bookbroads

Join World Book Night on April 23

2012-01-23T15:08:00.000-08:00

Do you want to be part of an awesome million-book giveaway? To volunteer to change a life? You can, as part of World Book Night on April 23, 2012

The deadline to sign up to be a volunteer quickly approaches – February 1 – but give us a moment to explain what this is all about.

World Book Night is a campaign to find light- or non-readers in the Portland community and hand them each a book -- a person-to-person sharing of the joy of reading. It was started in the UK, and it is coming to the US on April 23, 2012 – Shakespeare's birthday, not coincidentally! Below you'll find a video clip showing some scenes from the inaugural World Book Night in the UK last year.

The World Book Night organization is printing hundreds of thousands of special free paperback editions of some of this country's most well-loved books. The organization needs thousands of volunteers to go out on April 23 and distribute these free books across America. You pick the place: hospital or diner, school or ... well, lots of possibilities. Be creative. If you are selected to be a book giver, you will give away twenty copies of a single book on that day.

Sign up by February 1 to be a book giver on World Book Night! Please go the website to read more about the mission, some rules and regulations, and the books you can choose from to give away (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Little Bee, The Things They Carried, Just Kids, Kindred, The Book Thief, and a little book you might have heard of called The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks are just a few of the titles). All you need to become a giver is a little time, a love of books, and the desire to give something to your community.

Think about where you’d like to give away the books before you go online to apply. And thank you! We love this idea and hope to be your community center for World Book Night support. If enough people sign up and choose Broadway Books as their pick-up spot for books, we're thinking we'll host a little pick-up party the week before World Book Night. World Book Night overlaps with the award ceremony for this year's Oregon Book Awards, so if you're attending that you can give away your books in the afternoon.

But don't delay -- February 1 is just around the corner. Come be a part of this fabulous moment in time to share the love of reading.

Allen Say at Broadway Books Tonight!

2012-01-23T13:04:00.000-08:00

We're so excited to be hosting local author, artist, and treasure Allen Say tonight at 7 pm! We last blogged about Mr. Say a little more than a year ago, with a link to a wonderful article about him by Jeff Baker of The Oregonian.

Tonight he will be here with his newest book, Drawing From Memory -- part memoir, part graphic novel, part narrative history. It is the story of the author's path to becoming the renowned artist he is today. Shunned by his father, who didn't understand his son's artistic leanings, Say was embraced by Noro Shinpei, Japan's leading cartoonist and the man he came to love as his "spiritual father." The book, accompanied by Say's wonderful illustrations, tells the complex story of the real-life relationship between a mentor and his student.

Allen Say won the Caldecott Medal for Grandfather's Journey and won a Caldecott Honor and Horn Book Award for The Boy of the Three-Year Nap. Some of his other books include The Bicycle Man, Tree of Cranes, Ericka-San, and Tea with Milk. Say came to the United States when he was 16 and moved to Portland in 1999.

We hope you can join us tonight to meet this delightful author/illustrator.

2012 Oregon Book Awards

2012-01-10T11:47:00.000-08:00

Hello, 2012!!!! It's been a while since I've posted -- taking a bit of a breather after the 24 Days of Books blogging. Lots of exciting stuff coming up in 2012, including our 20th anniversary celebration (more on that to come). But first, a look back at 2011 highlights. In my next blog I'll announce the 2011 Broadway Books Bestsellers. Yesterday, Literary Arts announced the finalists for this year's Oregon Book Awards, as well as the recipients of this year's LA fellowships.

The award ceremony will be held Monday, April 23rd, at 7:30 pm at the Gerding Theater at the Armory in Portland (128 NW Eleventh Ave). This year's host will be one of my favorite authors, Timothy Egan (seriously, I might swoon -- literarily speaking). Egan is the author of The Big Burn, The Worst Hard Time (which won the National Book Award), and -- one of my personal favorites -- The Good Rain, among other books. You can get tickets to the award ceremony by clicking here.

The list of finalists for this year's Oregon Book Awards is very impressive, full of lots of great reads and wonderful authors. Two books in particular stand out because they are not only finalists for the Oregon Book Awards but also won this year's Pacific Northwest Booksellers awards and were listed in the top ten of best local//NE books by The Oregonian, The Portland Mercury, and The Willamette Week: The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt (which also made the shortlist for both the Man Booker Prize and Canada's Giller Prize) and The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch (which was also named to numerous "best books of 2011" lists from publications outside of the area AND was the third bestselling nonfiction book at Broadway Books in 2011). What a year for these two outstanding authors. Best of all, The Chronology of Water comes not just from a local author but also from a publisher based right here in our own neighborhood: Hawthorne Books.

Other finalists for this year's Oregon Book Awards include Brian Doyle for his debut novel Mink River, the top selling book at Broadway Books in 2011 (and also published by a regionally based publisher, OSU Press), and Carl Adamshick, whose poetry book Curses and Wishes was also a Broadway Books bestseller this year.

Don't forget that YOU can be involved in the selection of one of the OBA categories, the Readers' Choice Award. On the Oregonian's book site, look on the left-hand side to find the link for voting. Last year's winner of the inaugural Readers' Choice Award was Willy Vlautin, for his novel Lean on Pete.

Congratulations to all of this year's finalists!

Day 24: Quirky is Good

2011-12-24T08:19:00.000-08:00

Well, it's finally Day 24 in our 24 Days of Books. It's been another fun ride for me; I hope you've enjoyed it too.

Today's the last day of shopping before Christmas, so I thought I'd talk about a few thinking-out-of-the-box gift ideas. Sure, anyone can give the latest big biography, or the currently hot novel or kids book as a gift this year. But how about something unexpected, something out-of-the ordinary, something to perhaps take the breath away?

It seems that LEGO(tm) is everywhere we look these days: LEGO (tm) Harry Potter, LEGO (tm) Star Wars, and so on. Everyone seems to want back in on the LEGO (tm) craze. Heck, they were hot when I was a kid, and that was more than just a few years ago.

LEGO (tm) is an abbreviation of the two Danish words leg godt, meaning "play well." The LEGO (tm) Group was founded in 1932 by Ole Kirk Kristiansen. The Company has passed from father to son and is now owned by Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, a grandchild of the founder.

And now here's the perfect gift for the LEGO-lover in your life: The Cult of Lego, by John Baichtal and Joe Meno. The authors take readers on a story-packed adventure through the history of LEGO (tm), from its humble beginnings in a small Danish village to its ascent to the summit of the toy world. The book is filled with pictures of spectacular LEGO creations, such as a life-size Stegosaurus and a detailed microscale version of Yankee Stadium.

For the casual LEGO fan or the hardcore builder, The Cult of LEGO makes a fabulous gift.

Everyone's gaga over Lady Gaga. Here's the perfect gift for the Gaga-fan in your life: Lady Gaga, by Lady Gaga and Terry Richardson. To create this coffee-table photo book, photographer Terry Richardson followed Lady Gaga during one year of her life, from Lollapalooza through the final show of her Monster Ball tour. During the year he followed Gaga, Richardson took over 100,000 images and attended more than 30 Monster Ball dates around the world.

Billboard named Lady Gaga both the 2010 Artist of the Year and the top-selling artist of 2010, ranking her as the 73rd Artist of the 2000s decade. She was named Forbes' Most Powerful Woman in the World 2011 and was included in Time's annual "The 2010 Time 100" list of the most influential people in the world.

And now, for a little entertainment and fun, here is a video of On the Rocks, the all-male a acappella vocal group from the University of Oregon, singing their version of Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance."

In Missed Connections, artist Sophie Blackall creates art in Chinese ink and watercolor to illustrate "missed connections" ads. A "missed connection" classified (usually posted on a website) is an attempt however far-fetched, by one stranger to reach another on the strength of a remembered glance, smile, or blue hat. The anonymous messages are hopeful and hopeless, funny and sad. This charming book offers a collection of illustrated love stories. Blackall is also the illustrator of the very popular Ivy and Bean series for young girls.

Here's a taste of the stories this new book tells:

Day 23: The Joy of Bleak

2011-12-23T08:21:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Day 23 in our 24 Days of Books. Today we're in a bleak mood. Not really, but work with us. The emergence of “Scandinavian Noir” as a genre has been fueled largely by Stieg Larsson novels over the past few years. His Millennium Trilogy featuring Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander and the Swedish movie adaptations of them are hugely popular – and the forthcoming American adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo promises to continue our national mini-obsession with all things Stieg. Or perhaps we should say all things Lisbeth. Because really, isn’t she one of the most interesting characters in contemporary fiction?

Sadly, Stieg Larson’s planned ten-book series stopped at three with his death in 2004. (Well, there may be a fourth book lurking in the wings, but that’s the topic for another blog). But as most mystery fans know, there’s much, much more to this dark genre than one author. Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallender novels are superb (and you can watch the BBC adaptations starring Kenneth Branagh – amazing). Many of Hakan Nesser’s novels feature Van Veeteren, a detective and antique book dealer (how can we resist that?). Danish crime writer Peter Hoeg’s first American success was Smilla’s Sense of Snow in 1992, and he has continued to write compelling stories. And we were so happy when Random House reissued the Martin Beck mystery series by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. These ten novels (beginning with Roseanna), first published between 1965 and 1975, predate the edgier books being written today (they also predate cell phones, personal computers, modern forensic technology, etc.) but are keenly observed commentaries on contemporary Scandinavian society that hold up some forty years later.

There are dozens of Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Dutch, and Icelandic authors worth considering if you enjoy a brooding, flawed hero and a menacing, elusive villain. One of the very best (some say THE best) of these is Norwegian writer Jo Nesbo, whose Harry Hole novels have caught the eye of readers everywhere. To date, there are eight novels in this series (only six available in English), including the most recent one, The Leopard, which just hit our store on December 13^th.

Inspector Harry Hole is a loose cannon in the Oslo Police Department. A heavy smoker and alcoholic, he is difficult in many ways but manages to keep his job because he is a brilliant detective who specializes in serial murders (and there are lots of serial murders in Norway). The Harry Hole series begins with the book The Redbreast. The newest book, The Leopard, begins with the discovery of two murder victims, both young women who drowned in their own blood. The media grabs the story and runs with it. Is there a serial killer at work? Inspector Hole soon discovers that he is dealing with a psychopath for whom “insanity is a vital retreat."

Jo Nesbo’s thrillers are literary (that is, well written) as well as suspenseful. Is there a Nesbo fan on your shopping list? If so, you’re in luck! Surprisingly, given the bleakness of his thrillers, Nesbo also writes books for middle school readers, a series that begins with the book Doctor Proctor's Fart Powder, followed by Bubble in the Bathtub (And in January, Who Cut the Cheese?). All full of middle-school fartiness fun.

Here’s a short video that features the author talking about his latest novel, The Leopard. (The cover shown in the video is from the UK publication, not the US.):

What I've Been Reading Lately, Part II: Nonfiction

2011-12-22T21:54:00.000-08:00

As happy as I've been with my fiction reading choices of late, I've been equally satisfied with what I've been reading on the nonfiction side. Here are the last few I've read, plus a look ahead at some to come.

The most recent nonfiction book I read was Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, by Candice Millard. I've been eagerly awaiting a new book from this writer, and I was not disappointed. Millard's first book was The River of Doubt, about what had to have been history's most poorly planned trip -- a harrowing journey by Teddy Roosevelt and his son Kermit down an uncharted tributary of the Amazon after he lost the presidential election in 1912.

Her new book tells the story of James A. Garfield, our twentieth president and the last of "the log cabin presidents," who -- to the surprise of many -- was elected in 1881. Just a few months after his election, a deranged office-seeker shot him in the back. The book focuses on the drama of what happened subsequently, as a team of physicians administered shockingly archaic treatments, to disastrous effect. Even Alexander Graham Bell got in the game, as he attempted to invent an instrument that could locate a bullet in a body.

Janet Maslin of The New York Times named it one of the top ten books of 2011, calling it a staggering tale of "lunacy... and medical malfeasance. " Another reviewer described it as "first-rate history, political intrigue, and a true-crime story all rolled into one."

The nonfiction book I read before that was Cocktail Hour under the Tree of Forgetfulness, by Alexandra Fuller. In Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight (she definitely wins the award for best titles and covers), Fuller wrote about growing up in then-Rhodesia-now-Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Zambia. Her newest book revisits that same time period, but this time through the perspective of her parents, Nicola and Tim, and she interviews her them about their personal history.

Fuller was born in England in 1969. In 1972 she moved with her family to a farm in Rhodesia. After that country’s civil war in 1981, the Fullers moved first to Malawi, then to Zambia. Currently she lives in Wyoming (the setting for her nonfiction book The Legend of Colton H. Bryant, also a wonderfully moving book). I loved Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight -- but I loved Cocktail Hour even more! I highly recommend them both; read in any order.

The nonfiction book before that was the latest from the marvelous storyteller Erik Larson, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin. The book tells the story of William Dodd, a mild-mannered professor from Chicago, who became America's ambassador to Germany in 1933, when Hitler came to power. Dodd moved to Berlin with his wife, son, and recently divorced daughter, willing to give Hitler the benefit of the doubt. Violence, censorship, and over-the-top behavior soon opened their eyes to the true threat Hitler posed, and Dodd tried to sound the alarm back home. Both Dodd and his daughter were avid journal-keepers and letter-writers, giving Larson a trove of eyewitness accounts to draw on.

One last nonfiction book I read that I'll mention just briefly: The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan, by Kim Barker. Barker, one of the Middle East's longest serving correspondents, captures the absurdities and tragedies of life in a war zone in a voice that is candid, self-deprecating, and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times recently named it one of her picks for 2011. Interestingly, Barker has a Portland connection, with family living in the area.

What's next on my nonfiction reading list?? Hmmm, I'll have to see what my mood is like after the holidays. Some of the options on the table are Van Gogh: The Life, A World on Fire, Steve Jobs, and 1491. Given the frenetic pace of the past few weeks, I might have to find something a little lighter to dip into first.

The nonfiction book I am most looking forward to being published in 2012 is unquestionably Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, by local writer Cheryl Strayed. I've already started reading an advanced copy of this book, and I can tell you that it's the real deal. Given how frenetic and stressed my life has been of late, and my herky-jerky opportunities for reading, I decided to put the book away until after the holidays so I can return to it at a time when I can truly savor every word. Have you ever done that? Tucked away a jewel of a book to read, and on those more-challenging days with long dark nights you flash upon the gem that awaits you and it makes you smile? That's how I feel about reading Cheryl's book. I'm also happy to share with you that you will be able to purchase signed and/or personalized copies of Cheryl's book through our website when the book publishes in March.

Day 22: So Much Fascinating History to Explore

2011-12-22T08:07:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Day 22 in our 24 Days of Books. For some people, the ideal holiday gift is a big chewy novel in which to get totally lost. For others, however, the ultimate giddy-inducing event is unwrapping a giant meaty book of history to dive into. An ideal candidate for the history lover in your life this year is A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War, by Amanda Foreman -- just named one of the top five nonfiction books of 2011 by The New York Times.

Twelve years in the making and coming in at about three pounds and just under a thousand pages, A World on Fire is a sprawling drama of British engagement with the American Civil War, a bloody, four-year battle that tore apart the nation and resulted in the deaths of more than 600,000 soldiers. But Foreman calls attention to the tens of thousands of Britons who served as soldiers, doctors, nurses, reporters, and more. Foreman builds her narrative, which she describes as “a biography of the many relationships that together formed the British-American experience during the Civil War,” around a huge cast of politicians, diplomats, soldiers and civilians in Great Britain, the United States and the Confederacy.

When the war first broke out, both the North and the South expected England to be on its side. Slavery had long since been abolished in the British Empire -- in fact, the British edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin had sold an astonishing million copies, three times its American sales. But Southern politicians threatened that if London did not recognize the sovereignty of the Confederate States, the cotton trade would be cut off, potentially driving England to economic collapse and revolution. And many in England thought the South had the moral advantage in the battle. Of the tens of thousands of Brits who joined up in the war in some capacity, some fought for the North and others for the South. Just as with American families, individual British families were sometimes divided in their loyalties.

English sympathy for the South lingered up until Lee surrendered at Appomattox in April 1865. Then, within days, came news that Lincoln had been assassinated. All at once, “newspapers that had routinely criticized the president during his lifetime,” Foreman writes, “rushed to praise him.”

Foreman's narrative concentrates on the four chief diplomatists: the Britons Lord John Russell and Lord Lyons and the Americans William Seward and Charles Adams. But it covers almost 200 individual characters -- the listing of the cast of characters in the book goes on for almost fifteen pages -- including Henry Morton Stanley (later of the "Livingston, I presume" fame), Elizabeth Blackwell (the British-born doctor who was the first woman to get a medical degree in the US), Rose O'Neal Greenhow (a Washington society leader and Confederate spy), and even the author Charles Dickens (who expressed his disenchantment with the US after his visit in 1842, writing that if American democracy was simply a vehicle for majority rule, then "I infinitely prefer a liberal monarchy."). The author excels at deft biographical portraits -- librarian and reviewer Nancy Pearl said she made lists of people she wanted to learn even more about as she was reading this book.

Despite the large cast of characters and the depth of detail (and accompanying research), the book is accessible to non-historians. According to the Christian Science Monitor: "Once again, Foreman displays her exceptional gift for storytelling and for making history both fascinating and relevant." Other reviewers called the book "a shimmering tapestry," "a real-life Gone with the Wind," "riveting," "a completely fresh persective," and "an achievement as enjoyable as it is impressive."

Foreman was born in London to an English mother and American father, brought up in Los Angeles, and educated in England. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University in New York. She received her doctorate in Eighteenth-Century British History from Oxford University in 1998. She has dual citizenship and maintains homes in New York City and London, writing regularly for newspapers and magazines in both countries. She and her husband have five young children.

Her previous book, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, was nominated for several awards and won the Whitbread Prize for Best Biography in 1999. It has inspired a television documentary, a radio play starring Dame Judi Dench, and a movie titled The Duchess, starring Keira Knightley and Ralph Fiennes. She is the daughter of Carl Foreman, the Oscar-winning screen writer of many film classics including, The Bridge on the River Kwai, High Noon, and The Guns of Navarone.

Other good bets for the history lover on your gift list this year include Swerve: How the World Became Modern, by Stephen Greenblatt; Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942, by Ian W. Toll; Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, by Candice Millard; In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin, by Erik Larson; Lions of the West, by Robert Morgan; Jerusalem: The Biography, by Simon Sebag Monteflore; Rome: A Cultural, Visual, and Personal History, by Robert Hughes; and Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America, by Richard White -- and that's just a handful of the many great history tomes from which to choose. Of course we can't forget my personal favorite narrative nonfiction of the past year: The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson, a book I have written about so much already I'm sure you're all tired of hearing me going on and on about it -- which doesn't negate that you should read it!!

What I've Been Reading Lately, Part I: Fiction

2011-12-21T08:53:00.000-08:00

The last three novels I've read have all been big winners in my book, but they couldn't be more different. I thought I'd take a few minutes to share them with you.

The most recent novel I read was We the Animals, by Justin Torres. I didn't expect to like this slim debut novel but for some reason it kept tugging at me whenever I walked past it, so I finally decided to give it a go. And it kept me. It is fierce and concentrated and feral and heartbreaking, a child's view of family's struggles and relationships, presented in brilliant language. The New York Times called it "a strobe light of a story," while Vanity Fair called it "a gorgeous, howling coming-of-age novel that will devour your heart," and author Pam Houston called it a "musical tornado of a novel." It is definitely a wow. I look forward to more from this author.

Just before that I read another slim novel that had just won this year's Booker Prize for Fiction: The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes. This intense, suspenseful novel follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he has never much thought about until he is presented with a mysterious legacy that obliges him to reconsider a variety of things he thought he’d understood all along, and to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world. Who are you? How can you be sure? What if you’re not who you think you are? What if you never were? The review on NPR called it “an elegantly composed, quietly devastating tale about memory, aging, time and remorse." I thought it was spectacular.

