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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
Debra Hamel/book-blog.com has commented on (13) products
Portuguese Irregular Verbs
by
Alexander McCall Smith, Alexander McCall Smith
Debra Hamel/book-blog.com
, February 19, 2007
Portuguese Irregular Verbs is one of only three books in Alexander McCall Smith's series featuring Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, author of the philological masterwork that gives this book its title.The eight stories included in this volume provide a great deal of background information about our hero. We learn, for example, about his friendship while a student with Florianus Prinzel, now his colleague. In the most poignant of the stories, Igelfeld attempts to beef up sales of his monograph. His quest for readers leads Igelfeld to the home of his nemesis, Detlev Unterholzer. The visit is initially infuriating, but after a moving discovery while browsing Unterholzer's bookshelves Igelfeld finds himself warming to the man. Alexander McCall Smith is a charming writer, and von Igelfeld a delightful character--pretentious and jealous and deeply flawed, but ultimately capable of goodness. The Igelfeld stories are delicious, quiet reads.
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Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time
by
David Prerau
Debra Hamel/book-blog.com
, February 11, 2007
In Seize the Daylight author David Prerau traces the history of Daylight Saving Time from the late 18th century to the modern era. The implementation of DST was neither quick nor straightforward. Transforming the story of its adoption into a readable narrative is a great accomplishment. Prerau's book is packed with information, some of it surprising: I'd had no idea that it was standard as late as the 19th century for communities to determine their time locally, so that time from town to town varied by minutes depending on how communities were situated from one another longitudinally. Prerau sometimes errs on the side of including too many details in his book, but for the most part the story he tells is fascinating. Seize the Daylight is as informative as it is interesting to read, shedding light as it does on a convention that quietly informs our daily lives.
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Perfect Mess The Hidden Benefits Of Diso
by
Ericz Fr Abrahamson
Debra Hamel/book-blog.com
, January 29, 2007
In A Perfect Mess authors Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman question the widespread assumption that organization and neatness are inherently better than disorder and clutter. They argue that some degree of messiness is often to be preferred to strict order--because, for example, the cost of maintaining order can be higher than the benefits accrued from it. The authors identify twelves types of messiness and discuss messy leadership and messy organizations as well as messy homes and offices. Throughout, they profile people and businesses and systems that have profited from the introduction of some degree of messiness. The authors' thesis won't necessarily surprise readers. But it's not so much the conclusion that matters here as enjoying a tour through the messy worlds of city planning and hardware stores and trombone tuning: you'll almost certainly learn something along the way.
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Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse
by
Lee Goldberg
Debra Hamel/book-blog.com
, January 09, 2007
Lee Goldberg's Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse is the first book in a series of mysteries based on the charming television show "Monk," starring Tony Shaloub as the brilliant, obsessive-compulsive detective Adrian Monk. Goldberg's novel, told from the perspective of Monk's assistant, Natalie Teeger, finds Monk investigating a series of related murders, beginning with the death-by-pickaxe of a firehouse dalmation. The quest for Sparky's killer leads Monk far outside his comfort zone--to the city dump, in fact, where the germophobic detective dons a hazmat suit to dig for incriminating garbage. Fans of "Monk" will not be disappointed in Goldberg's addition to the franchise. The story's plot and the characterization of Monk strain credibility in a few spots, but on the whole the book is a great read. Goldberg's dialogue, in particular, is sometimes laugh-out-loud funny.
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Girls Of Tender Age A Memoir
by
Mary Ann Tiro Smith
Debra Hamel/book-blog.com
, January 08, 2007
Mary-Ann Tirone Smith's Girls of Tender Age is a memoir wrapped around a true crime story. She writes about growing up among the "working stiffs" of 1950's Hartford, Connecticut under less than ideal conditions: Smith's mother was distant and negligent, while her father was a sort of saint who devoted his life to caring for the author's autistic older brother at a time when no one understood that condition. Smith's autobiographical chapters--compelling enough without the introduction of further drama--are interspersed with brief sections, sometimes chillingly succinct, on the career of serial rapist and murderer Bob Malm. Eventually, the two threads of Smith's story meet, tragically, when the author is nine years old. Smith's account of Malm's crime and the lasting effect it had on her life is a powerful, impressive piece of nonfiction.
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Perfect Assassin
by
Ward Larsen
Debra Hamel/book-blog.com
, January 02, 2007
Sailing across the Atlantic westward from France, Christine Palmer pulls aboard a man clinging to a cooler amid the flotsam of a shipwreck. She soon comes to regret it: once recovered, he commandeers the boat and orders her to sail to England. It is the start of an adventure that will see the two of them running from both Scotland Yard and rogue elements within the Israeli secret service. Larsen tells his story from multiple points of view, giving his principals just enough back story to make them sympathetic. The most compelling is Inspector Chatham, a charming technophobe who is quirky enough to anchor his own series. It is a pleasure, too, to watch our hero survive by using the training of a lifetime of service in Mossad. Larsen's debut novel won't keep you up too late, but it's a solid spy novel and a good read.
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Girl Sleuth Nancy Drew & the Women Who Created Her
by
Melanie Rehak
Debra Hamel/book-blog.com
, November 25, 2006
Melanie Rehak has written a fascinating history of Nancy Drew, the preternaturally competent girl sleuth whose series of mysteries was one of some two dozen published by the Stratemeyer Syndicate. The Syndicate's books, including the Hardy Boys mysteries, were the product of collaboration between Edward Stratemeyer, who created the Syndicate in 1905, and his stable of ghostwriters. Stratemeyer created Nancy Drew in 1929 and assigned the job of writing the books to Mildred Wirt, the first of two strong-willed women who would be inextricably linked with the girl detective. After Stratemeyer's death in 1930 the Syndicate was run by his daughter, Harriet. Much of Rehak's book is focused on the contentious relationship between Harriet and Mildred: the Syndicate was jealous of its properties, and Harriet was a fierce guardian of the secrets behind the books' authorship. The uneasy relationship between the two women makes Rehak's book that much more compelling.
