War Dances Kicks off 24 Days of Books

Welcome to Day One of The 24 Days of Books. Between now and December 24th, we'll highlight each day some of the many wonderful books in the store that would make, in our humble opinion, terrific gifts for some lucky person for Hanukkah or Christmas or any other special occasion.

Today we kick off The 24 Days with the newest from one of our favorite (and almost local) authors, Sherman Alexie, who lives in Seattle. War Dances offers a collection both heartbreaking and hilarious of stories (and the occasional poem) that explore modern relationships from the most diverse angles. Alexie populates his stories with ordinary men on the brink of exceptional change, taking us to the heart of what it means to be human.

Alexie's most recent book before War Dances, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, won the 2007 National Book Award for Young Readers (as well as Sweden's 2009 Peter Pan Award!). Rumor has it he is currently working on the sequel to that terrific book -- hurrah!

Sherman Alexie is one of the most entertaining people -- in print and, especially, in person -- I've ever encountered. And tonight you can get a glimpse of that yourself as he appears on "The Colbert Report." Hmmm. Stephen Colbert AND Sherman Alexie -- now that ought to be worth a laugh or two.

For many more wonderful gift-giving ideas, please check out our gargantuan December newsletter, which you can find by clicking here.

Three Cups of Tea Author Returns

Today is new-release Tuesday, the day of the week when publishers are most likely to release new books. This week's hot ticket is Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, by Greg Mortenson, co-author of the bestseller Three Cups of Tea.

In his first book, co-written with Portland author David Oliver Relin, Greg told the story of his attempt in 1993 to climb K2, the massive summit in the Himalayas. When he failed, a small village in Pakistan -- Korphe, at the base of the Karakoram Mountains -- took him in and nursed him back to health. To thank them, he committed to building a school for the children of the village.

Stones into Schools continues that story. Mortenson co-founded the Central Asia Institute, which has now built more than 130 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan serving 58,000 children -- of which 40,000 are girls.

As an example of how much progress has been made, in Afghanistan in 2000, only about 800,000 children attended school, and most of those were boys -- many attending extremist madrassa. Today, 8.4 million children attend school, including 2.5 million girls. The girls often then go home and help teach their mothers to read. Educated women, Mortenson believes, can be a firewall against extremism.

Besides the growth in schools, which is phenomenal in itself, the efforts of the CAI have led to other related improvements: women's literacy programs, bridges, water-delivery systems, libraries, and teacher-training programs. In October 2005, an earthquake in Pakistan destroyed more than 9000 schools, and about a quarter of the casualties were children, most of them in school at the time of the quake. The CAI established temporary tent schools, and then worked to build several earthquake-proof schools.

The goal of the CAI is "to promote and support community-based education, especially for girls, in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan." Mortenson is also the co-founder of Pennies for Peace, which he founded with school children in the US to help raise money for building schools. P4P aims to "educate American children about the world beyond their experience and how they can make a positive impact on a global scale, one penny at a time."

Stones into Schools is less personal than Three Cups of Tea -- which included the story of Mortenson marrying his wife Tara six days after meeting her -- and offers more on the history, geography, and politics of the central Asia region. But given the importance and success of his endeavors, I expect it to be just as eagerly embraced as Three Cups of Tea, which has sold more than three million copies throughout thirty-nine countries and is required reading for special forces deployed to Afghanistan.

Khaled Hosseini, a native of Afghanistan and the author of the international bestsellers The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, has written the foreword to Stones into Schools: "...Greg believes, as I do, that if Afghanistan has any chance to become a more prosperous nation, it will require the full engagement of its women as part of the process. And for that to happen, women have to be given access to schools, and their education has to be one of the cornerstones of national reconstruction and development. As he says repeatedly, mantralike, 'If you educate a boy, you educate an individual, but if you educate a girl, you educate a community.'"

Safe and Happy Thanksgiving to All!

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope wherever and whenever you read this you are warm and dry and cozy and surrounded by folks you love. Today is a day of giving thanks, and I am thankful for so very much. I'm thankful for my wonderful friends and family -- I feel especially blessed in that department -- but I'm also extraordinarily thankful for and appreciative of the Broadway Books community: my terrific colleagues, the authors and publishers reps we work with, and our fellow merchants in the NE Broadway community, but most importantly you, our wonderful and supportive and endlessly interesting customers.

Have you had a chance to see the great window display that Kate did for us this month? Kate has made some eye-popping windows since she started at the store this fall, but I have to say this is one of my favorites, because it's all about celebrating local, and celebrating YOU! "You make the difference," it says, and it's true. Without you and your support we wouldn't be in our eighteenth year in the community. When you shop at Broadway Books, you tell us that you value our presence in your community and that you want us to stay. And we appreciate that so much. If you haven't seen it yet, you might think about stretching your legs between courses today to wander down and take a peek (even though the store is closed today), because this weekend the window will magically change (the magic we call "Kate") to our new holiday window, with oodles of great gift ideas for you.