The one before that was another debut novel, The Night Circus, a novel unlike any I'd ever read before. The author, Erin Morgenstern, is a visual artist, and in her writing she created worlds that I could see just as if I were standing inside of them. Generally I'm not big on books that involve the circus or magic. And this involves both. Sort of. And yet I found it both delightful and breathtaking. It involves a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors and who meet in Le Cirque des Reves, a Victorian nocturnal black-and-white circus. Here are some of the accolades reviewers have bestowed upon this novel and its author: "playful and intensely imaginative," "quietly, enchantingly perfect," "an extraordinary storyteller," "a beguiling, gripping read," "A literary Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride." I definitely recommend giving this one a go.

I'm also "reading" two audiobooks right now that I'm enjoying very much: one I'm listening to on my iPod when I walk and the other I'm listening to in my car when I drive. Sadly for the former -- and for my ability to fit into my clothing -- lately I've been spending more time with the latter book. I blame the weather and the lack of daylight.

The walking book is Pulitzer-Prize winner A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, an inventive investigation of growing up and growing old in the digital age. It took me a while to get going on this one, because it bounces around a bit in time and in point-of-view, so it takes a while to get a handle on all of the characters and their relationships. But now I'm really enjoying it.

The driving book is The Stranger's Child, by Alan Hollinghurst, a sweeping, multi-generational novel that opens in England in 1913. “At once classically literary and delightfully, subversively modern." This book is so entertaining that I find myself manufacturing reasons to drive my car -- something I don't do that often, since I can easily walk just about everywhere I need to go -- just so I can continue to listen to this delightful book.

Novels that I'm considering treating myself to when the holiday rush moves past and I can focus again include The Art of Fielding, 11/22/63, Wish You Were Here, Matterhorn, Pearlmann's Silence (by the author of Night Train to Lisbon) and The Corrections (yes, I admit, I've haven't read it yet, but I enjoyed Freedom). The novels I'm most looking forward to being published in 2012 are Truth Like the Sun, the newest from Jim Lynch (The Highest Tide, Border Songs), which is due out in April (just in time for the store's 20th anniversary celebration!), and Dora: A Head Case, a novel (due to be published summer 2012) by Lidia Yuknavitch, author of the stunning memoir The Chronology of Water.

Ah yes, so many books, so little time. Tomorrow I'll talk about recent, current, and forthcoming nonfiction reads.

Day 21: A Painter and a Writer

2011-12-21T08:33:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Day 21 in our 24 Days of Books. As always at this time of year, major biographies are all the rage. This year is no exception. Of course one of the biggest biographies of the season is Steve Jobs, by the eminent biographer Walter Isaacson. But when I think of holiday biographies I tend to think of historical biographies.

One of the major historical biographies this year is Charles Dickens: A Life, by Claire Tomalin. This new biography, published by Penguin Press, gives full measure to Dickens's heroic stature -- his huge virtues both as a writer and as a human being -- while observing his failings in both respects with an unblinking eye. Dickens's own grim upbringing, including his father's time in a debtor's prison, helped him to develop his remarkable eye for all that was absurd, tragic, and redemptive in London life.

Tomalin crafts a story worthy of Dickens's own pen, a comedy that turns to tragedy as the very qualities that made him great -- his indomitable energy, boldness, imagination, and showmanship -- finally destroyed him. With a focus on the man and his life, rather than his writings, the man who emerges in this book is one of extraordinary contradictions, whose vices and virtues were intertwined as surely as his life and his art.

Another significant historical biography this season is Van Gogh: The Life, by Pulitzer-Prize-winning biographers Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith and published by Random House. Working with the full cooperation of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Naifeh and Smith have accessed a wealth of previously untapped materials, drawing liberally from the artist’s famously eloquent letters and wading through hundreds of unpublished family correspondence. This detailed biography provides a tour through both the life and the work of the Dutch painter, beginning with his parents' family tree, and postulates a new theory about Van Gogh's death at the age of 37.

According to The New York Times, "What Mr. Naifeh and Mr. Smith capture so powerfully is Van Gogh’s extraordinary will to learn, to persevere against the odds, to keep painting when early teachers disparaged his work, when a natural facility seemed to elude him, when his canvases failed to sell. There was a similar tenacity in his heartbreaking efforts to fill the emotional void in his life: ostracized by his bourgeois family, which regarded him as an unstable rebel; stymied in his efforts to pursue his religious impulses and become a preacher; rejected or manipulated by the women he longed for; shunned and mocked by neighbors as crazy; undermined by a competitive Paul Gauguin, with whom he had hoped to forge an artistic fraternity."

Recently CBS's 60 Minutes aired a segment focusing on Van Gogh and the new theory around his death and interviewing Naifeh and Smith.

A few of the other major biographies this season from the literary world include Just One Catch: A Biography of Joseph Heller, by Oregon Book Award winner and OSU professor Tracy Daugherty; Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-1961, by Paul Hendrickson; and
And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life, by Charles J. Shields.

Day 20: Stephen King Rewrites History

2011-12-20T09:12:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Day 20 in our 24 Days of Books. So much good fiction has been published this year that it’s hard to pick just one or even five favorites, and I won’t try to do that here. I tend to agree with Neil Gaiman, who said "Picking five favorite books is like picking the five body parts you'd most like not to lose." Besides, who has the time to read every single one? There are novelists who write faster than I can read (I’m lookin’ at you, Joyce Carol Oates). I’m exhausted just looking at the array of choices on our “new fiction” table.

And now I will risk my literary street cred by asking everyone to take an unbiased look at Stephen King. We’ll just yadda yadda our way through the arguments – pro and con – concerning this author and his books, and jump right into his latest novel, 11/22/63, which currently sits on top of the bestseller lists, and for good reason.

This reimagining of the events surrounding President John F. Kennedy’s assassination is an engrossing read. Stephen King is, in the opinion of many, the author who has “absorbed the social, political, and popular culture of his generation more imaginatively and thoroughly than any other writer” and as such is supremely equipped to tackle this subject. In almost 850 pages, he gives us an incredible (yet totally believable) journey back in time and the possibility of altering world history.

The protagonist of King’s story is Jake Epping, a thirty-five-year-old English teacher who is given an extraordinary opportunity by his friend Al, who reveals to Jake that the storeroom in his diner is a portal to the past, a particular day in 1958. Al invites Jake to take over the mission of time traveling back to 1958 and preventing one of this generation’s most famous and devastating crimes.

And so begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson, in a world of Ike and JFK and big American cars and Elvis. His travels lead him from Derry, Maine to Dallas, Texas, where he is the one man who knows what will happen and is rushing headlong into the past in order to change the future.

Stephen King is one of the most entertaining writers working today. This book captures the baby boomer’s generational zeitgeist like no other has. If you are looking for a big, fat page-turner that will completely absorb you for a large chunk of time, look no further.

Day 19: YA novels - including one by a Portlander!

2011-12-19T08:56:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Day 19 in our 24 Days of Books. Local writer/illustrator and husband/wife team Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis have been getting much (well-deserved) attention for the first book in their new middle-reader trilogy, Wildwood. Another Portland author, who writes books for young adults, is also receiving major accolades for her work.

Laini Taylor, who was a finalist for last year's National Book Award for Young Readers for her book LipsTouch, Three Times, has a new book out that The New York Times recently named one of the top five Young Adult books of 2011: Daughter of Smoke and Bone, a romantic adventure fantasy set in Prague. The first book in a planned trilogy, Daughter of Smoke and Bone centers on a young blue-haired girl named Karou who encounters unusual creatures and dangerous angels as she travels the world to carry out mysterious errands. Karou gradually becomes aware that she is part of ancient struggle between devils and angels and finds herself in a forbidden romance with a warrior angel.

The New York Times describes the book as "a breath-catching romantic fantasy about destiny, hope and the search for one’s true self that doesn’t let readers down. Taylor has taken elements of mythology, religion and her own imagination and pasted them into a believably fantastical collage."

“My goal is always to write stories that readers will want to climb inside of and live in, and which – I hope – will allow them to just lose themselves in the page,” said Taylor, who has clearly succeeded in her goal. In an attempt to find the next Twilight hit, the movie rights to the book have already been acquired by Universal in a hotly contested battle.

Taylor lives in Portland with her husband, the illustrator Jim Di Bartolo (he did the illustrations for her previous book) and their daughter. At the end of this blog post is a video of Taylor talking about her new book. But first, a couple of other YA books to consider this holiday season:

Why We Broke Up, by Daniel Handler (who has also written as Lemony Snicket) and illustrated by the wonderful Maira Kalman tells the story of the break-up of high schoolers Min Green and Ed Slaterton, through a letter and the detritus of their relationship.

One of the hottest YA books of the season is the fourth and final installment in the Inheritance cycle by Christopher Paolini. Inheritance concludes the compelling story that began with Eragon (written when the author was only fifteen years old!) -- if you're lucky, you might get one of our few remaining signed copies!

Also one of the top five YA novels cited by the NYT, The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater tells the fantastical story of racing killer water horses in coming-of-age story about a young girl named Puck.

Whip-smart and wickedly funny author Libba Bray provides social commentary galore in Beauty Queens, about a plane full of Miss Teen Dream beauty contestants that crashes on an apparently deserted island.

We've got all kinds of YA books for your holiday shopping, including a boxed set of The Hunger Games trilogy -- just tells us about the person you're shopping for and we'll try to match you up with just the right gifts.

Day 18: Annie Leibovitz Does It Again

2011-12-18T13:19:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Day 18 in our 24 Days of Books. Although the publication of any collection of Annie Leibovitz’s photographs is an occasion to be celebrated, I must admit that I was lukewarm when I was told about this new one, called Pilgrimage. For starters, the book was to be full of photographs with no people in them. What? That’s what we know and love Ms. Leibovitz for: her penetrating portraits of people both famous and obscure. So now she’s doing landscape photography or something?

And now I will admit how wrong I was. Landscape photography? Hardly.

Pilgrimage is a look at rooms, historical artifacts, and incidental objects as well as wide, open spaces. The things she has photographed are significant to the artist. There are the houses of Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Louisa May Alcott. And within these houses, rooms full of paintings, mementos, and other signs of domestic life: Ms. Woolf’s writing desk. Ms. Dickinson’s only surviving dress. A bird specimen collected by Mr. Darwin on the voyage of the Beagle. Dr. Freud’s carpet-covered sofa. A silver serving dish from Mrs. Roosevelt’s family.

The landscapes are varied and carry great meaning for Ms. Leibovitz. “From the beginning, when I was watching my children stand mesmerized over Niagara Falls, it was an exercise in renewal," she says. “It taught me to see again.” So we look through her eyes at Yosemite Valley, Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty earthwork on the shore of the Great Salt Lake, The Isle of Wight, Thomas Jefferson’s garden at Monticello, the site of Henry Thoreau’s cabin on Walden Pond, the river where Ms. Woolf drowned.

This is perhaps her most revealing book. By sharing with the reader places and objects that are important to her (some of these are famous, but many are not), she has created an intensely personal and idiosyncratic narrative that includes so much more than can be talked about in this one little blog. Pete Seeger’s cabin and workshop. Lincoln’s handwritten address at Gettysburg, and the gloves and hat he wore the night of his death. Old props from Martha Graham’s studio. Georgia O’Keeffe’s collection of rocks and bones. A concert gown worn by Marian Anderson. So much.

The text that Ms. Leibovitz wrote to accompany these photographs is elegant and informative. The book also features an introduction by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Despite my original apprehension, I do not hesitate to recommend it.

Day 17: Chanukah is Almost Here!

2011-12-17T11:37:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Day 17 in our 24 Days of Books. Today we're getting ready for Chanukah (or Hanukkah, depending on how you choose to spell it), which begins next week. In honor of the Festival of Lights, today we're spotlighting the beautiful pop-up book from pop-up master Robert Sabuda, Chanukah Lights, published by Candlewick Press.

With text by Michael J. Rosen, the book follows the Festival of Lights through place and time — from Herod’s temple to a shtetl in Russia; from a refugee ship bound for the New World to an Israeli kibbutz. Robert Sabuda’s striking pop-ups depict each night’s menorah in a different scene, using imagery such as desert tents, pushcart lanterns, olive trees, and a final panorama of skyscrapers.

Michael J. Rosen has written and edited some ninety books for children and adults, including the critically acclaimed The Cuckoo's Haiku and Other Birding Poems. His books have won many awards, among them the National Jewish Book Award, the inaugural Once Upon a World Children's Book Award from the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance, and three Ohioana Book Awards.

Robert Sabuda is the creator of many best-selling pop-up books, including The Twelve Days of Christmas, Winter's Tale, Peter Pan, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Beauty and the Beast. He is also the co-creator of the Encyclopedia Prehistorica and Encyclopedia Mythologica series. Since the time he first learned to hold a crayon, he knew he wanted to be an artist: "My bedroom was a constant whirlwind of pencil shavings, drippy paint brushes and mounds of paper scraps. My mother's pleas of 'when are you going to clean up this mess?!' went unanswered." And aren't we happy he kept at it, as he has given us so many gorgeously detailed pop-up books to enjoy.

[Another fabulous new pop-up book in the store is the M.C. Escher Pop-Ups, published by Thames and Hudson.]

As you prepare for Chanukah, remember that Broadway Books has candles, dreidels (large and small), gelt, and a terrific selection of Chanukah books from which to choose.

Here is a short video giving you a taste of the beautiful pop-up book that Robert Sabuda has created, based on Michael Rosen's reverent poem.

Day 16: Arguing with Christopher Hitchens

2011-12-16T13:49:00.000-08:00

It's Day 16 in our 24 Days of Books, and we're in mourning. It was with great sadness that we learned this morning of the death of Christopher Hitchens. The news was not unexpected, as he had been dying quite publicly for the past eighteen months. Nevertheless. One of the finest essayists of his generation, a formidable contrarian, first-class raconteur and sharp-tongued wit, he leaves behind a mountain of published work that has provoked, infuriated, delighted, criticized, explained, amused and entertained us for years. We will miss him.

Hitchens’ most recent book, published in September, was recently named one of the Ten Best Books of 2011 by the New York Times. Fittingly, the title is Arguably. It’s a collection of dozens of elegant essays written for various publications. In these pieces, Hitchens brilliantly engages the reader in a wide range of political and cultural issues.

Whether you agree (as we often do) or disagree (as we often do) with Mr. Hitchens, his opinions are always very well thought out and vividly expressed. Always eager to display his partisanship and never shrinking from a fight, he often dismayed even his biggest fans as they watched him change sides or refuse to adhere to a particular dogma.

He was one of a kind. As Ian McEwan said, “If Hitchens didn’t exist, we wouldn’t be able to invent him.”

Day 15: Channeling Georgia O'Keeffe

2011-12-15T18:13:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Day 15 in our 24 Days of Books. Today we're talking about Portland's one-woman cottage industry: Karen Karbo, who writes smart, funny, original material. Her adult novels, Trespassers Welcome Here, The Diamond Lane, and Motherhood Made a Man Out of Me, have been named New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Her three witty young adult mysteries, featuring the unforgettable Minerva Clark, are great reads for teens, preteens, and those who love them. Her 2004 memoir about the time she spent with her father in his last year, The Stuff of Life, was also a NYT Notable Book and won the Oregon Book Award. In addition, she has written short stories, essays, articles, and reviews that have appeared in dozens of magazines and online.

It’s hard to pick our favorite Karen Karbo books, but today we’re tending to favor what Karen calls her “Kick-Ass Women Trilogy.” The first book in this series, How To Hepburn: Lessons on Living from Kate the Great, showed readers how to break all the rules and lead a fabulous life. The second book, The Gospel According to Coco Chanel: Life Lessons from the World’s Most Elegant Woman, delivered inspiration and wisdom from the life of the world’s greatest fashion icon.

And now the last book in the trilogy has finally hit the shelves. How Georgia Became O’Keeffe: Lessons on the Art of Living is a fresh and revealing look at an artist who continues to be a model and inspiration for new generations of women. The ten chapters are ten verbs: defy, grow, adopt, muddle, embrace, bare, rebel, drive, break, and prize. Each chapter gives examples from O’Keeffe’s life that illustrate the verb.This beautiful little book is handsomely illustrated with nine reproductions of O’Keefe’s paintings and a photograph of her taken by her husband, Alfred Steiglitz. It’s a lovely gift for almost any female, ages 12 to 120. Clearly we're not the only ones who think so, as her book has been flying off our table the past few weeks.

Day 14: The Meaning of Food and Preparing it Fearlessly

2011-12-14T14:20:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Day 14 of our 24 Days of Books. I don't know about you, but I'm getting hungry! Here are a couple of terrific books for the foodies in your life:

The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food by Adam Gopnik. With his usual charm and depth of knowledge, Gopnik takes us on a beguiling journey in search of the meaning of food in our lives as he charts America’s recent and rapid evolution from commendably aware eaters to manic, compulsive gastronomes. It is a journey that begins in eighteenth-century France—the birthplace of our modern tastes (and, by no coincidence, of the restaurant)—and carries us to the kitchens of the White House, the molecular meccas of Barcelona, and beyond.

What goes on the table has never mattered to us as much as what goes on around the table—the scene of families, friends, and lovers, coming together or breaking apart; conversation across the simplest or grandest board. While Gopnik's book is packed with information, it's lightened by the many personal anecdotes and reflections.

Julia Keller of the Chicago Tribune says of the author, "Gopnik would surely be the world’s greatest dinner guest; he can make any subject fascinating, and always backs up his curiosity with unhurried research and an acute eye for the telling detail." Based on my reading of his previous books, I would certainly concur on the dinner guest comment! And Ina Garten (of Barefoot Contessa cookbooks fame) says, "“Adam Gopnik brilliantly weaves together the history, philosophy, and culture of food with his deep passion for cooking and the shared pleasures of the table. Anyone who roasts a chicken at home or eats chocolate mousse in a restaurant will be forever changed by this book. I loved it."

Gopnik has been writing for The New Yorker since 1986. During his tenure at the magazine, he has written fiction and humor pieces, book reviews, profiles, reporting pieces, and more than a hundred stories for The Talk of the Town and Comment.In 1995, Gopnik moved to Paris and began writing the Paris Journal column for the magazine. My favorite book of his is Through the Children's Gate: A Home in New York, which talks about life in New York and about raising two children there (and about his daughter Olivia's imaginary playmate Charlie Ravioli, who is usually too busy to take her calls).

While I will certainly read Gopnik's book because I'm such a big fan of his writing, today's second book is one that is crying out to be read by me, because I definitely need to learn what it has to offer. The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Cooks by Kathleen Flinn offers exactly what the subtitle promises. After graduating from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, Flinn returned with no idea what to do next until one day at a supermarket she watched a woman loading her cart with ultraprocessed foods. Flinn's "chefternal" instinct kicked in: she persuaded the stranger to reload with fresh foods, offering her simple recipes for healthy, easy meals.

Inspired by this chance encounter, Flinn gathered a group of volunteers who felt intimidated by cooking. She investigated the items in their pantries, catalogued the contents of their refrigerators and freezers, inquired about what they bought and threw away, and sampled what they routinely prepared. Armed with this background knowledge, Flinn enlisted the aid of top culinary professionals to offer classes on fundamentals of cooking, from chopping and braising to preparing vinaigrette. In each class she taught her students how to choose and cook food that's delicious, healthier for them, and better for the planet.

Her students varied in age and circumstances, yet all of them found a common missing ingredient in their lives: confidence in the kitchen and confidence in themselves.

