Lists
by Powell's Staff, June 27, 2022 9:00 AM
June is one of my favorite months, especially here in Portland, where the weather can be beautiful and sunny one minute and a gray downpour with threats of thunder the next. It’s important to always be prepared to take advantage of those rainy afternoons, with a good mug of tea and a great book. Below, we’ve rounded up some of the books in translation released this past month that have got us the most excited and intrigued.
June’s selection includes a Moroccan novel about an aging military officer coming to terms with his queerness, a criminal on the run, Dutch autofiction reminiscent of Italo Calvino, and a modern Hansel and Gretel set in Belarus, and a speculative Japanese thriller about nuclear trauma. These translations are...
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Playlists
by Phuc Tran, June 22, 2022 8:32 AM
This week, we’re pleased to present the playlist Phuc Tran put together for his memoir, SIGH, GONE: A Misfit's Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and The Fight To Fit In.
In 1987, I entered high school. The ‘80s were in full Benetton bloom, and we all donned the uniforms that would identify ourselves as friend or foe: jock, prep, redneck, punk, geek. I already had an irrepressible oppositional streak and an explosive relationship with my parents, so punk was the natural fit for me. Punk was against pretty much everything, so I immediately signed up. By the end of high school, however, that antithetical stand felt like a corner into which we had painted...
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Q&As
by Kendra James, June 20, 2022 8:52 AM
Early on in Kendra James’ professional life, she began to feel like she was selling a lie. As an admissions officer specializing in diversity recruitment for independent prep schools, she persuaded students and families to embark on the same perilous journey she herself had made — to attend cutthroat and largely white schools similar to The Taft School, where she had been the first African-American legacy student, graduating only a few years earlier. Her new job forced her to reflect on her own elite education experience, and to realize how disillusioned she had become with America’s inequitable system...
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Lists
by Powell's Staff, June 15, 2022 9:11 AM
Not to be self-aggrandizing, but the booksellers at Powell’s are known for their excellent taste, and this year’s annual midyear roundup is just further proof of that. The 31 titles include a history of method acting, a “meta take on the horror genre,” a feminist fantasy quest, a romance with a Chris-Evans-esque nemesis, poems about grief and identity and garden-thieving groundhogs, and so, so much more. You can’t go wrong with any (or all!) of the books on this list.
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Lists
by Deana R., June 13, 2022 9:13 AM
We didn’t own a grill when I was a kid. My folks were German and midwestern and grilling was not in their wheelhouse. Cooking outside over fire was something that you did if you didn’t have electricity to fuel an inside stove or oven. Summer food for us was fried chicken, fried fish, massive potato salads, or cold lunchmeat sandwiches. I did eventually learn to grill as a newly married young adult, but it was still something reserved for camping or church cookouts.
I honestly don’t remember when I got my first real grill. I think it was when my husband and I bought our first house and escaped the regulations of apartment living. We had a nice, big backyard, perfectly sized for entertaining, and with no low-hanging trees...
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Five Book Friday
by Stacy Wayne D., June 10, 2022 8:54 AM
Queer people are no strangers to horror. Identifying with the villains and dark forces that plague the white-picket-fence families of the horror genre is as hard-coded into us as our queerness itself. But as publishing chips away at its long-established heteronormative structures, allowing queer creators a seat at the table, we no longer have to identify with the monsters...unless we want to. Here are five queer horror reads that are sure to terrify and delight you!
Carmilla
by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
With misogyny being one of the long-standing pillars of our society, it comes as no surprise that this sapphic, feminist, vampire gothic has ...
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Powell's Picks Spotlight
by Keith Mosman, June 9, 2022 8:34 AM
This week we’re taking a closer look at Powell’s Pick of the Month Woman of Light by Kali Fajardo-Anstine.
My grandmother was the family genealogist. The bulk of her research centered our most prominent ancestors, who were members of the ill-fated Donner Party. The horrors that my great-great-great-grandmother endured while emigrating to California are well-documented, and together my grandmother and I hunted for accounts in used bookstores all across the West. But then there’s a gap: I know nothing about the following generation; my knowledge of the family history picks up with my great-grandfather in Minnesota in the early twentieth century. How the family line got from point A to point C is a mystery to me, and Grandma isn’t around to ask any ...
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Playlists
by Edgar Gomez, June 6, 2022 8:55 AM
When I first realized I was gay, and in the years after I came out, I was so busy trying to make everyone else happy that I forgot who I was. I felt like I was being pulled in a hundred different directions. There was the person I was around my family, the person I was around my friends, the person I was at gay bars, the person I was at work, the person I was while alone in the bathroom playing with makeup. Caught up in pleasing others, I prioritized everyone else over me. Reading, and eventually writing, was a safe space where I could go to ask myself questions I didn’t dare ask anywhere else...
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Five Book Friday
by Tove H., June 3, 2022 8:53 AM
Books and labor are two of my favorite topics to talk effusively about, so I’m delighted to be able to combine them in this blog post, and sorry that you won’t get the full IRL experience, which includes wide eyes, occasional swears, and lots of gesticulating. Here are five books about labor I think you should read (and if you like the sound of these, might I also recommend everything in this collection?)...
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Original Essays
by Adam P., June 2, 2022 9:21 AM
In the late summer of 2002, which is somehow nearly twenty years ago, I moved west across the Mississippi River, from St. Paul, Minnesota to Minneapolis, into a studio apartment just off Nicollet Avenue. I’d spent the previous three years living with friends I’d made while attending a nearby Christian college. After graduating, I started working at a Borders bookstore in the neighborhood, and made just enough money to pay for rent, food, and the occasional rock concert. Work gave me access to more books and magazines than I could ever read, more music than I could ever listen to, and more movies than I could ever watch. I made a valiant, but unsuccessful, attempt to satiate my hunger for all three types of media. I read...
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