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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
Victoria J DiLorenzo has commented on (3) products
Winter Queen An Erast Fandorin Mystery
by
Akunin, Boris
Victoria J DiLorenzo
, January 31, 2011
The Book Report: Young, orphaned Erast Fandorin has landed a comparatively cushy job for one whose comfortable future in czarist Russia was snatched away by the machinations of capitalists, beggaring and causing the suicide of his father: Erast is a fourteenth-class state functionary, serving a police official as amanuensis and errand-boy. It leads him into some odd alleyways, serving his about-to-retire master; his wit, his proficiency with language, his unquenchable curiosity lead his boss to allow, amused and indulgent of his junior's silly fascination with nothing criminal, Erast to investigate some odd goings-on among Moscow's Bright Young Things, including the suicide of a youth whose estate, over a million rubles, is left to elderly English philanthropist Baroness Adair. That one fact, that odd itchy ill-fitting wool sock of a fact, unravels an international conspiracy touching every government in the world, though it is unclear that this conspiracy has any evil intent, at least to me. Erast, extremely young and naive at the outset of the book, ends it extremely young, concussed, and in no possible sense naive and inexperienced any more. How that comes about is a page-turning pleasure to read. My Review: For once, I am glad I read the second book in the series before the first. I felt much more like I was investing my time wisely after reading Turkish Gambit than I might have had I read this book first. It's good, don't mistake me, but it's not as good as "Gambit" and it's not as clear and succinct, either. But good golly Miss Molly, it's a ripping good read full of explosions, betrayals, and general all-around wickedness and sneakiness. It's got young love, it's got hopeless infatuation, it's got comradeship and affection, and even a *very* memorable wedding scene. I am completely entranced with its picture of czarist Russia; I am excited to discover the roots of some of Erast's oddities; and I hanker to see these books turned into movies or TV shows, like Montalbano has been. I really feel I can SEE the action as I'm reading, and that's usually so much less of an issue for me; but this series is supremely visual. Read, and enjoy, and don't fear the commitment of time a new series requires, because like Rutledge, like Montalbano, there are a lot of 'em and they get better as time goes by.
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Stork Raving Mad
by
Donna Andrews
Victoria J DiLorenzo
, November 30, 2010
Meg and Michael are homebound on a dreary winter's afternoon, marooned in their huge Victorian home. Alas, alack, poor things, right? Ha! They have dozens of houseguests. Students from Caerphilly College, where Michael teaches drama, slung out into the cold by the College's heating system going kerflooie in the coldest winter anyone can remember. Add to the madness Meg's mom on a kamikaze decorating binge for the arrival of Meg's twins (genders unknown and referred to by cute names throughout like Castor and Pollux and Heckel and Jeckel), her brother Rob's computer interns, and oh yeah a murder, and the fun never stops. But many things do, sad to note. A major plot thread involving an elderly Catalan Franco resistor and the US premiere of his sixty-year-old play goes absolutely nowhere and would have been unnoticeable had it been absent. Meg's ancient and irascible grandfather is deployed a couple times to very little immediate effect, but rather to set up and explain future plots (he donates a state-of-the-art theater and TV production facility to Caerphilly). A student love triangle resolves itself remarkably swiftly and tidily, but not hugely believably, and with little fanfare. Still, the book was fun, and it's number 12 or some ridiculous thing, so one isn't expecting new literary forms to emerge or the Pulitzer committee to scrutinize Andrews's CV for accusations of plagiarism before awarding her an investigative journalism award or some damn thing. She's telling a fun story, taken on its own merits, and delivers on the promise implicit in the series: Sane center Meg is instrumental in weaving the correct picture from the chaos of tangled threads that surround her. Expect more, it won't deliver; expect this, you're in for a very nice afternoon's entertainment.
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BLUE LIGHTNING
by
Ann Cleeves
Victoria J DiLorenzo
, November 17, 2010
The Book Report: Jimmy and Fran go to visit Jimmy's parents, Big James and Mary, on Fair Isle, since they're planning to be married. Big James and Mary make a nice engagement party for the happy couple at the North Light, which now serves as the centerpiece of a birding reserve and research center. Maurice and Angela, who run the reserve, have attracted the best chef *ever* in the form of Jane, a lesbian escapee from life's more hectic and less forgiving pace in London. Throw in some birders, a weird subspecies of Homo obsessivus, a misery of a teenaged daughter, a snotty young upperclass Brit-twit, and some genuinely surprising revelations about the families and lives of the characters we who are fans have come to love, and then...drumroll please...kill off an extremely main character for absolutely avoidable reasons and throw the entire cast of characters into a major tumult, and you have book four of the Shetland Islands Quartet. My Review: Oh, owww. I thought Lousy Louise Penny had hurt me as badly as a novelist could with her perfidious, horrible, and completely unforgiven emotional drubbing in book 5 of Three Pines. I suppose I should have been on the alert for a similar anguishing event because Lousy Louise herself blurbed this book. I was, however, all padded up in cotton wool, interestedly following Jimmy around his hometown Fair Isle, meeting and tutting over the characters who are slated to die; I had my murderer all picked out (I was right) and I was practically *drooling* with eagerness to see my candidate suffer, be blamed, pay for a horrible crime, a forgivable one too though honestly had the first murder gone unpunished I wouldn't've been even a little fussed about it; and then *BLAMMO* right between the eyes, *smash* went the skull with a twist I did NOT see coming; and then, and then...! Cleeves kicked me square in the teeth with the ending!! I cried. I was very upset. I felt I'd been hurt in my real life. It takes a good, good storyteller to make that happen. These are well-written books, and they convey a clear sense of life in the Shetland Islands. They're very much worth reading on that basis alone. But Cleeves creates characters that are deeply real, ones you can invest in, and that's the most important quality a writer can have. I strongly recommend the books. This one, obviously, should be saved for last; I suspect, though, given the last few lines of the book, that Cleeves's publishers have prevailed upon her to make the Quartet more open-ended. I am not at all sure I think that's a good thing, if it's true. Still, I hope you will go and procure them for your reading pleasure, because it will be a pleasure.
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