Happy Mother's Day! Late brunch followed by a long stroll through a small bookstore, picking up the latest in great reading. A delicious day all the way around.

Gifts for Mom

Don't forget Mom! Sunday is Mother's Day, and you don't want to let it slip by. We've got Mother's Day cards and lots of wonderful book recommendations for you. And if Mom likes games, you might want to consider giving her Bananagrams -- it's great fun! As always, we're happy to gift wrap the items you buy here -- no charge! Maybe you want to add some extra color to your book gift for Mom -- think about heading up the street to Broadway Floral to get a beautiful bouquet of flowers to go with the book. Local Broadway Floral, owned by Doug and Janice Fick, offers lots of gorgeous fresh cut flowers, among their other items, that you can put together yourself or have them arrange for you. The store has been in business for more than one hundred years and has been in its present location since 1928. It was bought by Doug's parents in 1970. Come see us, and then go see them!

One of my favorite "mom" signs is the one on the wall at Bill's Tavern in Cannon Beach that says "Don't forget a six-pack for Mom!" If you don't think a six-pack is the right gift for Mom this year, think books!

New Book Edited by Female Nomad Author

A consistent bestseller here at Broadway Books is Tales of a Female Nomad: Lving at Large in the World, by Rita Golden Gelman. Gelman, the mother of two (now grown) children and the author of more than 70 children's books, made a huge change in her life in the 1980s: she divested herself of all worldly possessions and became a modern-day wandering nomad. She tells the story of that process and of her first "wanderings" in Tales of a Female Nomad. Here's what she has to say about her decision on her Web site: "I’ve been living and loving my nomadic existence since the day in 1986 when, at the age of forty eight, on the verge of a divorce, I looked around and thought, There has to be more than one way to do life."

That book was published in 2001. Since then there has been a lot of wandering, lots of good work, and a handful of children's books, but nothing else. Here's the good news: We've just learned that Three Rivers Press (a division of Random House) has bought world rights to Break Free, Break Rules, Break Bread, a collection of essays about connection through food, love, and travel from readers of Gelman's first book. Gelman will write the foreward, afterword, and brief pieces that weave the essays together. All royalties will go to the author's charity, the Golden Fund, which helps children in India get vocational training. You can follow along with the author's travels on her blog.

It's been a long time coming, so we're very excited, even if we likely have to wait until some time in 2010 for it to come out. Here's some more of what Gelman had to say about why she wrote Tales of a Female Nomad: "I wrote the book to let people know that if they dare to dig up the buried person inside, to uncover the dreams and desires of the young man or woman they once were, they would probably realize that they can make some of those dreams happen. I do not expect men and women to leave their families and run away to do my life. But I’m hoping that within the context of their own lives and their own dreams, they can awaken some of the spirit that lies trapped inside. Maybe it’s just to sing out loud and loudly. Or perhaps to sit through three movies in one day. Or to go deep sea fishing some weekend when everyone thinks you’re at a church retreat. How about going to a strange city and playing your saxophone on a street corner? Don’t forget to leave the open case with a few dollar bills in it just in front of you."

We also recently learned that the authors travels will bring her to Fox Island (near Tacoma, WA) this month for a free reading on May 20th -- which gives you time to read her book and then go see her!

2009 PEN Literary Awards

PEN American Center has announced its 2009 Literary Award winners. The ceremony will be hosted by poet Billy Collins on May 19 in New York.

The PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction goes to a distinguished living American author of fiction whose body of work in English possesses qualities of excellence, ambition, and scale of achievement over a sustained career which place him or her in the highest rank of American literature. The award carries a stipend of $25,000. This year’s honoree is Cormac McCarthy. McCarthy was born in Rhode Island in 1933 and spent most of his childhood near Knoxville, Tennessee. He served in the U.S. Air Force and later studied at the University of Tennessee. In 1976 he moved to El Paso, Texas, and now resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

McCarthy’s fiction parallels his movement from the Southeast to the West—the first four novels being set in Tennessee, the last three in the Southwest and Mexico. The Orchard Keeper (1965) won the Faulkner Award for a first novel; it was followed by Outer Dark (1968), Child of God (1973), Suttree (1979), and Blood Meridian (1985). All the Pretty Horses, which won the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction in 1992, is the first volume in McCarthy’s acclaimed Border Trilogy, and was followed by The Crossing (1994) and Cities of the Plain (1998).He received the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for The Road, and his 2005 novel No Country for Old Men was adapted as a 2007 film of the same name, which won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. He is also the author of The Stone Mason: A Play in Five Acts. McCarthy is also the recipient of a fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation, among other grants.

The PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship for Writers honors an exceptionally talented fiction writer whose debut work—a first novel or collection of short stories published in 2008—represents distinguished literary achievement and suggests great promise. The winner receives a cash award of $35,000, a stipend intended to permit a significant degree of leisure in which to pursue a second work of literary fiction. The fellowship was established in memory of Robert Bingham, who died in 1999 at the age of 33, to commemorate his support of young writers, his love of literature, and his contribution to literary fiction. This year’s award goes to Donald Ray Pollack for his collection Knockemstiff (Doubleday). The finalists are Rivka Galchen for Atmospheric Disturbances (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and Aravind Adiga for The White Tiger (Free Press).

