Special Offers see all
More at Powell's
2013 Archives
2012 Archives
2011 Archives
2010 Archives
2009 Archives
2008 Archives
2007 Archives
2006 Archives
2005 Archives
2004 Archives
2003 Archives
2002 Archives
2001 Archives
 |
Daily Dose Archives
February 01
Selected by Kim from Los Angeles, California
Kim won a Powells.com gift certificate worth $20.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
by Betty Smith
In the past few months, we've heard many stories celebrating New Yorker chutzpah and heart. Hopefully, there's room for at least one more. Betty Smith's great novel about growing up in Brooklyn is not only one of the best loved of American novels, it is also one of the most revealing explorations of the beating heart of our greatest city. (read more)
Your price $4.50
Used - Trade Paper
add to wish list
|
February 02
Selected by Harry from Gainesville, Florida
February 03
Selected by Jennifer from Ottawa, Canada
Jennifer won a Powells.com gift certificate worth $40.
Infinite Jest
by David Foster Wallace
"A genius? A tennis prodigy? A total nutcase? What to make of the protagonist of this story is up to you, but despite the enormity of the book itself, this is one you won't be able to put down, except perhaps to rest your arms from the weight." Jennifer (read more)
Your price $12.50
Used - Trade Paper
add to wish list
|
February 04
Selected by Lisa from Albuquerque, New Mexico
Lisa won a Powells.com gift certificate worth $20.
The Northern Lights
by Lucy Jago
It might be more appropriate in chilly February to feature a book about beaches or palm trees, but this book about a phenomenon only visible in polar climes seemed too interesting to pass up. According to Lisa, this story is "rich and engaging" and when you're done, "you'll never look at the sky or the sun the same way again." (read more)
Your price $6.95
Used - Hardcover
add to wish list
|
February 05
Selected by Leah from St. Helens, Oregon
Leah won a Powells.com gift certificate worth $20.
Dream of the Walled City
by Lisa Huang Fleischman
With so much historical fiction being published, it can be difficult to separate the truly good from the merely adequate. Leah claims to have found a winner in Lisa Huang Fleischman's novel set in China during the turbulent 20th century: "Fascinating...Dream of the Walled City slowly takes hold of you, drawing you into its world, while making it both fresh and real. If only all historical novels were this well written..." (read more)
Your price $4.95
Used - Trade Paper
add to wish list
|
February 06
Selected by Cory from Old Saybrook, Connecticut
Young Men and Fire
by Norman Maclean
"While Black Hawk Down plays in the public's consciousness, no one should forget Maclean's heart-wrenching account of the smokejumpers who battled and died in the Mann Gulch fire, an earlier testament to the courage and loneliness of young men in the face of extraordinary danger." Cory (read more)
Your price $4.95
Used - Trade Paper
add to wish list
|
February 07
Selected by Laura from New York, New York
Laura won a Powells.com gift certificate worth $40.
King Suckerman
by George P. Pelecanos
Get out your Curtis Mayfield and gold chains, today's Dose is a street-smart mystery set in the '70s involving a drug deal gone bad, a blaxploitation film called King Suckerman, and a five-pound 'fro or two. "Oh, this is fun!," says Laura, who adds only, "Man." (read more)
Your price $3.95
Used - Mass Market
add to wish list
|
February 08
Selected by Jay from Rapid City, South Dakota
Jay won a Powells.com gift certificate worth $20.
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
by Anne Lamott
Great novelist (and great aficionado of paranoia) Don DeLillo, has said of the publishing industry: "The more books they publish, the weaker we become. The secret force that drives the industry is the compulsion to make writers harmless." Whatever. But if this were true, Anne Lamott would bear much of the blame. As Jay says of her bestselling writing manual, "The title could just as easily be the Joy of Writing. It will make anyone who reads it walk around with paper and pens stuffed in their pockets." We can only assume, Bird by Bird has also contributed to the allegedly dangerous increase in recent years in publishable writers. (read more)
Your price $7.95
Used - Trade Paper
add to wish list
|
February 09
Selected by Laura from New York, New York
Laura won a Powells.com gift certificate worth $20.
