PowellsBooks.Blog

I have learned a lot from reading historical romance novels. Unfortunately, one of the primary things that I have learned is incorrect. During the Napoleonic Wars, many Englishmen were spies, as many as a quarter to a third, apparently. Not only that, but a lot of them were seemingly very bad at it and got captured by the French. Not all of these fictional English spies were awful enough to be captured, but enough were to make me wonder how, if this was the quality of the opposition, Napoleon was ever defeated. Okay. Okay. It's true that the villainous French captors often let slip Very Important Information during their sessions questioning/torturing their British captives. And these captors almost inevitably met their deaths at the hands of their erstwhile captives. But that doesn't excuse the fact that they got caught in the first place.

I think the book that finally made me roll my eyes at the frequency of the capture of English spies was A Lady's Revenge by Tracey Devlyn. Not that the book itself is deserving of eye-rolling, just that it started right off with the rescue of a captured spy called ...

Some six or seven years ago, I heard a story about an employee of a coastal restaurant who beat a one-legged gull to death with a stick out back of the establishment. Apparently the gull served as the establishment's mascot, and for whatever reason, if sociopathic behavior can be said to have logical reasons, the employee bashed the bird to death.

The man who recounted the incident to me heard about it from an eyewitness who later called the police. An investigation ensued, but the perpetrator wasn't arrested, even though killing a gull constitutes a crime under federal migratory bird law, punishable by a maximum fine of $15,000 and a maximum prison sentence of two years, depending on the offense.

The tale of the senseless and horrific murder of a gull has never left my mind. I can also never forget driving behind a pick up truck and watching a male driver purposely swerve into the shoulder of Highway 20 and kill a gull. Who are these people? What happened to their moral development? What books do they read to their children? If I had had my cell phone with ...

Over the past several weeks, I've found myself reading a lot of books that take their inspiration from folk and fairy tales. This isn't unusual — I've long been attracted to this sort of story — but, what is unusual, at least for me, is how many of them have been traditional historical romance novels. I've always snapped up fairy tale-inspired young adult novels (like Cinder by Marissa Meyer) and literary fiction (The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey) and especially fantasy (almost anything by Robin McKinley), but, although I have occasionally come across a romance novel built on the foundations of a classic fairy tale, it seems to have either become more common for these books to be published, or I'm just finding more of them recently.

I think the realization of how many fairy tale-inspired romance novels I was reading first hit me this past week when I was reading Nicole Jordan's Princess Charming. The story is only very, very loosely inspired by the Cinderella story, but it reminded me that Kieran Kramer's most recent Impossible Bachelors novel, If You Give a Girl a Viscount was also a Cinderella story. ...

Recently, I've been on a streak of reading a lot of British "chick lit." I put chick lit in quotes because it's a fairly loaded term that isn't exactly accurate, but there isn't another shorthand term that quickly encompasses the idea of the genre. These aren't the books of bubblegum-pink covers and city girls questing for the perfect job, fashionable accessories, and/or Mr. Right. Instead, they're books about women, usually in their 30s, looking for happiness but willing to settle for contentment.

There is a formula — Dear gods, is there ever a formula! — but it's one that I quite like. It generally goes something like this: A middle-class woman in her 30s experiences a crisis of some sort (adulterous husband, early widowhood, job loss, mountains of debt/impending poverty... or sometimes several of these in combination) and moves to a new home, often in the country. (If she already lives in the country, there will be no moving.) There are at least two potential love interests — one who is OMG hawt and the other who is the best friend/shoulder to cry on. (Guess who she ends up with.) There are animals: usually ...

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 — ...

For my penultimate list of favorite books of 2011, I've assembled a bit of a hodgepodge, an olio, a miscellaneous, an et cetera. In other words, this is a list of books which either don't properly fit into any other list or that I forgot about or whatever.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern is a book that captivated me from the moment I began reading. It's a lush and lyrical, dreamy and sensual historical novel about love and magic and the most strangely beautiful circus ever. The narrative spans decades and centers on the competition and romance between the magicians Celia and Marco, one of whom will not survive. Morgenstern's descriptions of the circus and its environs are so rich that, like many of the characters in the book, the reader will be left with a distinct longing to track it down and become part of it, no matter the cost.

