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If you subscribe to any of our daily newsletters — Daily Dose, Review-a-Day, and Recently Arrived Used — you may not have been receiving them lately. Our apologies! Our email sending software has been on the fritz, but we hope to have everything running smoothly again by next week. In the meantime, you can visit each of these features directly on our site. [Note for Recently Arrived Used subscribers: just visit your favorite section and click on the link in the upper right-hand corner of the page to browse recently acquired titles in that section.] Thanks for your patience.

Winter doldrums getting you down? Tired of being stuck inside, praying for an early spring? Starting to think Jack Nicholson had the right idea in The Shining? Put down that axe, Jack — spring will be here before you know it.

POWELLS.COM INTERVIEWS: FRANK MCCOURT
"People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version," Frank McCourt famously noted in his debut. Picking up where Angela's Ashes left off, his follow-up, 'Tis, stands as one of the great immigrant stories of our times. "After it was published," however, as McCourt explains in memoir number three, "I had the nagging feeling I'd given teaching short shrift." Now, in Teacher Man, he focuses on those thirty years in the classroom. "McCourt's many fans will of course love this book," Publishers Weekly declared in a (predictably) starred review, "but it also should be mandatory reading for every teacher in America. And it wouldn't hurt some politicians to read it, too."

ORIGINAL ESSAY: DARA HORN
Dara Horn, author of The World to Come, reveals the question writers most dread hearing: "Where did you get the idea for the book?" According to Horn, "We writers will often oblige and invent a crowd-pleasing moment of revelation, or worse yet, refuse to answer by invoking the vow of silence we made to our uncle of blessed (and imaginary) memory." Find out the secret of Dara Horn's inspiration — and save 30% on The World to Come.

VOTE FOR THE PUDDLY AWARDS!
The Oscars make us grouchy. Pulitzers are for punks. And the Whitbread doesn't even have a name anymore. Let's face it: the only reliable awards are the Puddlys, brought to you each and every year by Powells.com. We're still lining up the big-name presenters for this year's ceremony (what's that? Oprah's on line two?), so now is the time to cast your vote. Tell us the best book you read last year, and you could win a $250 Powell's Card and two $100 cards for your friends. Your votes will decide who will wear this year's Golden Galoshes. (Voting ends on February 1st.)

2005 STAFF TOP 5s
More than twenty employees from Powells.com and our various stores have contributed lists of their favorite top five books published in 2005. If you're looking for suggestions on what to buy with that Powell's Gift Card you got for Christmas, here are over a hundred excellent ones.

RARE BOOK SALE
We've extended our rare book sale through the month of January — all titles are a whopping 30% off. You'll find more than 10,000 books, broadsides, pamphlets, and manuscripts from authors like Charlotte Bronte, William Faulkner, Charles Bukowski, Arthur Conan Doyle, Albert Einstein, Arthur C. Clarke, Stephen King, and more.

This edition of our newsletter is sponsored by the semicolon. Friends, are you tired of all those surly periods, persistent question marks, and annoying exclamation points? Extend the life of your sentence; keep your readers hooked interminably (studies show that people stop reading more often at the end of a sentence than in the middle); win lots of literary accolades for having long, overly complicated sentences that critics just love; and best of all, exercise your right pinky while you type!

BUY TWO DOCURAMA DVDS, GET A FREE T-SHIRT
Powells.com is pleased to partner with Docurama, which is dedicated exclusively to bringing critically acclaimed and cutting-edge documentary films to video and DVD. Docurama's collection includes modern classics like Best of "See It Now", with Edward R. Murrow, and Don't Look Back, the Bob Dylan concert film, to Lost in La Mancha and Michael Moore's The Awful Truth — and even Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy. Best of all, buy two Docurama DVDs (shipping, as always, is free) and receive a free T-shirt!

TEXTBOOKS
Every student's nightmare: you've just gotten your reading list for the term, the school bookstore is selling the required titles at insane prices, and you need the books as quickly as possible! Never fear, young ones: we've got your back. Check out our incredible second-day shipping offer: just $4.95 per order, plus $2.00 per book. You won't find a better deal anywhere online!

POWELLSBOOKS.BLOG: ELISSA MINOR RUST AND KEVIN SMOKLER
Joining such illustrious company as Susan Orlean and Adam Gopnik, our latest guest blogger is Elissa Minor Rust, author of the acclaimed short story collection The Prisoner Pear, which Kirkus calls "thoughtful, surprising fiction." Next week we welcome Kevin Smokler, editor of Bookmark Now. Visit PowellsBooks.Blog and read what you've been missing.

NEW IN STORES
New titles popping up at Powells.com include The Accidental by Ali Smith, winner of the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award; Julian Barnes's latest, Arthur and George, praised by Powells.com's Georgie and Jill in our latest Bookcast; and Small Steps, the long-awaited follow-up to Holes from beloved children's author Louis Sachar. Get them all at 30% off the cover price!

DVDs
Free shipping on all DVDs! Choose from over 40,000 great titles, including new releases like the hilarious box-office smashes The Wedding Crashers, starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, and The 40-Year-Old Virgin, with Steve Carrell (whose first season of the U.S. remake of The Office is also on DVD).

In our next edition:
An interview with Marilynne Robinson (Gilead); signed first editions of Louis Sachar's Small Steps; and an original essay from David Masiel (The Western Limit of the World).

FUP. STORE CAT.
Turns out Fup won't be back from the vet till noon. She mentioned her annual check-up the other night, but Oreo completely forgot. Now, rather than walk all the way home, he waits on the bookstore stoop. Maybe Bear will show up. Or the blue sky will lure another cat to the North Park Blocks for a visit. In the meantime, every customer offers a potential diversion. Oreo stations himself accordingly.

"You'd think he's auditioning for Fup's position," Amber remarks, watching through the front window as yet another pedestrian veers off-path to greet him. He’s a magnet, there's no denying. A scratch under the chin, perhaps some head rubbing, always a few kind words.

"The cat knows how to sell it," Lisa acknowledges. Out on the sidewalk, Oreo rolls onto his back and lifts his paws in the air. Lisa murmurs, "Surely, kind stranger, you will pet my stomach." The stranger does.

Amber wonders if maybe Fup has been tutoring him.

They don't know — how could they? — that before Oreo arrived in Portland he lived in a vacation rental on the coast. "Fully furnished," the marketing materials boasted: a brimming pantry, no shortage of board games and books, three old milk crates filled with LPs...plus several unique amenities, including something called a "catcierge." That was Oreo.

Invariably, when guests sent postcards and thank-you notes to the residence from back home, they came addressed to the cat.

POWELLS.COM BESTSELLERS (UPDATED HOURLY)

1. Animals in Translation by Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson (Nature Studies) 2. The Baby Book by William Sears (Child Care and Parenting) 3. The New Best Recipe by Cook's Illustrated (Cooking and Food) 4. Postsecret by Frank Warren (Excess Culture) 5. The Planets by Dava Sobel (Astronomy) 6. Permaculture by Bill Mollison (Gardening) 7. A Million Little Pieces by James Frey (Recovery and Addiction) 8. Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook by Anthony Bourdain (Cooking and Food) 9. State of War by James Risen (Politics) 10. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (Literature)