Wizard of Earthsea
by Ursula K Le Guin
With The Fellowship of the Ring now in theaters, there is increased attention being paid to fantasy series, which of course brings up one of the genre's best writers, Ursula Le Guin, and her popular Earthsea cycle. Even so, as Laura points out, "This series gets a bad rap because it falls into the fantasy genre. While Wizard of Earthsea does have one of the coolest wizards ever created, Le Guin's writing transcends easy categorization. Beyond wizards and other worlds, she touches on the darkness of soul we all run from, but must ultimately face." (read more)
Your price $3.50
Used - Mass Market
add to wish list
|
February 10
Selected by Laurent from Portland, Oregon
Laurent won a Powells.com gift certificate worth $20.
February 11
Selected by Eric from Tallahassee, Florida
The Debt to Pleasure
by John Lanchester
Though today's Dose is a sophisticated novel about food, fans of Paul Prodomme might want to steer clear. As Eric says, "The public should be protected from this wicked book, which was clearly written for dark-hearted degenerates ? like me." (read more)
Your price $4.95
Used - Trade Paper
add to wish list
|
February 12
Selected by Christine from Salem, Oregon
Christine won a Powells.com gift certificate worth $40.
February 13
Selected by Jennifer from Paris, France
The Last Life
by Claire Messud
"I generally steer clear of coming-of-age novels. They're too often trite, obvious, and self-satisfied. But The Last Life is wonderful: gripping, thoughtful, witty, and deeply moving. Claire Messud gives all those the-novel-is-dead naysayers the thumb." Jennifer (read more)
Your price $5.95
Used - Trade Paper
add to wish list
|
February 14
Selected by Mark from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Mark won a Powells.com gift certificate worth $40.
February 15
Selected by Jill from New Orleans, Louisiana
Jill won a Powells.com gift certificate worth $20.
February 16
Selected by Jennifer from Calumet, Michigan
February 17
Selected by Beth from Beaverton, Oregon
Beth won a Powells.com gift certificate worth $40.
The Passion
by Jeanette Winterson
Jeanette Winterson has been called one of the most important young novelists at work today. And any young writer who can count Gore Vidal among their fans is rare indeed. Beth calls this novel "an incredible story about passion and blind obsession and what love really is." (read more)
Your price $4.95
Used - Trade Paper
add to wish list
|
February 18
Selected by Jena from Kihei, Hawaii
Jena won a Powells.com gift certificate worth $20.
February 19
Selected by Stephen from Columbus, Ohio
Stephen won a Powells.com gift certificate worth $20.
In the Lake of the Woods
by Tim O'Brien
"With [this book], O'Brien manages what he does best, which is to find the boy scout in the foot soldier, and the foot soldier in every reader. No one writes better about the fear and homesickness of a boy adrift amid what he cannot understand, be it combat or love....[O'Brien] remains much better at exploring mystery than at explaining it....Yet if he is no psychologist, he is a masterly evoker of shadowy psychological states. And what remains in the mind from this book is an unsparing depiction of the moral and emotional nightmares of Vietnam, made more upsparing by O'Brien's rigorous refusal to write them off as the craziness of the moment....[He]looks head-on at those unfashionable old friends, morality and evil." Pico Iyer, Time (read more)
Your price $1.50
Used - Trade Paper
add to wish list
|
February 20
Selected by Pamela from Sacramento, California
When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge
by Chanrithy Him
"A gut-wrenching story, told with honesty, restraint, and dignity, When Broken Glass Floats is one of those books that open our minds to a world of unimaginable brutality and horror. This book, packed with authentic details, testifies to the gratuitousness of human suffering inflicted by a violent revolution. Page by page it brings history to life." Ha Jin, author of Waiting, winner of the National Book Award (read more)
Your price $7.95
Used - Trade Paper
add to wish list
|
February 21
Selected by Debra from Brooklyn, New York
Debra won a Powells.com gift certificate worth $40.