On the other end of the spectrum is Donald Ray Pollock's The Devil All the Time, which is in no way lovely or dreamy. It is a harsh, brutal novel that left me reeling. It's not an easy ...

Since Powell's is one of my favorite bookstores in the world, and since I'm a guest blogger, I thought I'd relay my experience at one of the worst bookstores in the world. In 2007, I traveled to North Korea to research my novel The Orphan Master's Son. I visited four cities over six days, and it's hard to describe the surrealism of the DPRK: there are no planes in the sky, no advertisements, no cars on the boulevards, no stores, no bicycles, no pets, no magazines, no... it goes on forever . There was one haircut that most of the men sported, a "speed-battle" haircut, the number four, and they wore the same blue shoes and black half-sleeve vinalon sport coats. The women all wore the same eerily dark shade of lipstick.

Pyongyang opens up for two weeks a year — once in the spring and once in the fall for the Arirang (or mass) games in the Rungrado May Day Stadium, which is situated on Rungra Island in the Taedong River that bisects Pyongyang. It's the largest stadium on earth. During these two weeks, North Korea is ...

Slowly but surely, I'm creating a mostly complete list of my favorite books of 2011. Last time, it was science fiction and fantasy. Prior to that, it was young adult fiction. This time around, it's mystery/crime/thriller fiction.

Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante was one of the most haunting and emotionally affecting novels I read this year. LaPlante beautifully and heartbreakingly captures the life of a protagonist suffering from dementia and who may or may not have killed her best friend. The solution to the mystery was nothing spectacular, but the writing was incredible and made me excited to see what else Ms. LaPlante has up her sleeve.

The Most Dangerous Thing is another foray by Laura Lippman into the dark places of childhood and an exploration of how events can resonate far into the future. To my way of thinking, there is no one who captures both the wonder and the terror of childhood like Laura Lippman.

Louise Penny's A Trick of the Light is perhaps the most beautiful and personal so far in her series about Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and the citizens of Three Pines. Events from previous novels are ...

In my last post, I listed some of my favorite Young Adult titles of 2011. Continuing the series, I now turn my attention to some of my favorite Science Fiction and Fantasy titles of the year.

Kicking things off is Ernest Cline's Ready Player One, which might just be my favorite book of 2011. It's the perfect book for anyone who grew up hanging out in video arcades and watching John Hughes movies. It's funny and nostalgic and... let's face it, you knew from the title whether or not this book was for you.

The Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss was a long time coming, but so very worth the wait. I loved The Name of the Wind (and am now on my third copy, because apparently everyone I loan it to loves it as well) and waited very, very impatiently for this sequel. I kept telling myself that I'd rather Rothfuss got it right than that I got it right now, and dreaded being disappointed after waiting — quite literally — years. If you have yet to read The Name of the Wind, please go do so now and then dive ...

It's December and everybody and their dog seems to be coming out with Best of 2011 lists. I saw this particular bandwagon, thought it looked like fun, and decided to jump on. Therefore, my next few posts will be recap lists of some of my favorite books in a few different categories. I'm going to start with Young Adult for no other reason than that it was one of the easier lists to compile. I now present to you, in no particular order, my favorite YA titles of 2011.

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray is the book I was shoving into people's hands in the first half of the year. It's smart, funny, snarky, and completely over-the-top. A plane full of teenage beauty pageant contestants crash lands on a deserted island. Things go a bit "Lord of the Flies." Some reality TV pirates show up. There is a secret lair hidden in a volcano. There are footnotes and interstitial advertisements and all kinds of crazy. Words cannot do this book justice. You just have to read it. Like, right now.

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater might just be the most romantic YA novel ...