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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
Janna Mauldin Heiner has commented on (22) products
All That Followed
by
Gabriel Urza
Janna Mauldin Heiner
, October 16, 2015
In a small Basque village in northern Spain, the threads of disparate lives twist around each other--the American who came to teach and stayed to love and mourn; the locals who tolerate rashness from their youth in homage to the ideals of Basque independence and resistance from the past, which those youth have absorbed without fully understanding them; the new teacher, another American but also a Basque, who comes from Idaho with his pretty, bored blonde wife with some idealized hopes and misunderstandings of his own; and the young politician whose violent death causes the threads to knot and to unravel in unsettling ways. Told through the eyes of key characters, Gabriel Urza's novel is a story powerful in place and time, imbued with culture and confrontations--some brutal, some subtle--but each influencing all that followed.
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Truth According to Us
by
Annie Barrows
Janna Mauldin Heiner
, August 10, 2015
_The Truth According to Us_ is an intricate story, gorgeously told. Annie Barrows weaves the complex threads of family and friendships in a small Southern town into a story that reveals the tiny lies that hide the astonishing truths of shared histories. Told through wonderfully distinct voices--a young girl trying to learn the grownup secrets she senses around her, a grown woman walking the balance between the duties of loyalty and the obligations she has to her own self and to those she cares about, and an outsider tasked with writing a history of the town that will both satisfy the town's elite and reveal the town's bedrock--_The Truth According to Us_ acknowledges that while there is truth in history, history is not truth, and we must all choose which light we will live by. Barrow's narrative is graceful, her characters well-drawn, and her hand invisible in the weaving.
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Man Called Ove
by
Fredrik Backman
Janna Mauldin Heiner
, July 31, 2015
Ove was as steady and staid as his wife Sonja was sparkling, and now that she's gone, he only has one thing on his task list--but he keeps getting interrupted before he can get it done. It is of necessity a secret and solo task, one he would like to manage quietly and without too much mess. But Ove is surrounded by people who can't follow simple community rules, can't manage their own repairs or problems, and can't observe the common courtesy of letting a private, introverted man off himself in peace. Between teenaged hooligans, social service workers, and an impossibly vivacious pregnant foreigner named Parvaneh, Ove's firm conviction to leave behind the emptiness of his life is fulfilled...in a manner completely different than the one he had carefully planned. The prose is spare and direct, like Ove; if you have Norwegian or Swedish uncles like I do you will feel it in your bones. It's also beautiful. I read the book as fast as I could, and then lamented having read it so fast. My mother, whose regular fare is charming little stories about women friends who go into a cute little creative business together, also ate it up. And Dad, who usually reads books in which WWII features as a main character, sat down with Ove and read it straight through, with relish. _A Man Called Ove_ earned a place in my top tier of favorites, and Frederik Backman is on my permanent reading list.
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Pest Fest
by
Julia Durango
Janna Mauldin Heiner
, March 20, 2015
Durango does it again! _Pest Fest_ is a fast-paced, fun, lively rhyming book in which any bug-lover's favorite creepy crawlies compete for the title of best pest. Each creature has its buggy charms...and the poor fly is sure he hasn't a chance. But you never know--sometimes things turn out differently than you expect! Underdogs (or in this case, underbugs!) are as common in kids' books as princesses and dirt--but this book is a standout for the lively language, the brilliant bug-eyed illustrations, and real science slipped into the story. Which is hilarious, exactly what Durango delivers in her books for lap readers. Julia rules. And this buggy book rocks.
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Hall of Small Mammals
by
Thomas Pierce
Janna Mauldin Heiner
, February 09, 2015
This is an unusual collection of stories, like a cabinet of oddities. Every story has an element of the impossible wandering through, as though on a quiet holiday through the museum of the real. Bits of one story resurface in another, possibly connected, probably not. What makes it all so wonderful is that Thomas Pierce offers no explanations for the subtle culture clashes that occur; the stories in this book simply are. The characters, most of them, are utterly normal, people who might live next door or across the road; but their circumstances are surreal in ways that are funny, unsettling, and thought-provoking. Don't expect them tied up neatly with a bow at the end. On the other hand, they don't leave you with a desperate need for that bow; Pierce packages them so perfectly that you actually enjoy the strings he's left untied as much as you enjoyed the ones he braided together.
