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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
Elizabeth L has commented on (26) products
State of Wonder
by
Patchett, Ann
Elizabeth L
, March 02, 2012
This was one of those books that really made me miss taking college English classes. It's so rich with symbolism, imagery, metaphor -- it begs for a great class discussion (not to mention the obvious parallels with Heart of Darkness). This is my first Patchett novel, and I'm very much looking forward to reading Bel Canto now. Her characters are richly drawn and the plot and setting of this novel are at once unique and familiar, making you feel as if you have access to a world and lifestyle that you'd never otherwise know. Highly recommended.
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Bottomfeeder
by
Taras Grescoe
Elizabeth L
, January 26, 2012
This book provides a much more in-depth look at the many issues that influence fish populations worldwide than anything I've read before, and Grescoe reaches some interesting conclusions that both contradict and resonate with what other food-related agencies would recommend. Grescoe teaches how to be an informed consumer (in all ways) of seafood, and speaks to the benefits with equal persuasion. He is such a great and evocative writer, that this book - despite some of its depressing content - is a joy to read from beginning to end.
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So Much for That
by
Lionel Shriver
Elizabeth L
, January 01, 2012
Shriver has a knack for taking on topics that most authors wouldn't approach (in this case incurable diseases) and writing about them both realistically and compellingly. She makes you want to keep reading about things that you would otherwise avoid. Less obliquely, I appreciate two consistent things about her prose -- her willingness to write unsympathetic (yet incredibly smart and caustic) female characters and her ability to write about romantic relationships that are robust and strong, both emotionally and physically. The final thing I really appreciate about this novel, which puts it above both We Need to Talk About Kevin and Post-Birthday World, is that it's narrative structure doesn't rely on any gimmicks to keep you reading. Instead, Shriver goes back to depending on her own well-paced prose and original ideas to create a narrative that never felt forced or cliched -- no small feat when writing about a topic that is normally anything but.
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Skippy Dies
by
Paul Murray
Elizabeth L
, May 26, 2011
At its most basic, this novel chronicles the declension (and, unfortunate, sacralization) of an all-boys Irish (obviously Catholic) boarding school in a contemporary time and place where even suggesting the existence of such a space seems anachronistic. But, at its most epic, this novel is much more. It's a parable of science versus religion, traditional versus contemporary. In a somewhat predictable way (particularly in an Irish setting) it is the twinned virtues--love and humor--that transcend the otherwise insurmountable dichotomies the book sets into play, emerging triumphantly from the embers of all else that has been destroyed. Beyond such abstractions (and I have no idea why I'm reviewing a book that is in many ways intensely realistic in such grandiose and vague terms), the book is a page-turner. It envelops the reader wholly into the glory that is existence and the agony that inevitably travels alongside it. It makes you remember exactly the toils and pleasures of adolescence and simultaneously question just how far you've actually traveled beyond it. To raise one final dichotomy, from the earliest pages in the novel (wherein Skippy, as the title announces, dies), this is a novel about life.
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Possessed Adventures with Russian Books & the People Who Read Them
by
Elif Batuman
Elizabeth L
, January 01, 2011
This book should be recommended reading for anybody in graduate school. It both renewed my faith in scholarship while simultaneously critically lampooning the entire process. Well worth it!
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Paradise Alley
by
Kevin Baker
Elizabeth L
, June 10, 2010
I don't normally like historical fiction, but couldn't get enough of this book. It vividly depicted the New York draft riots through a diverse and amazing cast of characters. I loved it and can't wait to read other historical novels by Kevin Baker.
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Through The Childrens Gate A Home In New
by
Adam Gopnik
Elizabeth L
, March 28, 2010
I wish Adam Gopnik would write books about all the places I've lived. First with his book about Paris, and then in this book of collected essays about New York, he captures with brilliance and eloquence all of the contradictory emotions places and spaces bring to their inhabitants. His accounts are incredibly moving, and this book in particular utilizes his childrens' growth as a metaphor for aging, loss, joy, and wonder. Though some of the selections are reprinted from pieces he published in The New Yorker, many of them were written expressly for this volume, including his tales of his first Thanksgivings back in New York, which punctuate the book and give a sense of the time period it belongs to. Particularly in these longer selections, Gopnik has a gift for weaving together disparate narratives, making them all speak to a single theme with a final flourish of beautifully drafted prose. Of course, part of the book's gravitas is provided by the time period it depicts: just before and in the years after 9/11. But Gopnik is not eager to make mileage of this event as much as he uses it to illustrate larger ideas about New York as a place and its citizens as a people. As a result his book feels like it will matter long beyond the years it chronicles and will speak to a far greater breadth of readers than those who inhabit the island of Manhattan. I can't recommend it enough.
