Powell's Picks Spotlight
by Keith Mosman, May 25, 2023 10:51 AM
This week we’re taking a closer look at Powell’s Pick of the Month The Guest by Emma Cline.
I read most of The Guest while on a much-delayed train ride between Portland and Seattle. The tracks lead passengers past incredible vistas of the Columbia River as well as right next to houses with residents who must be inured to the sensation of trains rattling their windows throughout the day and night. There is something about staring out from the window of a train that makes one feel anonymous, both distant and like one is trespassing ...
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Powell's Picks Spotlight
by Keith Mosman, April 5, 2023 9:32 AM
This week, we’re taking a closer look at Powell’s Pick of the Month, A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung.
When the topic of aging and my end-of-life plan comes up (why do my friends keep bringing me up?), I usually resort to dark humored jokes involving Soylent Green, Logan’s Run, or some other movie that I’m not actually old enough to remember. This is because I, an elder Millennial, am deeply unsure about what the state of the world will be when I reach a point in my life when my age or other circumstances require me to stop working and/or face a health crisis...
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Powell's Picks Spotlight
by Keith Mosman, March 8, 2023 9:19 AM
This week we’re taking a closer look at Powell’s Pick of the Month Saving Time by Jenny Odell.
In her new book, Saving Time, Jenny Odell questions the origins and consequences of nearly every aspect of our various timekeeping systems and the ways we use them to dehumanize ourselves and each other.
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Powell's Picks Spotlight
by Keith Mosman, February 23, 2023 9:09 AM
This week we’re taking a closer look at Powell’s Pick of the Month, The Sun Walks Down by Fiona McFarlane.
The Sun Walks Down is a novel about getting lost, except it isn’t.
A work of literature that is both elegant and addictive is a very rare thing, but Fiona McFarlane’s new novel achieves that fine balance with aplomb...
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Powell's Picks Spotlight
by Keith Mosman, January 12, 2023 9:19 AM
This week we’re taking a closer look at Powell’s Pick of the Month The Dream Builders by Oindrila Mukherjee.
When I first moved to Portland, almost twenty years ago, many a bumper was festooned with a “Keep Portland Weird” sticker and all the municipal letterheads included the motto: “the city that works.” Both were fairly recent adoptions; both were copied from other cities. It seemed to me then that much of the energy of the civic-minded was devoted to concern about the gentrifying Pearl District and how would Gus Van Sant ever make another film set in Portland?...
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Lists
by Keith Mosman, December 13, 2022 8:52 AM
Another year is drawing to a close, and another one that I could measure in the cumulative hours of audiobook listens (at 1.5x). I listen to a lot of audiobooks and I enjoy most, but the true standouts for me are the ones where voice meets voice and create a true experience. Here are my favorite listens of 2022...
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Best Books
by Keith Mosman, November 11, 2022 8:38 AM
After a few years where this category was dominated by books about current events, I was relieved to put this list together and see not just books about important issues of the day, but also a broad variety of books about the world and our place in it. And almost none of them mention the White House! A gift! So maybe take a breather and find a nourishing book on this list; current events will still be here when you finish...
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Best Books
by Keith Mosman, November 9, 2022 8:41 AM
Every year, as I look over upcoming fiction releases, I pay special attention to debut novels and story collections because they bring so much new energy to the bookstore. Debut authors often have fresh ideas about form, and they utilize unique perspectives to spotlight different aspects of human experience — this is especially true in recent years as publishers are working to correct past injustices and produce work by authors from a greater variety of backgrounds and identities...
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Five Book Friday
by Keith Mosman, November 4, 2022 12:58 PM
We recently highlighted a selection of works by authors of Korean heritage, as a part of our Read The World series. Choosing titles for the display was a real joy — researching release dates, balancing genres and subjects, and reading a ton of great books. The downside to putting together a title list for a subject that you love is that you can’t include everything you’d like, and this list was especially difficult to narrow down...
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Powell's Picks Spotlight
by Keith Mosman, August 18, 2022 8:22 AM
This week we’re taking a closer look at Powell’s Pick of the Month Stories from The Tenants Downstairs by Sidik Fofana.
I was a theatre major, and like most theatre majors, I: 1. Insist on spelling “theatre” with an “re” and 2. Don’t actually make theatre any more (and even seeing any plays in performance during the last few years has been a challenge for well-documented, world-historical reasons). Yet still, my training has had lifelong implications, including my general aversion to film...
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