Here is what some of the reviewers had to say about The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: "Flinn guides you patiently in the kitchen like the mom you always wish you'd had to learn to cook from." "This title provides encouragement where the others offer direction. A mash-up of inspiration and reference, it will appeal to readers who enjoy a story with their instruction." "If you are going to read one book to change your diet and your life, The Kitchen Counter Cooking School is it." Wow. Sign me up!

Flinn has been a writer for more than twenty years, with her work appearing in dozens of publications around the world. Her first book, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry, which recounted her experience earning a diplome de cuisine at the venerable Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, was a finalist in the Washington State Book Awards. She and her husband divide their time between Seattle and Florida.

Day 13: We're Soaring with Poetry...and Birds

2011-12-13T18:45:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Day 13 in our 24 Days of Books. Today we're soaring with poetry -- specifically with the new gorgeous book The Conference of the Birds, illustrated by Peter Sis and published by The Penguin Press. This lavishly illustrated new book brings to life the classic twelfth-century Persian epic poem written by Farid Ud-Din Attar that tells the story of a flight of birds in search of the true king, Simorgh: "Birds! Look at the troubles happening in our world! Anarchy -- discontent -- upheaval! Desperate fights over territory, water, and food! Posioned air! Unhappiness! I fear we are lost. We must do something! I've seen the world. I know many secrets. Listen to me: I know of a king who has all the answers. We must go and find him."

The perilous journey to the mountain of Kaf, where Simorgh lives, takes the birds past seven planets, across seven seas, and through seven valleys: quest, love, understanding, detachment, unity, amazement, and death. Many birds decline to tackle the perilous journey. The birds that persist and survive the journey learn that Simorgh the king is, in fact, each of them and all of them.The Conference of the Birds is an inspirational parable about the painful but beautiful human journey toward understanding.

Peter Sis was born in Brno, in the former Czechoslovakia. He is an internationally acclaimed illustrator, author, and filmmaker who sought asylum in America after being sent to Los Angeles to produce a film on the 1984 Winter Olympics. He is the author of more than twenty books and is a seven-time winner of The New York Times Book Review Best Illustrated Book of the Year. In 2003, Sis was named a MacArthur Fellow.

Heller McAlpin, in his review of the book on NPR, described it thusly: "Often evocative of Asian scrolls, the book is filled with mazes, circular patterns, geometric peaks, and enigmatic, dreamlike landscapes, all tinted in the rich browns, greens, blues, and reds of earth, air, water and fire." He says the exquisitely illustrated book on its thick textured paper readily makes the case of what print books can do that e-books can't do. True that! This book is a visual and tactile feast, filled with hidden meanings -- and it works on many levels, so it will appeal to people of all ages.

While we're on the subject of poetry, I can't resist telling you about the wonderful new poetry anthology edited by Rita Dove (and also published by Penguin): The Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry. The book makes a conscious and noble attempt to be inclusive -- across race, gender, ethnicity, old favorites and lesser-known poets. But compiling anthologies is a thankless job, even for a former US poet laureate. I loved the comment on the Poetry Foundation's website:

"Does anyone have a phone number for the producers of the World's Toughest Job? Because we’d like to petition that they add “poetry anthologist” to their roster of underwater welders, rodeo clowns, ultimate fighters, and pyrotechnicians. Okay, it’s true that you won’t lose any limbs compiling the “best” verse of the last 100 years, but the occupational hazards are nevertheless intense." In other words, people are already tossing darts at Dove for her inclusions/exclusions. Nevertheless, as one review commented, "these satiny pages hold bushels of treats to savor."

As Dove notes in her introduction, even though it "doesn't seem right to weigh poems like cabbage or fish," some poems and poets were eliminated because of budgetary issues, as permissions fees range from "modest to outrageous and don't necessarily correlate to literary significance and artistic influence." In the end, however, Dove believes she has remained true to the quest she set out on, presenting "my panorama of twentieth-century American poetry -- viewed not with a scholar's dissecting eye but from the perspective of a contemporary poet who, although not exactly born into her country's mainstream, nevertheless took possession of mainstream society's intellectual shapes and artistic aesthetics to make them her own."

Day 12: Historical Atlas of Washington and Oregon

2011-12-12T17:07:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Day 12 in our 24 Days of Books. Today we're spotlighting a book both gorgeous and fascinating: Historical Atlas of Washington and Oregon by Derek Hayes, published by the University of California Press. This beautiful book is illustrated with more than five hundred colorful images and original maps, creating a visually rich history of the states of Oregon and Washington.

Through the images, maps, and lively text, we follow the coming of the railroads and the rapid establishment of the coastal ports, northwest cities and roads, the fur and lumber industries, and the large farms. We witness the westward expansion, and the conflicts that arose between settlers and Native Americans. Through this book we also witness the twentieth-century development of the war industries, the establishment of the aviation industry, and the celebratory 1962 Seattle World's Fair (I was there, doing The Twist).

The author is a renowned historian with a passion for old maps and what they can reveal about the past. He was trained as a geographer at the University of Hull in England and at the University of British Columbia, and he worked for a time as a planner with the Vancouver (BC) City Planning Department. Last year during the holidays we sold several copies of Historical Atlas of the North American Railroad, also by Mr. Hayes. His newest book seems to be in even greater demand -- in fact, we're having a hard time keeping this book in stock, so don't wait til the last minute. It would make a great gift for someone who loves history, or maps, or art, or the Pacific Northwest -- or all of the above.

Day 11: You're Just My Type. Really

2011-12-11T14:38:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Day 11 in our 24 Days of Books. Today I have to make an admission: I'm a font snob. There. I've said it. I have to come clean and admit that there are some books that I have been unable to read because I can't stand the typeface used to print the book. And while I don't think I've ever purchased a book solely because of the font, it's definitely true that the reading experience of many has been made that much more pleasurable because of the font (and I have been known to drool appreciatively over the handsomest of them).

If you are interested in fonts or know someone who is -- the history of specific fonts and the lives of typographers -- then Just My Type: A Book about Fonts by Simon Garfield is just the book for you. Where do fonts come from? Why do we need so many? Why do certain typefaces reign supreme? Is Comic Sans Serif really funny? Rather than overwhelm readers with technicalities, the author uses anecdotes to tell how something we take for granted has shaped and shaded our perceptions ever since humans first started carving messages on hard surfaces.

Garfield credits Steve Jobs for the array of fonts so easily available to us, noting that Jobs' early fascination with calligraphy and letter forms later translated into the long pull-down font menus available on computers everywhere. This is a must-have book for the design conscious. "Well researched," "delightful," "deliciously clever," "charming," "entertaining," and "downright fun" are just some of the words reviewers have used to describe this book, recently published by Gotham Books/Penguin. Janet Maslin of the New York Times says, "This is a smart, funny, accessible book that does for typography what Lynne Truss's best-selling Eats, Shoots & Leaves did for punctuation: made it noticeable for people who had no idea they were interested in such things."

Reading this book will change the way you perceive the written word forever and will assure you that, contrary to reports of its premature death, print is very much alive. In fact, in an age of ebooks, the physical appeal of print books takes on even greater importance. And did I mention that the book is in our Holiday Book Guide?

This video gives you a taste of the myriad fonts Garfield talks about in his fascinating book.

Day 10: We Live in a World of Magical Trees

2011-12-10T14:44:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Day 10 in our 24 Days of Books, and welcome to the magical world of trees. In the Irvington neighborhood we are blessed with a multitude of magnificent trees. In the fall I often find myself tripping over uneven sidewalks (usually the result of roots spreading from those same magnificent trees) because my eyes are looking up, taking in the beauty of the trees in their most flamingly glorious time of year. And I marvel at the spectacular root structures of many of the trees -- some of which seem large enough to live in!

But how carefully do we really look at these trees -- at their exquisite details, and not just their overall shape and effect? Our shelves, like those of most bookstores and libraries, are groaning with books that give you all kinds of advice for birdwatching, the little details that differentiate different types and genders of birds. But where are similar such books for trees?

Now, local publisher Timber Press has provided just such a book, and it is a doozy. Seeing Trees: Discover the Extraordinary Secrets of Everyday Trees, written by Nancy Ross Hugo with photography by Robert Llewellyn, celebrates seldom-seen but easily observable tree traits and invites you to watch trees with the same care and sensitivity that birdwatchers use to watch birds. I think this will end up being one of the hot holiday gift books of 2011.

Focusing on widely grown trees, this captivating book describes the rewards of careful and regular tree viewing, outlines strategies for improving your observations, and describes some of the most visually interesting tree structures, including leaves, flowers, buds, leaf scars, twigs, and bark. In-depth profiles of ten familiar species — including such beloved trees as white oak, southern magnolia, white pine, and tulip poplar — show you how to recognize and understand many of their most compelling (but usually overlooked) physical features.

Hugo's delightful text and Llewellyn's breathtaking photographs deliver a steady stream of small astonishments that not only underscore the fascinating physiology of trees but will bring you into a closer, more intimate relationship with these miracles of nature.

Nancy Ross Hugo has been writing, lecturing, and teaching about trees, native plants, and floral design for over 30 years. She was the garden columnist for the Richmond Times-Dispatch and the education manager of the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, supervising adult and children's education. She and her husband live in Howardsville, Virginia, where they manage the outdoor education and retreat center Flower Camp. Nancy loves exploring the creative process, particularly in the form of nature journaling, which, she says "helps me keep my thoughts in order, my dates straight, and my eyes open to all things wild and wonderful!"

Robert Llewellyn has been photographing trees and landscapes for almost forty years. His photographs have been featured in major art exhibits, and more than thirty books featuring his photography are in print. He had always seen trees as important aesthetic forms in landscape photography. But when he worked with Hugo on an earlier book, Remarkable Trees of Virginia, he saw them differently. “First, they were living things, they are born, they die. And second, they live in communities.” In Seeing Trees, he has discovered that minute detail reveals something else, an unexpected and alien beauty.

This video tells you more about the book and especially about the digital camera technology Llewellyn used to capture incredibly sharp detail to create the amazing photographs in the book. They are truly stunning.

Day 9: The World of Catherine the Great

2011-12-09T16:45:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Day 9 in our 24 Days of Books. Last year Cleopatra: A Life reigned as the hot biography during the holidays. This year a new biography of another powerful woman leader is catching the wave: Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman, by Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Robert K. Massie and published by Random House.

Massie, who was born in Kentucky and studied American history at Yale and European history at Oxford, won the Pulitzer Prize for his biography Peter the Great: His Life and World. He also wrote Nicholas and Alexandra and The Romanovs: The Final Chapter, along with other books -- spending almost a half a century studying czarist Russia. He served as president of the Authors Guild from 1987 to 1991.

Catherine the Great was born as Sophia Augusta Fredericka on April 21, 1729, a minor German princess, to her sixteen-year-old mother Johanna. From these humble beginnings she rose to become one of the most remarkable, powerful, and captivating women in history, corresponding with major historical and literary figures of her time -- Voltaire, Frederick the Great, Maria Antoinette, Gregory Potemkin (her lover and possible husband), and even the American naval hero John Paul Jones.

At the age of 15, the young German princess was swept from obscurity to marry the heir to the Russian throne, and Sophia -- renamed Catherine -- eventually went on to rule Russia for more than thirty years. She was intelligent. charming, fiercely determined, and a voracious reader. One of her boldest moves was the attempt to abolish serfdom—the Russian brand of slavery, but she was unsuccessful. She was able to amass a remarkable art collection, help to bring about advancements in medicine and science, and win important military victories during her reign.

History offers few stories richer than that of Catherine the Great, and as the New York Times says in its review of the book, Massie has always been "a biographer with the instincts of a novelist." Massie brings to his biographies historical accuracy, depth of understanding, felicity of style, mastery of detail (and lots of it), the ability to shatter myth, and a rare genius for finding and expressing the human dram in extraordinary lives.

Massie first became interested in the Romanov family when his oldest son, Robert Massie Jr., was diagnosed with hemophilia. As he and his wife struggled to manage their son's illness, they reviewed case studies of history's most famous hemophiliac, Tsarevich Alexis. Massie became convinced that Alexis’ disease, and the resulting need for secrecy and dependence on Rasputin, was a larger contributing factor to the dynasty’s downfall than it had been considered previously. This research led to Massie's first major book, Nicholas and Alexandra, published in 1967.

Here is a link to Diana Rehm of WAMU interviewing Robert Massie.

Children's Picture Books to Drool Over

2011-12-08T12:57:00.000-08:00

I am a nut for children's picture books. So many of them are so clever, or funny, or gorgeous -- or all of the above -- that I find them hard to resist. Here are a few of my current favorite picture books -- although it's awfully hard to narrow it down to these few. Come explore the whole section if you can!

I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen, which tells the story of a bear who has lost his hat, is described by the New York Times as "a charmingly wicked little book." Recently on NPR's Weekend Edition the story was read by Daniel Pinkwater and Scott Simon. Cute!

Winner of the 2010 Caldecott Medal for The Lion and the Mouse, Jerry Pinkney's newest -- and stunningly gorgeous -- book is Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. In this breathtaking rendition of our most enduring lullaby, Pinkney lights a path for sleepy readers on their way to a land where dreams are as real as you want them to be.

Oliver Jeffers makes art and tells stories, and he does both beautifully. In his newest picture book, Stuck, Floyd attempts to get his kite unstuck from a tree, with laugh-out-loud results. I also loved his book The Heart and the Bottle.

Loren Long continues the adventures of heroic little Otis the tractor in his newest book Otis and the Tornado. This book (like its predecessor) is marvelously illustrated. Long also illustrated President Obama's picture book Of Thee I Sing. [And don't forget that you can buy a "plush Otis" to go along with the book!]

McSweeney's launched a children's book imprint this year, and one of their first books is Symphony City by Amy Martin, who recently moved to Portland. Martin uses color and short staccato phrases to capture a world of sound using only visual cues. And the book's dust jacket unfolds into a giant double-sided poster!

You really have to see Press Here, by Herve Tullet, to understand just how wonderful it truly is. But here are some reviewers' comments to pique your interest: "This book is 100% magic." "Compared to the squawking sounds and flashing lights of many toys, Tullet's simplicity is a breath of fresh air." "Every once and a while a book comes along exemplifying such a rare simultaneous brilliance and simplicity that you cannot believe the world of words ever functioned before its conception." I'm also rather fond of another of Tullet's books, The Book with a Hole, although it is a challenge to shelve!

With the aura of an established classic, the first volume in William Joyce’s long-anticipated series “The Guardians of Childhood,” The Man in the Moon offers a dazzling, breathtaking landscape. Readers will be happy to know that many books and films will follow. Brian Selznick (The Invention of Hugo Cabret) says, "William Joyce, to put it simply, is a genius."

Bumble-Ardy, the first book Maurice Sendak has written and illustrated in thirty years, is about a mischievous pig who throws a party for himself, with wild results. Sendak has won a pot-load of awards for his children's books, including the Caldecott Medal for Where the Wild Things Are. Sendak wrote Bumble-Ardy while his friend and partner was dying. I dare you to listen to this interview with Terry Gross without tearing up.

Last but not least (make me stop!) is an adorable board book based on last year's sensational picture book: It's a Little Book, by Lane Smith. It's a Little Book (versus It's a Book) has altered the final line in the book, for those of you who were wondering. As delightful and charming as the original as it reveals the virtues of books, but for a younger level of reader who might opt to chew on books literally, not figuratively.

Lots lots more, but I'm sure you're ready to stop reading this blog and start looking at books!

Day 8: Dipping into My Guilty Pleasures

2011-12-08T09:39:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Day 8 of our 24 Days of Books. Today we're going to indulge in a little guilty pleasure. Oscar Wilde famously said, “I can resist everything but temptation.” He also said, in the same breath, “the only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.” These words were never truer than in December. Each of us has at least one personal guilty pleasure when it comes to books, and I have several. For this one last month of the calendar year, I yield to my temptation to read books about the performing arts.

I’m not talking highbrow academic treatises on obscure composers here. Nor am I fond of cheesy fan bios. My tastes run to memoirs by and biographies of performers and others associated with the performing arts (writers especially). Here are five of my favorite new ones, with a heavy slant to the worlds of theatre and performance:

My Song: A Memoir by Harry Belafonte leads the reader through the life of a most extraordinary performer and social activist whose public and private selves are imbued with a personal integrity that serves as a beacon for all who follow in his footsteps. Throughout his life, he has been at the very heart of the civil rights movement, beginning with his poverty-ridden childhood in Harlem and Jamaica, through his years in the U.S. Navy during World War II, to his close friendship with Martin Luther King and beyond. Indeed, this book can be read as a history of that era, but it is much more. It is a very personal look at the major players in the movement and the world in which Belafonte has long moved. He has befriended many beloved and important figures in both entertainment and politics – Paul Robeson, Eleanor Roosevelt, the Kennedys, Sidney Poitier, Nelson Mandela, Tony Bennett, and more. He writes about all with exceptional candor, pulling no punches and turning his loving but critical eye on our country’s cultural past.

Wendy and the Lost Boys: The Uncommon Life of Wendy Wasserstein by Julie Salamon is the first biography of one of the major playwrights of the baby boomer generation. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the first woman playwright to win a Tony Award, Wendy Wasserstein was a Broadway luminary. In this deeply moving portrait, the author reveals Ms. Wasserstein’s most enigmatic character: herself. She was, by turns and also simultaneously: a daughter of the 1950s, an artist who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s, a powerful woman in 1980s New York, and a single mother at the turn of the century. Her very life spoke to the tensions and contradictions of an era of great change. Her loving family was difficult, her critically acclaimed work was her passion, and her legions of friends (many of them gay men, which partly explains the title) were steadfast. Sadly, she died too young, leaving behind a six-year-old daughter. This is the story of a famously private person (who kept both her pregnancy and her illness secret as long as she could, and never revealed the name of the person who fathered her child) who was most comfortable working in a very public forum.

Then Again by Diane Keaton is an unlikely twist on the celebrity memoir, and just what one would expect from an artist who is known for following her own path. This book tells the story of Diane’s mother, Dorothy Hall, a beautiful, intensely complicated, restless and creative woman who struggled to find an outlet for her talents as she raised a large family. Mrs. Hall kept journals, 85 of them -- literally thousands of pages of diary entries, collages, newspaper clippings and private notes about her marriage, her children, and herself. Her daughter draws on these journals to talk about the influence her mother had in her own life, and the bond that connected them. It was a bond that defined both their lives and one that Ms. Keaton obviously treasures and continues to emulate with her own children. This is an intimate look into the life of one of our most charming and accomplished actresses.

Drama: An Actor’s Education by John Lithgow is a look at the backstage life of a journeyman actor (and I mean that in the way that Mr. Lithgow would approve of, surely). Full of insider stories about his collaborations (professional and personal) with renowned performers and directors (including Mike Nichols, Bob Fosse, Liv Ullmann, and Meryl Streep), this book is largely a tribute to his most important influence: his father, Arthur Lithgow, who was an actor, director, producer, and great lover of Shakespeare. It’s the story of a boy who was smitten with the theatre at a very early age and has lived his life telling stories on and off the stage. The theatre worlds of New York and London come alive through these stories. His ruminations on the nature of theatre, film acting, and storytelling cut to the heart of why actors perform, and why we watch them do it. His memory is clear, his wit is sharp, and his candor is moving. A delicious treat.

My favorite performing arts book from last year was Stephen Sondheim’s Finishing the Hat, which was a compendium of lyrics from and stories about the musicals he wrote from the beginning of his career in 1954 through 1981. And now, the second and final volume of this quasi-memoir has just been published. It’s called Look, I Made a Hat, and it covers his career from 1981 through 2011. These things happen to be true: if you have the first book, you have only the first half of the story and so of course must get the second book; if you know the song and/or the show from which both titles are taken, you are a true Sondheim fan/nerd like me and must have both books; if you’re at all interested in the history and development of one of America’s few indigenous art forms you must read these books. These are some of the shows that Stephen Sondheim wrote (lyrics, or music and lyrics): West Side Story, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd (my personal fave), Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George, and Gypsy. There is simply nobody who can match him in the history of American musical theatre. These books include all of the lyrics to all of his shows, plus hundreds of personal anecdotes, advice on songwriting, discussions of theatre history, photos and illustrations. Whew.