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Unpacking My Library Architects & Their Books
by
Jo Steffens
Elizabeth L
, February 11, 2010
This book is both beautiful look at and amazing to read (not unlike the books that are its subject). I could spend hours pouring over these intimate portraits of architects' shelves and the books that inhabit them.
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Magic For Beginners
by
Kelly Link
Elizabeth L
, February 08, 2010
This book was fantastic in both senses of the word. I could have read hundreds more pages about the family who moved to the haunted house with stone rabbits out front, the universe inside the grandmother's pocketbook, or the mysterious television series "The Library." It was all rendered so visibly, and made complete by entirely apt yet totally original descriptions.
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Case For Books Past Present & Future
by
Robert Darnton
Elizabeth L
, January 29, 2010
Darnton writes about far more than books in this anthology comprised (mostly) of lucid and compelling articles he contributed to the NYRB of books during the past two decades. However, if his title is slightly misleading, the issues he deals with (electronic publishing, discarding old newspapers) are important enough to compensate. In short, Darnton writes about books and print in a way that combines his training as a historian with the practical knowledge he has acquired as a librarian and board member over the years. He raises issues that are important to anyone who regularly works with or reads copyrighted material (whether in print or online). And, as he shows, this is basically all of us.
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Gathering
by
Anne Enright
Elizabeth L
, January 25, 2010
Anyone who is mildly familiar with Irish literature (or literary tropes) will recognize the themes of Enright's novel: Catholicism, alcoholism, English antagonism, and the like. However, Enright brings something new to these familiar subjects: a female protagonist. Furthermore, she invests her with a deity-like ability to hearken forward and backward across the "real time" of the novel, recalling moments both from her own childhood as well as her grandparents' with a command as fantastic as it is affective. (I was reminded of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, where certain narrators are given the ability to describe they couldn't have possibly witnessed as if they were, in fact, right there.) Though the narrative's momentum (perhaps due to its constant jumps through time) lags at points, what emerges is a vivid portrait of the horrors of family, the powers of memory, and the inevitability of repetition and return. I remember this novel being a controversial pick when it won the Booker Prize in 2007, but I was continually impressed by its power to render old themes in a new way while simultaneously feeling representative of its cultural and literary roots.
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For the Time Being
by
Annie Dillard
Elizabeth L
, January 20, 2010
This book was less immediately affecting than The Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, but it combines Dillard's intense curiosity for scientific fact (particularly anomalous cases) and religious history into a lyrical and beautiful prose style that seems to truly reflect the wonder and awe she finds in nature and life. I imagine Dillard as the sort of writer who spends hours pouring over really dense histories and scientific textbooks, only to pull out exquisite details which she renders into poetic insights into the human condition. Even if this isn't how she works, what is certain is the amount of herself Dillard injects into her prose. She wants readers to confront her uncertainties as well as her convictions, and she lays them bare. She also succeeds in the careful craftsmanship such lyrical writing demands. Here, she uses 7 chapters (hardly a coincidental number given how invested this book is in ideas regarding creation, birth, and existence). She divides them each into topic headings, beginning (always) with "birth" and ending (always) with "now." It is an incredible way to organize such vast swaths of information, and to allow the reader to glimpse patterns that may not have emerged otherwise. I recommend this, and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek even more highly. Annie Dillard is one of my favorite writers. Reading her truly feels as if you are encountering someone who has to write in order to make sense of her world.
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Man Who Loved Books Too Much
by
Allison Hoover Bartlett
Elizabeth L
, January 18, 2010
Bartlett's book is a joy to read, and as someone who has been studying and inhabiting the world of rare books for the past two years for her own research, I can attest to how well she describes it as well as identify with how she relates to it. I was further impressed, having spoken with a few book dealers who suggested the book was controversial due to its sympathetic portrait of a book thief, with how even-handed Bartlett was in her account. She certainly gave Gilkey (the thief) his due, but was actually more judgmental of his actions than the narrative might demand. In either case, I appreciated the sense of self-reflection she brought to the project as it rendered itself into some lovely passages that consider the relationship between books and their collectors, as well the distinctions between collecting and appreciating or accruing books.
