Focusing on three strong figures– writer Mikhail Bulgakov; the beautiful, outspoken Margarita; and Ilya, a member of Stalin’s secret police– Mikhail and Margarita is a love triangle, a biographical literary thriller, and a paean to literature, a needful thing in times of tyranny and chaos. –Gigi, Powell’s Books, Portland, OR This novel was a March …
Last week, booksellers from all around the country converged on Portland, OR for a conference on children’s books and bookselling, hosted by the American Booksellers Association. Some lucky participants registered for half-day and full-day bus tours of Portland area independent bookstores, hopping from neighborhood to neighborhood for 20-30 minute drop-ins (Woefully short!). Here are some …
Hill’s characters are so precisely written, they feel as real as you and me, despite the generations of inbreeding, which have left them somewhere off the “normal” scale. Yet, these folks love and hope and yearn like the rest of us, and their stories are magical. Hill has the silver tongue of a master wordsmith. …
Peter Mountford gives human form to the volatile science of Economics in his second novel, The Dismal Science, which follows Vincenzo d’Orsi’s purgative transformation as he learns to cope with loss and living. Mountford is embarking on a whirlwind tour, including his Seattle book launch party at Richard Hugo House, February 13 at 7 pm, …
“Portlander Kevin Sampsell’s hometown serves as the backdrop for his new novel about two recently split 30-somethings and parents trying to build a new life together. This is Between Us is five chapters, each encapsulating a year in the life of the relationship and developing family. The story is presented in a journal style somewhere …
“I’m really, really not just picking this because I have an essay in the collection. Really. This sweet, little book is wonderfully indie and stuffed full of Oregon authors. A collection of essays and interviews with such local lit figures as Scott Sparling, Lauren Kessler, and Yuvi Zalkow, Brave on the Page is not only about craft …
When public figures make headlines saying inane things about women’s bodies, it’s clear we’re too penned in by ignorance. This is why Lidia Yukanavitch’s novel Dora: A Headcase (Hawthorne Books) is timely and valuable. The novel is a feminist reclamation of Freud’s infamous case study. Yukanavitch’s Dora has refused diagnosis and the hysteria of her …
Portland author Bart King, known for his playful pocket guides to all things whimsical, waxes warmly about the magic of the bookstore experience in the Oregonian piece “More Than a Store: A Place to Bask in Books.” King conjures the endless aisles of Powell’s and the mazes of Annie Bloom’s in convincing readers that the …
A familiar scenario from my childhood: My father and I are driving in his truck. I’m six years old, it’s summer break in Southern California, a sunny Saturday morning, and we’re heading to the beach. I’ve eaten two bowls of sugar cereal and I’m spun out, frantic to get in the water. The ocean comes …
Every day, my ex-roommate and current best friend Eric—an infatuated collector of everything copasetic and beautiful—used to go to bookstores and record stores looking for rare finds. It used to be like a disease with him. The apartment where we lived in Thousand Oaks, California groaned under the weight of his purchases; its floorboards creaked …
