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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
Pauline Alama has commented on (7) products
Bad Kitty 01 Gets A Bath
by
Nick Bruel
Pauline Alama
, January 19, 2018
So, your cat needs a bath. Do you have what it takes? Warm (but not hot) water? A suit of armor? Your doctor on speed-dial? Plasma? Anybody who's ever lived with a cat will recognize Bad Kitty's behavior--and laugh. This is the best of the "bad kitty" books--too funny to leave just to the kids!
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Beasts Of Clawstone Castle
by
Eva Ibbotson
Pauline Alama
, December 02, 2014
Pay no attention to the synopses attached to this book, because they belong to other books. The Beasts of Clawstone Castle is a charming fantasy in which two resourceful children -- an older sister who's a people person and a younger brother who's an animal person -- are sent to stay with elderly relatives in old, atmospheric, and dilapidated Clawstone Castle. There they find their relatives, the lord and lady of a no-longer-rich estate, desperately trying to keep the castle going for the sake of its ancient trust: the habitat of Britain's only herd of wild white cattle. In order to keep these cattle wild and free in their own land, they are anxious to draw enough tourists to the castle to keep the bills paid so they don't need to sell out to a real estate developer. The children set about trying to make Clawstone the most interestingly haunted castle in Britain. The story is a highly original, imaginative blend of humor, environmental consciousness, fantasy, and wonder, appropriate for children but entertaining to fantasy-loving adults as well.
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Wells Bequest A Companion to the Grimm Legacy
by
Polly Shulman
Pauline Alama
, August 18, 2014
Like Shulman's earlier volume, "The Grimm Legacy," "The Wells Bequest" is an elegantly written, fast-paced, fun-filled, and amiable adventure in which teenagers' lives are turned upside-down by the odd objects in a unique lending library. In this case, the objects come out of early science fiction novels, but work for real in 21st-century New York City. The hero--the underachiever of an overachieving family--is drawn into the adventure when he sees a miniature version of himself riding a strange contraption with a pretty girl he's never met before holding him around the waist. Mini-me says he's from the future, tells him to read Wells' "The Time Machine," and vanishes. The book sets him on course for an unconventional science fair project, an unusual after-school job, adventure, love, and saving the world from destruction. Both my 10-year-old and I loved it.
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The Count of Monte Cristo
by
Dumas, Alexandre
Pauline Alama
, September 07, 2013
This amazing book, full of drama and adventure, passes the ultimate test of a classic: everyone steals from it. Mark Twain refers to it in Huckleberry Finn. Dorothy Sayers stole a murder plot from it, and The Princess Bride went right on and stole the same device. This kind of stealing -- like the kind in baseball -- is actually legit, and in fact, the highest tribute to the storytelling powers of the great Dumas. Edmond Dantes, the hero, is falsely convicted of a crime he didn't commit (hmm, maybe Hitchcock also read this at a formative age). He is robbed of everything: his good name, his engagement to the woman he loves, and his youth, which he spends in an impregnable prison on a lonely island. There follows a daring escape, a new identity, a campaign of revenge -- and a surprisingly uplifting ending. Today the book is, of course, dated -- above all in its view of women -- but it remains necessary reading for anyone who loves adventure stories.
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Science Made Stupid How To Discomprehend
by
Tom Weller
Pauline Alama
, September 05, 2013
Remember those science textbooks from your grade school days, full of factlets and factoids and diagrams? Science Made Stupid is a great parody of the way science is often presented to kids (or at least was back then). It does for science education "1066 and All That" did for English history and "Dave Barry Slept Here" did for American history. Much of the humor is visual, like an illustration of the dinosaurs being made extinct by a comet -- that is, a comet whacking a dinosaur in the back of the head. Others rely on wordplay, like "Red shift shows increasing Communist domination of the galaxy." I remember when my college science fiction club got a copy of this book, we passed it around laughing helplessly.
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The Scorpio Races
by
Stiefvater, Maggie
Pauline Alama
, August 26, 2013
There are just so many reasons to love this beautiful story! The characters are worth caring about, the setting is so vivid I can almost hear the ocean, and the story is so gripping that I could hardly put it down. It's an original twist on the legend of the water horse -- sort of like Seabiscuit, except that some of the horses can eat you. On the fictional island of Thisby, an annual race draws foolhardy men to test their courage on water horses: predatory creatures of legend, born from the sea. Driven not by desire for glory but by desperation, a young woman signs up for the race riding an ordinary mortal horse. While it's fully and gloriously within the best traditions of the fantasy genre, exploring a mythological idea with a full-fledged sense of wonder, the Scorpio Races is also grounded in a healthy dose of reality, including one of the most convincing depictions of poverty I've read anywhere outside Dickens. Although marketed to Young Adults, this beautifully written novel is well worth the attention of Not-So-Young-Adults, especially if you love animals or the ocean.
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Freedom Maze
by
Delia Sherman
Pauline Alama
, January 30, 2013
Seldom have I read a historical fiction/time travel book so well-researched and nuanced -- and never before in the children's section. Sophie, a middle-schooler in the segregated South of 1960, thinks she's already experienced the ultimate humiliation. Her parents have divorced, her best friend acts as though the divorce taints her, and she's going to have to spend the summer with her impossible-to-please authoritarian grandmother in the remains of what used to be their family's sugar plantation. Then a mysterious trickster in the plantation's old maze sends Sophie back in time to 1860. Her visions of "Gone with the Wind" romanticism come crashing down when her slaveholding ancestors see her not as a long-lost relative, but as a light-skinned slave. To be fair, actually they see her as both: they identify her as the daughter of a ne'er-do-well son of the family and his mixed-race lover. But family ties do little to soften the bonds of slavery. Sophie's family troubles in 1960 and her larger burdens in 1860 intertwine in ways that enrich character development. The same habit of defensive secrecy that helped her evade conflict with her mother and grandmother is a survival skill in slavery. As Sophie grows through her experiences, she learns to put the family legends into perspective, and her sympathies broaden beyond the clear-cut categories of black and white that she was raised with. But she isn't sent to the past just to learn her lesson: she has to take sides and risk all to help a sexually abused slave escape. The Freedom Maze is a gripping time travel story with interesting characters and an ultimately hopeful ending, appropriate for ages 12 to adult.
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