Harriet the Spy
by Louise Fitzhugh
"From the very beginning this story has a vitality and interest that complex attention. 11-year-old Harriet is a superb character. Most modern fictional children are pallid denizens of a dream world compared with this precocious, intense, egocentric, and mean child." Book Week (read more)
Your price $2.95
Used - Trade Paper
add to wish list
|
February 22
Selected by Marcia from Albany, New York
The Best of Times: America in the Age of Clinton
by Haynes Johnson
"In The Best of Times, Haynes Johnson captures the extraordinary decade of the '90s. Combining superb social history with fine journalism, he makes familiar events seem fresh again as if we were reliving them once more, but with a deeper understanding of what it all means. A book that readers will turn to fifty or a hundred years from now to understand America in the Clinton years." Doris Kearns Goodwin
(read more)
Your price $9.50
Used - Hardcover
add to wish list
|
February 23
Selected by Gary from Evanston, Illinois
Pale Fire
by Vladimir Nabokov
"This centaur work, half-poem, half-prose...is a creation of perfect beauty, symmetry, strangeness, originality and moral truth. Pretending to be a curio, it cannot disguise the fact that it is one of the great works of art of this century, the modern novel that everyone thought was dead and that was only playing possum." Mary McCarthy (read more)
Your price $7.95
Used - Trade Paper
add to wish list
|
February 24
Selected by Laura from Ann Arbor, Michigan
Laura won a Powells.com gift certificate worth $60.
Black White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self
by Rebecca Walker
"In this powerful memoir, Rebecca Walker mines the terrain of her biracial upbringing in a voice that is deeply affecting and wholly her own. She tackles her complicated history with passion and lucidity. This is more than just a personal narrative: it is the story of a whole generation of movement babies for whom the definition of 'home' was always and already up for debate." Danzy Senna, author of Caucasia (read more)
Your price $4.95
Used - Trade Paper
add to wish list
|
February 25
Selected by Heather from Louisville, Kentucky
Heather won a Powells.com gift certificate worth $20.
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
by Sijie Dai
"Few if any books that are mailed to me strike me as worth recommending. I recommend this book highly. I myself was also secretly introduced to Western culture through literature during the Cultural Revolution when I first read a hand copied Chinese translation of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Dai Sijie does an excellent job showing this experience. Anyone who wants to understand how Western art and literature influences the Chinese mindset should read this book." Anchee Min, author of Red Azalea and Becoming Madame Mao (read more)
Your price $3.50
Used - Hardcover
add to wish list
|
February 26
Selected by Jennifer from Ottawa, Canada
Jennifer won a Powells.com gift certificate worth $20.
The White Boy Shuffle
by Paul Beatty
"Take a young black boy with a Nordic name, move him out of complacent suburbia and into a ghetto where he sticks out like a sore thumb, and sit back to watch as he moves beyond the funny-but-painful circumstances he has been placed in to become a cynically hilarious and renowned poet. Beatty's book has just enough levity not to let you get bogged down in the unhappy circumstances, and to see past them to the unique characters." Jennifer (read more)
Your price $5.95
Used - Trade Paper
add to wish list
|
February 27
Selected by Mark from San Diego, California
Mark won a Powells.com gift certificate worth $20.
Einstein's Dreams: A Novel
by Alan Lightman
"Speaking of Einstein, here is an absolute treasure. Lightman is a physicist, but don't let that put you off. This novel is really a collection of vignettes, each one describing a world in which time behaves differently. Framed as a series of Einstein's dreams, these chapters are more about how we live our lives than they are about physics. Some people seem to get 'stuck' at some point in time, and others race through time as if pursued. I really can't recommend this poignantly beautiful book enough. Get it and your soul will thank you." Doug Brown, Powell's Books
Recommended by Doug B.
(read more)
Your price $1.95
Used - Trade Paper
add to wish list
|
February 28
Selected by Laureen from Sonora, California
Laureen won a Powells.com gift certificate worth $20.
Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America
by Andrea Tone
"A brilliant and original work of research, Devices and Desires promises to transform our historical understanding of the place of birth control in American life. Professor Tone does a superb job structuring a sophisticated and subtle examination of a sensitive subject. Devices and Desires is very well written, packed with interesting people, fascinating analysis, and surprises. A work of significant scholarship that is fun to read, Tone's book has major policy implications not just for the issue of birth control but also for the debate over health care in the United States. It is, a work of the first importance." Michael Bellesiles (read more)
Your price $22.00
Used - Hardcover
add to wish list
|
|
