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

Wolves and hens and bears and owls and koalas — oh my! One of my favorite categories of books is nonfiction that combines the history and cutural foot(paw?)prints of a species alongside memoir, literary criticism, science, sociopolitical analysis, travelogue, ecological research.... really, any combination of the above. There are so many books that fall under this wide umbrella, but I wanted to bring five together as a starting point, in case you, like me, can’t get enough of these books about the animals...

Can we talk about how I'm short, brown, fat, and how I love playing sports and working out?

I've never fit the mold of what people perceive as "athletic." I probably never will. When I was in high school and playing tennis, basketball, or football every day, my doctor told me that I would die if I didn't lose weight (imagine saying that to a 15-year-old girl...). This was without running any sort of test on me. Just one glance and boom: death sentence. Did he know I played sports every day and that I carried a lot of muscle? No. Did he listen when I tried to explain it to him? Also no...

I don’t watch a lot of TV, but a few years ago, my partner texted me about this show that a friend of his recommended. He said it sounded right up my alley, and did I want to give it a watch?

I looked it up online. It featured John Goodman as the celebrity preacher of a gigantic mega-church and patriarch of a family of Christian preachers, entertainers, and youth ministers. The trailer was packed with rich folks in flashy clothes, car chases...

The mermaid — a mythological symbol of mystique, power, beauty, sex, and predation. In a time where the patriarchy rages on unfettered — it's no wonder we're all fascinated with the idea of a beautiful creature luring a man to his death. With the success of Disney's The Little Mermaid live-action remake and Netflix's popular Merpeople documentary series, mermaids are making their splash again, cannonball-style. In a long-overdue renaissance, authors have decided to veer more heavily...

There is so much to be said about the beauty and importance of queer literature, no matter the genre or when it was written. I was never going to be able to explain that importance and that history with just five books, but I did spend many weeks trying to find five that were good examples of the complexities and struggles and also the joy and beauty of queer authors, queer characters, and, overall, how it feels to be queer in the world we live in...

Literary — or alternatively: creative; narrative — nonfiction is more or less what it says on the tin. That is, a self-excavatory, narrativized nonfiction practice enriched by reportage and scaffolded by the trappings of literary fiction (in terms of plot, pace, structure, imagery, tone, and style), emanating from a developed, palpable "I."

The grain of a ubiquitous, felt human subjectivity does more to distinguish literary nonfiction than a penchant for unconventional modes of storytelling and (long and hotly contested) separation of "fact" and "truth" (the latter being more expansive...

Prophecy, divination, fortunetelling... whatever it may be, we humans are eager to believe that some among us (maybe even we, ourselves) are capable of receiving knowledge through supernatural means. From the Oracle at Delphi to daily horoscopes and Ouija boards, our fascination with psychic ability is undying, even as belief fluctuates. Unsurprisingly, countless authors...

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April is Arab American Heritage Month. To celebrate this vibrant community, here are five recent books written by Arab Americans about the Arab American experience. These books explore gender, heritage, sexuality, identity, family, religion, migration, language, trauma, otherness, and so, so much more. The stories are told in exciting, unexpected ways — through vignettes, through time jumps, through alternating points-of-view. There’s speculative fiction alongside emotive...

My favorite underrated classification of author is the “sad girls” — or the female authors often dismissed because their work is too emotional, too dark, or too raw. While these authors do write about topics like death and grief and the darker parts of life, more often than not, they also write about nature and the light that can be found in the mundanities of life. This is not to say the darker parts of their work are unimportant. However, there is truth to both sides; these authors have more to offer...

One of my favorite parts of working at a bookstore is connecting customers to books they may not find otherwise. Autism and neurodiverse research and literature has come a long way in recent years, and I'm so happy to be able to make these connections. These 5 picks are some of my favorites to recommend due to the intersections they represent and familiarity they can provide...