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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
Jim Simpson has commented on (2) products
Rules of Inheritance A Memoir
by
Claire Bidwell Smith
Jim Simpson
, April 21, 2013
Claire Bidwell Smith's debut book, The Rules of Inheritance (Hudson Street Press, 2012; Penguin Paperbacks 2013), is a “grief memoir” as she calls it, about her life from the time she was 14 when both of her parents were diagnosed with cancer, until 2011. The author, an Atlanta, Georgia native now living in Los Angeles, would be parentless by the time she was 25 years old. The book jumps around in time covering a period of roughly 18 years and is divided into five parts, each following Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ five stages of grief. A particularly striking episode finds her on assignment in the Philippines for Student Traveler magazine. She was on her way to the remote island of Malapascua to dive with thresher sharks, one of many examples in the book describing her destructive behavior (unhealthy relationships and alcohol abuse, to name but two) that she will later discover to be subconscious attempts at bringing her dead parents back in order to save her. This diving trip is a climactic event because, as she and her guide are descending into 80 feet of dark, shark-filled water, she suddenly cancels the dive and surfaces. With tears streaming down her face, she sits slumped in the front of the boat heading back to shore. She writes, “This is the very place -- with my tear-soaked face, at the front of this little boat in the middle of the great Pacific Ocean -- where I ind a truth that I will test over and over in my life. Nothing is ever going to bring either of them back.” Some parts of the book are almost too much to bear, but you find yourself forging ahead, cheering her on, hoping she will be okay in the end, which, thankfully, she certainly is. I highly recommend this one.
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What Happened to Sophie Wilder
by
Beha, Christopher
Jim Simpson
, January 01, 2013
Novels concerning main characters who are young, freshly published novelists living in New York City can be quite self-conscious and didactic, but Christopher Beha's debut (he is also the author of a memoir, The Whole Five Feet, about his time spent reading the Harvard Classics fiction collection) is a quiet yet compelling conversation between two very different characters who've written two very different books. Charlie Blakeman's book is a critical failure, while Sophie Wilder's is a resounding success and she's bound for a stellar career; however, it will be the only book she will ever write. The two meet in a college creative writing class in NYC, and Charlie becomes obsessed with the elusive Sophie. They have a brief affair and then she disappears, turning up later married to another classmate. We spend much of the novel learning of Sophie's time spent with her husband's estranged and dying father, and her conversion to Catholicism. Reading this book, I felt just as eager to find out what happened to the mysterious Sophie Wilder as Charlie Blakeman did. Not a perfect debut, but well worth the time.
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