The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories are the product of a new partnership between Vintage and PEN American Center. Since 1919, twenty stories have been chosen each year and collected in the annual O. Henry Prize Stories, whose original and present mission is to strengthen the art of the short story. Now in partnership with PEN, the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories continues the tradition of recognizing excellence in the short story and encouraging writers and readers alike to celebrate the form. This year’s recipients are Graham Joyce, Kristen Sundberg Lunstrum, E. V. Slate, John Burnside, Mohan Sikka, L. E. Miller, Alistair Morgan, Roger Nash, Manuel Muñoz, Caitlin Horrocks, Ha Jin, Paul Theroux, Judy Troy, Nadine Gordimer, Viet Dinh, Karen Brown, Marisa Silver, Paul Yoon, Andrew Sean Greer, and Junot Díaz.

The PEN Translation Prize goes to book-length translations from any language into English published during the previous calendar year. The $3,000 prize has been conferred since 1963 in recognition of the art of the literary translator, and it is the first American award to do so. This year’s award goes to Natasha Wimmer for her translation from the Spanish of Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). The finalists for the award are Jordan Stump for his translation from the French of The Waitress Was New by Dominique Fabre (Archipelago Books) and Joel Rotenberg for his translation from the German of The Post- Office Girl by Stefan Zweig (NYRB Classics).

We've got all of these winning books. In fact, the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories collection is hot off the press! Check out the rest of the awards at the PEN Web site.

New Palahniuk Novel On Sale Today!

Pygmy, the newest novel from local fave Chuck Palahniuk, goes on sale today. The publisher describes it as "'The Manchurian Candidate' meets 'South Park.'" Pygmy is one of a handful of young adults from a totalitarian state sent to the United States, disguised as exchange students, to live with typical American families and blend in, all the while planning an unspecified act of massive terrorism. Palahniuk depicts Midwestern life through the eyes of this thoroughly indoctrinated little killer, who hates us with a passion and has been trained since infancy in martial arts, chemistry, and radical hatred of the United States. He has six months to build a prize-winning project for the National Science Fair. If he succeeds, he and his project will go to Washington, D.C. for the finals competition -- where the project will explode, killing millions.
It’s a comedy -- albeit a dark one, about terrorism and racism. And it's a romance. And it will make you think. In other words, it's vintage Palahniuk.

Palahniuk grew up in Burbank, Washington, and lives in the Portland area. He earned his degree from the University of Oregon's School of Journalism in 1986. In his mid-30s he started writing novels, working with Tom Spanbauer and his Dangerous Writers writing workshops. Some of his novels include Fight Club, Lullaby, Choke, and his two most recent: Rant and Snuff. Several of his books have been made into movies. He has also written a nonfiction book about the oddities of Portland called Fugitives and Refugees.

Come get your copy of Pygmy today! We'd be happy to save a copy for you.

Final Percy Jackson Book!

On our shelves and ready to fly out the door first thing Tuesday morning: The final book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, by Rick Riordan. The Last Olympian, the eagerly anticipated final book in the five-book series, tells of the battle for Western Civilization raging on the streets of Manhattan, as the Half-Bloods battle against Kronos's Titans, and the prophecy surrounding Percy's sixteenth birthday unfolds. I can't wait to read it myself!

PBS to Air Kurt Wallander Episodes

Starting Sunday, May 10th, PBS will air three Kurt Wallander mysteries on Masterpiece Mystery. The Kurt Wallander series, by Swedish author Henning Mankell, began with the book Faceless Killers, published in 1991. The PBS episodes, in which Kurt Wallander is portrayed by Kenneth Branaugh, will be based on three of Mankell's books: Sidetracked (May 10th), Firewall (May 17th), and One Step Behind (May 31st).

Henning Mankell was born in Stockholm in 1948, raised in a village in northern Sweden and now divdes his time between Sweden and Maputo, Mozambique, where he works as the director of a theater, Teatro Avenida. Kurt Wallander remains one of the most impressive and credible creations of crime fiction today. The first Wallander book was written in response to the social chaos Mankell encountered on his return to Sweden from Africa in early 1989. Neo-fascist attacks on immigrants had increased during his two years in Mozambique. "Racism is a crime, and I thought: okay, I'll use the crime story. Then I realized I needed a police officer." He plucked the name "Wallander" out of the telephone directory. "It was May 20 1989 (I looked it up in an old diary) when Kurt was born."

Readers like the Wallander books for their edgy, convincing police work and coverage of social concerns. Mankell makes you reflect on society. Questions of responsibility and morality - of justice and democracy - are explicitly raised, which is unusual in detective fiction. "I work in an old tradition that goes back to the ancient Greeks," Mankell says. "You hold a mirror to crime to see what's happening in society. I could never write a crime story just for the sake of it, because I always want to talk about certain things in society." He says the best crime story he has ever read is Macbeth - "a terrible allegory about the corrupting tendency of power that could equally be about President Nixon."

Mankell cites John le Carré as a key influence and admires the way he develops the character George Smiley with each subsequent book. "If you can call le Carré a crime writer, he investigates the contradictions inside man, between men, and between man and society; and I hope to do the same." In addition to his thrillers, he has written children's books and novels on African themes. In Sweden one of his most faithful admirers is Ingmar Bergman; Mankell is married to the film director's daughter, Eva. In Africa, Mankell is passionately committed to the fight against AIDS and devotes much of his spare time to his "memory books" project, which aims to raise awareness of the catastrophe. Parents with AIDS are encouraged to record their life stories not just for their children, but as a human chronicle as well.