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Powell's Staff:
Five Book Friday: In Memoriam
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Every year, the booksellers at Powell’s submit their Top Fives: their five favorite books that were released in 2023. It’s a list that, when put together, shows just how varied and interesting the book tastes of Powell’s booksellers are. I highly recommend digging into the recommendations — we would never lead you astray — but today...
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Brontez Purnell:
Powell’s Q&A: Brontez Purnell, author of ‘Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt’
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Rachael P.:
Starter Pack: Where to Begin with Ursula K. Le Guin
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Customer Comments
Barbara Miller has commented on (11) products
Birds
by
Tarjei Vesaas, Torbjorn Stoverud, Michael Barnes
Barbara Miller
, November 26, 2017
A small gem of a book, sensitively and beautifully written from the point of view of a mentally impaired man who lives with his older sister by a lake in the Norwegian countryside. Mattis, the central character, is unable to work and it is up to his sister Hege to support them both by knitting sweaters to sell. A woodcock that flies over the house at night, two stunted aspen trees whom the townspeople have nicknamed Mattis and Hege, a thunderstorm, an old boat, take on deep significance to Mattis. The routine is broken when a lumberjack comes to live in the house with them and Mattis has to try to cope with the changes. The mood and images of this book will stay with me for quite a while.
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News of the World
by
Paulette Jiles
Barbara Miller
, August 06, 2017
This book was suggested to my book group and I have really enjoyed it. In it the author brings to life the world of Texas shortly after the Civil War, through the eyes of two misfit characters, a 10-year old girl who was captured by the Kiowa at the age of 6 in a raid where the rest of her family was brutally killed, and a 70-year-old veteran of two wars who discovered that his joy in life was to carry messages, whether they be military messages in wartime, or readings from world newspapers in small towns. The veteran undertakes to return the unwillingly ransomed captive, who has thoroughly adopted the culture of the Kiowa, to her relatives in southern Texas. Their journey takes them through towns and countryside where there is often no law enforcement and, through their resourceful response to the dangers they face, they form a bond that proves difficult to break at the journey's end. The language is clear and evocative.
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Under Another Sky Journeys in Roman Britain
by
Charlotte Higgins
Barbara Miller
, February 28, 2017
I found this book while searching for background reading for a trip to walk Hadrian's Wall. The author writes beautifully, giving insight into what it's like to visit some of the major Roman sites in Britain today, as well as what the Roman presence in Britain has meant to artists, to professional and amateur archaeologists, to historians, and to writers in the centuries since the Roman presence in Britain ended. While she was on a tour of personal reflection about the sites, her press credentials gave her access to people and places of particular interest, experiences that one might not necessarily encounter on one's own. There is a useful section at the end describing sites one can visit. When preparing for trips, I love books like this, that are at once informative and personal, helping me to feel when I visit a special place that I am already somewhat familiar with its history, and it significance.
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Bettyville A Memoir
by
George Hodgman
Barbara Miller
, April 25, 2015
A beautifully written book that is reminiscent of Cheryl Strayed's "Wild" in that it interweaves a description of a challenging journey (in this case the author's return to his childhood home to care for his aging mother as she copes with health and cognition issues) with a memoir of a troubled life (growing up gay in a small Midwestern town, moving to New York and being part of the gay community during the devastation of the early days of the AIDS epidemic, landing jobs at high profile publications and developing a cocaine habit, never being able to have a satisfying relationship). Hodgson's extensive experience as an editor, like Strayed's long apprenticeship as a writer, has allowed these authors to write memoirs that are skillfully structured, beautifully worded, and enlightening to the reader beyond the simple story of a painful life. I found myself laughing out loud in spots of "Bettyville" as he describes misadventures from his childhood or his mother's current outspokenness, and at other times my heart went out to him. The book was brought to my attention by a friend who, like the author, is a single gay man living with his aging mom and acting as her primary caregiver, and reading the book along with this friend has helped me understand more deeply what his life is like. I recommend the book very highly.
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City Secrets Books: The Essential Insider's Guide
by
Strand, Mark
Barbara Miller
, September 21, 2014
I have learned of and visited some wonderful treasures through the "City Secrets" series of guidebooks (some of the original Winnie-the-Pooh stuffed animals in a branch of the New York Public Library, the movement of a ray of afternoon sunlight across a painting that is still in its original situ in a chapel in Venice, one of the original copies of the Magna Carta in the British Library in London, to name a few). I happened across this book in the series by accident but it is introducing me to many fascinating books that I might never have known about otherwise (and reminding me of a few that I've enjoyed in the past). The essay about each book is at most a page or two long, written by an accomplished writer, and it's a wonderful book to dip into--I am about halfway through my copy and it is heavily marked with post-it notes for the books that I look forward to reading when I get the chance.
