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
15% off new books on Powells.com!*
Spring Sale
Big Mood Sale
Teen Dream 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
Adrien-Alice has commented on (3) products
Austerlitz
by
W G Sebald
Adrien-Alice
, January 18, 2010
What to say about this book? It's the only Sebald I've read, so I don't have much to compare it to. It's amazing, and only got better as its very first-person pattern got more distinct, as my brain went from present to past to future past, spiraling around the details that, if they don't quite add up to a personality, add up to a life. One of the most persuasive evocations of what the Holocaust can mean, how it can be approached. The book is an accumulation of fact and artifacts, not plot or even really events, and eventually as a reader you come to realize that the distance between the objects the narrator has accumulatedand the meaning they had for the people who used to own them is the exact distance of understanding the holocaust, the impossible thing I feel like this book manages to hint at how to do. It's the kind of book that splits me--do I suspend myself in the beauty of its attempts at the inexpressible or do I hurtle myself towards trying to penetrate it and parse it out, because maybe its beauty is in its reconstituted self as well? Clear your afternoon and your evening as well. And then give it to someone you're interested in knowing better and talk about it.
Was this comment helpful? |
Yes
|
No
(1 of 1 readers found this comment helpful)
report this comment
Housekeeping
by
Marilynne Robinson
Adrien-Alice
, January 18, 2010
Oh, oh, oh. I just finished this book--it's short but potent with some of the most gorgeous prose I've read in a long time.
Was this comment helpful? |
Yes
|
No
(10 of 17 readers found this comment helpful)
report this comment
Senselessness
by
Horacio Castellanos Moya
Adrien-Alice
, February 11, 2009
My book club just read this book and it's great for a solo or group read--the translation captures the part-brutal, part-dreamy language, the central character is absorbing and off-putting, the story is disturbing and entirely intriguing. At 142 pages, it's brief enough to keep the whole book in mind as the central character is inexorably changed by the experiences of this long-gone genocide and the culture that seems to not have been changed by it at all. It's smart, it's funnier than it has any right to be and shifted my understanding of the world just a little.
Was this comment helpful? |
Yes
|
No
(5 of 7 readers found this comment helpful)
report this comment