Original Essays
by Kimberly King Parsons, August 19, 2019 9:30 AM
My son tells me there’s a woman made of garbage who lives in our walls. He tells me this at night, while we’re trying to go to sleep in my dim bedroom, his father out of town.
“Her name’s Trish,” my son says, “and she’s so nice.” He yawns.
I’ve perfected the art of minimizing my reaction to the creepy things my kids say and do. One night, my older son sat on a stool next to me while I washed dishes.
“Remember before I was born,” he said, “when I used to just hang out in your apartment and watch you live your life?”
I didn’t drop the glass I was washing, didn’t slowly back away from him, snap up my car keys and drive away forever. I calmly dried the glass, ran through an incriminating catalog of my pre-mom behavior, and hoped he wouldn’t offer up any proof.
That son learned to talk early — a little too early, maybe...
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Lists
by Powell's Staff, August 16, 2019 9:37 AM
It’s Bookstore Romance Day, a new nationwide initiative developed by bookseller Billie B. of Third Street Books aimed at celebrating romance novels and their readers. To get us in the mood to swoon, we've asked a few of our resident experts to share their favorite new romance novels.
Rebel
by Beverly Jenkins
I love historical romances, but I'm guilty of picking up books that cover obscure parts of English history and ignoring excellent authors writing about American history. My new favorite author is Beverly Jenkins and her books about powerful African American men and women after the Civil War.Rebel has one of her strongest leads yet...
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Portrait of a Bookseller
by Powell's Books, August 15, 2019 9:38 AM
How would you describe your job to someone you just met?
I work with the store locations to round up every item ordered on Powells.com, as well as on our online partner marketplaces, and ship them from the warehouse to customers around the world.
Last book you loved:
Letters to the Lost by Brigid Kemmerer. I sat down to read this one night at about 50 pages in and got lost in it. I stayed up until nearly 4 a.m. because I just had to finish it.
Where are you originally from?
Green Bay, Wisconsin. I have been in the Pacific Northwest for 10 years now, and I have no intention of leaving.
What did you want to be when you grew up?
A veterinarian or a landscape architect, but...
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Original Essays
by Téa Obreht, August 14, 2019 9:00 AM
Quartzite is a tiny town in La Paz County, Arizona. It’s one of those bright, gone-in-an-instant flashes along Interstate 10 that feels utterly roofless — all sun and open sky — and yet, somehow, simultaneously full of secrets. During winter months, a glut of gem shows draws streams of vacationing snowbirds to its main thoroughfare. Pride of place in its solitary graveyard belongs to a squat, brilliantly tiled pyramid, a mausoleum whose shape might strike blow-ins as odd, but not especially out of place. Pyramids, after all, belong in the desert. So do camels — and this particular pyramid happens to be topped with the rusty silhouette of one of those. To an unknowing visitor, the whole ensemble might look like just another piece of desert kitsch.
In truth, however, this unlikely monument is the “last camp” and final resting place of a man identified by the grave-marker as “Hi Jolly.”...
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Lists
by Lisa Lutz, August 13, 2019 2:03 PM
A while back I was meeting with an editor — not mine. She asked me to name another writer whose career I wanted to emulate. My answer: I don’t think like that. I want to do my own thing. That’s when the editor advised me to pick a lane. She meant that I should just write either regular crime novels (like The Passenger) or comedic ones (like the Spellman series). All of this experimenting and coloring outside the lines — Heads You Lose, How to Start a Fire — was bad for my career, she suggested.
That editor may have been correct on the whole. I get the argument for not alienating your readers by writing something vastly different from your previous book...
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Powell's Picks Spotlight
by Powell's Books, August 13, 2019 9:24 AM
This week we're taking a closer look at Powell's Pick of the Month An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo.
Over the last, distressing two weeks, it’s been an unexpected jolt of joy to remember that our current U.S. Poet Laureate is Joy Harjo. Even now, when so much bigotry is being sanctioned or tolerated or passively renounced by America’s leaders, the official poet of the United States is a Native woman (Muscogee Creek Nation) whose work is inspired by First Nation history and traditions, and rooted in social justice and feminism. If Washington is a swamp, Harjo’s appointment is like chancing upon a field of marsh marigold; it’s an encouraging reminder that not everything in our capital needs to be drained....
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Lists
by Powell's Staff, August 12, 2019 5:38 PM
When we published our first list of must-read books set in the Pacific Northwest, we knew it would be a popular and contentious feature, but we never anticipated that five years later we’d still be fielding passionate responses from our customers. When it was time to determine the theme for this year’s 25 Books to Read Before You Die list, we couldn’t resist the challenge of narrowing our favorites down further into what we consider a consummate selection of books written by Pacific Northwest authors.
A collection of old and recent books, expected authors and some who may be new to you, what the 25 books on our list have in common is the masterful prose, indelible characters, unique perspective, and profound gift for observation found in the very best fiction and nonfiction. Whether your passion is for short stories, nature writing, history, or literary fiction, you're guaranteed to find a stack of new reads to add to your bucket list...
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Original Essays
by Laura McHugh, August 12, 2019 11:14 AM
When I made my way through the local book club circuit after the publication of my first novel, The Weight of Blood, one topic came up again and again. People would remark that I seemed so normal, so nice — they were surprised that a pleasant Midwestern mom would write about such dark and disturbing crimes. I didn’t have an easy answer prepared for the question that would inevitably arise: Where does the darkness in your writing come from? I would smile, and shrug, and drink more wine.
I used to think it was simply my nature, that the darkness was innate, but that’s not quite true. My earliest writings were as innocuous as any other child’s, though that wouldn’t last long. As the youngest of eight children, I wasn’t sheltered...
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Lists
by Jia Tolentino, August 9, 2019 9:07 AM
They were independent.
I mean, they were really independent — more so than most adults. Harriet Welsch, in Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy, had her friends Sport and Janie, and of course, she loved her nanny, Ole Golly, but she was happiest when she was snooping solo on her daily afternoon rounds. Solitude is, of course, what made her adventures possible: Harriet taught me that many worthwhile activities, like hiding in a dumbwaiter to spy on divorcées, or writing up those adventures afterwards, are best undertaken alone.
Lots of other childhood heroines were like this. Anastasia Krupnik was a solitary weirdo...
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Original Essays
by Keah Brown, August 8, 2019 9:16 AM
I have always loved to read. Here’s the thing, I know that I am not alone in this love. A love to read may have brought you to this essay, and it is the thing that binds us all. My love began the way love often does, on a warm afternoon and all at once. I won’t bore you with the age-appropriate books that made me love the craft of books, though they were often about young girls on adventures, solving mysteries, or falling in love. Instead, the work of Nora Roberts, Sidney Sheldon, and James Patterson and Gabrielle Charbonnet’s Sundays at Tiffany’s are the genre of books I want to touch on. These stories and these women — a ranch woman from Montana, a lawyer, and the daughter of a Broadway producer — were the women I rooted for long before I truly understood the intricacies of womanhood, when I was still too young to know exactly what I was reading but I read and read and read anyway...
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