Game On at Broadway Books!

Do you like to play games? Hey, who doesn't?!? We've got some great new ones in the store. Besides the ever-popular Bananagrams (come and get yours if you don't have one yet; it's fantastic!), we now have a great selection of fun card games: Go Fish, Crazy Eights, Slap Jack, Banana Split (yes, it's a banana theme this year); all kinds of great playing cards (large index, for those with failing eyes, like mine, plus animal and wildflower and dinosaur cards); and some great conversation-starter cards called Table Talk, with your pick of all sorts of topics: movies, sports, animals, music, ecology, science, and more. These are great for roadtrips or picnics or just sitting around a table (hence the name). And all are very reasonably priced, if I do say myself. It's game-on time at Broadway Books!

Harry's Here - Come and Get 'Em!

For you Harry Potter fans who have been waiting for the final book to arrive in paperback, tomorrow is your big day! Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Book 7, goes on sale tomorrow morning -- we open at 10 am! And if you want to order a full boxed set of paperbacks, we can take care of that as well.

The Fascinating World of Science

I love to read books about science, although I must admit that lately I've fallen for the lure of the novel and haven't gotten back to my non-fiction roots. While I've been away, a bunch of new books have come into the store that look quite interesting -- here's a taste of some:

• Galapagos at the Crossroads: Pirates, Biologists, Tourists, and Creationists Battle for Darwin's Cradle of Evolution, by Carol Ann Bassett ($26, National Geographic). Bassett teaches environmental writing and literary nonfiction athe University of Oregon and directs an ongoing summer program for her students on environmental writing in the Galapagos. Her portrait of today’s Galápagos depicts a deadly collision of economics, politics, and the environment that may destroy one of the world’s last Edens. Each chapter in this provocative, perceptive book focuses on a specific person or group with a stake in the Galápagos’ natural resources. Told with wit, passion, and grace, the portrait is as readable as it is sensible.


• Plan Bee: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Hardest-Working Creatures on the Plant, by Susan Brackney ($21.95, Perigee/Penguin). Brackney is a beekeeper, nature writer, and avid gardener in Bloomington, Indiana. Humble, hard-working, overtaxed, and underrecognized, the honeybee finally gets her due in this engaging, whimsical, and expertly written guided tour of the world of bees, filled with fascinating facts, inspiring insights, expert recipes (cooked bees?), and instructions.


• Central Park in the Dark: More Mysteries of Urban Wildlife, by Marie Winn ($15, Picador). By the author of Red-Tails in Love, this new book explores a natural world that flourishes in the midst of a crowded and mechanized city. The exuberant essays lead the reader through the cycle of seasons as experienced by nocturnal beasts (raccoons, bats, black skimmers), insects (moths, wasps, fireflies, crickets), and other denizens of the park's trees and swamps and thickets. Alongside a cadre of amateur and expert naturalists, Winn reveals a world that lies hidden in the dark between the bright lights and traffic of Fith Avenue and Central Park West.


• Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness, by Lisa M. Hamilton ($25, Counterpoint). Books about where our food comes from are a hugely growing section of the science-book market, and I think it's probably a good thing that we all lean more about what we eat and what factors determine what's available to us. In this book, Hamilton explores our food system through examining the stories of three unconventional farmers, and makes the argument that to correct what is wrong with the food system, we must first bring farmers back to the table.


• Human: The Science Behind What Makes Your Brain Unique, by Michael S. Gazzaniga ($16.99, Harper Perennial). What happened along the evolutionary trail that made humans so unique? In a lively, accessible, witty narrative, Gazzaniga -- director of the SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind at UC-Santa Barbara -- pinpoints the change that made us thinking, sentient humans different from our predecessors, exploring what makes human brains special, the importance of language and art in defining the human condition, the nature of human consciousness, and even artificial intelligence.


• Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, by Richard Wrangham ($26.95, Basic Books). In a groundbreaking theory of our origins, renowned primatologist Wrangham shows that the shift from raw to cooked foods was the key factor in human evolution. By making food more digestible and easier to extract energy from, Wrangham reasons, cooking enabled hominids' jaws, teeth and guts to shrink, freeing up calories to fuel their expanding brains. It also gave rise to pair bonding and table manners, and liberated mankind from the drudgery of chewing (while chaining womankind to the stove). Catching Fire will provoke controversy and fascinate anyone interested in our ancient origins -- or in our modern eating habits.


• Waking Up in Eden: In Pursuit of an Impassioned Life on an Imperiled Island, by Lucinda Fleeson ($13.95, Algonquin Books). Part memoir, part nature writing, part adventure tale, Waking Up in Eden tells Fleeson's story of chucking her big-city life to move to the edge of a rainforest in Kauai. She accompanies a plant hunter in search of the last of a dying species, follows a paleontologist who deconstructs island history through fossil life, and shadows a botanical pioneer who propagates rare seeds, hoping to reclaim the landscape. Inspired by nineteenth-century travel writer Isabella Bird, Fleeson renovates a former plantation cottage, enters an outrigger canoe race, and, of course, cultivates her garden.


• The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet, by Neil DeGrasse Tyson ($23.95, Norton). This book isn't brand-spanking new (it came out in January), but I mention it because a) it's a fascinating topic and b) the author will be in Portland July 21st at the OSMI Science Pub at the Bagdad Theater in a "Cosmic Conversation" with Paula S. Opsell, Senior Executive Producer of NOVA. Astrophysicist and Hayden Planetarium director Tyson was involved in the emotionally controversially process of demoting Pluto from planet status (in August 2006). Consequently, Pluto lovers have freely shared their opinions with him, including endless hate mail from third graders. In his typically witty way, Tyson explores the history of planet classification and America's obsession with the "planet" that's recently been judged a dwarf. This book offers a scientifically based but lighthearted look at the former planet.