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Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune
by
Dedman, Bill and Newell, Paul Clark
Janna Mauldin Heiner
, February 02, 2015
This is the fascinating story of the daughter of one of the last century's wealthiest men in the world. The Clark fortune equaled or surpassed that of the Rockefellers; the sums discussed in this book are astronomical, almost beyond comprehension, and the woman who spent them both eccentric and engaging. Bill Dedman discovered her story when he stumbled on one of the empty mansions she owned. Homes in which she had never lived, but which were kept ready for her return by well-paid house managers. Homes filled with dolls and books and silence, whose owner oozed money but spent her last years living in a hospital, despite being in good health for a woman of her age. The book is compelling, but what makes it more so is that Huguette Clark was still living into the 1990s, spending insane amounts of money, hiding even from her family, treasuring her odd collections and befriending her nurses. Eccentric beyond words--but also witty, funny, and generous. I would have liked to have met her.
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Popular Vintage Wisdom for a Modern Geek
by
Maya Van Wagenen
Janna Mauldin Heiner
, November 19, 2014
Maya Van Wagenen may be the bravest teenaged girl I have ever encountered. After coming across a book of advice for girls, written in the 50s and purchased by her father at a thrift store, Maya decides to see if anything in the book remains relevant. Though Maya describes herself as "socially awkward" and hangs out with a handful of "misfits and oddballs" at a tough border-town school, she takes on the gutsiest social experiment an 8th grader could imagine. She spends an entire school year practicing the advice in a book written 60 years earlier--right down to wearing skirts to school and gloves and a hat to church. In the two-thousand-teens. But before you get the idea that this was just a silly stunt--not all of the book's advice is dated, and Van Wagenen is not so awkward as to be oblivious when it is. She is just very, very courageous and very committed. And over the course of the year, she learns some of the ways in which courage and commitment--and kindness--can change the world. I picked this book up on a whim. I read it in a day. It's insightful, well-written, and deeply touching. I'm going to give copies to every young adolescent girl I know--and every boy, too, that I think might look past the female protagonist and recognize the astonishing boldness and life-changing message it carries. A perfect book for mother-daughter book clubs or those run by teachers. For me, 8th grade was in 1979, and even at my age I will not soon forget this book.
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Shopaholic to the Stars
by
Sophie Kinsella
Janna Mauldin Heiner
, November 13, 2014
Bex is back! This time she's in Hollywood hoping to break into a career as a stylist. Red carpets, film stars, limousines--Becky is right in her element, and completely out of her league. As she trains her eyes on the Big Time, all hell breaks loose in her peripheral vision. Her best friend is in crisis, her father is on a mysterious errand, and her husband Luke has about had it with the bodyguards she's hired. And she's going to turn and take a good look at the situation, really she is, but just now she's about to be discovered and she can't let that chance pass her by, can she? Of course not! It's true, Sophie Kinsella's _Shopaholic_ books are the kind of pink-covered girlie novels I usually pass up. Normally I don't pick up much of anything that has a picture of lipstick or high heels on the cover. But Kinsella is genuinely funny and a better wordsmith than your average chick-lit writer. And Becky's clueless myopic goodheartedness is as endearing as ever.
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Every Last One
by
Anna Quindlen
Janna Mauldin Heiner
, May 01, 2014
Anna Quindlen's writing is so simply beautiful so thoughtful, so gently evocative, it's easy to get lost in the quiet movement of this story and the everyday details of her main character's inner and outer worlds. As a mother, I sifted through the details of Mary Beth Latham's children's lives along with her, looking for clues to their worries and problems, seeing the same things she did, missing the same things. I took comfort in her awareness, was distracted by what she noticed. Like her, I was looking elsewhere, the real problem still just a shadow in my peripheral vision, when the story took a horrifying turn. Even that was rendered by Quindlen in a quiet voice, in small scenes and small details, even as the hugeness of it began to sink in. What happens after is the exquisitely rendered human response to incomprehensible pain, and how we go on--at first, because we have no other direction in which to go; and then because we become aware that there are reasons for going on.
