Cart
|
|
my account
|
wish list
|
help
|
800-878-7323
Hello, |
Login
MENU
Browse
New Arrivals
Bestsellers
Featured Preorders
Award Winners
Audio Books
See All Subjects
Used
Staff Picks
Staff Picks
Picks of the Month
Bookseller Displays
50 Books for 50 Years
25 Best 21st Century Sci-Fi & Fantasy
25 PNW Books to Read Before You Die
25 Books From the 21st Century
25 Memoirs to Read Before You Die
25 Global Books to Read Before You Die
25 Women to Read Before You Die
25 Books to Read Before You Die
Gifts
Gift Cards & eGift Cards
Powell's Souvenirs
Journals and Notebooks
socks
Games
Sell Books
Blog
Events
Find A Store
Don't Miss
Big Mood Sale
Teen Dream Sale
Portland Like a Pro Sale
Powell's Author Events
Oregon Battle of the Books
Audio Books
Get the Powell's newsletter
Visit Our Stores
Powell's Staff:
Five Book Friday: In Memoriam
(0 comment)
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...
Read More
»
Brontez Purnell:
Powell’s Q&A: Brontez Purnell, author of ‘Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt’
(0 comment)
Rachael P.:
Starter Pack: Where to Begin with Ursula K. Le Guin
(0 comment)
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
##LOC[Cancel]##
Customer Comments
Nick Chapman has commented on (13) products
Telegraph Avenue
by
Michael Chabon
Nick Chapman
, January 30, 2013
Brilliant. A tour de force. Recognizably from the author of Kavalier and Clay and Yiddish Policeman's Union, but grounded in the contemporary real world. Particularly in my contemporary real world, as he writes about the area in which I grew up in and still hang out in, and name checks records I owed, donuts I've eaten, even my high school. But I would love this book even if it didn't have all those powerful connections to my life. It's a moving, complex exploration of relationships: between men and women, before fathers and sons, between friends, between the black and Jewish communities, between people and the neighborhoods they create and inhabit, between men and their pop culture obsessions. Laid out like that, the books interests and engagements have some connection with those of another of my favorite authors, Nick Hornby. But this book is less funny than, say, High Fidelity. While it has moments of genuine humor - I laughed out loud more than once - it also runs very, very deep, and has some real darkness in it. There are endings, and they are for the most part positive, but they aren't really happy endings. This book doesn't tie everything up, it just gets you to the end of its particular journey. One might make some minor quibbles. I might have like to see the character of Nat fleshed out a bit more, gotten to know him a bit better. Chabon's wives here are much like the women of Yiddish Policeman's Union - their hard resolve, willingness to put up with a lot of shit from the feckless men that they've come to love, their commitment to a vocation. And Gwen does emerge as a very real, fleshed out character. But as with Hornby, women characters do't always seem to have quite the three-dimensional solidity of the men. The plot maybe has a few too many threads. I'd have like to spend more time in Brokeland, listening to people shoot the shit. But these are, like I said, minor quibbles. What is not minor is the prodigious talent that Chabon unleashes. It's been clear, I think, to most people for a while that he was, and was likely to continue to be, one of America's best novelists. But with Telegraph Avenue, he should have silenced almost any opposition to this view. Rich, densely layered, evocative, with a loose narrative voice that slips easily between jivin' and the sometimes heavily literary voice of his earlier work, summoning up so vividly such an engaging world... Telegraph Avenue is a knockout.
Was this comment helpful? |
Yes
|
No
(4 of 6 readers found this comment helpful)
report this comment
Space Chronicles Facing the Ultimate Frontier
by
Degrasse Tyson, Neil
Nick Chapman
, August 12, 2012
I part of a low-key, but growing and only partly humorous movement to try to haul Neil deGrasse Tyson into the political sphere. His lucidity, sense of humor (about himself as well) and his deep intelligence, and the sense he gives of a very powerful moral compass and reliability, makes him seem like he would be a welcome addition to the political scene. We've elected business men with law degrees and that hasn't worked out so well. How about a deeply humanistic scientist with a PhD? Read this book and you'll find out why we're not just joking about wanting him to run for high office. And why he is the most effective and exciting popularizer of science since Carl Sagan. He's the real thing.
