Lists
by Powell's Staff, October 12, 2021 9:24 AM
Have a book lover on your gift list, but no idea where to start? Let us help with 40 recommendations that suit all kinds
of readers. These are the books we're gifting, and, well, we have very good taste.
100 Things We've Lost to the Internet
by Pamela Paul
To: My adolescent children who’ve not known a world without the
Internet
From: A loving mother who desires balance between then and now...
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Lists
by Powell's Staff, September 15, 2021 9:11 AM
Powell's Book Buying team are our go-to experts for general advice on publishing trends, authors to watch, and industry news, but like all of us, they're also deeply passionate about niche topics from dried flower embroidery to Afrofuturism to RPGs. Here are 26 of the books they're most excited about reading this fall. (Pro tip: See something you want to read too? Save yourself the supply chain woes and preorder it now to ensure a timely arrival.)
÷ ÷ ÷
Jennifer H.'s Picks
Jennifer buys books for the mystery and sports sections. Her three favorite things are books, cats and basketball.
Grave Reservations (October 2021)
by Cherie Priest
Hugo and Nebula Awards nominee Priest has written her first mystery novel, and I hope it is the first of many. Leda is a travel agent and inconsistent psychic. Based on a very strong feeling, she rebooks a customer’s flight and accidentally saves them from an airplane that catches fire. When that customer, detective Grady Merritt, returns to Seattle, he tracks down Leda and recruits her to help with a case he can’t crack...
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Lists
by Powell's Staff, June 15, 2021 8:59 AM
As a collective, our reading runs the gamut from YA romance to music theory to fiction in translation, so it's no surprise that the 21 books in our annual midyear roundup are eclectic and unexpected. Discover a fantasy reimagining of The Great Gatsby, a ribald picaresque, an exploration of Ojibwe culture, and even some karma in the list below.
Firekeeper's Daughter (March 2021)
by Angeline Boulley
Wow, this debut novel is so well crafted, I cannot recommend it enough! After Daunis loses her uncle, she is approached by an undercover agent to investigate a drug ring in her community. On top of the mystery, there is romance, exploration of family, community, and the Ojibwe culture...
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Original Essays
by Powell's Staff, April 2, 2021 10:22 AM
We love many old-fashioned children’s books, but what makes Beverly Cleary’s books extra special is that 80 years after the publication of the first Henry Huggins novel, they don’t feel anachronistic. Sure, Ramona and her peers have a little more freedom to wander than today’s children do, but the basic aspects of their lives — elementary school teachers, friendships, sibling rivalries, chaos, loving parents — haven’t changed. As a child, it’s easy to find yourself in dependable Beezus, lively Ramona, enterprising Henry, and their friends; as parents, our hearts leap in recognition every time a weary Mrs. Quimby comes home to start dinner, only to find a Ramona-inspired disaster. Baked doll, bluing-tinted skin, toothpaste mountains, crown of burs — no one beats Cleary’s capacity for imagining trouble...
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Lists
by Powell's Staff, January 1, 2021 8:03 AM
We generally write a company-wide list of New Year’s reading resolutions, but if getting through the political, economic, healthcare, and literal fires of 2020 didn’t absolve us of whatever small literary sins we carry, nothing will and we’re moving on unrepentant. And, as booksellers, moving on means turning the page in its least metaphorical sense. For some of us, 2021 will involve the first chapter of a novel in translation, or a history of empire, or a report on the Anthropocene. For others, a mythology-inspired fantasy or an 80-year-old thriller. In a way, the books themselves are less important than the act of faith they will require of us: to move forward into the unexpected, mind open and unafraid.
The Hole
by Hiroko Oyamada and David Boyd
The author's previous book, The Factory, was so strange and interesting, plus it's another slim volume that's so easy to carry around...
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Lists
by Powell's Staff, December 30, 2020 2:08 PM
It feels like a wild understatement to talk about how this has been a difficult year on every level — global, national, local, and personal. 2020 has become shorthand for overlapping and ongoing crises, for disaster on top of disaster, for navigating a shared sense of awfulness. The usually cheerful look-back-at-the-year roundups have taken on a new tone of survival, and every book we recommend comes with a stated or implied "how it might help you handle everything."
In that spirit: These are the books that saw us through this cursed year. They’re titles that gave us an escape hatch into sunnier times, or the necessary background (informational or emotional) to better understand our present...
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Lists
by Powell's Staff, October 26, 2020 2:57 PM
Sometimes we reach for sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and graphic novels because we want to be transported away from the present; never mind that all of these genres use the tropes of technology, magic, history, myth, and the future to scrutinize the present. In a way, 2020 embodies the contradiction inherent in using genre fiction as a form of escapism: More than ever, we need to be confronting the very grave problems of racism, climate change, illness, economic crisis, and anti-democratic politics; and more than ever, we need an occasional rest from the exertion of those confrontations.
The books below astonished us in their abilities to entertain and educate us, sometimes making us laugh or cry, or indulge in a very ugly combination of the two that (almost) made us thankful for quarantine...
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Lists
by Powell's Staff, October 19, 2020 1:54 PM
In a year like this — strange and stressful — we've needed books more than ever. To teach us, to give us escape, to bring us happiness, even sometimes silliness. Well, in that way, 2020 came through! There have been soooo many great books this year that it's been hard to choose which ones we loved the most.
But with such diverse subjects as Arthurian myths and Ojibwa prophecies, unicorns and orcas, basketball and ( ahem) butts, ghosts, magical powers, climbing kittens, the ways to make sunshine and the ways to hear snow, here are our picks for the Best Kids' and YA Books of 2020.
FOR YOUNGER KIDS:
We Are Water Protectors
by Carole Lindstrom and Michaela Goade
An absolutely beautiful and important book on protecting the earth and fighting for what’s right. This powerfully moving picture book is based on an Ojibwa prophecy and written by Ojibwe/Métis author Carole Lindstrom and gorgeously illustrated by Tlingit artist Michaela Goade...
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Lists
by Powell's Staff, September 4, 2020 9:22 AM
Powell’s new book buying team are experts at predicting trends, zeroing in on promising titles, and talking books. We asked them to share a list of the books they’ve loving and looking forward to this fall. From the new Tana French ( yes) to the best pie cookbook ever, let Corie, Mary Jo, Doug, McKenzie, Kim, Tracey, Jennifer, and Kathi lead you to your next favorite read...
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Lists
by Powell's Staff, June 3, 2020 9:05 AM
In the spirit of keeping things close to home, we would like to (re)acquaint you with seven phenomenal Portland writers whose work explores themes of gender, sexuality, queerness, and community. The works below encompass short stories, novels, poetry, memoir, and humor, and in unique ways expand the reader’s notions of love, selfhood, and family.
I Loved You More
by Tom Spanbauer
In Doug’s words, “Just when Tom Spanbauer's novel fills you with despair, it picks you up with an absurd, dark humor. Reach for this book if you want a slow, meaty read where you can savor the quirky spoken feeling of the narrator's voice. Read it if you want to hear the lie that tells the truth. If you want to live in the thoughts and pain and discovery and selfishness and generosity of the storyteller...
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