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Old Country
by
Mordicai Gerstein
Janna Mauldin Heiner
, March 22, 2014
Gisella lives in the old country, where nothing is quite as it seems, where forests are full of enchantment and superstitions are worth living by. When her brother is abruptly called away to war, it falls to Gisella to hunt down the fox who has been stealing chickens from the family's coop. Armed with her bow and her grandmother's strange warnings whispering in her ears, she sets out determined to kill the fox. But when she forgets her grandmother's words and stares too long into the fox's eyes, she finds herself in the fox's body! As war escalates and danger increases, Gisella negotiates an ever more unfamiliar world as she seeks to return to her own body. In this strange and starling short novel, Mordicai Gerstein explores civilization and wildness, magic and war, and the nature of being human.
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Around The World On Two Wheels: Annie Londonderry's Extraordinary Ride
by
Peter Zheutlin
Janna Mauldin Heiner
, March 05, 2014
In 1895, Annie Kapchovsky--a married Jewish mother of three young children with no cycling experience--climbed on a bicycle and set out to "girdle the globe" to win a bet. Or not. Actually, the impetus for and circumstances of her round-the-world trip are a little bit hard to pin down. Annie--who went by the name of Annie Londonderry during her escapade--played fast and loose with pretty much everything, from how much she actually rode her bicycle to the precise terms of the wager behind it. A brilliant marketing strategist and storyteller, closely attuned to the winds of the times, she made her escape from convention and turned it into money, notoriety, and a banner for a woman's right to freedom from restricting clothing and roles. This wasn't quite the adventure book I expected it to be, but I didn't care. Annie Londonderry's creativity and charisma captured me as well as it captured so many of her contemporaries. And while Peter Zheutlin only alludes to it, hidden in her tale is a wonderful love story--that of the man who stayed at home with their little family and let her make her independent way, welcomed her back at her journey's end, and continued to enjoy her company for the rest of their lives.
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Love Life & Elephants An African Love Story
by
Daphne Sheldrick
Janna Mauldin Heiner
, February 28, 2014
Dame Daphne Sheldrick writes with humor and deep passion of her life in Africa--the orphaned animals she nurtured, the wild ones she tried to protect, and the man with whom she shared everything except her ultimate grief. The story would be fascinating if that was all it was--but perhaps the most interesting part is the undercurrent of the pressures and tensions that characterized life as a second-generation native white African in a deeply divided world. Sheldrick's views represent a colonial perspective; a careful and sensitive reader can get a feel for how that perspective affected those who lived in Africa long before the British arrived. I didn't find Sheldrick an entirely sympathetic figure, but I learned as much from those passages that made me question her as from those driven by her deep love for the African landscape and the living creatures that inhabit it. At once an adventure story, a love story, and a story of two very different cultures meeting at rocky crossroads in a vast, often dangerous landscape, _Love, Life, and Elephants_ both filled my heart and made it ache.
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Out of My Mind
by
Draper, Sharon M.
Janna Mauldin Heiner
, February 01, 2014
In _Out of My Mind_, Sharon M. Draper offers an important addition to the canon of books that explore the issues surrounding disability. Her protagonist, Melody, is a 10-year-old girl with a photographic memory, an impressive vocabulary, a keen mind...and no way to show it. Misjudged and misunderstood more often than not, Melody struggles to express herself, to reveal herself, and to protect herself from repeated underestimation from peers and adults alike. But even the ability to communicate and participate doesn't entirely save Melody from disappointments and betrayals; and in the end, her biggest victory comes not from the technology that helps her communicate, but from her own strong and forgiving heart.