Was this comment helpful? |
Yes
|
No
(3 of 6 readers found this comment helpful)
report this comment
Hobbits Journal Being a Blank Book with Some Curious Illustrations of Friends & Foes of the Nine Companions
by
J R R Tolkien
Nick Chapman
, November 09, 2010
I'm excited about this. I loved The Hobbit - maybe more than my son, but he loves to write and draw, and I think he will really enjoy this.
Was this comment helpful? |
Yes
|
No
(4 of 8 readers found this comment helpful)
report this comment
Heat Death
by
Stephen Dobyns
Nick Chapman
, May 08, 2010
OATMEAL DELUXE This morning, because the snow swirled deep around my house, I made oatmeal for breakfast. At first it was too runny so I added more oatmeal, then it grew too thick so I added water. Soon I had a lot of oatmeal. The radio was playing Spanish music and I became passionate: soon I had four pots of oatmeal. I put them aside and started a new batch. Soon I had eight pots. When the oatmeal cooled, I began to roll it with my hands, making small shapes: pigs and souvenir ashtrays. Then I made a foot, then another, then a leg. Soon I’d made a woamn out of oatmeal with freckles and a cute nose and hair made from brown sugar and naked except for a necklace of raisins. She was five feet long and when she grew harder I could move her arms and legs without them falling off. But I didn’t touch her much - she lay on the table – sometimes I’d touch her with a spoon, sometimes I’d lick her in places it wouldn’t show. She loooks like you, although her hair is darker, but the smile is like yours, and the eyes, although hers are closed. You say: what has this to do with me? And I should say: I want to make more women from Cream of Wheat. But enough of such fantasy. You ask me why I don’t love you, why you can’t live with me. What can I tell you? If I can make a woman out of oatmeal, my friend, what trouble could I make for you, a woman? STEPHEN DOBYNS Someday I want to do an anthology, maybe just a chapbook, of poems about varieties of porridge. There’s that classic of early American literature, “Hasty Pudding,” and Galway Kinnell’s poem on oatmeal, and I am sure there are more… Maybe an anthology of breakfast foods, with a section on porridges. I really like Heat Death, the volume from which this poem comes. I think a big part of what I enjoy about these poems is Dobyns’ style, which is very intelligent and very poetic and crafted (in things like line breaks and word choice – all that) but at the same times reads so naturally, like prose, vernacular. It makes me think these would be interesting poems to teach to kids, to help them think about poetry in new ways – not as something alien, in form and content, but as no different really from the forms of speech and writing with which they are already familiar. Language that has been shaped – a little – but mostly that has been rendered powerful through some subtle process – subtle in the doing, though, rather than in the outcome. I might use Niedecker’s term to refer to it – “this condensery” – except that Dobyns’ language doesn’t seem that condensed. Like I said, it feels much more natural, much more vernacular. Though of course when you look closely the rhymes and rhythms and breaks all add up to real craft, hard work to make something simple. Not perfect. Near the end, when the women says “what has this to do with me,” that diction is anything but natural. And I feel like the word “soon” recurs a bit too much, though the deadpan delivery of the first line in which it appears – “Soon I had a lot of oatmeal” – is one of the great moments in the poem. As is the line break here, which is like a moment of hesitation in a striptease: sometimes I’d lick her in places it wouldn’t show. Overall, “Oatmeal Deluxe” has a kind of magical realist quality to it, starting off mundane – what could be more mundane than oatmeal? – but then descending, or ascending, into strangeness, before finally saying “enough of such fantasy” and coming clean on its intentions. It’s his way of saying “No” to a woman who loves him. How much better than “I like you – as a friend,” or “it’s not you, it’s me” is the ending: If I / can make a woman out of oatmeal, my friend, / what trouble could I make for you, a woman?
