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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
Invisible Lizard has commented on (3) products
Gourmet Rhapsody
by
Muriel Barbery
Invisible Lizard
, November 13, 2014
So of course I read Gourmet Rhapsody immediately after finishing The Elegance of the Hedgehog. How could I not? This is Barbery's first novel, which presumably didn't achieve nearly the same fame as her second. When Hedgehog took off, internationally even, her publisher re-released this one as a companion volume. It takes place in the same location (7 Rue de Grenelle) with some of the same characters (Reneé even makes a brief appearance) but is a completely different story. The writing is just as good. (The words I mean. The sentences.) The characters are just as interesting. (Complicated.) But the story is somewhat lacking. It's a great character study of the lead, Pierre Arthens, a famed restaurant critic, and a retrospective of his life told through his journey through food, peppered with interlocking chapters from his family's and friends' (and acquaintances' and pets') point of view, which detail a very different person than Pierre sees in himself, until the final chapter when he dies, which he told us he was about to do in the first chapter, leaving behind his legacy and his tortured family in the wake of his selfish life. Was there a point to that? I can't tell. I couldn't find anything to get a handle on as I read through it, no footholds to propel me into the story, so I mostly read to just enjoy the rotating perspectives and the random scenes. It could have been a collection of short stories and I would have enjoyed it about the same. Not nearly the gem that Hedgehog is, but to fans it will do to whet your (our) whistles while we wait for Barbery to finish her, hopefully, third in the 7 Rue de Grenelle Trilogy. That said, I was very interested that this book came first. Reneé must have been only a tiny speck in her imagination at the time of this writing. To flesh her out so completely in Hedgehog *and* to elaborate so much on the 7 Rue de Grenelle location was a masterstroke. I almost want to reverse engineer the way that decision came about to see how and when it makes sense to do something like that. Because it worked so well between these two books.
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The Elegance of the Hedgehog
by
Muriel Barbery
Invisible Lizard
, November 12, 2014
Best book I've read in months. Hands down. Of course, it's been sitting on my shelf for years. I recently finished up a string of relative light weight semi-stinkers and figured a translated French book about philosophy and god-knows-what-else could be just what I needed to cleanse the palate. If nothing else, it would be quick, I felt pretty sure, and I hoped for little more than that. Wow, did I misjudge this one. First of all, let me say a word about the writing. It was sublime. And because this is a translated text, I think I have to give serious credit to the translator, Alison Anderson. Lots of times when you read translated books, you stumble across expressions, idioms and even simple word choices that break into the flow of your reading because they seem out of place. Lots of times those are foreign expressions/words which don't translate well. The translator does the best that he/she can. I found none of that here. Maybe it's because Anderson is a writer herself. Maybe she took some liberties. I don't know. Regardless of how much freedom and creativity she infused into the English text, it could not have been what it is today without Barbery's original French text, which had to be (as I've said) sublime to begin with. What a pleasure to read. The characters were just as rich. Reneé and Paloma, the two leads, provide the foreground, behind which a subtle arrangement of players create a layered background (Oza the new tenant, Manuela Reneé's friend, Paloma's bourgeois family). The story unfolds delicately. Told in alternating chapters between Reneé's anti-class snobbery and Paloma's adolescent ignorance-cum-loftiness, we see the world around 7 Rue de Grenelle in masked, unreliable tones: through Reneé's refusal to believe that anybody could see a common concierge as anything but a working class dullard and Paloma's belief that she has seen enough in her 13 years years to know, unequivocally, that there is no beauty in the world. Through these two tainted perspectives, we learn about our dual protagonists, their lives, their loves, their thoughts. This gives Barbery plenty of time to wax rhapsodic on any number of topics from philosophy to modern cinema, and it's often in these asides that we, the reader, get caught up in her beautiful writing and forget there is a story going on in the background. But there *is* a story going on, and that's what makes this book better than so many alternatives. It's easy to find beautiful writing without a good story. It's easy to find a good story without beautiful writing. It's very uncommon to find the two combined so nicely. Barbery blends them together masterfully. A note about the ending, which I will state as spoiler-free as possible. Others have commented upon the ending, mostly favorably, albeit with an occasional ode to a box of tissues. In my opinion, it ended perfectly. Anton Chekov famously said that if you hang a rifle on the wall in the first chapter, then in the second or third chapter it must go off. Otherwise why put it there in the first place? Considering Paloma's 13th birthday ultimatum, somebody had to fire that rifle. Sad as I was to see Reneé take up that mantel, the larger story continues on (in my mind) even after the last page is done, left as we are with these parting words from Paloma: "Thinking back on it, this evening, with my heart and my stomach all like jelly, I have finally concluded, maybe that's what life is about: there's a lot of despair, but also the odd moment of beauty, where time is no longer the same. It's as if those strains of music created a sort of interlude in time, something suspended, an elsewhere that had come to us, an always within never. Yes, that's it, an always within never. Don't worry Renée… from now on, for you, I'll be searching for those moments of always within never. Beauty, in this world."
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Hyperbole and a Half
by
Allie Brosh
Invisible Lizard
, September 28, 2014
Without knowing the backstory of Allie Brosh's blog, including bits and pieces of her personal life, that one can pick up quickly on Wikipedia and a few other sources, the brilliance of Hyperbole and a Half would not be quite so obvious. It may appear, at first glance, as the ramblings of a nonsensical narrator with childish (at best) artistic skills. You wouldn't know that (a) the ramblings are often intensely personal and deeply moving insights from a profoundly introspective individual, nor (b) that the childish drawings are intentional, done for effect. Once I caught up on her history, I was immediately moved by the way Brosh revealed herself through these stories, quite bravely so, exposing her innermost struggles with the world. It's tough to lay yourself bare, especially to an often unsympathetic internet audience who can just a quickly flame and roast as they can bolster and support. The best section in this compilation, hands down, were her struggles with depression. I don't suffer from that myself, but I think everybody has moments of depression and can relate (or at least empathize) with what she is saying. Not that this book deserves a 5-star review. Some of the included "stories" are better than others. Some are funny. Some are touching. Some are simply filler. I guess they can't all be stellar. It felt as if Brosh had enough grade-A material to fill half a book, and instead of spending time crafting more for another half, she threw in some lesser grade filling. The book wouldn't have sold as well if it were a thin, flimsy rag. Oh well. I won't complain too much.* I'll knock a point off, but it's still a good (sometimes great) read. * Hey, even Abbey Road had that B-Side medley to fill in some time.
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