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Archie Meets Nero Wolfe: A Prequel to Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe Mysteries
by
Robert Goldsborough
Barbara Miller
, November 14, 2013
No, this book isn't quite the same as one of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe mysteries. But, having spent the last year or so working my way through that series, I have come to enjoy the characters and setting so much that it is still a real treat to visit them again. In this book, Archie Goodwin (Wolfe's confidential secretary who narrates the mysteries) tells of coming to New York City from his home in southern Ohio during the Depression and finding his way into a group of operatives (the familiar ones from the novels) who are hired by the eccentric genius Nero Wolfe to do the legwork needed to help him solve a kidnapping and murder. It is probably most enjoyable to those who already know and like the Nero Wolfe series, but everyone and everything is introduced and the writing is skillful enough that the book can be enjoyed by anyone who likes period mysteries.
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Radetzky March
by
Joseph Roth, Joachim Neugroschel, Nadine Gordimer
Barbara Miller
, July 23, 2013
An outstanding and underappreciated twentieth-century novel that looks back to the twilight of the Austro-Hungarian empire. An ordinary soldier from the provinces saves the life of Emperor Franz Joseph at the Battle of Solferino, and the emperor gives him a noble title and takes a continuing, if vague, interest in the welfare of the next two generations of sons of the family. The novel is written with humor, irony, and compassion, and the writing itself can be achingly beautiful, particularly in its use of nature description to set off the emotional events in the lives of the characters.
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Last Friends
by
Jane Gardam
Barbara Miller
, July 17, 2013
While I had enjoyed many of Jane Gardam's humorously insightful novels in the past, I had missed "Old Filth" and "The Man in the Wooden Hat" until a friend mentioned that this, the third book about those characters, had just been published, so I read all three in close sequence. This book illuminates, and is illuminated by, the two previous novels, and I think that one will enjoy it best after the others rather than on its own, but the novels are short and rewarding, so I encourage the reader to read all three. Taken together, the three novels provide a gradual unfolding of the arcs of the lives of the members of a love triangle of British outsiders (two "Raj orphans" and the son of a working-class northern woman and the husband whom she meets from a touring Russian circus), skipping back and forward in time between the far East before and during World War II, post-war London and Hong Kong, and modern-day Dorset, where the characters have retired. The author's style reads very easily, but behind the realistic details are mysteriously symbolic characters or natural figures that make the books much richer to think on than they might seem at first. Coming upon this trilogy all at once has been a reading treat for this summer for me.
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Moonbird
by
Phillip Hoose
Barbara Miller
, August 09, 2012
I heard about this book through a mailing list of birders. Targeted at younger readers, which I am not but I definitely enjoyed the book, it gives fascinating insight into the life cycle of the rufa subspecies of the Red Knot, which makes an annual migration journey from southernmost South America to the arctic. It focuses on a particular banded bird, B95, which was first banded in 1995 and has been photographed as recently as 2011, having flown during its lifetime a combined distance that would take it to the moon and back (hence the name Moonbird). There are wonderful photographs of the natural areas in North and South America that are crucial to the survival of these birds, and profiles of scientists and young people who are working to understand the mysteries of where the birds go and to protect the important stopping points on the huge journeys that they make each year.
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Long Walk the True Story of a Trek to Freedom
by
Slavomir Rawicz
Barbara Miller
, May 09, 2012
I had known about this book for many years before running across the audio version of it in a library and deciding to experience it. I realize that there are questions about whether this story could possibly be true--certainly there are highly improbable aspects to it, and apparently there are Soviet records saying that Rawicz was released in 1942 rather than being sent to Siberia. But it's a fascinating and compelling book, even if it's fiction (or, perhaps, a story that he may have constructed while in solitary confinement to keep from going crazy). The characters he meets and describes, and the relationships he forms with the people with whom he escapes and makes the journey, are as interesting as any novel. The journalist who ghost-wrote the book is a good writer, so the story flows well, with telling details. The time I spent with it was well worth it.
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Drawing Conclusions
by
Donna Leon
Barbara Miller
, September 20, 2011
Much of my reading time is taken up with Capital-L Literature or academic articles, but I do spend a fair amount of time driving (or listening to an MP3 player while gardening, walking, etc.). So I've never actually read a Donna Leon mystery, but I find the audiobook versions, as read by David Colacci, very enjoyable. The characters she has created around her main character, Guido Brunetti, the evocation of Venetian life, scenery, and food make these more than just puzzles to be solved, and I find them to be my favorite form of "escape listening".
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