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Powell's Staff:
Five Book Friday: In Memoriam
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Every year, the booksellers at Powell’s submit their Top Fives: their five favorite books that were released in 2023. It’s a list that, when put together, shows just how varied and interesting the book tastes of Powell’s booksellers are. I highly recommend digging into the recommendations — we would never lead you astray — but today...
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Brontez Purnell:
Powell’s Q&A: Brontez Purnell, author of ‘Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt’
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Rachael P.:
Starter Pack: Where to Begin with Ursula K. Le Guin
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Customer Comments
Bracken MacLeod has commented on (2) products
Gwendys Button Box
by
Stephen King, Richard Chizmar
Bracken MacLeod
, June 02, 2017
Stephen King and Richard Chizmar have written a tight, compelling character study of an empowered child. While the book is clearly a spiritual sibling to Richard Matheson's "Button Button," the question asked here goes further. In "Button Button" a married couple are given the choice of receiving a large sum of money in exchange for pushing a button that will kill a complete stranger somewhere in the world. If they choose not to push, no death, no money, and no more button (for them, anyway). Here, Gwendy is given a similar box (perhaps by the Devil, or someone like him), but with an array of buttons that are mysteriously tied in to the entire world, and a final one that will do whatever she wants. Though, the heavy implication is that it won't sprout flowers and butterflies if she pushes it. That final button still has a grim purpose. It's her darkness given form. The task given to Gwendy is not whether to push a button (though she realistically struggles with that), but the mere safekeeping of the box. Like Tolkien's ring, tremendous potential has been entrusted to a small person possessed of no dark motives. Yet. She's an innocent given the power to perhaps end it all if she'd like. Again, like Matheson's tale, this is a quiet story without cataclysmic bombast. It centers on Gwendy's internal life and the emotional effect that the box has on her. And this is where it really shines and becomes wholly original. Unlike Matheson's story, it's not about asking the simple moral question of avarice versus humanity. Gwendy--and if you've read the interviews, this is ALL Chizmar's doing--posits the thematic question, "what if you gave a struggling child the power to be everything she wanted to be?" Would she rise up, or lay us all low? On the surface, it's a story about a magic box that gives out money and chocolates, and maybe can destroy the world. But deep down it's about a child who is allowed to have control of her life, and the choices she makes when she doesn't have to fight as hard to be the person she dreams of being. Is the box a corrupting influence, or an empowering one? I won't spoil it. But I will say that this is a mature story about trust. It clearly asks and answers the question, can we trust the next generation with the fate of the world? If this is an indication of how well King and Chizmar work together, I sincerely hope they collaborate again.
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New Yorked
by
Rob Hart
Bracken MacLeod
, June 03, 2015
Ash McKenna wakes up one morning from a drunken blackout to find a voice mail from his ex-girlfriend, left moments before she was murdered. He sets out on a quest-qua-vendetta to find her killer, and everything unravels from there. New Yorked is part Eight Million Ways to Die, and part Red Harvest meets the Warriors. As a detective novel, New Yorked is good. It hits the expected high notes of the genre while providing enough novelty to keep it the story fresh and interesting. By that standard alone, New Yorked is a solid four star story with great pacing, an interesting protagonist, and plenty of action. However, the brilliance of New Yorked--and what kicks it up to five stars for me--is the parallel of Ash’s relationship to his murdered girlfriend and his relationship to the city. As an existential meditation on the struggle against mortality, this book is a thing of near perfection. *New York* is the real victim of the novel--or, at least, the New York that Ash McKenna once loved. While he’s searching for the literal killer who murdered his ex, he guides the reader on a tour of the people responsible for murdering his real love, the once dirty, dangerous New York you had to earn your way into. The “gents” (out of towners responsible for the gentrification of the city), hipsters, and long time residents more interested in profit than preservation all have a stab at the heart of his true love, while all also punishing Ash for daring to stand up for what the city once represented. He takes a beating and with every wound he’s a little more “New Yorked”--a little more transformed by others’ plans for and designs upon him.
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