As you begin your holiday shopping (ok, some of you have already begun and others, like me, haven't even begun to think about it) we hope that you'll think local as much as you can. Personally, I can think of few things more hideous than standing outside of a mall store in the dark cold rain tomorrow morning at 4 am waiting for the doors to open and the masses to pour in, pushing and shoving to get at the bargains. But everyone has their own way of doing things. We hope to make your holiday shopping experience hassle-free and satisfying -- and dare I say even enjoyable! We'll help you select gifts for even the hardest-to-shop-for person on your list; we'll special order available items not in the store; we'll gift wrap all of your purchases; heck, we'll even stand in line to ship them for you if you want! And starting Friday we shift into our longer holiday hours so you have more options for stopping by: Monday through Saturday we'll be open from 10 am to 9 pm (although frankly you'll often find us there at 9 am), and Sunday from 10 am to 7 pm.

Our December newsletter offers many great gift-giving ideas, but there wasn't enough room to accommodate them all! Come in and see for yourself. Our shelves are sagging with goodies. And come back again next weekend (December 4-6) for the annual Lights on Broadway celebration, where you'll find carolers and holiday cheer and sales galore up and down NE Broadway and the neighborhood. Watch the blog for more on that event next week!

But, getting back to my original thought, thank you -- for all that you do to make us Book Broads feel appreciated and needed. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

A Jesse Katz Love-Fest

A standing-room-only audience hated to leave last night as Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist and local-boy-made-good Jesse Katz delighted us all, reading from his memoir The Opposite Field, about his journey of being a husband, a son, and most of all a father. Jesse was introduced by his father, Mel Katz, a neighbor and friend of Broadway Books and well-known artist and art educator. Sadly, Jesse's mom, Vera Katz, was unable to attend because she opted not to infect us all with her cold. After reading and answering questions, Jesse graciously signed books til his fingers were worn to the nubbins. Well, maybe not completely to the nubbins. But close. And what the heck is a nubbin, anyway? The bottom line is that we have signed copies for you! This lovely book would make a wonderful gift for anyone, but especially for a son or husband or father. Or baseball lover. May we all learn to hit to the opposite field. And may we all be so lucky to have such wonderful family ties and friendships. What a wonderful way to head into the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

Chelsea Cain and the Case of the Severed Hand

Chelsea Cain was her usual wicked funny totally entertaining self when she read at the store last week. She read from her latest book, Evil at Heart, the third in the Gretchen Lowell/Archie Sheridan/Susan Ward serial killer thriller series, and then answered questions from the just-about-as-entertaining audience. Including questions about buckets of eyeballs. Ugh.

As promised, Chelsea came with her own severed hand. Well, not her OWN severed hand, of course, but a plastic stand in. (See photo.) She was particularly pleased that we had arranged to have the flashing lights of a police car bouncing off the store wall's in the middle of the reading. Truth be told, we DIDN'T arrange for someone to drive the wrong way on Broadway (which is a one-way street in our neck of the woods) and have a cop pull said driver over directly in front of our store in the middle of the reading. But, heck, if we'd thought of it we would have. Anything for Chelsea!

So sorry if you missed the reading; it was a fun night. But, the good news is that if you act fast, you can still get signed copies of Chelsea's books for that special someone in your life. Just make sure you're driving the correct direction down Broadway. Better yet, just hoof it on over!

Nationl Book Awards Ceremony Tonight!

Tonight's National Book Awards presentation offers a local angle for Portland readers: one of the nominees in the Young People's Literature category lives among us! Local writer and artist Laini Taylor is the author of the nominated title Lips Touch: Three Times, illustrated by her husband and collaborator Jim Di Bartolo. Check out the wonderful profile of Laini and Jim by Jeff Baker in the Oregonian. The awards presentation will start about 9:15 Eastern time.

You can read the full list of nominees here, in a previous blog post. Tonight is also the 60th Anniversary of the National Book Awards, and as part of that celebration they've asked the public to select the Best of the Best, the most popular of all of the National Book Award winners for fiction -- the first time in its history that the National Book Awards folks have opened things up to a public vote. Here are the six finalists: The Stories of John Cheever; Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison; The Collected Stories of William Faulkner; The Complete Stories, by Flannery O'Connor; Gravity's Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon; and The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty. Hmmm. Which one do you think should win? At this snazzy looking page you can see the book covers of ALL of the fiction winners from previous years, from 1950 (The Man with the Golden Arm, by Nelson Algren) to 2008 (Shadow Country, by Peter Matthiessen)

Good luck, Liani & Jim! Congratulations on this wonderful acknowledgment of your work.

New-Book Tuesday!

Tomorrow is Tuesday, and you know what that means! New books!!!! Here's a taste of what's on tap for tomorrow: Too Much Happiness, the newest collection of short stories by the incredible Alice Munro; Changing My Mind, a book of essays by Zadie Smith; and The Original of Laura (Dying is Fun), by Vladimir Nabokov. And yes, you're right; that last author is no longer with us. For some 30 years or so. It's an interesting story. Stop by and we'll tell you all about it. Just a taste of this week's Tuesday releases. Come check them out!