Also, fresh out of the box and lurking on our shelves, you can find memoirs and/or biographies of film critics Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert, actors Steve McQueen, Spencer Tracy, James Garner, Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, Cary Grant, and Rob Lowe, rockers and reality-TV stars Ozzy Osbourne and Steven Tyler, television funny people Tina Fey, Ellen Degeneres, Darrell Hammond and Jane Lynch, monologuist Spalding Gray, singer Frank Sinatra, and transgendered dancing star Chaz Bono. Surely you can find your own guilty pleasure in this mixed assemblage.

An Intimate Evening with Storm Large

2011-12-07T14:46:00.000-08:00

If you love Portland-based singer/songwriter/actress/force of nature Storm Large as much as we do, you will be happy to know that she has added “author” to her list of credits. This January 10th, Simon & Schuster will publish Storm Large’s memoir, CRAZY ENOUGH. We can hardly wait!

This book is a rough, raw, and compulsively readable first-person account of how one woman lived with the terror of losing her mind – and lost it, only to find herself. It’s a story few would have the guts to tell so honestly. But honestly, what else can we expect from Storm Large? If you were lucky enough to see her one-woman show called “Crazy Enough”, you know what we mean.

And now here’s our amazing news:

Storm has enthusiastically agreed to spend an intimate evening talking about her life and her book (and signing books) here at Broadway Books. It will be a private event at our cozy little store, open to a limited number of people who sign up by pre-ordering and pre-paying for her book.

The event will be at the store on the evening of Monday, January 2, 2011. We have special permission from the publisher to sell books on this date, which is eight days before the official publication. If you would like to join us for a book, a glass of wine and a schmooze with Storm, here is what to do:

Call us (503) 284-1726 or come into the store no earlier than Tuesday, December 13 at 10 am.
Pay us $25 (the price of Storm’s book) for each person who will attend our event.
We’ll put your name on the list to attend the party, and we’ll give (or mail) you a receipt which will be your ticket to the party.
Come to the party with your receipt, and we’ll give you a book and an appropriate beverage and you’ll get to meet one of Portland’s most gifted, dynamic, and generous performers. And she’ll sign your book!

We are expecting this event to sell out quickly. Mark your calendars for December 13 and give us a call or come in! We cannot accept orders for this event on our website. Pre-ordering the book through the website does not qualify you for a ticket; you must order the book by phone or in person to obtain a ticket to the event.

What a dynamite way to start the year!

Day 7: We're getting Elemental

2011-12-07T08:54:00.000-08:00

It's Day 7 in our 24 Days of Books, and today we're talking about a book-in-a-box. A truly fabulous book-in-a-box.

A couple of years ago, one of our bestselling holiday gifts -- and my gift-of-the-year pick -- was The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Element in the Universe, by Theodore Gray. The book showcased every element in the universe in stunning photography on black paper, providing information about each element including the way each element lives in the world.

This year the author/publisher (Black Dog & Leventhal) team has done it again, producing Theodore Gray's Elements Vault, by Theodore Gray and Nick Mann. As the subtitle of the package notes, the "vault" includes "treasures of the periodic table with 20 removable archival documents, a model pop-up atom, a poster, plus 10 real elements including pure gold!" That's right. Pure gold. Doesn't that special person in your life deserve real gold this year??

Theodore Gray's Elements Vault picks up where The Elements left off. Organized into the nine major groups of the periodic table, the book includes all new text, new stunning photographs, and even more information about each of the elements. The book also includes twenty removable historic documents related to the elements and to the field of chemistry, such as Einstein's famous letter to Roosevelt explaining the potential of uranium for use in nuclear weapons, an advertisement for lithium-laced 7UP soda, Mendeleev's original notes on the periodic table, and more.

Each document is individually packaged in an envelope attached to the book page, so the document can be removed and examined and then put back for safekeeping. The book also includes a gorgeous poster of the unique rainbow spectrum emitted by each element in the periodic table, as well as real samples of pure elements, including gold.

Just as The Elements appealed to -- and was accessible by -- people of all ages, Theodore Gray's Elements Vault will be a welcome addition to your family library, with hours of fun and interesting exploration guaranteed. Books about the periodic table have been hot of late -- including The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements , by Sam Kean, and Periodic Tales: A Cultural History of the Elements, from Arsenic to Zinc, by Hugh Aldersey-Williams.

If you want to move beyond the periodic table, you might try Theodore Gray's Mad Science: Experiments You Can Do at Home, but Probably Shouldn't. In this book, Gray demonstrates essential scientific principles through fifty-four thrilling, daredevil experiments, each accompanied, of course, by full-color photographs that give you a front-row seat to rarely seen chemical reactions and glorious subatomic activity.

Black Dog & Leventhal has also produced another Elements-like book this year for people with an interest in astronomy, Solar System: A Visual Exploration of All the Planets, Moons and Other Heavenly Bodies that Orbit Our Sun, by Marcus Chown. This book replicates the eye-popping visual presentation of The Elements, while teaching readers of all ages about the wonders of our solar system.

Day 6: P.D. James Channels Jane Austen

2011-12-06T10:26:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Day 6 in our 24 Days of Books, which happily coincides with "new-release Tuesday" (Tuesday being the day of the week when many publishers release hot new titles). The hot new title of the day is Death Comes to Pemberley, by the grand master of the detective novel, P.D. James (with the P.D. standing for Phyllis Dorothy, if you're curious).

P.D. James has written more than twenty books, most of them featuring investigator and poet Adam Dalgliesh of New Scotland Yard. The first Adam Dalgliesh novel, Cover Her Face, was published in 1962, followed by thirteen more. The now-91- year-old James had long pondered the idea of combining her two great enthusiasms: reading Jane Austen, one of her long-time favorite authors, and writing detective fiction. [In fact, she is such a fan of the writer that she named one of her daughters Jane.]

Unsure of whether her creative energy would hold out for a fifteenth book featuring Dalgliesh (although she isn’t quite ready to confirm his retirement), she decided to pursue her idea of writing a detective novel based on the characters in Pride and Prejudice -- "Its heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, clever, witty and energetic, is probably the most enchanting female character in English literature." Austen buffs will have great fun spotting references which roam freely in the Austenian landscape of Death Comes to Pemberley.

The book begins in 1803. Elizabeth and Darcy have been happily married for six years and have produced two fine sons. They are preparing for the annual autumn ball which will take place the next evening when a coach careens up the drive carrying Lydia, Elizabeth’s disgraced sister, who with her husband, the very dubious Wickham, has been banned from Pemberley. Lydia stumbles out of the carriage, hysterical, shrieking that Wickham has been murdered. With shocking suddenness, Pemberley is plunged into a frightening mystery.

"Nearly all my detective stories have had their genesis in a place and setting, which is important to any work of fiction and is particularly so in a crime novel, especially if there is contrast between peace, order and beauty and the contaminating eruption of violent death. This contrast is assured by setting a murder mystery in the grounds of Pemberley, a house that in my book enshrines married happiness, children, a household at peace with each other and a daily life in which duty to the community, learning, tradition and an ordered, civilised lifestyle embody all that is good about the age"

According to the bio on her website, her favorite foods are roast duck and freshly picked peas and new potatoes and raspberries and cream. She has no favorite weapon as a crime writer, saying "The weapon should always be appropriate to the murderer."

Detective fiction, she says, is an inherently optimistic genre, affirming our belief that we live in a rational, comprehensible and manageable universe.

Here is a longish (about five and a half minutes) video of the author talking about her newest book:

Day 5: Some of the Season's Best Cookbooks

2011-12-05T15:54:00.000-08:00

It's Day 5 in our 24 Days of Books, and today we're cookin'!! I know we usually only talk about one book a day, but we've got a big appetite when it comes to cookbooks. This is the time of year when publishers produce some of the most beautiful cookbooks, designed to be given as gifts but often purchased by people who just can’t resist the allure of a gorgeously illustrated book about the best of all subjects, FOOD! Seriously, what’s not to like about food? No matter what your dietary restrictions, there is a cookbook for you. Here are five of our favorite new ones:

Dishing Up Oregon: 145 Recipes that Celebrate Farm-to-TableFlavors by Ashley Gartland is a collection of yummy recipes by chefs from Oregon’s very best restaurants, wineries, and purveyors of local foods. Using grown-in-Oregon ingredients that are fresh-fresh-fresh, these recipes celebrate the bounty that is available to lucky Oregonians. From grilled Oregonzola figs to hazelnut-crusted salmon with brown butter and balsalmic vinegar to blackberry bread pudding, these mouthwatering dishes will appeal to anyone who loves local food. Included are hundreds of full-color photos of the food, the chefs, the venues and the landscape, as well as sidebar essays about some of our most precious resources: the dairies, farms, wineries, and other suppliers whose products we all enjoy.

We’re so happy that the cookbook editors have finally figured out that many of us are vegan and/or gluten-free. Here’s a wonderful little book that just came in: Gluten-Free and Vegan Holidays: This book is by Jennifer Katzinger, the author of Flying Apron’s Gluten-Free and Vegan Baking Book. It’s a collection of delicious and stylish recipes that are perfect for celebrating throughout the year. Even if you aren’t vegan and/or gluten-free, mightn’t someone at your table be? These are the holidays covered: Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Saint Patrick’s Day, Passover, Easter, Fourth of July, and Halloween. Also: special sections on holiday cookies, cakes and breads, and a whole chapter of birthday cakes!

One of the most beautiful cookbooks this season is Yvette Van Boven’s Home Made: The Ultimate DIY Cookbook. Ms. Van Boven, who divides her time between Amsterdam and Paris, is a freelance food stylist and recipe writer and runs a lunch restaurant and catering business in Amsterdam. She is also an illustrator. This book is FULL of photos, illustrations, hand-lettering, and more than 200 recipes that are as creative and unique as the author. From something as simple as biscuits to something as gourmet as duck confit, this book is a delight. Make your own cheese! Pickle a bit of mackerel! Concoct chocolate and caramel truffles! With two ribbon markers and a beautiful binding and hand-drawn endpapers, this $40 book is worth much more and makes a charming gift for almost any occasion.

All About Roasting: A New Approach to a Classic Art by Molly Stevens belongs on the shelf of any serious cook. A great companion to Ms. Stevens’ earlier book, All About Braising, this book brings her trademark thoroughness and eye for detail to the technique of roasting meat, poultry, fish, vegetables, and even fruits. Show-stoppers include roast goose with potato-sage stuffing, porchetta made with a loin of pork, and brown-sugar roasted pineapple. Tons of photos, wine and beer pairings, recipes for sauces, condiments, relishes and vinaigrettes and more. If you’ve ever wanted to know the very best way to roast anything – from a chicken to a batch of cherries – this is your book.

Essential Pepin by Jacques Pepin is a stunning collection of more than 700 all-time favorite recipes from the author’s life in food. This encyclopedic volume includes a searchable DVD demonstrating every technique a cook will ever need. “This book is a distillation of the very best of his creations, showing both the remarkable breadth of his cooking and the beautiful continuity of his dishes over the past sixty years. He makes food the way it should be made: simple, seasonally ripe, pure, and impossible to resist.” – Alice Waters

Day 4: Conversations with Jacqueline Kennedy

2011-12-04T15:50:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Day 4 of our 24 Days of Books. Today we offer you Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy. The book is based on conversations between Jacqueline Kennedy and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., that took place in her Washington house in the spring and early summer of 1964. At home and at ease, she spoke about her husband and their time in the White House, with young Caroline and John Jr. occasionally popping in. She was in her mid-30s and recently widowed but determined to set down her thoughts for history.

The book's foreward is written by Caroline Kennedy, with an introduction and annotations by the historian Michael Beschloss. Most importantly, it contains eight CDs with never-before-released interviews. After the interviews took place, the tapes of those sessions were sealed and later deposited in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, in accordance with Mrs. Kennedy's wishes.

Here is Caroline Kennedy writing in the book's foreward about the decision to release the tapes at this time: "In 1964, as part of an oral history project on the life and career of John F. Kennedy, my mother sat down with Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., to share her memories and insights. Recorded less than four months after the death of her husband, they represent a gift to history and a labor of love on her part....The moment seems right — enough time has passed so that they can be appreciated for their unique insight, yet the Kennedy presidency is still within living memory for many who will find her observations illuminating....My parents shared a love of history. To them, the past was not an academic concern, but a gathering of the most fascinating people you could ever hope to meet."

The book and tapes show a politically curious first lady, sometimes caustic and often witty, who had strong views about everyone around her. What’s especially striking is how candid the first lady was in these interviews, and her willingness speak her mind.

The Kennedy family has been a subject of great interest to the baby-boomer generation. [Two other Kennedy-related books receiving much positive acclaim right now are the new biography of Jack Kennedy by Chris Matthews (Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero) and the novel by Stephen King (11/22/63) about a time traveler who tries to prevent the assassination of President Kennedy.] But this book/CD package gives us the opportunity to hear from the former first lady herself, providing insights on the many significant people and events that shaped JFK's presidency and offering us perhaps the most informed, genuine, and immediate portrait of John Fitzgerald Kennedy we shall ever have, as the past comes alive through the words and voice of an eloquent eyewitness to history. The book is illustrated and the package handsomely produced.

Day 3: Happy 50th, Milo! You've Never Looked Better

2011-12-03T12:18:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Day 3 in our 24 Days of Books. Today in honor of Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day, I'm going to talk about one of my all-time favorite books, forever and ever and ever, The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster and illustrated by Jules Feiffer. It's quite amazing to me that the book is now celebrating its fiftieth anniversary -- I can't possibly be that old.

The book tells the story of Milo, who is always bored and who comes home from school one day to find a large package containing a tollbooth, three precautionary signs, some coins for tolls, a map, and a book of rules and traffic regulations. He climbs into the small electric automobile he hadn't driven in months, and off he goes on his adventures in Dictionopolis and Digitopolis, soon to be accompanied by a watchdog named Tock.

As a child I loved the wordplay and puns of the book and all of the wonderful characters: the Humbug, Officer Shrift (he was short), Faintly Macabre, the Whether Man and the Senses Taker, King Azaz (The Unabridged) of Dictionopolis and his brother, the Mathemagician, ruler of Digitopolis, and of course King Azaz's advisers: The Duke of Definition, the Minister of Meaning, the Earl of Essence, the Count of Connotation, and the Undersecretary of Understanding -- and many many more. As I grew older, and continued to re-read the book, I delighted in the satire and wit, the double entendres and the humor. It's just darned fun, for readers of any age.

To commemorate the book's fiftieth anniversary, Random House has just published The Annotated Phantom Tollbooth,” with notes by Leonard Marcus; and a fiftieth-anniversary edition, with a series of short essays by notable readers about the effect the book has had on their lives.

The Annotated Phantom Tollbooth tells the fascinating story of the book and of the author and illustrator. Here is a tiny snapshot of what we learn (but there is so much more the book offers): Norton Juster was born in Brooklyn in 1929, just two months before the onset of the Great Depression, his father a Romanian-born Jew who immigrated to the US as a young boy, and his mother coming from a hardscrabble Polish-Jew family. His older (by four years) brother Howard was a golden boy who breezed through life ahead of Norton, leaving him in his shadow.

Juster's father and brother were both architects, and he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania's school of fine arts assuming he too would build a career as an architect. After earning his Bachelor of Architecture degree, Juster went to England on a Fulbright Scholarship to study civic design/urban planning.

In 1954 he enlisted in the military, joining the Civil Engineer Corps of the United States Naval Reserve. While stationed in Newfoundland, he began to write and illustrate a story for children, to combat the misery and boredom. His final posting took him back to Brooklyn, and a small basement ("garden") apartment, where he eventually became acquainted with one of his neighbors, Jules Feiffer, who was then writing a cartoon strip for the Village Voice.

That meeting led eventually to the partnership that created The Phantom Tollbooth -- written by Juster after he had quit his architecture job after receiving a grant from the Ford Foundation to write a book on urban planning (a book he never did write) -- and published by Epstein & Carroll in September 1961. At first the book went nowhere. Juster's mother, Minnie, "terrorized" booksellers on her son's behalf. Then, spectacular reviews began to appear: the New Yorker, the New York Herald Tribune, the New York Times. Jane Jacobs, the urban-design critic and neighborhood activist (and a friend of Juster's), wrote in the Village Voice that book derived its special flavor from a fusion of the "most outrageous fantasy" with an "urgent and vivid sense of reality." And she wrote of Feiffer, the illustrator, that he is "a man who can draw an idea."

The annotated book contains the entire text of The Phantom Tollbooth, accompanied by annotations which draw upon interviews with Juster and Feiffer and Juster's notes and drafts and that provide cultural and literary commentary, artistic context and background, and other commentary by Marcus, a nationally acclaimed writer on children's literature.

In a recent article in The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik, wrote about the anniversary of The Phantom Tollbooth, it's beginnings, and its continuing appeal to readers of all ages, speaking with both Norton Juster and Jules Feiffer. Here are some of the comments from that article (but please do read the entire article):

The Phantom Tollbooth was signed and edited by Jason Epstein. Says Juster: "He was a wonderful editor, and he used to scare the hell out of me. At a certain point, he’d stop and say, ‘It’s your book. Do what you want with it.’ I’d get rigid.”

The book was published in 1961, and no one had much hope that it would find an audience. “Everyone said this is not a children’s book, the vocabulary is much too difficult, the wordplay and the punning they will never understand, and anyway fantasy is bad for children because it disorients them,” Juster said, four million copies later.

The other shaping experience was listening to the radio. As both artists stress, having a pure stream of sound as your major source of entertainment meant that your mind was already working imaginatively, without your necessarily realizing it. “It’s impossible today!” Feiffer said. “Everything is visual."

Milo [whom Gopnik describes as "not very actively parented"] is also one of the few protagonists in children’s literature—Dorothy is another—who have a wiser best friend throughout their journey, in this case Tock, the watchdog. Just as Dorothy learns from the smart Scarecrow, Milo learns from Tock’s timekeeper’s knowledge. Milo doesn’t educate himself; he gets educated. His epiphany is that math and reading and even spelling are themselves subjects of adventure, if seen from the right angle. The point of The Phantom Tollbooth is not that there’s more to life than school; it’s that normal school subjects can be wonderful if you don’t have to experience them as normal schooling.

For The Phantom Tollbooth is not just a manifesto for learning; it is a manifesto for the liberal arts, for a liberal education, and even for the liberal-arts college....Juster was writing a comic hymn to the value of the liberal arts at a moment of their renaissance, buoyed as they were by the G.I. Bill and new cadres of students.

Day 2: Moby Dick, or Why We Love Reading

2011-12-02T11:18:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Day 2 of our 24 Days of Books. Today you get a bonus -- three terrific books instead of one, all sharing a Melville theme.

One of my favorite reading memories is the time I was assigned to read Moby Dick. We’re talking high school. I put it off and put it off, until at last I had two days to read this whale of a book and no choice but to barricade myself in my bedroom and ask Mom to slip food under the door.

Little did I know what a sea change awaited me.

I spent the next 48 hours on a ship looking for a great white whale and discovering a passion for reading. I was awash with adventure, drowning in metaphor, and totally carried away on a sea of language. All from the safety of my little bed.

And here’s the thing: I have no memory of how I did in that English class, but thank you, Mrs. Hackett. You gave me the joy of reading, a gift which will last me to the end of my days. And Mom, thanks for the grilled cheese sandwiches.

