Local Author Wins Locus Award

Winners of the 2009 Locus Awards, sponsored by Locus Magazine, were announced at a ceremony and banquet Saturday night in Seattle during the Science Fiction Awards Weekend. One of the winners was Oregon's own Ursula K. Le Guin, whose novel Lavinia was named Best Fantasy Novel. Neal Stephenson's Anathem was named Best Science Fiction Novel, Neil Gaiman won Best Young-Adult Novel for The Graveyard Book, and Kelly Link won the Best Novella award for Pretty Monsters.

Locus Magazine has been covering the science fiction and fantasy field since 1968. The monthly publication provides news of the science fiction/fantasy field and extensive reviews and listings of books and magazines. The magazine is published from Oakland, California. The publisher and editor-in-chief is Charles N. Brown. You can read more about the awards at the magazine's Web site.

In related sci-fi news, Cory Doctorow's Little Brother and Ian R. MacLeod's Song of Time tied to win the 2008 John W. Campbell Memorial Award. This is only the third tie in the award's history. The awards will be presented at a banquet July 10, 2009, held during the Campbell Conference in Lawrence KS, from July 9-12.

The John W. Campbell Memorial Award for the best science-fiction novel of the year is one of the three major annual awards for science fiction. The first Campbell Award was presented at the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1973. The Award was created to honor the late editor of Astounding Science Fiction magazine, now named Analog. Campbell, who edited the magazine from 1937 until his death in 1971, is called by many writers and scholars the father of modern science fiction. Writers and critics Harry Harrison and Brian W. Aldiss established the award in Campbell's name as a way of continuing his efforts to encourage writers to produce their best possible work.

The Campbell Award differs from the other two major awards in the field by being restricted to the novel and by its method of selection. The Hugo Awards are voted on by some thousand of the several thousand members who pay advance fees to attend the World Science Fiction Convention, which meets annually at different locations on Labor Day weekend. The Nebula Awards are voted on by some hundred of the nearly three thousand members of the Science Fiction Writers of America and presented at the annual Nebula Award meeting usually held late in the Spring. The Campbell Award is the only award of the three selected by a committee small enough to discuss among its members all of the nominated novels. You can read more about The Campbell Award here.

New Paintings

Syd McCutcheon was in town this week and left us more of her colorful and engaging art to sell. We now have eight new paintings, from large (30" X 30") to small (10" X 10"), hung in the store. Prices range from $55 to $550. Come in and have a look!

Border Songs a Big Hit at Broadway Books

It was a packed house and a happy house at Broadway Books last night to hear Jim Lynch read from his wonderful second novel, Border Songs. Jim has been a big favorite at BB since the publication of his first novel, The Highest Tide, and people were eager to hear from his new one. Jim read a few passages -- some of which were hysterical, all of which were beautiful -- and talked about the process of writing the book. As a long-time journalist, Jim is well-versed in research and investigation, which served him well in the writing of this book, for which he had to learn about birding, autism, dairy farming, the US/Canadian border, and other subjects. After taking questions from the audience, Jim gladly sat and signed book after book for his enthusiastic audience. And then he signed some more books. All of the books we have in the store, in fact. So come on down and get your very own signed copy of Border Songs, before they fly away. My prediction? Brandon Vanderkool will become as well-loved a literary character as Miles O'Malley has been. And now we know: Jim can write short and tall. A huge thank you to Jim and all who attended for a truly wonderful night!

New Paperbacks Just in Today!

It's Tuesday, which is the day that many publishers release their new titles. Why Tuesday, you might ask? And the answer is I have no earthly idea. I'm sure it stems from some very important publishing tradition, but I haven't a clue what it is. Perhaps someone can educate me on that score. But, what I DO know, is that we got a couple of great titles in paperback today. The first, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson, is the first in the trilogy by the Swedish author who died shortly after delivering the manuscripts for the three books. The book is a spellbinding amalgam of murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue, and by all accounts it is spectacular. Even more impressive, the early reports on the second book, The Girl Who Played with Fire (due out in hardback next month), are even MORE positive. So get started on the first book now so you're ready for #2!

