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Original Essays | June 22, 2009
By Bethany Moreton
"In the 'culture wars' narrative of the Republican ascendancy, this slippage represents the greatest con in recent history: while you rush to defend marriage or protect the unborn, please pay no attention to the financier behind the curtain."
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Here in Oregon, it seems like we spend nine months of the year yearning for summer. As summer approaches ever so quickly, we at Powells.com would like to take a moment to sing the praises of those glorious overcast, rain-soaked days that will soon disappear completely for, oh, three, maybe four weeks. What better excuse could we have to sit inside and pore over Jill's interview with Aleksandar Hemon ( The Lazarus Project)? Sure, we could sit by a pool and read the original essays by Adam Gollner ( The Fruit Hunters), Ann Hood ( Comfort), Sheldon Siegel ( Judgment Day), and Carl Honoré ( Under Pressure) — but somehow it just feels better indoors with the staccato of rain against the window. And while the INK Q&A from Dan White ( The Cactus Eaters) puts us in mind of desert and sun, we're thrilled that guest blogger Lynne Rossetto Kasper ( The Splendid Table's How to Eat Supper) gives us a great excuse to work in the kitchen and keep that barbecue grill tucked in the garage for another week or so.
signed editions
 Kirkus Reviews calls The Lazarus Project "a profoundly moving novel....A literary page-turner that combines narrative momentum with meditations on identity and mortality." Library Journal raves, "a novel worth reading with as much fire as its composition must have demanded." Get a signed first edition of Aleksandar Hemon's The Lazarus Project while they last.
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FEATURED INTERVIEW
 Hemon, who came to the United States in 1992 from his native Bosnia, and then stayed on after war broke out in Sarajevo, began writing in English in 1995. He won a MacArthur Fellowship in 2004, and has drawn plenty of comparisons to Nabokov both because of his circumstances and his crackling, inventive, and blackly funny prose. The New York Times has called him "an extraordinary writer....not simply gifted, but necessary." In The Lazarus Project, Hemon reconstructs the story of an immigrant's death in Chicago a century ago, but it is also a book about storytelling, about the nature of memory and reality, and about the relationship of America to the rest of the world, then and now. In our interview, Hemon discusses storytelling, canvassing for Greenpeace, Bosnian jokes, and his remarkable novel.
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NEW ARRIVALS
HARDCOVER
 A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World by Tony Horwitz
"With the same sly humor and neighborly curiosity he brought to Confederates in the Attic and Blue Latitudes, in A Voyage Long and Strange Tony Horwitz roams the New World, surveying the destinations of history's foremost explorers. What do North Americans think of those explorers now, anyway? Ride along with Horwitz — but let him suffer the sweat lodge alone — and discover for yourself." —Dave, Powells.com
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Sale $19.25 | Hardcover
List Price: $27.50 (You Save: $8.25) |
 Odd Hours by Dean Koontz
Odd Thomas's fourth adventure breaks new ground, taking this utterly unique hero to undreamed-of new places, where both the perils he will face and the stakes for which he fights surpass all that has come before. Burnishing Dean Koontz's stature as a master of suspense and one of our most innovative and gifted storytellers, Odd Hours illuminates a legacy of mystery and hope that will shine on long after the final page.
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Sale $18.90 | Hardcover
List Price: $27.00 (You Save: $8.10) |
 The Golden Compass
From Philip Pullman's beloved novel, The Golden Compass, comes the blockbuster film. In a wondrous parallel world where witches soar the skies and Ice Bears rule the frozen North, one special girl, Lyra Belacqua (Dakota Blue Richards), is destined to hold the fate of the universe in her hands. "As a visual experience, it is superb," proclaims Roger Ebert. "As an escapist fantasy, it is challenging." Remember: all DVDs ship free.
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Sale $29.60 | DVD
List Price: $34.99 (You Save: $5.39) |
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PAPERBACK
 I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley
"Funny, charming, and self-effacing, Sloane Crosley's essays will resonate with you, whether you grew up playing 'Oregon Trail' on the computer or have ever locked yourself out of your house — twice in the same day. Crosley's voice is uniquely irreverent, making I Was Told There'd Be Cake a perfect summer read." —Tessa, Powells.com
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Sale $9.80 | Trade Paper
List Price: $14.00 (You Save: $4.20) |
 No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July
Now in paperback, Miranda July — screenwriter, director, and star of the acclaimed film Me and You and Everyone We Know — brings her extraordinary talents to the page in a startling, sexy, and tender collection of stories. "Cross Aimee Bender and Amy Hempel, and then cross your fingers July makes time for more fiction soon," raves our own Dave Weich. Watch an exclusive video and listen to an audio clip of July reading one of her stories, as well.