So here we are, 160 years after Moby Dick was first published, and it’s a banner year for lovers of Melville’s great American novel. Three new books for your consideration:

Moby-Dick in Pictures: One Drawing for Every Page by Matt Kish. This huge brick of a book is exactly what it says it is. Matt Kish, an Ohio artist, set out on an epic voyage of his own one day in August 2009. He began illustrating Melville’s classic, creating an image a day over the next eighteen months based on text selected from every single page of the 552-page Signet Classics paperback edition. Completely self-taught, Kish refused to set any boundaries for the artwork and employed a deliberately low-tech approach in response to the increasing popularity of digital art. Found pages torn from old books are combined with ballpoint pen, marker, paint, crayon, ink and watercolor in a variety of styles. This book is beautifully printed on luscious paper and published by Tin House Books of Portland. Many of Matt’s original illustrations for this book are available through his blog. The book is available in a paperbound version and a slipcased hardbound version -- both are gorgeous.

Ishmael and friends find their perfect contemporary champion in Nathan Philbrick, whose Why Read Moby-Dick? is an enlightening and entertaining tour through the world of Melville’s classic. In this slim volume, the author brings a sailor’s eye and an adventurer’s passion to unfolding the story behind an epic American journey. He skillfully navigates Melville’s world and illuminates the book’s humor and unforgettable characters, finding the thread that binds Ishmael and Ahab to our own time. This book is designed to start conversations, inspire arguments, and make a powerful case that a classic tale can be discovered anew.

Chad Harbach’s novel The Art of Fielding, published recently to much acclaim, is the story of the Harpooners, a baseball team from Westish College, a small liberal arts school whose president, Guert Affenlight, is a Melville scholar. Team star Henry Skrimshander makes a disastrous error, and the fates of five people are upended. Besides Henry and Guert, there is Owen Dunne, Henry’s roommate and teammate, Mike Schwartz, team captain and Henry’s best friend, and Pelle Affenlight, Guert’s daughter who returns to Westish after escaping an ill-fated marriage. It’s complicated. But throughout, there are references to Melville. And, as the Paris Review says, Harbach’s novel is “…a book about baseball in the way that Moby Dick is a book about whaling – it is and it isn’t.” This is a big-hearted novel whose author loves his characters, in spite of and because of their flaws. I gobbled it up.

What Are You Doing this Weekend?

2011-12-01T21:00:00.000-08:00

Day 1 of Our 24 Days of Books

2011-12-01T08:18:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Day 1 in this year's 24 Days of Books. If you're new to the blog, it's a pretty straightforward concept: each day in December through Christmas Eve we feature a book or group of books that we think would make particularly wonderful gifts this holiday season.

It's always a challenge to winnow down to the few that we talk about, because there are SO MANY books that would make great gifts. And, frankly, we enjoy nothing more than having you all come in and talk to us about all the specific giftees in your lives so we can help you select the perfect gift for each person on your list. But this is a start, right? Other good sources for gift ideas can be found on our website in the staff picks, the store bestsellers (under "what's new?"), the Holiday Book Guide, Indie Bestsellers, and the IndieNext List -- all of which can be reached via our home page.

A couple of caveats before we get started: We tend to focus on recently released books, because we figure we've probably already talked about older books (and by older we mean they came out before the Fall) in previous blog posts or Facebook posts or somewhere else. Also, because we mostly talk about newly published books they tend to be hardbound books. But here's a tip: if you're more interested in paperback books, look for the "Blog Archive" on the right-hand side of the blog, and click on December 2010 and 2009 for previous years' 24 Days of Books, since many of those books will now be available in paperback.

So let's get started....a little drum roll would be nice.....Day 1 in this year's 24 Days of Books features A History of the World in 100 Objects, by Neil MacGregor and published by Viking/Penguin. This fascinating book takes a dramatically original approach to the telling of history, using objects that previous civilizations have left behind, often accidentally, as a prism through which to explore the lives of the men and women of history. The author not only describes these 100 objects, but also shows us their significance in history and puts them in the context of a larger history.

Neil MacGregor has been the director of the British Museum since 2002. Previously he was the director of the National Gallery in London. The book originated as a partnership between the BBC and the British Museum, leading to a BBC radio series narrated by MacGregor. As he says in the book's preface, "Telling history through things is what museums are for." "All museums rest on the hope -- the belief -- that the study of things can lead to a truer understanding of the world."

The rules for this particular collection of "things" were set by the BBC: "Colleagues from the Museum and the BBC would choose from the collection of the British Museum 100 objects that had to range in date from the beginning of human history around two million years ago and come right up to the present day. The objects had to cover the whole world, as far as possible equally. They would try to address as many aspects of human experience as proved practicable, and to tell us about whole societies, not just the rich and powerful within them. The objects would therefore necessarily include the humble things of everyday life as well as great works of art." The point of the project was to help people make sense of the museum’s vast holdings by taking a single object and putting it into a larger context, one that told a story that everybody could relate to.

Of course there is an inherent limit in this approach, as it is limited to the things that survive: "It is particularly harsh on cultures whose artefacts are made mostly of organic materials, and especially so where climate will cause such things to decay: for most of the tropical world, very little survives from the distant past."

The oldest artifact in the book is a stone chopping tool found by Louis Leakey in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania and dating from somewhere around two million years ago -- the beginning of the human toolbox. "Those extra chips on the edge of the chopping tool tell us that right from the beginning, we -- unlike other animals -- have felt the urge to make things more sophisticated than they need to be. Objects carry powerful messages about their makers, and the chopping tool is the beginning of a relationship between humans and the things they create which is both a love affair and a dependency."

From 5000 BC we have the Jomon Pot, found in Japan: "It was these Jomon people living in what is now northern Japan who created the world's first pots." The Jomon Pot looks much like the baskets that people had relied on previously, but the new sturdy clay containers brought great improvements: they kept freshness in and mice out, they were leak-proof and heat-resistant: "This is an important point -- pots change your diet. New foods become edible only once they can be boiled. Heating shellfish in liquid forces the shells to open, making it easier to get at the contents, but also, no less importantly, it sorts out which are good and which are bad -- the bad ones stay closed."

From about 3000 BC the book brings us a clay writing tablet found in southern Iraq -- a tablet "almost exactly the same size and shape as the mouse that controls your computer." Unlike bamboo and paper, which are easily destroyed, sun-baked clay will survive in dry ground for thousands of years. This particular tablet seems to be a bureaucratic record of beer issued as payment to workers.

Another object in the book is a stone mask made by the Olmecs, who ruled in what is now Mexico from about 1400 BC to about 400 BC. The Olmecs "were a highly sophisticated people, who built the first cities in Central America, mapped the heavens, developed the first writing and probably evolved the first calendar there."

A granite sphinx found in northern Sudan, The Rosetta Stone, a Korean roof tile, a stone statue from Easter Island, a shadow puppet of Bima, a Hawaiian feather helmet, a buckskin map from midwestern America, a Sudanese slit drum, a chronometer carried on the HMS Beagle, a penny from England with "votes for women" hammered by hand on its face, and ending with a solar-powered lamp and charger made in China in 2010 -- this book of objects tells you a history of the world that you have never seen before. And it is fascinating. This is the kind of book you can pick up over and over again, reading straight through or dipping in and out and jumping around in time. A terrific gift. But be sure to pick up one for yourself!

Lights on NE Broadway Celebration

2011-11-30T13:59:00.000-08:00

Throughout the month of December you'll find unique gifts, personalized service, special sales, holiday food and drink, and all sorts of general merriment in the NE Broadway neighborhood during our Lights on NE Broadway Celebration. On Thursday, December 8th, from 5 pm to 8 pm, several merchants are participating in a special Ladies Night Out, with even greater deals and still more merriment!

At Broadway Books, we'll have a little nosh for you, as well as a wine tasting sponsored by Zerba Cellars, a scrumptious family-owned, estate winery located in the heart of the Walla Walla Valley. Wine Press Northwest named Zerba Cellars Winery of the Year in 2011. I grew up in Walla Walla and go there frequently to visit family and partake of all the wonderful new wine coming from the valley. Zerba is one of my favorites and is a regular stop on my way into town.

If you spend $30 or more at Broadway Books during Ladies Night Out, we'll give you a free booklover's calendar! We have all kinds of wonderful books in the store right now -- for gifts or for yourself -- as well as games and puzzles and calendars and cards and Christmas & Hanukkah goodies and all kinds of fun stuff.

As always, you can go to the NEBroadway website to get details on these events and on all the other cool stuff going on in the neighborhood. And don't forget about our 2011 Holiday Book Guide for great gift ideas.

Take Home Your Own Cuddly Olivia -- and more!

2011-11-28T14:23:00.000-08:00

As you're working your way through your holiday shopping list this year, please note that besides fabulous books for kids, we also have some delightful plush characters from children's books that could be just the ticket for your younger gift recipients. We've got characters from all sorts of popular children's books, including Olivia (my personal favorite), Otis the Tractor, Rocket (who learned to read), Llama Llama, Pete the Cat, Ladybug Girl, Penny (and her song), the polar bear from On the Day You Were Born, and Stillwater the panda from the wonderful Jon Muth books. Last, but not not least -- or maybe least (Roberta made me do it, really) -- Walter the Farting Dog. These lovely soft characters range from $10 to $18 and are made by MerryMakers.

MerryMakers was founded in 1993 with the goal of providing carefully designed dolls and toys based on the very best children's books, museum collections, and other characters. Their products meet the recently revised safety requirements and will still be deemed Safe For All Ages under the new regulations.

Quantities of each are limited, so come early for the best selection!

It's Civil War Day!

2011-11-26T09:31:00.000-08:00

In honor of today's Civil War football game, check out these cool 2012 calendars with vintage posters from UO and OSU football teams -- we've got one for Duck fans and one for Beaver fans. Personally, I come from a broken family: my parents are Beavers and I'm a Duck fan, so I'm probably going to have to pick up one of each.

We've got lots more 2012 calendars, if football posters aren't to your liking. So far I've picked up a sock monkey calendar and a gorgeous Cavallini garden calendar for my kitchn. I usually buy a handful of Oregon calendars -- one for me and the rest as gifts; we have several different Oregon calendars from which to choose, showcasing the splendor of our state. Many of our calendars are one-time shots: once they're gone, they're gone for good, so shop early for the best selection.

Thanks to our new extended holiday shopping hours, we're open both before and after game time -- we open at 10 am today and we don't close until 9 pm. Those are our hours every day of the week until Christmas Eve, except for Sundays when we'll be open from 10 am to 7 pm until Christmas Eve. Here's to a great Civil War!

Turn Black Friday to Book Friday

2011-11-25T09:33:00.000-08:00

Oregon writer Scott Sparling, author of the novel Wire to Wire (published by Tin House Books), wrote a blog post recently that we thought was brilliant. Here's some of what he had to say (I encourage you to read the full blog):

Despite what you may have heard from various small-minded people in my past, I am not the one who ruined Christmas. But I do know how to save it.

On the day after Thanksgiving, go out and buy anything you want…just as long as it’s a book. That’s how we’re saving Christmas this year. Forget Black Friday. It’s Book Friday now.

And by go out, I mean to a physical bookstore with a real bookseller inside. From what I’ve heard, last Christmas was tough for some independent bookstores. Chances are, your favorite record store is already gone. If your favorite bookstore is still open, use the power of your holiday spending to help keep it that way. Go out on Book Friday and buy books for everyone....

Or let’s say I invite you over to the house for a holiday dinner (which I won’t, but hypothetically). Don’t show up with a bottle of wine or flowers as your gift. Bring me a book.....

But which books, you wonder? Well, the one I wrote would be a fine choice. But so would any other. How about one of the National Book Award winners, or all of them? How about the equally fine or finer books unrecognized by awards? Perhaps you could find a website that recommends good books. There must be one somewhere.....

They do have to be real books, however. With physical pages and covers. That’s what Book Friday is all about....

How many books should you buy on Book Friday? Simple. Just take the prime number closest to your hat size, multiple by the number of letters in your last name, and divide by the speed of a bus traveling from Baltimore to Poughkeepsie. Knowing you, that's probably three or four.

Also, I know you like sitting at your computer and sending money to far-away places, listening into the ether for the efficient whir of gears as robots robo-pack your purchases. That’s not gonna cut it this year. No sexy UPS guy with a package from Amazon is gonna get us out of the mess we’re in. The bottom line is this: Independent bookstores are good for our communities and good for America...and the world, come to think of it. Basically, if you don’t support your local booksellers, you’ll be ruining more than Christmas. You’ll be ruining the future. And you wouldn't want that rumor to get around.

So head out to your favorite bookstores on Book Friday, and stock up. I’ll be out there with you. Do it for the local economy, for the people you love, for me, for my mom, or for yourself.

Indie Reader App for Android

2011-11-25T09:17:00.000-08:00

If you've been hankering for an easy way to purchase ebooks from your local independent bookstore (ahem), check out this new app from Indiebound called IndieReader. It's a slick new app that allows you to set up your preferred independent bookstore and then browse and buy ebooks easily. Currently it's available for Android devices and will shortly be available for iOS devices (read: Apple). I downloaded it onto my Android phone and it worked like a charm, just a few quick taps. Once I had purchased the book through IndieReader, I could read it on any of my eReading devices.

The application was created by the American Booksellers Association and Bluefire Productions, an independent software company in Seattle. (We're big on independents!)

IndieBound is a community-oriented movement begun by the American Booksellers Association that brings together booksellers, readers, indie retailers, local business alliances, and anyone else with a passionate belief that healthy local economies help communities thrive. Successful local, indie businesses help dollars, jobs, diversity, choice, and taxes stay local, creating strong, unique communities and happy citizens.

You can download the app from the Android Market or from IndieBound. Or you can download it at our store -- just look for the QR code.

Book Drive for Roosevelt High School

2011-11-23T13:35:00.000-08:00

This year, Broadway Books is dedicating our annual book drive to Roosevelt High School. Librarian Betsy Tighe, a dedicated and energetic soul, wrote this to us: “For four years, RHS library was staffed only by a library assistant. Last year, RHS was able to hire a certified media specialist on a grant it had received from the Federal Department of Education. However, the grant does not contain funds for materials.” We’re bound and determined to help them with that!

They need adult and young adult fiction, graphic novels, nonfiction in the areas of science, medicine, world cultures, and food, Asian and African literature, and Somali dictionaries. Here’s our proposal: from November 25th through December 31st, we’ll give you 20% off any book you buy for the RHS library. We've got their wish list behind the counter if you want to buy something from their list. Or you can donate money and we’ll increase your donation by 20% and let Ms. Tighe and her students will choose books for the library’s collection. Either way: Yay! A win-win for sure. Each year our customers have shown themselves to be thoughtfully supportive of the schools we "drive" for -- we thank you, and the kids thank you.

Fun and Games at Broadway Books

2011-11-22T18:40:00.000-08:00

This season we’re stocking a wide selection of puzzles and games for family fun!

Please check out our new puzzle section at the front of the store (next to magazines) and you’ll find 300-piece puzzles for the whole family, as well as more advanced 1000-piece puzzles. We also have block puzzles, each of which have nine cubes, with six pictures to complete. Most of our puzzles feature reproductions of paintings. A few have nature photography. All of them make cool gifts that are good for hours and hours of family togetherness.

We also have four different memory games, for ages 3 to 103. Each box features a set of cards that are placed face down on a table, and pairs are turned over in turn by each player until pairs are discovered and collected (those of you who are as old as I am will remember the old TV show “Concentration”). The games are in themes: Incredible Insects, Artful Animals, B Kliban Cats, and Hieroglyphs from A to Z.

Don’t forget everyone’s favorite, Bananagrams! And also from the Bananagrams people, four other fun games to take with you and play anywhere:

Pairs in Pears: A fun word game played with 4 alphabets, each in a different pattern. For 2-4 players, age 6 and up.
Appletters: A new domino game. You don’t connect the dots, you connect the letters! For 2-4 players, age 6 and up.
Zip-It: A 20-second crossword race you can play anyplace. For 2 players, age 7 and up.
Fruitominoes: Just like dominoes, with pictures of fruit instead of dots. For 2-4 players, age 5 and up.

And we think you’ll love these two new games:

Tell Tale: Using cards with a variety of images ranging from the charming to the ordinary, encompassing a range of situations, players improvise stories. You will love the way this game gives everyone's imagination a chance to shine. For 1 to 8 players, age 5 and up.
Spot It!: This is a good game for pre-readers. There is always one, and only one, matching symbol between any two cards in this game. Spot it and you win! A sharp eye and a little bit of speed is all it takes to play the 4 quick party games included. For 2 to 8 players, age 7 and up.

These games and puzzles make great stocking stuffers and holiday party gifts and offer hours of entertainment for all the family time during the holidays.

Look Before You Leap into the Fire

2011-11-15T15:23:00.000-08:00

I'll just come right out and say it: I'm a much bigger fan of ink-on-paper books than I am of ebooks. There. I've said it. Call me old-fashioned, but I love the feel of a book, the look of the font, yes even the smell of a book, and I have been known to judge a book by its cover.

Having gotten that confession out of the way, I will also say that I can see the merit to ebooks. For instance, my mother is a former librarian and a voracious reader who is burdened by macular degeneration, which makes it difficult for her to read traditional print books. She is currently experimenting with reading on an ereader (The Nook Simple Touch) on which she can expand the type size.

I can also appreciate the advantages of carrying multiple books on a single device when traveling by plane, rather than lugging around a back-ache-inducing sackful of books. I'm even tempted to read the new Stephen King book (which clocks in at 800+ pages) electronically, rather than toting around the tome itself (although it is awfully good looking).

This week is a big week in the electronics world, as both the Nook Tablet and the Kindle Fire tablet are being released, and both are getting lots of media hype. If anyone out there is considering buying one of these tablets, or another brand of tablet or ereader, I think it's essential that you understand one thing very clearly: If you purchase an Amazon product (Kindle Fire, Kindle Touch, etc) you will ONLY be able to buy content for that product from Amazon. Every other seller of ereaders allows you to purchase books from your local independent bookseller. Amazon does not.

In fact, Barnes and Noble, which sells the Nook family of ereaders has clearly decided that the customer should be in charge of content decisions. Of course, the company would prefer that you buy books from its own bookstore, and it's made it easy for you to do so, but they don't insist; they let you decide. Amazon takes that choice out of your hands.

Today NPR ran a story about the pricing of Amazon's new Kindle Fire, stating that Amazon is selling the KF for less than its manufacturing costs (not to mention all of the related marketing costs). Why would they do that? Because the company expects to make A LOT of money from everyone who buys one of its devices:

"Once you're inside Amazon's ecosystem, there are a whole bunch of ways they can make money off you. You buy Amazon's books, movies, and music. You buy Amazon's apps. You see Amazon's ads. There's no Apple store on an Amazon device. You're locked in. This is the model printer manufacturers often use. You can buy a decent printer for $40 — less than it costs to produce. That's because printer companies make all their money selling ink cartridges to go in the printers."

Basically, Amazon is putting a storefront in your hands, where it makes money on everything you do with the device. So why not sell it below cost? It's like the phone companies who give away phones or sell them cheaply because they they know once they have you locked into a contract they can more than make up the difference. Ugh. Count me out!

Personally, I am opting for the Nook Simple Touch and the Nook Tablet. The December 2011 issue of Consumer Reports gives the Simple Touch its highest rating -- and that was before Barnes & Noble dropped the price of the device to $99! It's got fast page turns, sharp text, and an amazingly long battery life -- and no annoying ads to get in your way.