The second book that arrived in paperback today is one of my favorites this year, from one of my favorite authors: The Eaves of Heaven: A Life in Three Wars, by Andrew X. Pham. Pham is the author of Catfish and Mandala, one of our consistent top-selling memoirs at the store. [If you haven't read it yet, come in and we'll tell you all about it.] His second book is the story of his father, told in the father's voice but written by the son. The Oregonian named it one of the Top Ten National Books of 2008, when it first came out in hardback, and The New York Times Book Review had this to say: "Few books have combined the historical scope and the literary skill to give the foreign reader a sense of events from a Vietnamese perspective....Now we can add Andrew Pham's Eaves of Heaven to this list of indispensable books." Read it for the history it teaches, for the compelling portrait of Vietnam it provides, for the story it tells of the tragedies of a family, but mostly read it for the beautiful, vivid prose it uses to do all of the above.

Sale Books, Oh My!

I just finished unloading our brand new shipment of sale books this very moment, and I gotta tell ya, there are some sweet, sweet deals to be had. "Like what?" you ask? Well, like a hardcover Silver Palate cookbook for $15.50! Or, how about Divisadero, Michael Ondaatje's newest novel, in hardcover for a mere $6.50. "But that's like stealing!" you say. No, no...think of it as our gift to you, lovely customers. There's also a slew of other great novels, mysteries, kids' books, cookbooks, gardening books, and a whole host of fascinating non-fiction (well, I think it's fascinating anyway, even though I'm biased because I'm the one who orders the sale books), like Eric Larson's Thunderstruck for $6.50. I would suggest, though, that you make quick tracks down here before Sally buys up all the good ones :-)

Papa!

Don't forget--tomorrow is Father's Day. And what better way to celebrate (and honor) your dad's supreme awesomeness than with a book. Does your dad like edgy fiction, perhaps? Maybe he would like Chuck Palahniuk's new book, Pygmy. Is he a golfer? A chef? A couch potato? A walker? A runner? A gardener? A kid at heart? A writer? A mountain climber? A ballet dancer? A fly fisherman? A bird watcher? Or, maybe all of the above? We've got the book for him, and you'll be promoted to favorite kid status. It's win-win. Feel free to ask for suggestions if you feel overwhelmed by all the amazing titles we have here at the store.

White-Knuckling it For Father's Day

Tick tock...Father's Day rapidly approaches -- it's Sunday, in case you've forgotten. THIS Sunday. Yikes! Here's another book idea for Daddio: Halfway to Heaven: My White-Knuckled--and Knuckleheaded--Quest for the Rocky Mountain High, in which author Mark Obmascik, inspired by his son's climbing bug, attempts to climb all 54 peaks higher than 14,000 feet in Colorado -- known as "The Fourteeners." Given the author's physical conditioning at the start, it was a pretty ambitious undertaking -- especially since The Colorado Fourteeners have killed more climbers than Mount Everest! Think Bryson's A Walk in the Woods meets Krakauer's Into Thin Air, but probably a little more Bryson than Krakauer.

His wife's only insistence in this whole endeavor was that he never climb alone, so while many of his favorite climbs were in the company of his oldest son, he also trolled the internet for potential climbing partners when his son wasn't available, resulting in what Obmascik calls his hiking "man-dates," which he says turned out to be his favorite part of climbing the Fourteeners.

Besides being an entertaining account of his quest, the book offers historical tidbits about previous Fourteeners and portrayals of his various hiking man-dates.

Mark Obmascik has been a journalist for two decades, most recently at the Denver Post, where he was lead writer for the newspaper's Pulitzer Prize in 2000 and winner of the 2003 National Press Club Award for environmental journalism. His freelance stories have been published in Outside and other magazines, and he has aired numerous political stories on public affairs and television news programs.His most recent book was The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession An obsessed birder himself, he lives in Denver with his wife and sons.

We've got lots of other great suggestions for you for gifting Dad on Sunday, including Michael's Lewis's new book about fatherhood, which Ron Charles of The Washington Post recently described as the Dad's version of Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions. Come see us!