• And, lastly, a book that I actually DID read when it first came out in hardback but love so much I just must mention it here: The Animal Dialogues: Uncommon Encounters in the Wild, by Craig Childs ($14.99, Back Bay Books). Naturalist, adventurer, and NPR contributor Childs portrays the sometimes brutal beauty of the wilderness in a series of essays focusing on a variety of wild creatures. Whether recalling the experience of being chased through the Grand Canyon by a bighorn sheep, of swimming with sharks off the coast of British Columbia, of watching a peregrine falcon perform acrobatic stunts at two hundred miles per hour, or attempting to rescue an understandably cranky raccoon trapped in a water hole in the desert, Child brings the reader along for the experience. And what a great cover!

There's many more books in the store about the world around us; I've barely scratched the surface of them here. Come on down and take a peek for yourself!

Signed Copies of All-American Poem

You'll never guess who came into our store this week....Portland's very own Matthew Dickman, poet-on-the-rise and winner of the 2008 APR/Honickman First Book Prize. While he was here shopping for books, he graciously signed copies of his debut collection of poems, All-American Poem, a book of great hopefulness about the ecstatic nature of our daily lives. And how appropriate to buy All-American Poems on the 4th of July! You can read more about Matthew and his brother, Michael, here. We're open until 3 today, and we have 3 signed copies, so come see me! Did I mention I've got freshly baked cookies????

Curse of the Pogo Stick

One of the most popular mystery series at Broadway Books this past year has been the series by Colin Cotterill based in Laos and featuring Dr. Siri Paiboun. Dr. Paiboun is one of the last doctors left in Laos after the Communist takeover, a 77-year-old Paris-trained physician serving as reluctant coroner to the Communist Pathet Lao regime in Laos in 1976.

Readers get a bunch for their money with Cotterill's books: a solid mystery story in an exotic locale, tinged with political satire, mystical overtones, and witty irreverent humor. The series launched with The Coroner's Lunch in 2004. Curse of the Pogo Stick, the fifth book in the series, has just been released in paperback. The sixth book, The Merry Misogynist, will be published in hardcover this summer.

Cotterill was born in London in 1952 and trained as a Physical Education teacher. He has taught in Israel, Australia, Japan, and Thailand. He spent four years in Laos, initially with UNESCO, and wrote and produced a language-teaching series for Thai TV. He became involved in child protection and set up an NGO in the south of Thailand. He also joined ECPAT -- an international organization that combats child prostitution and pornography -- and set up their training program for caregivers.

Cotterill lives in Thailand, but he returns to Lao several times a year to help run charities and to conduct research. He says he can't seem to stay away from the country: "I keep coming for the people," Cotterill says. "Every time I come to Laos, there's always an element of the mystical. When I step off the airplane, I know something wonderful or terrible is going to happen to me."

Besides writing his Siri Paiboun series, Cotterill is also a cartoonist. Come check out his series; we think after reading the first you'll be happy to know that you've got five more awaiting you!

Hot Books, Cool Store

Our books are hot but our store is cool! Broadway Books is open until 7 pm tonight and will be open tomorrow, the 4th of July, from 10 am to 3 pm. Sunday we'll be open our regular Sunday hours, noon til 5 pm. Come see us! Our air-conditioning is a welcome relief from the hot temperatures outside.

Oxford English Dictionary at Your Fingertips!

One of my favorite things to do is to read dictionaries. Yes, I mean it. I read dictionaries. I guess that truly pins me down as a dork. But that's ok. I can live with that title. Dork it is! Some of my favorites words: copacetic, the origin of which is not known for sure, and mediocre, which means, literally, halfway up a stony mountain. Love it! One of my favorite dictionaries, not surprisingly is The Oxford English Dictionary, but it can be a handful. But, new in the store is The Oxford English Dictionary 2nd Edition on CD-ROM Version 4.0. How cool is that! For a mere $295, you can have easy access to the internationally recognized authority on the English Language, with definitions of more than 500,000 words and tracing their usage through 2.5 million quotations from a wide range of literary and other sources. And think what a great punch $295 would be on your pink free-book card!

The text on the CD-ROM comprises the full text of the OED 2nd Edition , plus the three Additions volumes, as well as 7,000 new entries from the OED's continuing research. Most importantly, OED v4.0 on CD-ROM boasts superb search-and-retrieval software, designed specifically for the electronic version, enabling you to investigate The OED in ways not possible with the print edition. Questions which might have taken years of patient research can now be answered in seconds.

• New to this version: Now compatible for Mac users as well as PC users; Flash-base; Smoother and faster performance providing instantaneous search results; New word-wheel which supports incremental letter-by-letter browsing; 7,000 new words and meanings.


• Existing functionality retained from earlier versions includes: Installation to the hard drive, so the CD is not required during use of the dictionary; Options to customize the entry display and show or hide pronunciations, spellings, etymology, and quotation text; Flexible full text search options, with search filters and an option to rank entries and search results alphabetically or by date.

We keep this little baby behind the counter, so you'll have to ask us for it. What a spectacular gift it would be -- for you or someone you love. Considering that the 20-volume hardcover version costs $995 and doesn't include the vast amount of new material that this CD-ROM holds, this version is quite the bargain at $295.