I opted for the Nook Tablet because it has ample storage (16 GB with micro SD card slot for additional storage -- versus Kindle Fire's 512 MG of RAM and 8 GB of storage with no capability to add storage) and a long battery life. But primarily I opted for the Nook Tablet because I applaud B&N's willingness to open up its devices to multiple content providers, enabling users of its devices to continue to support their local independent bookstores.

With the holidays fast upon us, I'm sure many people are considering the purchase of ereaders or tablets. I encourage you to evaluate your decision carefully. It's not just about the upfront cost of the device. Would you buy a car if you could only buy gas for that car from a single service station? It might be fine for a while, but what if that service station decides to dramatically increase its prices? Or delivers bad gas? You would be stuck, because you would have no other options. Giving someone a device that essentially controls them is not a gift; it's a burden. Give the gift of choice. Of options. Of freedom. Better yet, just give them a book. (I couldn't resist!)

Novelists Rae Richen to Read Tonight

2011-11-14T14:12:00.000-08:00

We are so excited to welcome our friend and neighbor, Rae Richen, to Broadway Books tonight to read from her recently published novel Uncharted Territory, a coming-of-age novel written for young adults and adults who enjoy a triumph of life over fear. Uncharted Territory is the story of seventeen-year-old Jack Huntington, all-state athlete and accomplished mountain climber. When a climbing accident nearly takes his life, Jack is forced to face his greatest fear. To save his family, Jack must recognize the vast difference between physical and emotional courage.

Writer Molly Gloss calls Uncharted Territory "a remarkable novel, evoking, with fresh insight, the complexity and fragility of families, of relationships, and of life itself." And Larry Brooks says that Rae writes with "a deft touch that penetrates the reader long after the book hits the shelf for the night." Jennie Shortridge says the novel is a great read for teens and parents both -- "especially when shared."

Before becoming a writer, Rae taught French and English literature, music, and history in the public schools. She enjoys hikes and mountain climbs with her family. Rae played violin in the Oregon Chamber Music Society and gave duet concerts with the fine pianist, Carol Kilmer.

Her short stories, poetry and articles have appeared in anthologies of northwest authors, in pacific northwest newspapers and in Writers’ Northwest Handbook. She recently became president of Oregon Writers Colony, a regional organization supporting writers.

Rae's mom was a drama teacher, a poet, and a Pacifist; her dad was a musician and teacher who became the director of city-wide classes for gifted children. One of her strongest memories from growing up is a lot of humor – "meals together and laughter you wouldn’t believe....We ate together, at least two meals a day, and our parents talked with us about the world, local politics, national politics, the functions or lack of function in the United Nations. They talked about how to work with, and when to stand up to, the bullies on the playground or in our classrooms. They talked about books, theater, music, the death of a pet or a grandparent. No taboo topics at the table except bathroom functions and sex."

We hope you can join us tonight at 7pm to hear Rae read from her new novel.

Free Copy of Matterhorn This Weekend!

2011-11-11T12:50:00.000-08:00

In 1969, at the age of twenty-three, Karl Marlantes was dropped into the highland jungle of Vietnam, an inexperienced second lieutenant in command of a platoon of forty Marines who would live or die by his decisions. Marlantes, who grew up in Seaside and now lives in rural Western Washington, spent decades writing about that experience in the novel Matterhorn, which was published to great acclaim last year -- among its many awards it was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and was selected as the Adult Debut Book of the Year by independent booksellers nationwide. We wrote about Matterhorn in our blog last year.

This year he has written a nonfiction book -- one that is deeply personal and candid -- on what it is like to experience the ordeal or combat. In What It Is Like to Go to War, Marlantes weaves riveting accounts of his combat experiences with thoughtful analysis, self-examination, and his readings -- from Homer to the Mahabharata to Jung. In his new book he tells frankly about how his is haunted by the face of the young North Vietnamese soldier he killed at close quarters and how he finally found a way to make peace with his past, and he makes it clear just how poorly prepared our soldiers are for the psychological and spiritual aspects of war. You can listen to an interview with Marlantes on NPR here.

For the Veterans Day weekend only, anyone buying a copy of What It Is Like to Go to War will receive a free copy of Marlantes' bestselling novel Matterhorn. This is offer is only good for books purchased Friday through Sunday, November 11-13.

George Wright Has the Newport Blues

2011-11-09T11:18:00.000-08:00

Broadway Books is happy to welcome back George Wright, a native Oregonian and a true friend of independent booksellers. George reads tonight at 7 from his fifth novel, Newport Blues, A Salesman's Lament.

George is a true Oregonian -- born in The Dalles and living in Baker City, Tillamook, and Roseburg growing up, and finally Portland, where he lives now with his wife Betsy. His "Oregon Trio" series of novels celebrate the small Oregon towns in which he was raised: Baker City 1948 was published in 2005, followed by Tillamook 1952, and Roseburg 1959.

In 2010, George moved from historical fiction to more contemporary fiction, but still honoring life in rural and small-town Oregon, publishing Driving to Vernonia and now his recently published novel, Newport Blues, A Salesman's Lament.

George's fiction-writing career blossomed after a lengthy career in the not-for-profit sector (primarily with the American Lung Association of Oregon) in which he wrote professionally, publishing books on management and board development, but finally returning to the writing he had first started at around age eight or nine. "The passion to create characters and tell their stories is something that has always just been there for me."

His inspiration for Sidney Lister. the main character in Newport Blues, came from an obituary George read in The Oregonian of someone who just happened to have the same last name as George. Sidney is a ground-down ex-salesman who has been reduced to working as a shipping clerk for the small import gift business and is barely getting by. When the company's salesman dies, Sidney steps into Jonesy's shoes and begins a sales run down the Oregon Coast. At the same time, Sidney is being hunted down by a man from his past who suddenly wants him dead. Sidney is making one last grasp for life’s brass ring and hoping to live to enjoy it.

The book is filled with familiar landmarks and places - Seaside, Cannon Beach, Astoria, and lots of sites in the Newport area such as Nye Beach and Fisherman's Memorial. The book’s cover features the Yaquina Bay Bridge, which also serves as the site of a wild car chase -- which means this is probably the first time in the history of the store that we've had readings two months in a row from books featuring the Yaquina Bay Bridge on the covers! (Matt Love was here last month reading from his new book, Love & The Green Lady, all about the beautiful bridge.)

George wrote the story from the premise that everyone is a salesman in some fashion: be it a product, a service, a cause or even an opinion. George knows a thing or two about sales. Because he runs his own publishing company, he not only writes his own books -- hard enough work, that! -- but he also handles the printing, distribution, marketing, and sales as well: "The writing eventually is over; the marketing never is."

We hope you can join us tonight at 7 to hear George read from his new novel.

The Two Judiths Return to Broadway!

2011-11-08T13:07:00.000-08:00

Tonight at 7 we bring back An Evening with the Two Judiths, featuring local authors Judith Arcana and Judith Barrington. It is sure to be a lively event; we hope you can join us.

Born and raised in the Great Lakes region and now living in Portland, Judith Arcana is a writer of poems, stories, essays, and books and a longtime scholar, teacher, and activist. Her work is published in many journals, online, and on paper. Judith A's latest collections are a poetry chapbook (4th Period English), a signed/numbered edition five-poem broadside (POEMS) and a chapbook manuscript in an envelope (Family Business). These three comprise the Ash Creek Series. Her most recent full-length book is What if your mother, a collection of poems and monologues examining a constellation of motherhood themes rarely offered with such richness, including abortion, adoption, miscarriage, and the contemporary biotechnology of childbirth. Judith A is also the author of Grace Paley's Life Stories, a Literary Biography. She is a Jane -- a member of the Chicago underground service that helped more than eleven thousand women and girls get safe illegal abortions before the US Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade in 1973. In 1972, she was one of seven Janes arrested by the Chicago police.

Judith A has a PhD in Literature, an MA in Women's Studies, an Urban Preceptorship in Preventive Medicine, and a BA in English. She’s taught in high schools, colleges, libraries, living rooms and many other other places. Recently she's completed a fiction manuscript and a big bucket of new poems.

Judith Barrington was born in Brighton, England, and moved to the United States in 1976. Although she has made her home in Portland since then, she now spends time each year in Europe doing readings and workshops.

She is the author of three poetry collections (Horses and the Human Soul, History and Geography, and Trying to be an Honest Woman), two chapbooks (Postcard from the Bottom of the Sea and Lost Lands), a prizewinning memoir (Lifesaving: A Memoir ), and a text on writing literary memoir Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art), which is used in numerous writing programs. She has also recorded a CD of selected poems titled Harvest.

Judith B is on the faculty of the Universtiy of Alaska's MFA program. Over the past twenty five years she has taught creative writing at various universities and at many summer writing workshops including the Port Townsend Writers' Conference at Centrum, Haystack, Split Rock, Fishtrap, the Ashland Writing Conference, the Hassayampa Writers' Conference in Prescott, Arizona, and Flight of the Mind, which she co-founded.

The two Judiths can always be counted on to put on a good show -- lots of lively discussion, good poetry, and interesting segues. To get a flavor of the event, here's a transcript of an email conversation between the two Judiths. We hope you can join us tonight at 7!

Brian Doyle is In The House!

2011-11-03T13:56:00.000-07:00

With great excitement and admittedly more than a wee bit of trepidation, we remind you that Brian Doyle will be reading at Broadway Books tonight from his recently published collection of stories, Bin Laden's Bald Spot, published by Red Hen Press.

Brian Doyle, Brian Doyle. What more can we say about Brian Doyle, other than that he is one of our dearest friends, one of our favorite writers, and unquestionably one of the most animated authors ever to appear in our store. In fact he's appear many times, because we have a weakness for animated authors who are also brilliant and quick-witted and wise with words. His recently published novel, Mink River, which we told you about here, is currently the bestselling novel in our store for 2011. Here is a video clip of the book launch for Mink River. What a fun night that was!

So, here, in no particular order, are things you may or not know about Mr. Doyle:

He is the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland
He has written a lot of books. Maybe twelve. I think. He writes essays, fiction, and "proems."
His work is frequently anthologized and has appeared in oodles of publications.
In 2008, he received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, for "murky reason" (according to the biographical note in his newest book).
The opening sentence of his book about wine-making in Oregon, The Grail: A Year Ambling & Shambling through an Oregon Vineyard in Pursuit of the Best Pinot Noir Wine in the Whole Wide World, opens with a 400-word sentence.
He is in a running battle with the writer David James Duncan over who can get the longest subtitle on the cover of a book. Surprisingly, he says he is losing.
The best thing that ever happened to him? Becoming a father, because it "completely destroyed any semblance of ego and arrogance -- you cannot be a dad and think you are cool."
He is the doting father of three. "On my gravestone I'd be proud if it read A GOOD DAD. Everything else is second."
One of his pet peeves is that our society and culture pay so much empty lip service to "family values" and children being the center of our lives, "but we do not act as we speak." Children go hungry, are homeless, lack health care, and are taught in understaffed schools.
One of his favorite books of 2009 was Alan Bennett's The Uncommon Reader. He is also a big fan of the Patrick O'Brian sea novels.
As an editor and a writer, Brian is intimately familiar with rejection notes. He says he sometimes daydreams about having them made up for all sorts of events in his life: Avoiding an argument with his wife (BRIAN DOYLE REGRETS THAT HE IS UNABLE TO PURSUE THIS MATTER) or sidestepping a sure-to-be-tedious meeting ((I WOULD PREFER TO HAVE MY SPLEEN REMOVED WITH A BUTTER KNIFE).
He once used the ampersand as a plot device.
Brian says he has the most interesting marriage in history.
Brian says he "tries to tell small true stories and not draw conclusions or wax cosmic, just let the reader eat the stories and connect where he or she can."
One of his goals was to undermine Osama bin Laden's arrogrance by getting people to laugh at him.

In his newest book, Bin Laden's Bald Spot, Brian once again plays skillfully with words and phrasing, in stories that are sometimes very short with sentences that are sometimes very long. The stories bring to mind David Foster Wallace in their straightforward accounts of anything-but-straightforward events, of Raymond Carver in their blunt, unadorned dialogue, and of Julie Whitty in their willingness to believe what is happening even if it absolutely shouldn't be. Cynthia Ozick calls Brian Doyle "an extraordinary writer whose tales will endure." We couldn't agree more.

We hope you will join us tonight at 7 for the tornado of ideas and words we fondly know as Brian Doyle.

The Burrito Blog Story Hits the Small Screen!

2011-11-01T16:44:00.000-07:00

I'm sure many of you recall the Burrito Blog story from a few years back, in which a magical blog post by Roberta's son got Tweeted throughout the Twitterverse. Our customers -- new and old -- responded with great compassion and generosity, and a very sad December turned into a very festive December. Recently, Twitter Stories profiled Roberta and her son, Aaron, and retold the Burrito Blog story on video. [I can't watch it without a tear or two....] Our copious thanks for the ongoing support of our wonderful customers who enable us to keep doing what we do: playing passionate matchmakers with books and readers.

Barbara Roberts to Read from New Memoir

2011-10-31T18:30:00.000-07:00

I'm so excited for our reading tomorrow night, when we welcome former Governor Barbara Roberts to Broadway Books to read from her recently published memoir, Up the Capitol Steps: A Woman's March to the Governorship (Oregon State University Press). Governor Roberts has always held a special place in my heart -- not just because she was the first (and thus far only) female governor elected in Oregon -- but because of her commitment to public education, human rights, and environmental management. I am reading her memoir currently, and finding the stories fascinating.

Ms. Roberts was an unlikely candidate to become Oregon's first female governor. Her introduction to politics came as she lobbied for educational rights for children with disabilities, who at that time (1962) had no legal rights to a public education in Oregon. Her first son, Mike was what is now known as autistic. At that time the medical experts told her that she was the cause of her son's problems, that she was what was then called "refrigerator mothers," for their cold, uncaring ways. I can't imagine how hurtful that must have been for a caring, passionate young mother.

Barbara Roberts, a fourth-generation Oregonian, was born in Corvallis and grew up in Sheridan. Her sister, Pat, was born two years later. Her family moved to Southern California in 1940, but moved back to Oregon after the war. "Looking back at World War II, I believe my sense of duty, my commitment to public service, was born during those years. The patriotism of the period was strongly felt."

Roberts was an active kid, participating in Girl Scouts and serving as catcher of the softball team and editor of the high school newspaper. She was a student body officer and cheerleader in high school. "By the time I was a teenager I had little concept of the role of spectator. I was never good on the sidelines. I always loved being part of the parade." She also picked strawberries and green beans to earn money, another area in which she excelled: "I was a driven crop picker. I reasoned if I were going to get up that early and get that dirty, I was going to make some money at it!"

She married while still in high school, but she graduated before moving to live with her husband, who was serving in the military -- as she had promised her parents she would. She and her husband had two sons, Mike and Mark, but divorced after sixteen years of marriage. As a newly divorced single parent, she worked as a bookkeeper at a construction company four days a week and spent one day a week in Salem, lobbying for Senate Bill 699 to give special-needs children the right to an education. Her mentor in the lobbying effort was Senator Frank Roberts. On June 29, 1971, Governor Tom McCall signed Senate Bill 699 into law. On July 29, 1974, she married Frank Roberts.

Roberts lost in her first attempt at running for office -- in 1972 when she ran for a seat on the Parkrose school board. A year later she ran again. This time she won. She later served on the Mt Hood Community College board, served as Frank's legislative assistant, and was appointed to fill the remaining nine-month term of the Multnomah County Commission, after one of the commissioners left before the end of his term. She publicly declared that she would visit every county facility and building in her first two months in office. She soon learned, to her dismay, that in addition to the courthouse, jail, juvenile facility, and elections department that she was aware of, the list also included parks, cemeteries, storage facilities, printing operations, road maintenance buildings, alcohol and drug programs, and a fairgrounds operation -- thirty-nine facilities in all. But she kept her word. "That experience taught me to be better informed before I made big public commitments and promises."

In 1980 she ran unopposed for State Representative in District 17. In her second term, she became Oregon's first woman House majority leader. In 1984 she was elected secretary of state -- the first Democrat elected to that post in 114 years. She was reelected in 1988. In February 1990, she got a very surprising phone call from then Governor Neil Goldschmidt one evening, in which he informed her that he would not be running for reelection. A few days later, Roberts held a press conference in which she announced her candidacy for Governor of Oregon. She won the election, a night that saw three states elect women as governors: Roberts in Oregon, Ann Richards in Texas, and Joan Finney in Kansas.

You'll have to read Barbara's book to get the details on the campaign and on her term as governor. Trust me: it's been a roller coaster ride of good times and challenging times. Currently, Roberts is serving on the Metro Council, completing the term of Robert Liberty, who left to take a position at the University of Oregon. When she completes that commitment, she says she's going back to school to finish her college degree. Yes, she is not one to sit passively on the sidelines!

I hope you can join us tomorrow (Tuesday, November 1st) at 7pm to hear Barbara tell us about her life and political career, as she reads from Up the Capitol Steps: A Woman's March to the Governorship.

Final Week of 30% Discount Special

2011-10-25T19:27:00.000-07:00

This is the last week to take advantage of our sale of 30% off of books from three wonderful publishers who just happen to be in our own backyard: Hawthorne Books, Oregon State University Press, and Tin House Books. Come see us and, while you're here, check out the great window display that Kate made -- white picket fence and all -- highlighting some of those books.

We are exceptionally blessed in Portland in a literary way -- a wealth of accomplished, thought-provoking authors, bookstores and literary organizations that host spirited, interesting book-related events, and publishers of all shapes and sizes. Some of the publishers are one-person, one-book outfits; others rival what you'll find in New York City.

In October we've been celebrating three publishers who make their homes by our sides. Together they publish a fabulous array of books, both fiction and nonfiction -- books for all interests and tastes. Their authors include Scott Nadelson, Lidia Yuknavitch, Monica Drake, Brian Doyle, Robin Cody, Barbara Roberts, Gregory Nokes, Scott Sparling, Sarahlee Lawrence, Harriet Fassenfast, and many many more.

This sale offers a great opportunity to get a head start on your holiday shopping and -- even more exciting -- to explore the works of authors you might not have read before, with minimal risk or financial investment (although given the quality of these publishers, your risk would be minimal anyway).

By the time the kids are out trick-or-treating, this sale will be over, so make sure you end up with a bag of treats for yourself -- literary treats produced in your own backyard!

We Welcome Floyd Skloot Back to BB

2011-10-24T12:40:00.000-07:00

Broadway Books is pleased to welcome back one of our favorites, Floyd Skloot, on Tuesday, October 25th, at 7pm. Floyd will be reading from his recently published collection of short stories, Cream of Kohlrabi, published by Tupelo Press. The collection, which gathers sixteen stories from the more than forty he has published since 1976, is his first collection of stories.

Here is what the magazine Publishers Weekly had to say about the collection in its review: "In this breathtaking collection of sixteen intimate stories by award-winning poet, novelist, and memoirist Skloot, characters struggle with their failing bodies and minds--and the ensuing loss of dignity--while demonstrating their will to live. Skloot's humane approach reveals the truth of each character's condition as well as the challenges of everyday life for the sick and aging--all to haunting and powerful effect....Skloot's subtle, vividly descriptive stories allow his characters glimmers of hope and strength amidst the pain. Readers can't help but be moved."

Floyd was born in Brooklyn and moved to Portland in 1984. In 1988 while on a business trip he contracted a virus that targeted his brain. His neurological functions -- memory, balance, reasoning, concentration, etc., were greatly affected, forcing him to learn to live in a whole new way and to completely change his writing process, writing in smaller chunks and fragments and not relying on abstractions or predetermined structure. "Writing has become an act of discovery for me," and Floyd shares that exploration with his readers.

He received his BA in English from Franklin & Marshall College and his MA in English from Southern Illinois University. In 1993 he married Beverly Hallberg -- a painter and fiber artist who has created the artwork for the covers of several of Floyd's books -- and for thirteen years they lived in a cedar yurt in the middle of twenty hilly acres near Amity before moving back to Portland.

