This piece was originally published on the Island Books blog. Growing up, I loved getting lost in books. It didn’t matter to me if the book was adventurous, dramatic, suspenseful, or fantastical; as long as it transported me somewhere else, I was happy. I’d be so immersed in my book that I’d barely hear my …
“Dear America, is this what you really want? Do you even know what is happening in your name?” Most of us don’t know what is happening in our name. This gorgeously written memoir is an important baby step towards Americans learning about our current deeply broken immigration system and the effects it has on our …
If Miguel de Cervantes & Lewis Carroll collaborated, this would be the book. A beautifully written 16th-century fantasy that, at its core, seems all too reminiscent of today’s current atmosphere. It’s as enchanting as it is hilarious. —Stacy, King’s Books, Tacoma, WA. . . This is a tough one to describe, because as soon as …
An enthusiastic customer tipped us off to this graphic novel, nearly a year after it came out. All we needed to hear, really, was “two cats in a robotic dog suit,” but “narrated by a sentient litter box”? That sealed the deal. And the book itself lived up to every hope raised by those oddball …
A Place for Us follows Layla and Rafiq as they immigrate from India and make a life in America. They raise their children Hadia, Huda and Amar with all the opportunities that America affords while instilling in them a reverence for their Muslim faith. Shifting perspectives in the novel lend itself to such a tender, …
An insight into more than just the precepts of Bodhisattva, it’s also an inquiry into the life lived by a master. Those experiences and anecdotes that Anderson makes beg the question of what if…He begs you to imagine scenarios where you might initially think you would make one decision, and then turns it on its …
Some humor from A Good Book in Sumner, WA: Overheard at The Store NADIA: Hello, welcome to the bookstore. Can I help you—oh, you’re that street artist fellow. I didn’t recognize you without all the gold paint. MIME: . . . NADIA: You’re looking for a book? . . . A big book? . . …
[Here’s an example] of quirky illustrations and marvelous set pieces. Torben Kuhlmann has been consistently been putting out stunningly illustrated books about small creatures doing great feats of aeronautics and engineering. Most recently, it’s Edison, the story of two mice who create a to-scale submersible in order to search for a sunken treasure. That’s right. A …
From Village Books and Paper Dreams in Bellingham, WA: Introducing the Bellingham-themed Monopoly game where the traditional railroad properties are Port of Bellingham properties and the Boardwalk belongs to Western. It has been a year-long project for the Bellingham Regional Chamber of Commerce, and we think you’ll enjoy seeing iconic Bellingham businesses represented on the game board — …
We’ve got copies of the University of California’s biography of Carleton Watkins. Watkins, as you may know, was kind of the Edward Curtis of landscape pictures during the 19th century. Much of Watkins’ own documentation was destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco fire, and so Tyler Green, the author of this splendid biography, had to …
