By the time he was twenty-nine, Charles Darwin had puzzled his way toward two-thirds of his theory of natural selection. He understood that plants and animals passed traits (hair color, say, or beak shape, or flower scent) down to their offspring. And he understood that those traits were not passed down perfectly. We resemble our …
It’s time for a Thursday Theme, where we shine a spotlight on some of the titles featured in this week’s Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association regional bestseller list. We celebrate Native American and indigenous stories on this week’s list. The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer Yellow Bird by Sierra Crane Murdoch An …
Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Nickel Boys, is out in paperback. . . The Nickel Boys follows Elwood Curtis as he is unfairly sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy. Curtis falls in with a fellow “delinquent” named Turner, and the novel explores the very different reactions to the terrible system that …
The 2015 Pulitzer Prize for fiction came as no surprise to many Northwest booklovers! Revisit our coverage of this fantastic novel by clicking on this link for an original essay by the author, reader recommendations, and much more. Congratulations to Idaho author and literary luminary Anthony Doerr!
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson grew up in Sandpoint, Idaho—nowhere near the “Midwest upbringing” alluded to in this Huffington Post intro. (Not only did the article’s author ignore the Northwest, but jumped the Mountain West as well!) Any NW fan of Robinson knows that the fictitious town of Fingerbone from her debut novel, Housekeeping, closely resembles Sandpoint, on …
“Describing Pulitzer Prize-winner Rae Armantrout’s poetry means attempting to condense work that is already piano-wire taut . . . The relationship to song in her poetry is similar to that in a Thelonious Monk composition. Rhyme and rhythm are at work, very intelligent, unexpected, but the music is interior—to read her poetry is to overhear …