Floyd began writing poetry in 1970, fiction in 1975, and essays in 1990. Since that time he has published seven collections of poetry (with another, Close Reading, to be published by Tupelo Press in 2012), four collections of creative nonfiction (the most recent being The Wink of the Zenith: The Shaping of a Writer's Life in 2008), four novels (Patient 002 came out in 2007), and now a collection of short stories. He also co-edited The Best American Science Writing 2011(Harper Collins) with his daughter, Rebecca Skloot, author of the bestselling book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

In January 2010, Poets and Writers magazine named Floyd one of the fifty most inspiring authors in the world. He has contributed to publications including The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Poetry, The Sewanee Review, Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly, Hudson Review, Boulevard, and Southwest Review. His book reviews frequently appear in the Boston Globe, New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Harvard Review.

Floyd has received the PEN USA Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction, three Pushcart Prizes, two Pacific NW Booksellers Book Awards, and two Oregon Book Awards.

The writer Phillip Lopate had this to say about Floyd: "Floyd Skloot has developed into one of the finest essayists we have. His strong, subtle, exquisitely truthful and often very funny writing testifies to an impressive humanity and maturity." Other reviewers offer these descriptions: "A master of the genre." "Floyd Skloot is the Willie Mays of memoirists." "He offers spare sentences that evoke a world." "Skloot's craft is nothing short of masterful."

We hope you can join us tomorrow night for an evening of wonderful storytelling with Floyd Skloot.

Signed Habibi and Wildwood Books!

2011-10-12T11:38:00.000-07:00

Wow. What a fabulous Wordstock weekend! That was the best festival yet, Greg Netzer -- a perfect swan song as you head off on a new adventure.

We saw lots of old friends and made many new ones. I got to get my picture taken with former governor (and my hero) Barbara Roberts -- who will read here from her new memoir on November 1st. We got to hear a few of the many great writers at the show, and we got to meet a lot of authors who came by to chat. Our booth was perfectly situated across from the McMenamins Stage, around the corner from Ristretto coffee roasters, so we were happy as pigs in mud all weekend.

As a special treat for all of our customers who weren't able to make it to Wordstock this year, we came back with signed copies of both Wildwood by Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis and the gorgeous graphic novel Habibi by Craig Thompson. These aren't likely to last long, so come get yours now. We can only reserve copies of these books for 24 hours unless we charge your credit card.

National Book Award Finalists on OPB

2011-10-11T16:30:00.000-07:00

This year the twenty finalists for the 62nd National Book Awards will be announced on Oregon Public Broadcasting's morning radio program, Think Out Loud, in front of a live audience (which will include one of our very own.....). Can you believe it? This is huge! The National Book Award finalists, being announced to the world from our own backyard. Wow. Here are the details:

On Wednesday, October 12th, from 9:06 am to 9:59 am PST, OPB's Think Out Loud will broadcast a special National Book Award show from the new Literary Arts Center in Portland, announcing the 2011 finalists in four categories. Listen to the show live on OPB Radio at 91.5 FM or watch the live video stream during the broadcast. They will also be live-blogging the event with regular updates of the announcements, and you can join in on the conversation there. Check out author interviews on OPB's website prior to the broadcast.

Host David Miller will interview guests about the National Book Awards and their experiences as winners, finalists, judges and organizers. This year’s finalists will be announced during the show at the following times:

9:15 am: Young People's Literature Finalists Announced by Virginia Euwer Wolff
Virginia Euwer Wolff is the author of six novels for young people, including Make Lemonade, winner of the Oregon Book Award for Young Readers, and True Believer, which won the National Book Award in 2001 and was a Printz Award Honor Book. Her most recent book, This Full House (2010), completes her Make Lemonade trilogy.

9:30 am: Poetry Finalists Announced by Vern Rutsala
Vern Rutsala is the author of 12 collections of poetry, including Laments, The Journey Begins, Little-Known Sports, and The Moment's Equation, which was a Finalist for the National Book Award in 2005. He has been the recipient of two NEA grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Juniper Prize, the Oregon Book Award and the Pushcart Prize, among other honors.

9:37 am: Nonfiction Finalists Announced by Sallie Tisdale
Sallie Tisdale was a National Book Award Nonfiction Judge in 2010. She is the author of The Sorcerer's Apprentice: Tales of the Modern Hospital (1986), Harvest Moon: Portrait of a Nursing Home (1987), Talk Dirty to Me: An Intimate History of Sex (1994) and The Best Thing I Ever Tasted: The Secret of Food (2000). Tisdale is an editor at Harper's as well as a columnist for the online magazine Salon, and her work frequently appears in Condé Nast Traveler, The New York Times Magazine and The Antioch Review. Her most recent book, Women of the Way: Discovering 2,500 Years of Buddhist Wisdom, was published in 2007.

9:52 am: Fiction Finalists Announced by Charles Johnson
Charles Johnson won the National Book Award in Fiction for Middle Passage in 1990 and was a Fiction Judge in 1999 and 2009. Johnson has written four novels, including Soulcatcher (2001), and has written more than twenty screenplays and numerous reviews and book introductions. His many awards and honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1979), the Writers Guild Award (1985), the Prix Jeunesse Award (1985), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1990), a MacArthur Fellowship (1998), and the Lifetime Achievement in the Arts Award (2000).

Winners of the 62nd National Book Awards will be announced in a ceremony and benefit dinner in New York City on November 16th. The event will be hosted by actor, author, and composer John Lithgow. Winners last year were Jaimy Gordon for Lord of Misrule (fiction), Patti Smith for Just Kids (nonfiction), Terrance Hayes for Lighthead (poetry), and Kathryn Erskine for Mockingbird (young people's literature). The 2010 finalists were announced from Flannery O'Connor's childhood home in Savannah, Georgia.

We hope you can tune in tomorrow morning to catch the show! Who do you think should be nominated?? We'll report the results in a blog later this week -- and Roberta can tell us all how much fun she had!

Celebrating 3 Publishers with 30% Off!!

2011-10-07T12:20:00.000-07:00

How lucky are we? Sometimes living in Portland feels like winning the lottery (although I wouldn't turn down REAL lottery dollars, if they came knocking). We enjoy gorgeous scenery, friendly people, a large and varied arts community, plenty of delicious food and drink, a world-class transit system (unless you have a cranky baby), a local economy that includes many independent businesses, a thriving outdoor lifestyle -- the list of treasures to be grateful for is endless.

We are also exceptionally blessed in the literary department, with a wealth of accomplished, thought-provoking authors and a spirited, knowledgeable literary community that includes author readings at bookstores, Wordstock -- a fabulous annual literary festival that just happens to be this weekend and is chock-a-block full of wonderful authors from near and far, the Portland Arts and Lectures series (and many more programs of Literary Arts), and lots more. We are especially blessed with a wide array of world-class publishers located in the region. This month we are celebrating three of those publishers with a special promotion, offering 30% off their books through the month of October*.

Hawthorne Books and Literary Arts, which is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year, focuses on literary fiction and narrative non-fiction, promoting emerging writers, cultivating notable literary figures, and presenting international voices as well.Their authors include Scott Nadelson, Lidia Yuknavitch, Monica Drake, Poe Ballantine, David Rocklin, Tom Spanbauer, and Peter Fogtdal. Publisher Rhonda Hughes lives in Irvington, where she grows heirloom tomatoes in the back yard of Hawthorne’s headquarters.

Corvallis-based publisher Oregon State University Press, founded in 1961, is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year. The press’s mission is to contribute to the intellectual, cultural, and social development of Oregon and the West. They strive to publish books that contain ideas and information that otherwise might not find a forum: books that are recognized for their superior scholarship and creativity. OSU authors include Robin Cody, Barbara Roberts (who will be reading from her new memoir here on November 1), Avel Louise Gordly, Brian Doyle (another great FOBB - "friend of Broadway Books" - who will read here from his new collection of short stories on November 3), Gregory Nokes, Don Berry, Evelyn Searle Hess, Ellen Waterston, Stewart Holbrook, and William Stafford.

TinHouse Books, an offshoot of Tin House magazine, is based in Portland and in Brooklyn. Spearheaded by Irvington resident Lee Montgomery, this publisher of literary fiction and nonfiction books issues about a dozen titles a year, and its authors have garnered attention from the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, and O, the Oprah magazine. Tin House authors include Scott Sparling, Sarahlee Lawrence, Bernard DeVoto, Harriet Fasenfast, Jim Krusoe, and Katie Arnold-Ratliff.

We hope you will join us this month in celebrating these three publishers and take advantage of our month-long 30% off promotion of their titles. You’ll find their books on display in our window (thanks to Kate, our magical window fairy) and in our store. These three publishers have produced oodles of wonderful books over the years -- more than will fit in the window and store displays -- so you will also find their books throughout the store. Aren't we lucky?!?!

*Just because there always has to be fine print: no pink card punch for these purchases; cannot be combined with other discounts.

My Lucky Reading Streak

2011-10-07T08:10:00.000-07:00

I have been on a remarkable lucky streak lately -- at least when it comes to book choices! You know how it is: sometimes you pick up two or three books and start reading, only to realize that none of them is the one you're in the mood for at the moment. It can take a few starts and stops before you find just the right one. Happily for me, I've been in a groove for the past few books, where each one I started reading was just right for me in the moment ("this porridge is just right").

First I read an enchanting debut novel, The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern, about two young, gifted magicians competing against each other -- and eventually falling in love -- in an epic, intricate, lifelong competition. The novel is set in a Victorian nocturnal black-and-white circus, Le Cirque des Reves ("The Circus of Dreams"), and it is one of the most elaborate and lusciously depicted backdrops you will find in a novel. As one reviewer wrote, "Morgenstern conjures a setting so intricate and complete that imposing a plot on it feels almost worthy of extra credit." Morgenstern is also a visual artist, and her visions of the world in each circus tent come alive in her writing. It's not a perfect book -- after all, it's a debut novel -- but it is a magical book and world in which to lose yourself, and it bodes well for more deliciousness to come. The audio version of this book is read by Jim Dale, one of the best book narrators in the business. Below you'll find a couple of video clips: the first a trailer for the book (I still can't get used to the idea of trailers for books, but in this case it sort of works for me) and a brief clip of Jim Dale reading the opening lines of The Night Circus. [PS: The copies of this book on our shelves right now are signed by the author.]

Next I picked up the newest book from one of my favorite writers: Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness, by Alexandra Fuller. In Cocktail Hour, Fuller revisits her upbringing in central Africa, which she first wrote about in her debut memoir, Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight. (Fuller unquestionably deserves a prize for great photos and cover photos!) In this version of the story of Fuller's family scraping out a living in the harsh land of then-Rhodesia/now-Zimbabwe, the author focuses less on her own perspective of that life and travels more deeply into her parent's perspective and explores their respective upbringings. As Dominique Browning writes about the two books in The New York Times, "'Dogs' was written in the throes of remembering; 'Cocktail Hour' recaptures the past through reporting....The two memoirs form a fascinating diptych of mirrors, one the reflection of a child's mind, the other of an adult's....Taken together, as they ought to be, the books transport us to a grand landscape of love, loss, longing and reconciliation."

I thoroughly enjoyed Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight and have been a big evangelist for the book since its publication; I liked Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness even more. [And as long as I'm on the subject of Alexandra Fuller, let me just put in a plug for her book The Legend of Colton H. Bryant, a heartrending true account of a young man and tragedy on the oil rigs of Wyoming.] Below is a brief video clip of the publisher's publicist describing Cocktail Hour.

I followed up Alexandra Fuller's book with a book from a terrific writer of historical narrative nonfiction, Candice Millard. I'm a big fan of her first book, The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey, about Teddy Roosevelt and his son Kermit on a harrowing -- and remarkably poorly planned -- exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on earth, a black, uncharted tributary of the Amazon, following his humiliating election defeat in 1921.

Millard's new book, Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President, tells the story of the assassination of President James A. Garfield, shot four months after his inauguration. But was it the assassin's bullet that killed him? With cameo appearances by Alexander Graham Bell and Joseph Lister, the book "blends science, medicine, and politics in a crime story that grabs tight and it does not let go until the very last page. This is historical reporting at its very best."

Below is a longish (only in today's video-clip universe is a video lasting just under three and a half minutes considered "longish") video clip describing the story told in the book. In it you'll learn more about President Garfield than you probably ever learned in school, and you'll look back enviously on the days when presidential candidates didn't stump endlessly for what feels like eons prior to election day. It might seem like this video clip tells the whole story, so why read the book? But Millard's extensive research and masterful storytelling will keep you turning the pages, even when you know how the story ends.

I hope to continue on this great reading streak -- stay tuned to hear what comes next! As always, when you click on the title links in this posting, you'll be taken to our website where you can read more about each title, including reviews and excerpts. And of course you can order your own copies at the site as well. Here's wishing each of you your own lucky reading streak!

You Won't Believe All the Great New Books!

2011-10-05T14:55:00.000-07:00

It's another huge week in the publishing world. Lots of eagerly awaited books out -- some for the first time and some newly in paperback. Here's just a smattering of what we received and shelved yesterday (plus a few that came last week, since I've been sorely remiss in my blogging of late -- copious apologies). If you click on each title it will take you to our website, where you can read more about each book and place an order if you wish. If you want to pick your order up at the store, just select "pay at store" and "pick up at store" as your options. We've got a bunch of wonderful new titles in for younger readers as well -- including a few by local authors -- that I'll be telling you about shortly.

In the nonfiction world, here are some of the hottest new titles:

Here are some of the hot new titles on the fiction list:

Remember that many of the books on our website are also available in Google eBook format, if you prefer to read that way. The eBooks can be read on any eReading device except for the Kindle, since the maker of that device prefers to specify that you only order books from them.

Join Us for a Spirited Spiritual Adventure

2011-09-19T16:48:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday night (yes, that's tomorrow) we're excited to be hosting Oregon author Jessica Maxwell, who will read from and talk about her book, Roll Around Heaven: An All-True Accidental Spiritual Adventure.

Previously known for her adventure-travel writing, Maxwell was dragged kicking and screaming into the spiritual realm. She was used to adventures that involved hip waders, fly fishing rods, and putting greens -- not to experiences like seeing her father's face in the sky three days after he died or seeing Celtic visions on the Isle of Iona. But that's where she found herself, especially after the arrival of the completely-un-asked-for spiritual teacher, the Holy Pig Farmer (I'll let her tell you about him).

Called a "rollicking spiritual ride" by one reviewer, Roll Around Heaven chronicles nearly two decades of Maxwell's own spiritual adventures: "...spirituality is dangerously close to becoming another commodity, like yoga lessons and God Is My Copilot bumper stickers....If my own unexpected spiritual marathon has taught me anything, it's this: if we think we can buy -- or trivialize -- our way into the kingdom of heaven, we are in serious trouble."Another reviewer had this to say: "Maxwell knocks the pompous off their pedestals and finds inspiration in unexpected, sometimes terrifying places.”

Maxwell , who got her degree in journalism from the UO (go Ducks!), is the author of books on flyfishing, adventure travel, and golf. Her work has been included in more than two dozen anthologies, including multiple editions of Best American Travel Writing. From 1985 to 1997 she was a regular contributor to Esquire’s travel column, and she created and wrote Audubon’s in-the-field conservation column, True Nature, from 1992 to 1997. She has published adventure travel narratives for AARP the Magazine, Audubon, Esquire, Forbes, Gourmet, Islands, Lexus, More, Outside, The Discovery Channel Magazine, Town & Country Travel, and Travel & Leisure Golf.

Her article in November 2008 on Portland’s restaurant scene was nominated for a James Beard food writing award. Besides receiving a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship and being a Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism winner, Maxwell is one of the few female members of the Flyfisher’s Club of Oregon. She lives in Western Oregon with her husband where, as one friend put it, “they have a lot of fun correcting each other’s grammar.”

We hope you can join us Tuesday at 7 pm to for our evening with Jessica Maxwell and her accidental spiritual adventure.

Celebrating the Launch of Nadelson's Newest

2011-09-08T17:32:00.000-07:00

Do you enjoy a fun party? Do you enjoy beautifully written short stories, albeit on the longish side? If your answers are yes, then we have the perfect Friday evening planned for you! Friday, September 9th -- yes, that's tomorrow night -- at 7 pm we join with Hawthorne Books to celebrate the launch of the newest collection of short stories from Scott Nadelson. In Aftermath, Scott's third collection of stories, his characters live in the wake of momentous events, finding new ways of forging on with their lives: "In this new collection, I’ve been drawn, as the title suggests, to write about aftermaths—the period following a significant loss or rupture rather than the moment of loss or rupture itself. What fascinates me about these periods is how people accommodate themselves to their new circumstances, how they fit loss or change into their understanding of the world and of themselves, and how, often, what starts out as rupture leads to growth."

Scott's first collection of stories, Saving Stanley: The Brickman Stories, won an Oregon Book Award and his second collection, The Cantor's Daughter, was a finalist for an Oregon Book Award. Both books were published by Hawthorne Books. He is currently working on a collection of essays/stories that form a kind of loose autobiography: The Next Scott Nadelson: A Life in Process, will be published by Hawthorne in 2012.

Scott has the distinction of being born on Kafka's 90th birthday; make of that what you will. He grew up in New Jersey a few miles a way from the mental hospital where Bob Dylan famously visited Woody Guthrie. Now he lives in Salem just a few miles away from the mental hospital where One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was filmed. Again, make of that what you will. Or ask Scott what he makes of it.

While in high school, listening to his dad's early Bob Dylan records turned him on to the use of language to "externalize the voiceless angst that often had me tied up in knots. He tried his hand at poetry, but soon found that short stories were his genre. "More and more what draws me to a story is the sound of its voice. Above all else, storytelling is seduction, and different readers are seduced by different voices....When I'm writing now, I spend a lot of time trying to find the right sound for a story....If the voice sounds right, then it takes me to places I couldn't have expected." Scott says that in particular he finds himself "exploring the ways in which characters' fears undermine their desires."

He teaches creative writing in the English department at Willamette University, holding the Hallie Ford Chair in Writing. "Teaching is as much a passion for me as writing, and I strongly believe that the teaching of creative writing, particularly on the undergraduate level and in a liberal arts context, complements studies in literature. My primary aim in creative writing courses is to teach students to read closely, from a writer's perspective."

Scott's publisher, the wonderful Hawthorne Books, will be providing goodies -- solids and liquids -- as we celebrate the launch of Aftermath. We hope you can join us for the evening -- it's free, and it's sure to offer a good time for all!

Patrick deWitt on Booker Shortlist!

2011-09-06T11:44:00.000-07:00

Canadian-born-but-Portland-based author Patrick deWitt has made it through to the shortlist for the 2011 Man Booker Prize for fiction for his novel The Sisters Brothers! The other five authors/books on the shortlist announced today are Julian Barnes for The Sense of an Ending, Carol Birth for Jamrach's Menagerie, Esi Edugyan for Half Blood Blues, Stephen Kelman for Pigeon English, and A.D. Miller for Snowdrops.

Barnes is the oddsmakers' favorite to win this year, but that doesn't always pan out. He has been shortlisted for the Booker three times. Birch has made the longlist once before. The others are first-time nominees, and Kelman and Miller are debut novelists. We wrote about the full longlist in a previous blog post last month. The prize aims to reward the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. The winner, who receives the equivalent of about $80,000, will be announced on October 18th. Last year's winner was Howard Jacobson for The Finkler Question.