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The Good Lord Bird (National Book Award Winner)
by
James McBride
Janna Mauldin Heiner
, January 31, 2014
From the day John Brown appears in his father's barbershop, Henry Shackleford's life becomes entwined in the passionate, righteous, and slightly insane crusade of one of the most enigmatic figures of American history. Son of a privileged slave, Henry is torn from a life that, in his view, is hardly worth the fuss Brown is making about slavery; and in the fire of Brown's disturbed charisma, becomes party to the abolitionist's efforts to free the Negro from slavery. Henry--mistaken for a girl and given the nickname Onion by Brown--is a perceptive narrator, but young, naïve, and not entirely reliable. Brown comes to vivid life through his eyes, in all his authority, glory, and insanity, his dedication and dereliction. Henry's own confusion and uncertainty adds a layer of meaning to the slave story as well as to this particular one. And in the writing, James McBride offers up a fascinating combination of history and possibility to explain Brown's God-fueled, turbocharged, ultimately doomed attack at Harper's Ferry--and shows clearly the ultimate winning power of his defeat.
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The Follower
by
Richard Thompson
Janna Mauldin Heiner
, October 14, 2013
This is as close to perfect as a picture book gets. The text is sweetly haunting, its rhyme and rhythm evocative; unlike many rhyming books it avoids off-putting singsong and instead offers up a truly poetic cadence that begs for a rich reading. The images are beautiful renderings that incrementally reveal clues to the gentle surprise of the ending. I have two four-year-olds, and this sits among the few books I can read to them as many times as they beg to have it read, without ever growing tired of it. Among Halloween-themed books, it's a wonder-filled, wonderful standout.
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Curious Man The Strange & Brilliant Life of Robert Believe It or Not Ripley
by
Neal Thompson
Janna Mauldin Heiner
, October 14, 2013
How did it take so long for someone to see Robert Ripley as a great biography subject? This book is a strange and fascinating look into the life of the man who made cultural curiosities and weird but true tales part of the fabric of American childhood in my era, and of life in my grandparents' era. Along the way he made more money than you might realize, and his fingerprints are on events as disparate as the codification of the National Anthem and the introduction of a dog that would one day become the country's favorite beagle. Engagingly written, _A Curious Man_ is a good long look into the life of the man behind "Believe It Or Not!" The only thing that disappointed me was that the picture plates section was so short--but if you have a Smartphone, you can unlock online content I missed. Ripley, the king of gimmicks and teasers, would love that.
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When I Found You
by
Catherine Ryan Hyde
Janna Mauldin Heiner
, September 21, 2013
When Nathan McCann finds something he doesn't expect while hunting ducks in the woods near his home, his life is slowly upended. It's not a complete, abrupt upending. It happens over years, a bit here and a little there, until everything is changed forever in not only Nathan's life, but the lives of everyone connected to him and the newborn baby he discovered wrapped in an adult-sized sweater and a tiny handknit cap under a tree on a chilly October morning. McCann reminds me of Atticus Finch--quietly, solidly rooted in a personal moral code that guides his actions as sure as the sun. But where Finch's moral code seems to have developed as the result of careful thought and education, McCann's seems to have been inborn; it's simply the way he sees life and his relationship to it. _When I Found You_ is a great book for curling up on a cold day and having your heart gently warmed.
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The Sandcastle Girls
by
Chris Bohjalian
Janna Mauldin Heiner
, September 20, 2013
Chris Bohjalian's _The Sandcastle Girls_ is painfully stark, heartbreakingly tender, and if it hinges on an uncannily neat coincidence or two, you just don't care. The book includes (in mercifully short scenes) a brutal chronicle of the atrocities of "The Genocide You Know Almost Nothing About," which gave most Americans the phrase "young Turks" but very little understanding of the horrible war that originated the phrase. But Bohjalian intertwines so many love stories into the telling, the book leaves with some painful knowledge you didn't have before, but also leaves you warm instead of cold.
