com In an era where you can read yourself blind online without spending a penny, buying books is an act of enlightened frugality. Magazines and newspapers get tossed; websites morph. Books stick around. What’s more, books slow us down. There are no hyperlinks or banner ads, nothing to whisk our mind into the …
Dinner at the Center of the Earth is a real tour de force with an unforgettable cast of characters: Prisoner Z who has gone from being a Mossad agent to traitor, a comatose general (who may be Sharon), the guard’s mother who could star in her own story. Many questions are posed and the answers, …
Most of the time, a sticker proclaiming a title is a “NEW BOOK” is sort of self-evident, but in the case of Shel Silverstein, an actual new book is worth getting out of bed, rushing through your morning oat bran, and heading on down to the bookstore early. Runny Babbit Returns is a collection of tongue-twisting poems …
When the heat of summer starts to feel oppressive, pick up Peter Geye’s latest novel, Wintering, and experience the bracing cold of snowshoeing across a frozen lake. Geye’s much-lauded third novel has elicited comparisons to Cormac McCarthy, Jack London, and Jon Krakauer. This finely crafted story of fathers, sons, patience, risk, love, and adventure unfolds …
Spoiler Alert! I will discuss the ends of several books in this piece. In case you are the kind of reader who covers your ears and screams, “Don’t tell me the end!” when a book is discussed, I will list them for you: The Lord of the Rings, The Princess Bride, and Gone with the …