DeWitt was also honored this week by being one of seventeen writers selected to the 2011 longlist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. The Scotiabank Giller Prize is Canada’s most distinguished literary prize, awarding $50,000 annually to the author of the best Canadian novel or short story collection published in English. Finalists on the shortlist receive $5,000. The award was established in 1994 by Toronto businessman Jack Rabinovitch in honor of his late wife, literary journalist Doris Giller. In September 2005, Scotiabank was proud to become the first ever co-sponsor of the prize, and it has been known as the Scotiabank Giller Prize ever since.

This year -- the eighteenth year of the prize -- the longlist was selected from 143 books submitted for consideration, a record-setting number of submissions. The shortlist for the Giller will be announced on October 4th, with the winner announced in a ceremony in Toronto on November 8th. Booker shortlister Esi Edugyan also made the longlist for the Giller, along with Alexi Zenter for Touch (gorgeous cover!), Wayne Johnston for A World Elsewhere, Michael Ondaatje for The Cat's Table (publishing in the US next month), Vancouver author Michael Christie for his debut short story collection The Begger's Garden, and Marina Endicott for The Little Shadows. You can read the full long list at the Giller Prize website.

Finalists for Literary Peace Prize

2011-08-25T09:45:00.000-07:00

The finalists for this year's Dayton Literary Peace Prize have just been announced. The winners will be honored in a ceremony in Dayton, Ohio, on November 13th.

Here are the finalists for fiction:

The Surrendered by Chang-rae Lee (Riverhead)
How to Read the Air by Dinaw Mengestu (Riverhead)
Beneath the Lion's Gaze by Maaza Mengiste (Norton)
The Gendarme by Mark Mustian (Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam)
Kapitoil by Teddy Wayne (HarperCollins) [Note that Kapitoil is one of twenty books available in Google eBook form for only 99 cents until the end of August through our website.]

Here are the finalists for nonfiction:

Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978 by Kai Bird (Scribner)
Little Princes by Conor Grennan (HarperCollins)
Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand (Random House)
For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question by Mac McClelland (Soft Skull Press)
In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Deliverance by Wilbert Rideau (Knopf)
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson (Random House)

The Dayton Literary Peace Prize honors writers whose work uses the power of literature to foster peace, social justice, and global understanding. Launched in 2006, it is the only literary peace prize awarded in the United States. As an offshoot of the Dayton Peace Prize, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize awards a $10,000 cash prize each year to one fiction and one nonfiction author whose work advances peace as a solution to conflict and leads readers to a better understanding of other cultures, peoples, religions, and political points of view.

Last year's winners were Marlon James for The Book of Night Women, a novel exploring the history of slavery in Jamaica in the eighteenth century, and Dave Eggers for Zeitoun, his eye-opening true story of the experiences of one family in New Orleans in the days following Hurricane Katrina. Past winners are Richard Bausch, Benjamin Skinner, Junot Diaz, Edwidge Danticat, Brad Kessler, Mark Kurlansky, Francine Prose, and Stephen Walker.

An annual lifetime achievement award is also bestowed upon a writer whose body of work reflects the Prize's mission. This year's honoree is Barbara Kingsolver, who will receive the first-ever Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. The award, formerly known as the Lifetime Achievement Award, was renamed in honor of the late Richard C. Holbrooke, the celebrated US diplomat who played an instrumental role in negotiating the historic 1995 Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the war in Bosnia. The award will be presented to Kingsolver at the November ceremony by journalist Kati Marton, Holbrooke’s widow. Previous honorees include Studs Terkel, Elie Wiesel, Taylor Branch, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, and Geraldine Brooks.

You can find links to all of this year's finalists as well as last year's winners on our website.

Crossing Africa. Now and Then. Reading Tonight!

2011-08-24T14:49:00.000-07:00

We're excited to be hosting Portland-based author Julian Smith tonight to read from his book Crossing the Heart of Africa: An Odyssey of Love and Adventure, now available in paperback.

In 1898, the dashing British adventurer Ewart “The Leopard” Grogan was head-over-heels in love, but he needed the approval of his beloved’s skeptical, aristocratic stepfather. To prove his worth, the 24-year-old Cambridge dropout set out on an epic quest to become the first person to walk the length of Africa.

A little over a century later, journalist Julian Smith also found himself madly in love with his girlfriend of seven years, but terrified by the prospect of a lifelong commitment. Inspired by Grogan’s story, Smith decided to face his fears of marriage by retracing the explorer’s amazing but now mostly forgotten 4,500-mile journey for love and glory through the lakes, volcanoes, savannas, and crowded modern cities of Africa.

Crossing the Heart of Africa is the unforgettable account of twin adventures, as Smith interweaves his own contemporary journey with Grogan’s larger-than-life tale of charging elephants, cannibal attacks, deadly jungles, and romantic triumph. The book won the 2011 Outstanding Book Award for Memoir/Autobiography from the American Society of Journalists and Authors.

Julian Smith is an award-winning writer specializing in travel and science. His articles and photographs have appeared in Smithsonian, Wired, Outside, National Geographic Traveler, New Scientist, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and US News & World Report. He is the author of travel guidebooks to El Salvador, Ecuador, Virginia and the Four Corners, and has won the country’s top travel writing award from the Society of American Travel Writers.

With a background in the natural sciences, including a BA in biology and an MS in wildlife ecology, Smith helped launch and edit Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, an international peer-reviewed scientific journal. He has taught writing, editing, and literature at the College of Santa Fe and the Gotham Writers Workshop.

The reading starts tonight at 7 pm, and it's sure to be exciting. Hope you can join us!

The 2012 Oregon Book Awards

2011-08-16T19:00:00.000-07:00

Been dreaming of joining the ranks of such literary luminaries as Willy Vlautin, John Daniel, Ehud Havazelet, Scott Nadelson, Robin Cody, Lee Montgomery, and other Oregon Book Award winners? Well, first you have to write a really good book. If you've done that, and your book was published between August 1, 2010 and July 31, 2011 AND you are an Oregon resident, perhaps your book should be nominated for an Oregon Book Award. Awards are presented in the following genres: Poetry, Fiction, General Nonfiction, Creative Nonfiction, Children's Literature, Young Adult Literature, and Graphic Literature. The deadline for nominating a title is 5 pm on Friday, August 26th.

As part of the Oregon Book Awards, Literary Arts also offers three special awards that recognize significant contributions to Oregon's literary culture:

The Charles Erskine Scott Wood Distinguished Writer Award is presented to an Oregon author in recognition of an enduring, substantial literary career.
The Stewart H. Holbrook Literary Legacy Award is presented to a person or organization in recognition of significant contributions that have enriched Oregon's literary community.
The Walt Morey Young Readers Literary Legacy Award is presented to a person or organization in recognition of significant contributions that have enriched Oregon's young readers.

For information on the guidelines submission process for these three awards and the general book categories, go to the Literary Arts website. To see what books have been nominated thus far, you can go to the Literary Arts blog, Paper Fort. There are some great books in the running already!

We've Got SoCal Sunshine and SoCal Poetry

2011-08-16T13:34:00.000-07:00

Please join us tonight as we welcome poet Brendan Constantine from California, who will read from his second collection of poetry, Birthday Girl with Possum.

Constantine is the second child of two working actors and is named for Irish playwright Brendan Behan. For as long as he can remember, he's been making things up. He has been teaching poetry in Southern California schools and colleges for the past seventeen years. He also regularly brings poetry workshops to foster and eldercare centers and homeless shelters and has worked with the Alzheimer's Poetry Project. He is currently poet-in-residence at The Windward School and Loyola Marymount University Extension. In 2002, Constantine was nominated for Poet Laureate of the state of California.

Known for his dreamy abstraction and the emotional ferocity of his work both on the page and on the stage, Constantine continues to explore "the illusion of knowledge" and the "facts of our dreams" in his newest collection, Birthday Girl with Possum, in which he blends classic and colloquial diction, pop culture and historical references, and multiple approaches to writing ("odes, codes, lectures, letters, tests and attendance sheets").

His work has appeared in numerous journals, most notably Ploughshares, Ninth Letter, The Los Angeles Review, The Cortland Review, RUNES, and LA Times Bestseller The Underground Guide to Los Angeles. New work is forthcoming in Rattle, 2River View, and Verse Wisconsin. His first collection, Letters to Guns, was published in February 2009 by Red Hen Press. Here's what one reviewer had to say about that collection:

"In the hands of Brendan Constantine poetry is a weapon. That much is obvious. But one never knows, his poems will explode with bullets or flowers because Constantine is both guerilla fighter and beguiling jester. Melancholy, hysterical, literary, musical-- the insights, like the forms (epistles, odes, annotated poems), of Letters to Guns are unpredictable, innovative and above all gripping. I am as helpless as anyone looking down the barrel of a gun. These poems are dangerous fun!

Constantine holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and lives in Hollywood at Bela Lugosi’s last address.

Please join us tonight at 7 pm for what is sure to be a lively evening of poetry and entertainment.

Some Enticing New Books for You

2011-08-10T16:03:00.000-07:00

I mentioned a while back that Tuesdays are when many of the publishers release their new titles. This Tuesday was a particularly exciting one for me, as we received the paperback editions of two especially wonderful nonfiction books. Let's Take the Long Way Home is a beautifully written memoir by Gail Caldwell that tells the story of her friendship with fellow writer and dog lover Caroline Knapp. It will take your breath away. And even though I already own the hardbound edition of this book, I'm tempted to buy a second copy in paperback because the new cover is gorgeous. (Who says you can't judge a book by its cover???)

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, by Siddhartha Mukherjee, is exactly what the subtitle says, a biography of cancer -- from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it, to a radical new understanding of its essence. The book includes an appearance by Brian Druker at OHSU and his work with chronic myeloid leukemia, or CML. The Emperor of All Maladies won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction this year, and was named a Top Ten Book of 2010 by The New York Times, Time magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, Entertainment Weekly, and O, The Oprah Magazine -- which gives you some idea of its broad range and appeal.

Recently one of our regular customers came in, someone who reads a great deal of very good narrative nonfiction, and he gave this book the highest possible marks. That's good enough for me! The book is going on my list. And now it's out in paperback!

Our cup continued to runneth over yesterday with wonderful new fiction titles as well, including a debut novel in hardcover that I've been eager to read: The Family Fang, by Kevin Wilson, who is also the author of a short story collection (Tunneling to the Center of the Earth), which received an Alex Award from the American Library Association and the Shirley Jackson Award. The Family Fang is about a family of four: performance artists Caleb and Camille Fang and their two (now grown) children Buster and Annie Fang. You have to be intrigued by a book with this comment from Ann Patchett on the cover: "A comedy, a tragedy, and a tour-de-force examination of what it means to make art and survive your family. The best single world description would be genius."

Some of the paperback fiction titles we received yesterday were Domestic Violets by Matthew Norman, Swamplandia! by Karen Russell, and To the End of the Land by David Grossman -- a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.

Our shelves are well stocked with much to tempt you. Come see for yourself! While you're here you can see Kate's fabulous new ocean-themed front window display. Oh, and we're starting to get new 2012 calendars (egad!!) too, including a nifty new one based on one of my favorite books of last year, The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe, by Theodore Gray.

All Things Forest Park on August 9th

2011-08-05T10:00:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, August 9th, at 7 pm we are excited to be hosting Marcy Cottrell Houle, who will read from and talk about the recently revised edition of her wonderful book, One City's Wilderness: Portland's Forest Park, published by Oregon State University Press.

One of the largest city parks in the world -- and certainly America's premier urban forest -- Forest Park stretches 7.5 miles long by 1.5 miles wide along the eastern slope of Portland's West Hills, encompassing 5157 acres and offering up eighty miles of trails. Because the northernmost section has not been fragmented by multiple roads or developed uses, it has remained nearly pristine, providing critical breeding habitat for many native wildlife species.

From its inception in 1903 and creation in 1948, Forest Park has been a refuge for both people and wildlife and an integral part of the environment of Portland. In 1903, the Municipal Park Commission of Portland contracted with the Olmsted Brothers landscape architectural firm to make a park planning study. John C. Olmsted -- nephew and adopted son of Frederick Law Olmsted, popularly known as the father of American landscape architecture and designer of, among many places, New York's Central Park and the site of the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 -- came to Portland to research the area. Among the suggestions made in the Olmsted Brothers' report was that the area that is now Forest Park be acquired for a park of wild woodland character. In their report the brothers stated (with great foresight) that along the hills northwest of Portland "there are a succession of ravines and spurs covered with remarkably beautiful primeval woods....It is true that some people look upon such woods merely as a troublesome encumbrance standing in the way of more profitable use of the land, but future generations will not feel so and will bless the men who were wise enough to get such woods preserved."

Sadly, that suggestion was not carried out -- at least not immediately. In the early 1900s, developers envisioned massive subdivisons in what is now the park, platting thousands of lots alongside a network of imaginary roads. One of the developers built what is now known as Leif Erickson Drive in 1915. In its first year a landslide closed the road, and the owners of the vacant lots were assessed the repair costs. Thankfully for us park lovers, the vast majority refused to pay, and hundreds of lots were forfeited.

Even with much of the land now belonging to the city, it wasn't until 1944 when movement toward a park really got going, thanks in great part to the efforts of the man with the interesting nick name: Garnett "Ding" Cannon, a Portland businessman and ardent advocate for an urban wilderness park. On September 25, 1948, a total of forty-two hundred acres of forest land was formally dedicated as Forest Park.

And that's just the history! In her book, Houle also covers the park's geology, watersheds, vegetation, wildlife, and trail system, incorporating checklists and wonderful color photographs of plants, mammals and birds found in the park and with fully half of the book devoted to the trails of Forest Park, with detailed descriptions, maps, and GPS coordinates for twenty-nine hikes diverse in length, steepness, and challenge.

Houle, a native Portlander, is an author and wildlife biologist who has hiked and studied Forest Park for thirty years. She has written two other books, Wings for My Flight: The Peregrine Falcons of Chimney Rock and The Prairie Keepers: Secrets of the Zumwalt, and has received several writing awards, including the Oregon Book Award in 1991 for Wings for My Flight.

Over the years since Houle first wrote her book about Forest Park, and through subsequent editions, at least one truth has held fast: the importance of a place like Forest Park in her life. "Forest Park's spectacular beauty and naturalness continue to impart peace and renewal. For me and for many, its wildness refreshes and inspires spirits grown weary from the fast-paced existence of modern life." Forest Park has always faced challenges over the years, and that continues today, as we must decide what we want Forest Park to be: a recreation capital or a forest wilderness?

We hope you will be able to join us Tuesday night to talk about our shared treasure, Forest Park: "Appreciate it, protect it, and pass it on."

Longlist for 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction

2011-08-04T17:13:00.000-07:00

The finalists and winners of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction are usually some of my favorite reads. The recently announced 2011 longlist offers one former Booker Prize winner, two previous shortlisters and one longlister, four debut novelists, and three publishers new to the prize. Most exciting of all, this year's longlist has a local writer! Well, he's actually a Canadian (born in British Columbia), but he and his family live in Portland.

That local author is Patrick DeWitt, whose nominated title is the recently published novel The Sisters Brothers, starring henchmen Eli and Charlie Sisters and paying homage to the classic Western while transforming it into an unforgettable comic tour de fource as the Sisters brothers travel from Oregon City to a gold-mining claim outside Sacramento. DeWitt's first novel was Ablutions: Notes for a Novel, a grim story about a bartender at a Hollywood watering hole and its down-and-out regulars.

The longlisted titles were chosen by a panel of five judges chaired by author and former Director-General of MI5, Dame Stella Rimington. "We are delighted by the quality and breadth of our longlist," said Rimington, "which emerged from an impassioned discussion. The list ranges from the Wild West to multi-ethnic London via post-Cold War Moscow and Bucharest."

Alan Hollinghurst, nominated this year for The Stranger's Child, won the Booker in 2004 for The Line of Beauty. He was also shortlisted in 1994 for The Folding Star. Sebastian Barry and Julian Barnes, longlisted this year, have also been shortlisted in the past, and Carol Birch was longlisted in 2003.

The 2011 shortlist of six authors will be announced September 6th, with the winner announced on October 18th. Not all of the books are available in the US, although some are forthcoming.Check out our website for the full list.

George Estreich to Read from Memoir

2011-08-01T17:15:00.000-07:00

We hope you can join us Tuesday night (August 2nd) at 7 pm to hear Corvallis author George Estreich read from his recently published memoir, The Shape of the Eye: Down Syndrome, Family, and the Stories We Inherit.

When his younger daughter, Laura, was born, her appearance presented a puzzle: did the shape of her eyes indicate Down Syndrome, or the fact that she has a Japanese grandmother? In this powerful memoir, Estreich tells his daughter's story, reflecting on her inheritance -- from the literal legacy of her genes, to the family history that precedes her, to the Victorian physician John Landon Down's diagnostic error of "Mongolian Idiocy." Against this backdrop, Laura Estreich takes her place in the family as a unique child, quirky and real, loved for everything ordinary and extraordinary about her.

The Shape of the Eye is predominantly about raising his youngest daughter. But, in the author's words, it is also about "fly-fishing, heart surgery, family, the history and meaning of “Mongolian idiocy,” genetic engineering, prenatal diagnosis, what it’s like to be stared at, feeding a child with a tube, made-up signs for French fries, and the way Down syndrome can become sort of ordinary."

Tracy Daugherty, author of the Oregon-Book-Award-winning biography, Hiding Man: A Biography of Donald Barthelme, described the book as "a splendid, stimulating, and extremely moving account of what it means to be a family, what it means to be human.” Physician and writer Abraham Verghese (Cutting for Stone, My Own Country: A Doctor's Story, and The Tennis Partner: A Doctor's Story of Friendship and Loss) says, “This is a poignant, beautifully written and intensely moving memoir, and I think only one writer in the world, George Estreich, could possibly have pulled this off. It will become part of the canon of narratives that are studied and taught in medical humanities courses.” Kim Edwards, author of The Memory Keeper's Daughter said "The Shape of the Eye taught me a great deal. It is a story I found myself thinking about long after I'd finished the final pages.

Estreich's first book was a collection of poems, Textbook Illustrations of the Human Body, which won the Rhea and Seymour Gorsline Prize from Cloudbank Books in 2003.

He was born in New York City and received a BA from the University of Virginia and an MFA in poetry from Cornell. After years of teaching freshman composition, he quit to become a full-time stay-at-home dad. He and his wife, an associate professor in the College of Pharmacy at Oregon State University, have two daughters and a dog named Jet.

Please join us on Tuesday if you can!

Former Oregonian to Read Short Fiction Tonight

2011-07-28T14:59:00.000-07:00

Joining us tonight is former Oregonian Diane Simmons, who will read from her recently published collection of short stories, Little America, which won the 2010 Ohio State University award for fiction.This book is for anyone who has ever considered just getting in the car and driving away. Here the ribbon of Western road is a metaphor for the heart's strange longings, providing hard, sometimes hilarious, lessons on the improbability of escape, the possibility of salvation, and the elusiveness of self-knowledge. With deadpan humor, perfect-pitch voice, and keen love of place, Simmons's stories illuminate the abiding American desire to "light out" -- if not necessarily for something better, at least for something new.

Simmons grew up on a farm in Eastern Oregon and worked as a newspaper reporter in Idaho, Alaska, and Washington before moving to New York. Currently she is a professor of English at The City University of New York. She has published two novels, one of which -- Dreams Like Thunder -- won the Oregon Book Award for Fiction in 1993. The novel is set in Eastern Oregon in the 1950s. Simmons has also written book-length critical studies of Jamaica Kincaid and Maxine Hong Kingston, as well as a study of narcissism in popular British Imperial writing.

Her short fiction has been published in Missouri Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, Blood Orange Review, and Northwest Review. Simmons holds an MA in creative writing from The City College of New York and a PhD in English from The City University of New York Graduate Center.

We hope you can join us tonight to hear Ms. Simmons read from her new award-winning collection of short fiction. The fun starts at 7 pm!