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Cadillac Jack
by
Larry McMurtry
Elizabeth L
, January 18, 2010
I can't help but feeling like this is a book that might have been great, but was really just fine. I was left with the same impression after reading McMurtry's recent memoir ("Books"), so it may well be that McMurtry is an author who is good, but not great. What's problematic in that assessment, is that his books (at least the two that I've read) veer toward greatness such that readers want/expect more. To be fair, McMurtry writes in the preface to this novel that he's never been entirely satisfied with it. It's a fictionalized account of his knowledge of the book scouting industry, except its titular character is an antique scout (who very rarely deals with books). On the whole, the novel fulfills McMurtry's stated purpose: to explore the relationship between a man and his material objects. And it does so in a way that is entertaining, and true to the realities of this social world (Cadillac Jack never succumbs to the temptation to value people/relationships more than objects). Perhaps it is the resolute nature of Cadillac Jack that makes it fall slightly flat. A novel that refuses to fully imagine an emotionally invested character will, in all likelihood, feel less than whole. But, I get the sensation there's something larger that makes this book feel unsettled. At any rate, I'm interested enough to want to read one of McMurtry's better-known novels.
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No One Belongs Here More Than You
by
Miranda July
Elizabeth L
, January 08, 2010
I love how unique and playful Miranda July is, both with the prose style and the contents of her stories. She makes slight and hard to believe situations seem incredibly important and real. In the process, she draws attention to just how the mundane, day-to-day elements of our lives are actually the most affecting and meaningful. If I had a criticism of this collection, it would be its order. I've never been more enraptured by the first 100 pages (8 or so stories), and then had the last 100 seem lackluster by comparison (though I suspect I would have liked them more had they not followed what came first). I wish the order had been mixed up; it would have assuaged the small sense of disappointment I felt at the conclusion. But either way, July is a beautiful writer who will hopefully continue to concoct stories that are as exciting and fresh as the one here.
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Age Of Innocence
by
Edith Wharton
Elizabeth L
, January 02, 2010
Extraordinary. Wonderful. Sophisticated. Makes you believe you are living there, then. Can't recommend this enought.
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Mysterious Benedict Society 01
by
Trenton Lee Stewart, Carson Ellis
Elizabeth L
, January 02, 2010
This book manages to meet all of the conventions of successful YA novels without exceeding any of them. It wasn't clever enough, or gripping enough, or whimsical enough to sustain my interest or make me want to pick it up again after putting it down. I'm not compelled to pick up any of the sequels, though I would look for more of the illustrator's work were it to appear elsewhere.
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Dart League King
by
Keith Lee Morris
Elizabeth L
, December 29, 2009
This book was great throughout, but its brilliant epilogue (30 pages of some of the best prose I've read it years) is so great it almost overshadows the remainder. Reading the beginning is more than worth the journey to its end.
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In Cold Blood A True Account of a Multiple Murder & Its Consequences
by
Truman Capote
Elizabeth L
, December 20, 2009
This book was all it is purported to be, and so much more. I realize Capote has the reputation for being somewhat obnoxious (particularly vis a vis his own talents), but if that's what it takes to produce something this exquisitely composed and fully realized, than I'd be happy for all writers to be jerks. As with many readers of this book, I was quickly drawn up into its narrative, forgetting the reality of the gruesome tale and surrendering to its writer's ability to conjure up a town and its people who seem so well-described I could pick them up of a line-up or recognize them on the street. Further, Capote does much to humanize all of the people in his story, both "good" and "bad." In this way, In Cold Blood establishes itself as a meditation on justice that compels its readers to consider whether guilt is sufficient grounds for punishment (particularly capital punishment). I feel I could read this again and again, discovering greater nuances most writers can only imagine they might portray.
