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This edition of PowellsBooks.news was written with a No. 2 pencil to ensure that its voice is heard.

POWELLS.COM INTERVIEWS: MICHEL FABER
Michel Faber's second novel has been inciting critics on both sides of the Atlantic to inspired feats of hyperbole. Time magazine has called it "a living, laughing, sweating, coruscating mass of gorgeous words." According to Kirkus Reviews, "it's hard to imagine...that readers who hunger for story won't devour this like grateful wolves." Such overstatement is understandable. Like Madonna's vinyl corset, The Crimson Petal and the White is a Victorian artifact brilliantly retooled for the 21st century. Read the Powells.com interview with Faber and save 20% on the acclaimed new novel.

REALLY GREAT DEALS
"Galileo's Daughter," raved Salon.com, "is most remarkable for its graceful combination of scholarly integrity and rhapsodic tone. [Dava] Sobel imbues this potentially dry, academic story with the language and cadence of oral storytelling, and she gives it all the dramatic suspense that narrative demands." More new Great Deals include Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand ("an absorbing book that stands as the model of sportswriting at its best," Michiko Kakutani applauded in the New York Times Book Review); Judith Miller's Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War ("one hopes the State Department's counterterrorism office reads it while there's still time," Esquire noted); and Portrait in Sepia by Isabel Allende ("a grand installment in an already impressive repertoire," announced Publishers Weekly). Save 45-80% on these and sixteen more staff picked favorites.

FROM THE AUTHOR: ALEKSANDAR HEMON
Nowhere Man, Aleksandar Hemon's first novel, has arrived; incredibly, its reviews are perhaps more gushing than those showered upon Hemon's earlier collection of stories. "Hemon, in just two books, and in just two years (if you haven't read 'The Question of Bruno,' do), has quickly become essential in the way that, say, Nabokov is essential," Adrienne Miller concluded in Esquire. The New York Times Book Review stated simply, "The bottom line is that Hemon can't write a boring sentence, and the English language is the better for it." Now the author has penned an essay called "The Question of Influences" exclusively for Powells.com readers. Read it here, and save 30% on the new novel.

At polling sites across Multnomah County, enterprising third graders raised the price of advice to fifty cents. While some parents level complaints of price gouging and an abuse of monopolistic privileges, others simply marvel at the infrastructure these local kids have established since 1998's disastrous experiment with a true/false question format.

SIGNED FIRST EDITIONS: CHABON AND BANTOCK
Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon (who recently signed to write the script to the next Spiderman movie) crosses over to young adult fiction with Summerland, the story of Ethan Feld, the worst baseball player in the history of the game. Nick Bantock, meanwhile, returns with Alexandria, the penultimate installment of his Griffin and Sabine series. Order signed first editions while they last.

OTHER VOICES
Poets & Writers talks to Anu Garg about A.Word.A.Day, the phenomenally popular linguistic e-mail service he started eight years ago. Ruth Reichl shares writing advice with — who else? — The Writer magazine. American Rivers introduces Dr. Judy Meyer, a clean water advocate and a true river hero. Utne Reader reports that more and more women are finding life without kids fulfilling. And Rob Brezsny offers your weekly horoscope. Read all this and more from our Other Voices today.

Officials early this morning confirmed that commas shall retain office for yet another term — extending for at least six more years their reign as the predominant space holders between intrasentence shifts. Voters simply continue to find satisfaction in the job commas are doing.

eBOOKS

CALENDAR (IT'S FOR KIDS)
Visit our Oregon stores in November, tell the cashier, "It's For Kids!" and Powell's will donate 10% of your purchase price toward Portland and Beaverton public school libraries. As if that weren't enough reason to visit, in the next two weeks we'll host William Langewiesche, the only writer with complete access to the WTC site after 9/11; 2001 National Book Award finalist Susan Straight; award-winning young adult author David Almond; the Satellite Sisters; radio host Michael Toms; Barry Lopez; and Derrick Bell. Plus, Stephen Elliott and Adam Johnson, The Trials of Lenny Bruce, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson's The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats, Patagonia: At the Bottom of the World, and much more. See the calendar for details.

FUP. STORE CAT.
The dog wakes up first. He tells Fup and Bear, "Sleep for ten more minutes, then let's go," and sneaks into the woods behind the patio.

Fup stirs. Mount Hood looms over the east hills like the fin of a southbound shark. The sky is turning purple with dawn.

Setting out promptly, Zooey leads, as has become routine. Bear and Fup trail behind, mostly on the dog's heels but now and then slaloming off as a pair, cutting a parallel route through the trees alongside the ribbon of country road they're following. Then a mile or so on, a state highway cuts north and south. Already plenty far south — from here it should be due east to Wiggums's place — back into the untamed forest they go.

Under towering firs, from moss patch to tangle of ivy, over massive weathering trunks downed in this storm in that decade, through the woods they go. And go and go, for hours.

The wind's whistle has swelled to full song. Where only a moment ago birdsong filled the forest, now there is none. Fup suddenly stops. Bear, daydreaming, almost runs her over.

"Bird," Fup whispers, "of prey." Zooey comes back from up ahead in the clearing to see what gives. Fup cricks her nose in the direction of the high rock face across the clearing. "Huge, freaking bird of prey," she reiterates.

The eagle abandons its perch and begins to circle over the clearing: she circles and circles, and circles and circles and circles again.

Zooey roams the edge of pasture, growling, while Fup and Bear wait among leaves and ferns and downed branches. Zooey begins to bark but gives up shortly, when it becomes clear that he's only egging the eagle on.

They kill most of the afternoon this way, waiting for safe passage. Will they ever get to Wiggums's farm?

TOP TEN
1. The Carnivorous Carnival by Lemony Snicket (Children's Middle Readers)
2. Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser (American Studies)
3. American Gods by Neil Gaiman (Science Fiction and Fantasy)
4. Skipping Towards Gomorrah by Dan Savage (American Studies)
5. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (Literature)
6. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich (American Studies)
7. Kissing in Manhattan by David Schickler (Literature)
8. Stupid White Men by Michael Moore (Politics)
9. Empire Falls by Richard Russo (Literature)
10. White Oleander by Janet Fitch (Literature)

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by Dave