Elissa Washuta’s White Magic is a collection of amazing essays about loneliness, addiction, cultural devastation, and grief. Washuta, a member of the Cowlitz tribe, explores the persistent trauma of colonization on the native peoples of North America, as well as her own efforts to find her own place and identity in this modern world. Along the …
Here’s Susie Hodge and Amy Grimes with Artistic Places, the latest volume in the Inspired Traveller’s Guides series. This time around, we’re visiting famous artistic destinations around the world, where we’ll get a chance to understand what prompted a visual artist to do some art. Munch and his bridge. Constable and his landscapes. Vermeer and …
From A Good Book in Sumner, WA: It’s been one of those “making sh*t up” weeks. We do Blind Date books at the bookstore, and they’ve morphed from traditional blind date sorts of profile to Snark in a Brown Paper Wrap. It turns out that snark sells. Over the last few years, I’ve done more …
If You Go Down to the Woods Today is a marvelous book filled with delightful pictures by Hartas and charming quatrains by Piercey. Sure to delight the smaller folk in your house, as well as provide them with a reasonable checklist that they can attain without a significant budget and a passport. –A Good Book, …
Ah, here is Ava Barry’s Windhall, a deliciously dark murder mystery about the golden age of Hollywood. Back then, a leading lady’s dead body is discovered in her equally famous director’s rose garden. He’s charged with murder, but the case is thrown out before the trial, and the director vanishes. Now, sixty-nine years later, another woman …
Phung Nguyen Quang and Huynh Kim Lien have created My First Day, a delightfully illustrated children’s story book about the magic and excitement of the “first day.” In this case, An is leaving home for his first day of school. It’s also the first day his mother has allowed him to take a boat out on …
Here’s a mashup we weren’t expecting this year (oh, come on, this is a good surprise—not like, say, murder hornets): Perestroika in Paris, an equestrian fairy tale set in Paris. Written by Pulitzer Prize Winner Jane Smiley, no less. Perestroika is Paris is the story of a talking racehorse who decides to venture into the world beyond …
We have a new Christopher Paolini book. Now, Paolini, as you may recall, wrote a book about dragons once up a time, and it turned out that more than a few folks wanted to know what happened next. Paolini showed up for a few more books, and became somewhat of a wild success story (given …
From A Good Book in Sumner, WA: We’re doing bespoke blind date boxes as a way to get you the good stuff during this time of anxious separation. Well, suffice to say the bespoke box has been a hit. Enough so that we’ve spent most of the week racing around the store, finding cool things …
…we’ve also got Haboo, a collection of tales from the Lushootseed-speaking peoples of the Puget Sound. Drawn from a period of oral traditions, Haboo highlights the Myth Age, a time before the world transformed. These fables feature talking animals, anthropomorphic trees, and wise old rocks, who manage to speak of the human condition without being, you know, human. …