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Book of the Book Some Works & Projections about the Book & Writing
by
Jerome Rothenberg
Elizabeth L
, December 19, 2009
On the one hand, this book provides a useful factual and historic background into futurist and contemporary attempts to manipulate and self-consciously play with the form of the book. However, where this book does not shine is in its utter lack of engagement with any theoretical ideas regarding the book object. In fact, the editors note they've purposefully minimized the references and notes included in many of their selections, in attempt to improve the accessibility of the volume. While I'm all for accessible academic writing, I don't think that it needs to be mutually exclusive from researched/cited writing, nor do I think that theory has no role to play in the average person's understanding of material books. A few selections in this volume (particularly in the first and last sections) were worth the time, but it was overall a disappointment for such a massive tome. And although I appreciated the attempts to include information regarding books and writing from all over the world and from all different disciplinary/professional perspectives, the lack of background information about the selections made many of them impenetrable.
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Taking Things Seriously 75 Objects with Unexpected Significance
by
Joshua Glenn
Elizabeth L
, December 18, 2009
This was a lovely collection with a surprisingly smart introduction. The titular "things" range in size and scope, united only by the fact they would appear as useless junk to all but their owners. Each thing is accompanied by a short article by its owner, illuminating its significance.
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Single Man Mti
by
Christopher Isherwood
Elizabeth L
, December 17, 2009
This book takes place in a single day of a single man's life, and is best read in one day as well (I would have read it in one sitting if I didn't have a meeting to attend). Though the book is written in third-person narration, it is all filtered through the experiences of George (the single man), whose identity as a British, gay man in a relatively small community is only complicated by the loss of his partner. However, Isherwood is too sophisticated to really make this a novel about sexuality or nationality. Rather, he uses these elements of George's personality as platforms to expose his singularity, one that is affecting and tragic, comical and beautiful, all at once.
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Multitude Of Sins
by
Richard Ford
Elizabeth L
, December 16, 2009
This story collection takes infidelity as a uniting theme and explores it with heartbreaking exactitude and depth. But, what was most striking is Ford's range as an author. That is, the characters and places they live are so wildly disparate from each other, yet incredibly believable and real.
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Muppet Show Comic Book Meet The Muppets
by
Roger Langridge
Elizabeth L
, December 16, 2009
If you can get past the fact that the Muppet characters don't look right (this is something that is probably easier for frequent comic readers to do than myself), this comic is entertaining, creative, and quite true to the Henson characters I already know and love.
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Evocative Objects
by
Sherry Turkle
Elizabeth L
, December 11, 2009
This book is one of a number recently published, all of which justify themselves as providing needed voices for material objects in our culture. In a way, it makes good sense that this type of analysis was ignored by scholars so often. In an academic climate where technological determinism is practically taboo, scholarship turned away from object-specific histories. However, as Turkle's collection both shows and tells, it did so at the expense of fully illuminating the vast meanings objects evoke for users and scholars alike. I like how this book manages to be a hybrid of theoretical insights into the importance of objects (from a number of different fields) and just beautifully told stories about particular things. Turkle's introduction provides just enough background to let the essays speak for themselves, however her conclusion limits the strengths of the contributions by attempting to pigeonhole their meanings in ways that the collection otherwise evades. In its space, I would have loved for Turkle herself, whose scholarship is so concerned with identity formation in a digital age, to write about her own evocative object.
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Things That Talk Object Lessons from Art & Science
by
Lorraine Daston
Elizabeth L
, December 05, 2009
This book has such a compelling title, and is actually beautifully put together (the illustrations, including series of color plates in the middle, attest to a fair amount of willingness on the part of MIT Press to spend money on the volume). And, of course, a book about things deserves to have pictures of those things, not just prose describing them. So, kudos for that. Unfortunately, however, the prose that does describe the pictures was a disappointment. The introduction leaves the reader with so much hope for this interdisciplinary collaboration, where writers will describe things as diverse as glass flowers, soap bubbles, and Bosch paintings. The former two essays were the best. Lorraine Daston (also the editor) describes the glass flower collection at Harvard and uses their popularity to explore the connections between science and nature in a compelling way. Peter Gallison's contribution on soap bubbles and the way they were mobilized as scientific evidence is equally fascinating, and his attempt to make bubbles a protagonist by writing about them as if they were a person in the tale (e.g. "Bubbles then followed in the footsteps of its maker and went to Europe.") may seem slightly gimmicky, but actually works quite well for his purposes. However, the other 7 selections were far more disappointing, and none of them were as compellingly theoretical as I might have liked. I think the introduction to this volume is well-worth reading, but the individual essays are probably only useful if you have a vested interest in the specific thing they each describe.
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