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Pardonable Lies: Maisie Dobbs 3
by
Jacqueline Winspear
Debra Hamel/book-blog.com
, November 19, 2006
Pardonable Lies is the third installment in Jacqueline Winspear's series of historical mysteries. This outing finds Maisie juggling three cases, two of them related: both an old friend and a prominent barrister charge Maisie with investigating the fate of their loved ones, a brother and son respectively, who were listed among the dead of the Great War. What happened to the men in fact proves to be more interesting than anything that was reported to their families. The cases bring Maisie back to France, which in 1930 hardly resembles the shell-shocked landscape she knew as a nurse in 1914. Winspear's books are cozies: there is no wallowing in the gory specifics of blood and guts. But Pardonable Lies is not a light read. The aftershocks of a war that claimed so many lives and ripped Europe apart are felt everywhere and provide the series with a poignant backdrop.
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Rumspringa To Be Or Not To Be Amish
by
Tom Shachtman
Debra Hamel/book-blog.com
, November 12, 2006
When they turn 16, children who have been raised among the Old Order Amish experience a curious coming-of-age ritual, the rumspringa, a period during which they are allowed to experience the conveniences and temptations, previously forbidden them, of mainstream, "English" society. The rumspringa period is intended to help the young Amish to make informed decisions, when the time comes, about whether or not to join the Amish church as adults. In Rumspringa, the product of more than 400 hours of interviews, Tom Shachtman focuses on the period of rumspringa, but in fact his book serves as an introduction to Amish life as a whole. I cannot know how a reader raised in the Amish faith would respond to the book, but Shachtman's study seemed to me a very thoughtful and fair-minded exploration of the society. It is a fascinating book, written in clear, admirably precise prose.
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At Risk
by
Stella Rimington
Debra Hamel/book-blog.com
, November 03, 2006
Thirty-four-year-old Liz Carlyle is an intelligence officer with MI5, Britain's Secret Service. At Risk finds Liz heading up an investigation into the infiltration of Britain by an "invisible," a terrorist who is or can pass as English and so not arouse suspicion. Rimington leads readers through the investigation, following Liz as she and her team track and analyze the terrorists' activity, and following the terrorists as they make small but significant errors that render them vulnerable to capture. It should hardly surprise us if the intelligence-related details in Rimington's thriller ring true. The author worked for the Secret Service for almost thirty years prior to her retirement in 1996. What is surprising is that Rimington has pulled off such a great piece of fiction her first time out, telling a complex story that is both riveting and well-written.
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Getting Stoned with Savages A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji & Vanuatu
by
J Maarten Troost
Debra Hamel/book-blog.com
, October 26, 2006
J. Maarten Troost's best-selling travel memoir The Sex Lives of Cannibals chronicled the two years the author spent living in the equatorial Pacific with his girlfriend. Troost is back with a second book about the couple's time in Fiji and Vanuatu. The author writes amusingly about Vanuatu's earthquakes, volcanoes, and frequent cyclones, as well as its shark-infested waters and the foot-long, poisonous, carnivorous, child-killing centipedes that call Vanuatu home. Troost dwells merrily on kava--the narcotic suggested by the book's title--and cannibalism, the last "recorded" instance of which in Vanuatu occurred in 1969. Troost's first book was laugh-out-loud funny. Getting Stoned with Savages is not quite as good, but it suffers in comparison only because the author set the bar so very, very high with The Sex Lives of Cannibals. Troost is a likeable, self-deprecating, witty guide through the cultures and countries of Vanuatu and Fiji.
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The Last Secret
by
Sholes, Lynn and Moore, Joe
Debra Hamel/book-blog.com
, October 15, 2006
Journalist Cotten Stone is back in this second installment in Lynn Sholes and Joe Moore's series of religious thrillers. The book starts with a deliciously suspenseful chapter: a pilot announces his suicidal intentions mid-flight, prompting scrambling on the ground as a criminal psychologist tries to talk him out of it, and scrambling in the air as two F-18s prepare to shoot him down. But the pilot's death is just the first in a world-wide rash of suicides, a phenomenon connected with the age-old battle between good and evil: the Nephilim, the fallen angels who were Lucifer's minions, are bolstering their ranks with the souls of suicides. It's Cotten Stone's destiny to combat them, a job for which she's unusually well suited. Like its predecessor in the series, The Last Secret is a skillfully crafted page-turner. I hope that Cotten Stone and her demon-fighting cronies are in for a long run.
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Chess Artist Genius Obsession & the Worlds Oldest Game
by
J C Hallman
Debra Hamel/book-blog.com
, September 20, 2006
J.C. Hallman's The Chess Artist is structured around a trip the author took with his friend Glenn to the Russian Republic of Kalmykia, whose president also heads the World Chess Federation. Woven around the story of their journey are chapters on chess history and accounts of Hallman's further adventures with Glenn: chess over the internet and in formal competitions, chess played in prison and in Princeton, encounters with child prodigies and the denizens of Dickensian chess shops. Part travelogue and part history, Hallman's book explores both the international subculture of competitive chess and the author's traveling companion. The Chess Artist is well researched and thick with information, and it is punctuated by some wonderful writing. The book is similar to Stefan Fatsis's Word Freak in that it exposes the weird underbelly of an intellectual pastime, but Hallman's book is a more serious and more difficult read.
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