One response to the complexity of explaining the Haitian Revolution is to narrow the scope, as Sudhir Hazareesingh does in Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture by focusing on Toussaint. Despite his tinier canvas and his younger audience, Hale, in the tenth installment of his wildly popular series of graphic histories of thrilling episodes …
We don’t consider it often, but writing about the past, even in the most straightforward way, makes time elastic. Take The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis, for example. It’s a 1983 novel that’s having a renaissance due to Netflix’s acclaimed screen adaptation. (Side notes: I’ve seen one episode so far and agree with the accolades. I …
I hope it doesn’t trivialize [the previous] week’s … Book of the Week, Erica C. Barnett’s memoir of alcoholic blackouts and self-destruction, to say that the humiliating confessions in this book are nearly as relentless and excruciating. Because the humiliations, in the case of this graphic memoir, are tiny: failed bookstore events, comicon party snubs, parenting meltdowns, …
This delightfully illustrated graphic memoir is an emotional and straightforward account of self-discovery and acceptance. Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, explores coming to terms with eir genderqueer identity and asexuality in a way that is personal, thoughtful, and educational. Kobabe’s self-aware recollections range from uncomfortable and painful to awkward and joyful and liberating. The artwork …
We know puzzles can be hard to come by these days, and many of our suppliers are out of stock, but we recently received another batch, and this time we’ve made it a little easier to buy them from us. We’ve created a page on our site with our current puzzle inventory—you can purchase them there, …
When an advance copy of Home Baked arrived at the store, I took it home hoping merely to escape into the iconic 1970s San Francisco setting. I never anticipated that this memoir would give me an in-depth education on both the history of the era and the politics surrounding marijuana. Home Baked tells the story of the underground, …
It’s a subject ripe for satire: a young literary woman leaves publishing to try out tech in San Francisco and gets drawn into the money and ambition of Silicon Valley. But Wiener’s memoir, sharp-tongued as it sometimes is—of the photos on a first date’s Instagram feed, she writes, “They were, I had to admit, very …
Out of an abundance of caution and concern for everyone, this year’s Seattle Independent Bookstore Day, originally scheduled for April 25, has been postponed. August 29, 2020, a Saturday, is the tentative new date. Visit our SIBD web page seattlebookstoreday.org. It lists all of the bookstores involved in this year’s event. Many, if not most, …
I love to learn things from the books I read, and this book taught me so much— not only about the South Korean island Jeju, its matrifocal society of haenyeo (women divers), and its culture and traditions, but also about friendship, the horrors of war, loyalty, and grief. The Island of Sea Women is vividly imagined and …
Yoshitake’s Still Stuck, the story of a boy who can’t get his shirt off, is one of our very favorite picture books [plus a Paulina Springs Books favorite, too], and in his latest, a child is confronted by an even more common, and more challenging, difficulty: being bored. Turns out being bored can lead you to wonder: …