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People of the Book
by
Geraldine Brooks
Janna Mauldin Heiner
, March 29, 2013
At 30 pages in, I was already lamenting the eventual end of this book. Beginning with a most unlikely main character--a book conservator, of all things!--Geraldine Brooks takes us on a powerful tour, from modern war-torn nations to ancient theocratic clashes, examining the nature of power, the power of religion and faith, the many variations of being human, the things for which we make sacrifices--or don't make them. One little volume, 500 years of history; the hands through which it passes and the events, personal and political, small and significant, that shape its survival; I reached the end and sat in stunned silence. The best book I've read in at least a year; and my annual consumption of books is very high.
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(4 of 7 readers found this comment helpful)
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Homemade Pantry 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying & Start Making
by
Alana Chernila
Janna Mauldin Heiner
, August 04, 2012
Beautifully photographed, each recipe introduced by an evocative description of how it came into, or how it fits into, Chernila's life, _The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying And Start Making_ is delicious from the cover to the last page. The recipes are preceded by a lively introduction that explains why Chernila makes things from scratch, and each individual recipe is introduced with a personal essay, well-written and evocative, of how that recipe fits into her and her family’s life. Unlike some similar books that leave a reader feeling she has to be a total purist or forget the whole thing, Chernila allows for all kinds of entry into her make-it-yourself world, from peeks through the kitchen door to full-on participation. There are no “shoulds” in this book; not even a hint of preachery about the horror of processed food, or the danger of genetically altered vegetables, or the ecological brutality of buying food if you didn’t watch it grow. She basically says, “You can make this yourself, if you want to. Or not.” Though clearly a purist herself, she never gives the impression that there is only one way to do anything. Everything in The Homemade Pantry is written to be understood by even inexperienced cooks. It’s utterly non-intimidating. Some of the recipes aren’t the most elementary, either; but they all are made to seem completely doable. They use readily attainable ingredients and there are explanations of those few which might not be found in the average pantry (along with substitutions). And with regard to cost, Chernila is straightforward: Some recipes will save you money. Some won't; but may be worth making for the pleasure, the flavor, or the fact that they are healthier than the ones you'd buy. My mother-in-law is an old-school frugal mom of a large family (12 kids) who has not purchased bread, milk, or eggs in years and bottles her own fruits, vegetables, and meats (all home-grown). She leafed through this book at my house and *bought herself a copy*. That’s a dang good recommendation for a cookbook.
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Look Me in the Eye My Life with Aspergers
by
John Elder Robison
Janna Mauldin Heiner
, April 12, 2008
In _look me in the eye_, John Elder Robison gives a compelling, heartbreaking, humorous, and intensely honest account of what it was like for him growing up with Asperger's syndrome in a world hinged on "normalcy." Beautifully written, the story of Robison's struggle to fit in is an enlightening tour of a point of view that is becoming more and more common (statistics show a continuing increase in the incidence of Asperger's and other autism-spectrum disorders). You probably know an Aspergian. You probably don't understand him (or her). You should.
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Ghost Map The Story of Londons Most Terrifying Epidemic & How It Changed Science Cities & the Modern World
by
Steven Johnson
Janna Mauldin Heiner
, January 06, 2007
An infant dies in a slum in London, and within hours every block, nearly every house, are filled with the sick and dying. The word goes out. _Cholera_. In the London of the 1850s, cholera was a terrifying disease, spreading quickly and killing quickly. Popular theories blamed its spread on "miasma," the noxious essences of life, basically tracing illness to things that smelled bad. Poverty, with its close living conditions and accompanying smells, was equated with depravity, and even God was invoked as the power behind cholera's sweeping judgements. In this atmosphere, in a crowded Victorian neighborhood in a city poised to make significant upgrades to its sewage and water-delivery systems, two men walked among the sick, independently offering what they could. One was a clergyman named Whitehead; the other a scientist named Snow. Their activities, though separate, would intertwine to slowly strangle the myth of miasma. In _The Ghost Map_, Steven Johnson has written both a compelling page-turner of a story, and a fascinating historical study of a significant event at the threshhold of modern medical understanding.
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