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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
MitchW has commented on (2) products
Ask
by
Sam Lipsyte
MitchW
, January 05, 2011
It's rare to find a novel that makes you burst out laughing--and I mean real guffaws, not smiling to yourself, "oh-that's-humorous" type chuckles--yet also fills you with a sense of deep sadness for the main character and the times he lives in, which we all share. Milo is our hero and narrator, a sad-sack of a man who knows all too well that he is losing everything--his job, his wife, possibly even the love of his precocious 9-year old son Bernie. But what keeps Milo (and "The Ask") from descending into despair is a heightened sense of the absurd that accompanies his daily trials and setbacks. We laugh because he stoicly endures the contempt of people he knows are his intellectual inferiors--people who succeed because they have no shame of the indignities they're willing to heap on themselves (or others) to get ahead. "The Ask" reveals a present-day America stripped of its honor and status, a kind of enormous reality show (and indeed the concept of a new reality show in which the country's top chefs compete to make last meals for death row prisoners hits home as at once bizarre and not at all hard to imagine popping up on a cable channel any day now). Lipsyte lets Milo guide us through a land where a good but flawed man is given one last chance to save a job he doesn't even want, but desperately needs. And so we find ourselves rooting for Milo as he negotiates a sea of posers, hacks, and inflated modern-day egoists in order to land one last "Ask"--getting an old college friend turned Internet billionaire to sign off on a large donation to a second-rate liberal arts college in New York. Will Milo succeed? What will be the cost to his own sense of pride and dignity if he does? Finding out is a heartbreaking joyride that will leave you at times outraged, at others doubled over with laughter, and ultimately thrilled to have been in the hands of a master storyteller who isn't afraid of revealing hurtful truths with compassion, humor, and sincerity.
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Last Last Chance
by
Fiona Maazel
MitchW
, January 01, 2010
More attention needs to be paid to this debut novel. Absorbing from page 1 to its conclusion, "Last Last Chance" taps into the frightening reality of 21st Century America, tackling everything from drug addiction to biological terrorism and what instigates fear responses in individuals and large groups of people. Despite the fact that the book's heroine, Lucy Clark, is confronting (or running from) a litany of personal problems that include her own and her mother's drug addictions, a broken heart, crippling depression, and the death by suicide of her father after his unstoppable super-plague virus is stolen from a lab--threatening to wipe out most of the human race--much of this novel is actually...hilarious. That's because Lucy narrates the tale with deadpan cynicism and wit. She's completely aware of her own faults and leanings toward self-destruction, but she narrates with pitch-perfect black humor the play-by-play of absurdity displayed her fellow Americans, who resort to mob mentality at the first sign of trouble. Visits to a drug rehab ranch in the most desolate part of Texas and to a kind of "outward bound" right-wing Christian-cult summer camp for kids are just two examples of the surreal and very funny side trips Lucy takes from her home in New York City as the virus spreads around the country. And while the book could have suffered from glibness in its portrayal of a hip woman dealing with drug problems, it doesn't shy from the terrible realities of dependence, and there are moments of deeply moving introspection and confession from the afflicted characters. But "Last Last Chance" is ultimately a novel of and about our times, revealing people desperate to love but afraid to do so, and a country running from itself and fears both imagined and--at times--all too real. There are also ruminations on reincarnation, the inevitable cyclical patterns of family histories, even Norse mythology. "Last Last Chance" is infused with humor, compassion and fresh insight into modern human frailty. It will make you laugh in one moment and send a shiver down your spine the next, and will leave you eagerly awaiting the next work from this exciting young writer. It's my favorite book of the decade.
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