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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
barbarakayrich has commented on (4) products
The Ogallala Road: A Memoir of Love and Reckoning
by
Bair, Julene
barbarakayrich
, June 20, 2014
Julene Bair takes on the difficult task of honoring and exploring the debt owed to the Ogallala Aquifer by her farming family. Her memoir moves from poetic, personal experience to clear-sighted environmental concern, with the search for old waterways linking the stories that make up the book. It's not without heartbreak, but beautifully written and deeply felt. You'll be shaken.
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Stars Go Blue
by
Pritchett, Laura
barbarakayrich
, June 20, 2014
I just finished reading Laura Pritchett's lean, quiet, fierce, poetic, brave novel Stars Go Blue. Did I say poetic? Really poetic. I love every page of it. One aging rancher who's mind is leaving him, and one wife who can't quite grasp or let go, with a family torn by Ben's mind's slow farewell. What I admire so much in Pritchett's novel is the spareness of detail coupled with emotion laid bare. There are gorgeous, believable details of ranch life in Colorado, but overall this compact story flies along. You'll never lean on your elbow and relax. You're living inside the quick-moving drama. Also, I loved feeling deep empathy for the crabbed wife Renny. It's rare to be inside the hurts of such a mind. I have to say, I felt the ghost of Jon Hassler whispering in Pritchett's ear. She may never haver read him, but he lives in her writing. In that empathy for even the hardest characters. Put this one on the top of your reading list. I am sure I will go back and read it many times. It inspired me!
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Riding in the Shadows of Saints A Womans Story of Motorcycling the Mormon Trail
by
Jana Richman
barbarakayrich
, June 19, 2012
This was exactly the right book at exactly the right time. I’m so grateful I found it. If you need a shot of summer courage, try “Riding in the Shadows of Saints.” I didn’t know much about the Mormon trail. And I’ve never ridden a motorcycle across-country alone. But Jana Richman decided, at age 45, to write about riding along the route her ancestors took from Illinois to Utah 150 years ago, and she does it with humor, daring, humility and grace. It doesn’t hurt that my ancestors were Mormon pioneers. The accomplishments and trials Richman describes in “Riding in the Shadows of Saints” were all the more interesting for that. No one but Mormons would stop along their 1,300 mile trek West to build stopover cities along the way for the faithful to follow: homes built in a day, ferries constructed, and at one stop, more than a thousand acres of land were “cleared, plowed, planted and fenced” in one week before the lead group moved on Westward. A thousand acres. I planted a quarter acre once, and paid a crew to clear it before I started. Industry and wholehearted engagement, amist spectacular sacrifice and loss and suffering. That is at the heart of the Mormon pioneer. 50,000 of them tried the journey Richman rode in 2001, through rain and wind and mud. But they rode in wagons or pushed handcarts, with the fresh, furious venom of the Gentiles, who cast them out of Illinois, pushing them onward. That sort of stamina and resolve don’t simply vanish. They haunt their progeny for generations. Richman shows, beautifully, the strength of her great-great grandmothers on the trail, and the less showy but dearly and truly lived bravery of her mother. “My mother’s strength was not to be found in assertiveness and activism, but in unrestrained love, compassion, and understanding.” That love extends continually to her apostate daughter who “can’t ever seem to find the obvious path.” Riding the Mormon Trail on a BMW R 1100 R is not an obvious path. I laughed and read with deep interest, teared up and shouted hoorah a few times, as Richman survived her cross-country trip: a love letter to her foremothers. Until we love and honor our ancestors, we are lost. Get found. Read “Riding in the Shadows of Saints.”
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Mississippi Flyway
by
Nel Rand
barbarakayrich
, March 24, 2010
Pack Up. Jump In. Get Muddy. “Bottom soil is the richest sewing ground,” says Ellie Moon, a 31-year-old woman, recently divorced, whose grieving is interrupted by the sudden appearance of her long-lost father Tiny. An enormous man with a voracious appetite for great cigars, bar-b-que and high stakes poker games, Tiny whisks Ellie off on a picaresque road trip from St. Louis to New Orleans. Tiny abandoned his family when Ellie was still a girl. Ellie hopes to find out why. Together, they ramble down the great Mississippi via gambling halls, hidden moonshine stills, illegal eating contests and the magnolia draped home of the nicest ex-hooker turned retired suburban angel named Ludine. Amidst the smell of “Wild Root Creme Oil” and illegal Havanas, Ludine hosts $100,000 poker fests and counts backyard birds in her kitchen. She believes kindness and having fun and keeping things light are all that’s required of us in this life. But Ellie’s life, like the Main Street of her old hometown Cairo, Illinois, is “currently in a stagnant drift.” As sidekick in her father’s dangerous flight from poker game to poker game, with an angry bent-hearted sheriff chasing them, Ellie confronts the forgotten demons from her past. She does this in the company of her selfish, life-gulping, repentant father. And Tiny gives his daughter a gift at last--an infusion of life lived hard and wild. In “Mississippi Flyway,” you will meet a few wild-flying women and delve into the muddy hearts of men who live for gambling. It’s a Southern tale, after all. Pack up, jump in. Nel Rand is your steady guide. The greatest fascination for me as reader was the life of big-stakes gamblers. We all long for complete immersion in something we love, and Rand paints the sweaty long gambling scenes with real understanding. These men took me out of my world and offered another in its place. Sites, sounds, smells, attitudes--their non-traditional lives made sense to this rather traditional woman. "Mississippi Flyway" holds moments of genuine grace. I really look forward to Rand's next novel!
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