PowellsBooks.Blog

Describe your new book/project/work.
Oddfellow's Orphanage is a series of stories/vignettes that tell the tale of the newest arrival to a curious orphanage, a mute girl named Delia. Through her eyes, we meet the orphanage itself, as well as the kind, but unusual family that calls Oddfellow's home. This is all nestled into the form of an early chapter book, heavily illustrated throughout with graphite drawings. I love books like The Wind in the Willows, Winnie the Pooh, or Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, books in which small interactions and adventures are collected together to create a larger sense of wonder and place. This is my hope for these stories, too.

What fictional character would you like to be your friend, and why?
I'd like to befriend Nick and Nora Charles from Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man, but they would probably be too quick-witted (even soused) for the likes of me. So I'll opt for P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves. Preferably embodied by Stephen Fry.

If you could choose any story to live in, which story would it be? Why?
I do think it would be ... Continue »

Over the last decade, I've given close to 400 presentations about my books and various other Oregon literary and historical topics. Traveling all over the state, I've gigged at bars, barns, bookstores, galleries, coffee shops, theaters, utility closets, fairs, fields, parties, prisons, libraries, parks, and historical museums and met thousands of fantastic Oregonians who have responded enthusiastically to my personal, somewhat eccentric approach to telling Oregon stories. At the conclusion of these events, certain audience members, aspiring writers I presume, invariably ask some or all of the following questions:

1. Where do you get your writing ideas?
2. Who or what is your muse?
3. What's your writing process?
4. How do you cope with literary rejection?
5. What's your best piece of advice for aspiring writers?
6. What's the secret to your success?
7. What type of writing workshop or group do you recommend?
8. Do you think you would have become a writer without the beach?

Generally, I believe no formula exists for becoming a writer, although the Internet and bookstores are crammed with how-to guides that preach otherwise. Nevertheless, the audience wants answers so here's generally what I say:

1. Beach (Best place to think. ... Continue »

This is it — the last of my lists of favorite books from 2011. This time around, it's those romance novels that I loved but, for whatever reason, didn't previously write about. And, yes, there is a bit of cheating going on with this list, because there were a few authors who published multiple titles in 2011, and I wasn't able to pick just one.

I'll start with Jill Shalvis, mostly because I've never made any secret of how much I enjoy her books. She had quite a year this year, with the first two books in her Animal Magnetism series (Animal Magnetism and Animal Attraction) published by Berkley, and the second two books in her Lucky Harbor series (The Sweetest Thing and Head Over Heels) from Grand Central. Plus, there were a couple of shorter pieces and a bind-up of the first two Lucky Harbor novels. I'm really enjoying the Animal Magnetism books. Wecause what's not to love about hot guys with cuddly animals? But if this were a contest, the edge would go to the Lucky Harbor novels because Head Over Heels was everything I love about Shalvis — ... Continue »

Ben Marcus's books The Age of Wire and String and Notable American Women were considered "experimental" fiction because of his unconventional use of narrative, character, and language. His newest novel, The Flame Alphabet, begins with an unconventional idea: Language becomes toxic to adults — first children's language, in the Jewish community, and later all language, spoken or written. But the book itself, though written in fantastic, sharp-edged prose, is at heart a story of family, religion, and loss.

Samuel and Claire are members of a Jewish sect that secretly practices forest worship — they have their own synagogue out in the woods and, through a device called a "listener," receive Rabbinical messages from an underground radio. When the couple become sick from their daughter Esther's speech and as their community fractures around them, Samuel takes it upon himself, through "smallwork" — maybe best defined as intricate, obsessively thorough testing and experimentation — to find a cure.

Library Journal raves, "Fierce, scary, hurtful, unsettling, and brilliant, this new work by award-winning novelist Marcus...reminds us that language is dangerous and that we'll do anything to protect our children, even when they are (literally) killing ... Continue »

As my farewell blog for Powell's, I wanted to be able to compile all of my favorite Portland-related things. There would be food, and clothes, and thrift shops, and parks, and record stores, and beer, and yoga. It would be a smorgasbord of Portland. I sat down to make my list, starting with Portland's literary delights. And I had to stop there. There were too many book and writing-related links, and the post was ridiculously long. So, for those new to Portland, or just new to the literary scene, I give you:

Port. Lit: A Short List of the Portland Literary Scene

1. So, obviously I'm a fan of Tin House, one of the most respected literary journals in the country, which spawned one of the most respected independent presses. The Tin House blog has great features like "Book Clubbing," in which writers tell you about a favorite bookstore, and "Lost & Found" (my favorite), in which authors tell you about an out-of-print or largely forgotten book they adore.

