Our guest list-maker today on 28 Authors, 28 Variations on a List is Garth Stein, whose novel The Art of Racing in the Rain has been on the Pacific NW Bestseller List since its publication in 2008. Today is not just Day 6 of our December list-fest but Stein’s birthday. Wish him a happy 29th! …
“In the past years’ fascination with Julia Child (following her delightful autobiography, My Life in France, Julie Powell’s Julie & Julia, and the Nora Ephron film), I heard rumors of a clandestine history behind Julia and Paul’s romance. The Far East, propaganda, classified files, overseas love—Conant delves into those legends and proves their truth. However, …
Day 4 here for 28 Authors, 28 Variations on a List, and we’ve got Laurie Frankel, who had the idea to pair some of her favorite books with other gift items, which makes us want to crowd under that umbrella with her and go shopping. Frankel lives in Seattle’s Central District with her husband, her three-year-old son, …
“Set in the stark south of Appalachia in the 1960s, Charles Frazier’s new novel delivers a study in human strength and endurance. At its center is Luce, a young woman who was abandoned as a child and later raped as a young woman. She has taken up residence in a dilapidated hotel on the outskirts …
“It doesn’t matter that Pluto has since been demoted to the status of a dwarf planet or that the outcome of the story is a foregone conclusion. Michael Byers has written an engaging story of discovery–a gentle but intriguing adventure set in the late 1920s and told from the perspective of the elderly Clyde Tombaugh …
“I would happily read Sebastian Barry’s shopping list and probably write a review of it! He has the gift of finding insight in the trivia of everyday life, the core truths that make each of our lives unique and precious. The post-its littering the pages of my copy of On Canaan’s Side prove my point. …
“Normally I don’t read books that have a kid for the main character (unless it’s a kids’ book), but I read a glowing review of Pigeon English that said it’s for anyone who loved Roddy Doyle’s Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha. OK, that’s me. So I started it on my lunch break and immediately couldn’t …
“New Year’s Eve 1937, Katey and her boardinghouse roommate Eve, are spending the evening in a Greenwich Village jazz bar. The night is still young, their dollars are dwindling fast, and these two girls are looking for a way to prolong the evening. In walks Tinker Grey, a handsome blue-eyed banker who orbits in the …
“Maggie Pouncey’s debut novel is set in a small college town with a cast of characters who are tied one way or another to the fictional Darwin College. This is perfect reading as fall fills the air. Perfect Reader is about a daughter coming to terms with her college president father’s death and her return …
“In 1842 New York City, P.T. Barnum opened his American Museum. It was part zoo, part freak show, part natural history museum, part theater, part restaurant, part . . . You get the picture. Among the Wonderful imagines the lives of two of its employees—Ana Swift, Giantess, and Emile Guillaudeu, Taxidermist. They are very different …