Was this comment helpful? |
Yes
|
No
(4 of 7 readers found this comment helpful)
report this comment
The Execution Channel
by
Ken MacLeod
Nick Chapman
, May 26, 2009
In "The Execution Channel," Ken Macleod breaks from the far distance future worlds of his recent books, the "Engines of Light" series, "Newtons' Wake" and "Learning the World," to return to Earth, and Scotland, and the very near future, a time and place much closer to where Macleod started in "The Star Fraction," the first book in his "Fall Revolution" series. "The Execution Channel" follows a father and his young adult daughter as their lives are caught up in an escalating crisis after an apparent nuclear explosion at a US air base in Scotland. The daughter had been at a peace camp outside the base and is pursued by the authorities to find out what she knows. The father has secrets of his own, that soon make him a wanted man as well. The "Execution Channel" of the title is a cable/satellite TV broadcast that consists entirely of short snippets showing executions, deaths under torture and the like, gathered from news and security camera footage from around the world. Initially of uncertain origin, the anonymous murder porn of the "Execution Channel" plays a pivotal role in the trajectories of the main characters, and eventually its source is revealed. The truth behind the apparent nuclear explosion is also revealed in the end, and it takes the book back into the more imaginative science fiction realms of Macleod's other books - but in a very satisfying fashion. Along the way, Macleod uses the near-future setting to explore some of the tensions of our present - in particular, relations between the US and Europe, Western military adventurism in the Middle East, the covert world of renditions and waterboarding, ubiquitous surveillance, computers and blogging, and so on. Ken Macleod is one of the most exciting writers in science fiction today. His always amazing and inventive and very, very human writing and his return to Earth and the pointed political observations of "The Fall Revolution" make this a book not to be missed.
Was this comment helpful? |
Yes
|
No
(6 of 11 readers found this comment helpful)
report this comment
Always Coming Home
by
Le Guin, Ursula K.
Nick Chapman
, May 20, 2009
Anyone who has spent much time in Northern California will recognize the physical landscape of "Always Coming Home." Anyone who has read other books by Le Guin, in particular the truly superb "The Dispossessed," will recognize the intellectual and emotional landscape. "Dispossessed" and "Always Coming Home" share a powerful engagement with the notion of utopia, and with the social issues informing the radical movements of the time in which they were published. "The Dispossessed" has space ships and anarchism. "Always Coming Home" has a Native American inspired matriarchal society on a (presumably) post-apocalyptic Earth. "Always Coming Home" is also stylistic very different from "Dispossessed." Whereas the latter was a traditional narrative, coherent, complete and closed, "Always Coming Home" is a story, or a picture, constructed from a number of different threads. The main thread is basically a coming of age story about a young woman that follows a very traditional narrative structure, but it is broken up into sections, with other pieces interspersed. These other pages are highly varied - song lyrics/poems, fables or folk tales of the society depicted in the main story, and so on. All the pieces come together in a very rich, satisfying way. The other material fleshes out the reader's understanding of the girl's world, while the interest of the girl's journey keeps the reader fully engaged.
Was this comment helpful? |
Yes
|
No
(7 of 11 readers found this comment helpful)
report this comment
Barefoot Gen 01 New Translation
by
Nakazawa, Keiji
Nick Chapman
, October 18, 2008
Incredibly powerful, moving, persuasive, and very real. If you want to know what things were like in the aftermath of the Hiroshima bombings, and especially if you want to have something to give to a young person to help them understand the horrors of nuclear war, then you need to check this out. I think there is a sense that nuclear war is no longer an issue, and that terrorism is what we now need to be fearful of, but the nukes are still out there. And just as relevant, or more so, is the issue of confronting the horrors that have been perpetrated in the name of war...
Was this comment helpful? |
Yes
|
No
(5 of 7 readers found this comment helpful)
report this comment
Places That Scare You A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times
by
Pema Chodron
Nick Chapman
, April 28, 2008
Buddhists of all stripes, non-Buddhists, anyone with a thoughtful mind and an openness to spirituality will find things to intrigue, enlighten, guide and help them in Pema Chodron's writings. This is perhaps my favorite book and the one I give the most, as it so often is the case that it is in "difficult times" that people start looking for answers, or new ways. Like all of Pema Chodron's works, this book does not offer answers, or at least not any easy or obvious ones, but it does offer new ways, ways forward even in the darkest of times. Very accessible - no prior background in Buddhism, or indeed in any spiritual practice, is necessary to approach and enter into this book, and she has a wonderful, engaging voice.