2. There's also Propeller Books, the books project of Propeller ... Continue »

One of the things I miss most about working at Powell's (besides working with the funniest, smartest, quirkiest folks you'll ever meet) is finding random, old children's books on our daily carts of recently acquired used books. Some of these books I remembered from my childhood, others were new to me, if not to the world. Here are some of my favorite discoveries from my eight years as a bookseller.

1. Plants That Never Ever Bloom by Ruth Heller
   Some of Heller's gorgeous nature-themed books are still in print, but not this one. The rhyming text is simple enough for my three-year-old son, but delivers plenty of facts.

   In proper scientific terms all of these are GYM-NO-SPERMS.

   
2. Where Have You Been? by Margaret Wise Brown with pictures by Barbara Cooney
   There are favorites and there are favorites. Margaret Wise Brown occupies a superlative category all her own. Her ingenuity attracted some of the best illustrators of her day, including Cooney (known best for her own classic, Miss Rumphius).

   Little Old Rook/ Little Old Rook/ Where do you look?/ At the

... Continue »

The sea is like music; it has all the dreams of the soul within itself and sounds them over. The beauty and grandeur of the sea consists in our being forced down into the fruitful bottomlands of our psyches, where we confront and recreate ourselves in the animation of the mournful wasteland of the sea.

So wrote C. G. Jung in 1909, aboard a steamer crossing the Atlantic, in a letter to his wife. He was undoubtedly looking upon the ocean when he wrote it. This letter and other fantastic comments on nature from Jung appear in a fantastic collection called The Earth Has a Soul. It was one of the most revelatory books I've read in a long time.

I often write looking upon the ocean, mostly letters, and the practice never fails to elicit interesting thoughts and rhythms. Is it really possible to think or write a banality while looking upon the ocean? The idea seems wildly implausible. I think even Justin Bieber could write a decent song staring at the sea. Or at least his handlers could.

Speaking of banality, my mind ... Continue »

When I have a writing deadline approaching, you'll probably find me in the kitchen. It's horrible, I know, but when I work with a deadline, I tend to find elective domestic projects — cooking, baking, canning — irresistible.

Here's how it goes: I'm sitting at the computer, staring down the blank page, or the half-written book review, or the novel-in-progress, when I realize I'm thirsty. Not for water (of course not), but for a hot, freshly brewed cup of tea. I go to the kitchen, fill the kettle, rinse my big blue English teapot, fill it with loose-leaf Keemun, and wait for the water to boil. As I wait, I realize I'm a bit peckish. I open cupboards, peer at jars of dried fruit and nuts and crackers. Nothing calls out to me. What could fill this wee, nagging hunger? A cup of tea and... a cup of tea with a little honey and... I glance at my shelf of cookbooks. A cup of tea with a little honey and buttered toast. No! Freshly baked bread and butter. Yes! A ... Continue »

Describe your latest work.
Blueprints of the Afterlife is a novel about the following things: giant heads that appear in the sky, a mystical refrigerator in the desert that never runs out of food, a competitive dishwashing champion, a sentient glacier that wipes out various North American cities, aliens, the ghost of a dotcom-era CEO, hundreds of clones of an ancient pop star's backup dancer, a town that's infected with hallucinations, and a full-size replica of Manhattan under construction in Puget Sound.

What's the strangest or most interesting job you've ever had?
Ice cream man. I drove a little truck for Joe's Ice Cream in Seattle for a couple summers while in college in the early '90s. Then I worked for a different, shadier outfit in Thurston County a third summer. It's really the perfect summer job for a college student. I got paid in cash every day, got to drive around in the sun, was a hero to children in cul-de-sacs.

Introduce one other author you think people should read, and suggest a good book with which to start.
I think people should read Trinie Dalton. She's an ... Continue »

Every Sunday morning since the start of the New Year, I've taken a hike in Forest Park. It's a trend I won't be able to keep up through the coming months as I travel around Oregon and Washington for readings. Nevertheless, I will pine for these excursions while I'm away. Forest Park is the wooded wilderness that stretches over seven miles along the western ridge (known as the Tualatin Mountains by Native Americans and the West Hills by today's locals) of Portland. I have a commanding view of these hills and their mostly coniferous (Douglas-fir, hemlock, and cedar) forest from my apartment in the St. Johns neighborhood.

If you've read Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis's fantastic Wildwood, you have read about this extraordinary place (though it may not be quite as extraordinary as their heroine, Prue, finds it). I imagine a time, years from now, when The Wildwood Chronicles have reached the status of an American Chronicles of Narnia, and children all over the country beg their parents to take them on pilgrimages to the Wildwood ... Continue »