PowellsBooks.Blog
Authors, readers, critics, media − and booksellers.

Describe your latest book.
I think of Spinning Silver as a conversation with Rumpelstiltskin — not a retelling of the fairy tale, but the fairy tale was the grain of sand in my oyster, and the book formed around it. 

Spinning Silver begins with the story of Miryem, a moneylender’s daughter, who lives in a kingdom called Lithvas, loosely inspired by a mix of Lithuania and Poland and Russia — not so much the real places, but those places as they existed in my imagination as a child, growing up with the fairy tales and family stories my parents told me. 

Miryem isn’t the only narrator, but the story follows her as she gains the power to turn silver into gold, and then uses that power to save first her family, then her people, then her nation...

In her dying days, my wife said to me, matter-of-factly, You don’t know how precious life is. You think you do, but you don’t. We were sitting out on the patio in the late summer sunshine, drinking tea. A week later, I was sitting there alone, but her words were with me. They still are. The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars is, in part, an effort to make sense of them. As the subtitle signals, it’s an odyssey of sorts, a journey through the strange territories of the brain-injured and psychotic, down into the underworld of dreams and imagination, through the porticoes of ancient philosophy. Along the way, there are encounters with gods and monsters and tussles with Fate, and we catch glimpses of what the superhuman future might hold, but ultimately we are contending with the stark realities of life and death in the here and now...

Describe your latest book.
I Will Be Complete is a memoir in three parts, an inquest into the end of the relationship between mother and son. The first part, "The King of San Francisco," is about how my father made and lost a fortune; after the divorce, my mother and I moved to San Francisco, and when I was 12, I came home from school one day to find she’d moved to New York without telling me. The second part, "The Counterfeit Child," is about how I built a family among my coworkers at a stately, weird, dying independent bookstore in Los Angeles in 1986. The final part, "The Book of Revelation," is about how my mother and I both found soulmates at the same time...

Road trips and good tunes go together like rubber and asphalt. Great music not only helps the miles breeze by a little faster, it provides a soundtrack to the adventure. It anchors the experience in our memories, taking us back to a very specific and vivid place and time. 

For every road trip I've taken (and I've taken many over the years), I'll bet I can name at least one song that somehow figured into the journey, and I can see, in my mind's eye, everything around me in that moment: who was with me, where they were sitting, the color and feel of the car's upholstery. I can probably even smell someone's stinky feet. But that's mostly because on every road trip I've ever been on...

Describe your latest book.
I have written a book called Many Love, which is very difficult for me to describe. You are supposed to have an elevator pitch for the book you have written, but I have struggled greatly with such a pitch. Here are the different ways I’ve described it to different people:

Modern-looking woman: “It’s an illustrated memoir about polyamory.”

Cool, comics-loving guy whom I might want to someday date: “Yeah, it’s mostly a comic. It’s like, an autobiographical comic? But there are words in there, too, that aren’t part of the comic; it's like Phoebe Gloeckner’s book, but different.”

My grandmother: “It’s a sort of sociological book with my own stories and it’s vaguely about the evolution of human love. You shouldn’t read it, you would find it boring."...

How would you describe your job to someone you just met?
I am the Online Buyback (OBB) Manager. Through Powells.com, we buy used books from people all across the United States. I lead a great group of people in getting those books from the UPS truck to the shelves, and then getting those sellers their money, either through Paypal or Powells.com credit. We get to look through used books all day long: not too shabby.

Last book you loved:
Anu Partanen’s The Nordic Theory of Everything was an eye-opener. Partanen is a Finnish American writer, and discusses the differences between the U.S. and Finnish governments and how they work (healthcare, education, assisted living, taxes, childcare). Partanen is fantastic at showing ideas Americans should not be afraid of and questioning how free...

Describe your latest book/project/work.
The Grey Bastards is an epic fantasy set beyond the borders of the decadent kingdom of Hispartha, where for the sparse inhabitants of the Lot Lands, the threat of orc raids looms over daily life. The last Great Incursion is 30 years in the past, and Hispartha has all but abandoned the Lots. Only the half-orc gangs known as "hoofs" stand between their former human masters and the vengeance of their full-blood cousins. Riding massive hogs bred for war, these mongrel warriors guard the borderlands that divide the worlds of their mixed heritage. 

Of all the hoofs, the Grey Bastards is the most notorious, yet the only leader they have ever known has grown increasingly tyrannical. Jackal, a young, cunning, and charismatic rider, intends to take his place...

One of the perks of being a bookseller is getting to read things before they’ve been released, which is how I read The City of Brass so many months before it came out. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I was fictionally adrift and looking for something to really sink into, and TCOB delivered on all counts — I loved the world building and the characters and the intrigue. I was so engrossed that I read the final 100 pages in a mad rush, unable to look away, and then it was just over. The City of Brass hadn’t even been published yet and I was already thirsty for a sequel that wouldn’t be released for 18 months. Eighteen months! 

I immediately recommended the book to all of my friends, who were immediately disappointed that they couldn’t pick up a copy for themselves...

When you’re a paleontologist, you had better get used to fielding questions from children. In general, that’s a good thing. They mean well, and I like being kept on my toes. Also, I know that I have to raise my game for the deceptively tough but straightforward questions, such as the inevitable, “Can I find a fossil in my backyard?” The answer, if I’m honest, has to be, “Depends on where you live.” 

The odds of finding a fossil aren’t evenly spread across the world. There are a lot of reasons why desert sand dunes, jungle canopies, and glaciers might obscure the rocks that enclose fossils — the tangible evidence of past worlds. And if you’re interested in finding a specific kind of fossil...

They asked me to write about my book, so instead I’m going to write about my YouTube recommendations. 

The Great Believers covers a very real epidemic in a very real time and place — namely, AIDS in Chicago in the late 1980s — but it’s a novel, and as such, the details are made up. (Insert your standard disclaimer: “Any resemblance to persons living or dead,” etc.) I used very real locations (bars, restaurants, hospital units), but invented all the characters, all the events. With two exceptions.

The first was the 1987 Pride Parade in Chicago. There were plenty of newspaper accounts, but these mostly covered Mayor Harold Washington’s lovely speech in Lincoln Park and the far less lovely KKK rallies the night before and in the parade’s free speech area...