Was this comment helpful? |
Yes
|
No
(5 of 7 readers found this comment helpful)
report this comment
Helping Me Help Myself One Skeptic Ten Self Help Gurus & a Year on the Brink of the Comfort Zone
by
Beth Lisick
Nick Chapman
, January 30, 2008
Beth Lisick is always a treasure - quirky, irreverent, unpredictable and intelligent. What's amazing about her is that she is so much the same in her writing as her music. Her album, pass, as The Beth Lisick Ordeal is a perennial favorite of mine.
Was this comment helpful? |
Yes
|
No
(6 of 12 readers found this comment helpful)
report this comment
Accelerando
by
Charles Stross
Nick Chapman
, January 22, 2008
Post-cyberpunk sci fi and a rollicking good read. Has a lot in common with some of Ken Macleod's outstanding stuff, but with a more over-the-top, humorous, space opera tone. A lot of the ideas about technology and futurology are worthy of serious consideration.
Was this comment helpful? |
Yes
|
No
(8 of 18 readers found this comment helpful)
report this comment
Ringworld's Children: Ringworld 4
by
Larry Niven
Nick Chapman
, November 29, 2007
Ringworld was awesome - a real achievement, mind-blowing. Part of it was the hard science stuff - the ringworld itself, the details about it. And part of the achievement, and appeal, of the book was in the plot and characters. With each new installment in the Ringworld series (unofficial though it is), Niven seems to have become more schematic in his writing. Entranced with his creation, as we all were, he loads each new book up with more and more details of the ringworld, aspect of its functioning, ramifications, backstory (the Pak), and so on. But he gets less and less interested, it seems, in plot and character. The writing is sketchy, moving from one big scene, big idea, big ringworld thingy to another at a breathless pace. To be honest, they feel a bit lazy, or perhaps self-indulgent - too full of the cool-ness of the ringworld to be bothered with being good books. They are fun - I enjoy them. But they are not great, and I would never recommend them to anyone who hadn't read and loved the original Ringworld.
Was this comment helpful? |
Yes
|
No
(2 of 3 readers found this comment helpful)
report this comment
Harry Potter Boxed Set Books 1 7 Chest
by
J K Rowling
Nick Chapman
, November 26, 2007
When I first saw this I thought, "who is it for? Everyone who wants Harry Potter will already have it." But then I realized kids are still growing up and getting old enough to read Harry Potter so there is clearly a market. And what a great present. The books are, obviously, compulsive reading, so having the whole set is great. And the box looks nice too.
Was this comment helpful? |
Yes
|
No
(10 of 15 readers found this comment helpful)
report this comment
Fifty Degrees Below
by
Kim Stanley Robinson
Nick Chapman
, November 07, 2007
Robinson's Mars trilogy was one of the greatest things I've read. One aspect of that greatest was the tremendous, persuasive detail of his imagined exploration and colonization and transformation of Mars. But the more important aspect was the human and the social. The people were real and interesting and I enjoyed spending time with them - and the vision of human society, and the hope for the possibilities of more just and interesting human societies, was exciting. His new trilogy, beginning with Forty Signs of Rain, continuing in this book, and then going on to Sixty Days and Counting, is every bit as wonderful and engaging. It lacks the epic scope the settlement of Mars provided, but instead we have a story that is much closer to our story, set in the very near future, a future rushing towards us - a future of catastrophic climate change. Again, the science is utterly persuasive, as with the Mars trilogy, but what makes these books great - and this one in particular of the three - is the utterly persuasive, and engaging, characters. This is not, in the end, science fiction, but simply fiction, as the science, crucial though it is, is always carefully subordinated to the human story - human both at the level of the individual characters who are wonderful, but also at the level of what is stake - humanity, human history. And again, there is the hope... Something that I am least desperately needed when it came to climate change. Like Sax Russell in the Mars trilogy, Frank from these books has become one of my mentors - not to follow slavishly or worshipfully, but as a deep, intelligent and compassionate thinker, whose thoughts and example I feel I can learn about myself from considering. These six books... I doubt I will be more moved or excited or encouraged by anything I read this decade more than I have been by these. Other books have made me laugh more, but none have made me think more, study more, or hope as much...
Was this comment helpful? |
Yes
|
No
(1 of 2 readers found this comment helpful)
report this comment