As a reader, I find recommendations difficult to ignore. Even when the pile beside my evening chair is in danger of toppling, something new, received at the insistence of a friend, simply must be cracked open. The same goes for gifts. While I have no trouble composting an unwanted fruitcake, or exchanging a shirt with …
Sometimes a unicorn shows up in your life and makes everything better. I wasn’t really expecting one. A few years ago, I had nearly realized an ambition I’ve had since age 12: I had scored a contract to develop a comic strip for newspaper syndication. I won that contract, in the Comic Strip Superstar contest, …
What did I think of when I learned that my peculiar collection of essays had won a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award? Weirdly, not the barrels of cash and fine wines and excellent cheeses that would surely come my way, or the hordes of somber graduate students that would soon be studying my semicolons, or the …
When Craig Thompson won a 2012 Pacific Northwest Book Award for the graphic novel Habibi, the awards committee declared that the book “should take its place alongside groundbreaking classics, such as Maus and Persepolis.” Praise doesn’t get any higher in the graphic book arena. I’m not certain a middle grade (and up!) cosmic adventure featuring …
Shelf Awareness recapped Tuesday’s appearance on the Today Show by Three Cups of Tea author Greg Mortenson. Mortenson has remained out of the spotlight since a 2011 controversy regarding the misappropriation of funds generated by his work for the Central Asia Institute, the Bozeman centered nonprofit he established to build schools in underdeveloped communities in …
My local bookstore is the beloved Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle. This is where I scour the shelves for acceptable novels of dystopian distress for my extremely opinionated children, where I discover small press essay collections for my wife, and where I signed the first fresh-off-the-press copy of The Mushroom Hunters right after the …
“Jonathan’s earlier book, West of Here, was a favorite all across the NW. This latest work of his is quite different both in context as well as writing style, but equally engaging and thoroughly satisfying. While the characters are certainly intriguing, particularly Trev, a teenage boy with muscular dystrophy, it is the plotline I found …
Montana writer and four-time Pacific Northwest Book Award Winner Pete Fromm just pointed us to the trailer for the forthcoming movie version of his 2004 winner, As Cool As I Am.
2012 Pacific Northwest Book Award winner Thor Hanson has been awarded a 2013 John Burroughs Medal for Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle. One of the jurors described Feathers as, “great natural history with intense focus and telescopic detail. It soars through an engaging blend of history, archaeology, animal behavior, art, physics, and conservation. …
The Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association, the indie bookstore booster behind this blog, announced the winners of their annual book awards today. Congratulations are in order for Sherman Alexie (Seattle, WA) for Blasphemy; Jonathan Evison (Bainbridge Island, WA) for The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving; Eowyn Ivey (Palmer, AK) for The Snow Child; Lucia Perillo (Olympia, WA) for …