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Sale $9.80 | Trade Paper
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 The Darkest Night by Gena Showalter
The Darkest Night, the first volume in Gena Showalter's Lords of the Underworld trilogy, opens with Ashlyn Darrow coming to Budapest to seek help from men rumored to have supernatural abilities. Neither she nor Maddox, a man trapped in his own hell, can resist the instant hunger that calms their torments.
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Sale $5.59 | Microsoft eBook
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Ed Park recently blogged for Powells.com about his admiration for another of our guest bloggers, John Darnielle.
May 14, 2008:
Tallahassee
I just read all of John Darnielle's blog posts. They're genius — I don't know why I don't check his normal, non-Powell's blog on a regular basis, given how much I like the Mountain Goats; I usually have to wait for my sister to email me or Facebook-message me with a "Did you read John Darnielle's blog today?" I've actually got his blog bookmarked, but I guess I never look at my bookmarks. (Note to self: Erase bookmarks?)
My favorite Mountain Goats album is Tallahassee. "Things will shortly get completely out of hand" is just one of the perfect lyrics — by turns conversational, piercing, intimately detailed — on an album that I loved from the very first note. (I'm a sucker for city-as-title-as-state-of-relationship songs, and have tried my hand at them — see "Raleigh" and "Providence" (cities I've barely been in!) on this Muxtape.) The album came out in 2002 but feels eternal....
Read more of Park's post — plus daily guest bloggers and Book News, Read It Before They Screen It, and more — on our blog!
| From the Authors |
SAVE 30% |
ANN HOOD: ORIGINAL ESSAY
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In Comfort, novelist Ann Hood offers a moving and remarkable memoir about the sudden death of a daughter, surviving grief, and learning to love again. "A loving tribute by turns harrowing and beautiful," praises Kirkus Reviews. Read Hood's original essay and save 30% on Comfort: A Journey through Grief. |
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Comfort: A Journey through Grief
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Sale $13.96 | Hardcover
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in our stores
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"It's a masculine and spare story, and Petterson tells it in sentences stripped of emotion and literary pretense....The style befits not only the stark Norwegian landscape, but it's perfectly befitting a man as emotionally distant as Trond." Peter Martin, Esquire (read more) |
9. Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin (Literature)
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MAY 27: Armistead Maupin
 Almost 20 years after ending Tales of the City, his ground-breaking saga of San Francisco life, Armistead Maupin revisits his all-too-human hero in Michael Tolliver Lives, letting the 55-year-old gardener tell his story in his own voice. "[G]reat fun," praises the New York Times. "Maupin is a master at sustained and sustaining comic turns." |
MAY 29: The Undercover Philosopher
 Why do we trust doctors to give us the medicines we need? How can we know who to vote for? How valuable are the opinions of "experts"? Drawing on cognitive and behavioral psychology, philosophy, and the social sciences, Michael Philips unpacks a new kind of thinking about knowledge in The Undercover Philosopher, showing us how flawed our acceptance of certain beliefs is. |
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preorder signed editions by authors coming to Powell's |
IN OUR NEXT EDITION:
Signed first editions of Chuck Palahniuk's Snuff 
Fup had been in Boring eight days, nine days, ten. Bear couldn't hold out any longer. The time had come for a visit to the bookstore, no matter what it might cost his pride. For better or worse, he needed information.
After a week of loitering in the Park Blocks, spying Powell's front door for clues, today he charged straight in.
"Bear!" Ryan shouted. "Where have you been? Fup moves to the country and suddenly you forget who we are?"
Moves?
Ryan called to Jason, who was fluffing a sale books table, "Look at the cat who dragged himself in!"
Moves? Bear's brain snagged on the word, searching for a definition that didn't imply permanent relocation. A form of "moves" with a built-in "moving back."
Time stopped. Voices filled the back office — Bear couldn't remember crossing the store to the office, but there he was. Someone petted his head. Someone else shouted his name. He thought he might throw up. Then Ryan appeared with a bowl of kibble, Fup's bowl, and Bear got sick on the floor.
"Gah!" Ryan exclaimed, retreating toward the paper towel stash. Bear almost followed. He would race out of the store, yes, he needed air, immediately — but what if the front door was closed? He froze among the concerned staff.
Just then Lisa poked her head in the door. "I'm driving out to see Fup on Friday," she announced. "Maybe Bear would like to come along?"
Send questions, comments, suggestions, and poems to newsletter@powells.com. Just kidding about the poems. Please don't send any more poems.
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