PowellsBooks.Blog
Authors, readers, critics, media − and booksellers.

Fellow procrastinators, this one is for us! Supply chain woes and a season of wonderful books that everyone is excited about mean that there’s a small chance your favorite bookstore will run out of the specific title on your gift list; but fear not! Wonderful books come out every week (and they’ve been coming out for centuries, if you can believe it). To take the stress out of gifting this year, I went through some of the hottest titles of the season to suggest great alternates.

Maybe your first choice is out of stock, maybe you’re worried your bookish friend already has the hot title of the year, or maybe you just want to look really cool by picking an unexpected title. Whatever your reason, remember that you can always ask a bookseller...

This week we're taking a closer look at Powell's Pick of the Month Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney.

I read Beautiful World, Where Are You in two sittings on my 29th birthday, chasing the shade around my backyard and contemplating the inevitability of climate crisis and societal collapse amidst record-breaking high temperatures here in the Pacific Northwest.

A lot. I know.

Alice and Eileen, the novel’s 29-year-old protagonists, are grappling with similar anxieties...