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

How would you describe your job to someone you just met?
I’m a matchmaker! I match people with the book they didn’t know they wanted. My focus is on literature and local authors. I also write reviews for shelf-talkers in the store and blurbs for the website.

Last book you loved:
Smoke City by Keith Rosson, Red Clocks by Leni Zumas, and Mammother by Zachary Schomburg (sorry, I can’t pick just one!).

Where are you originally from?
Born and bred in Portland.

What did you want to be when you grew up?
Seriously, I’ve wanted to work at Powell’s since I was 12!...

Every evening, the limbs of the frangipani tree that shaded our second story apartment shivered and rustled, strewing star shaped blossoms onto our balcony’s floor. Balmy lake breezes mixed the petals’ thick perfume with the aromas of brewing coffee and fried snacks wafting from our neighbors' kitchen windows. In the distance, auto rickshaws and motorcycles revved their engines, announcing the start of Bangalore’s evening commute.  

The minute I heard the creaking branches, I'd stop what I was doing and come outside. Leaning over the balcony’s wrought iron railing, I smiled and waved at the black-haired girl who was, inevitably, perched somewhere on the tree’s trunk, her bare feet tight against the rough bark, her long fingers plucking flowers. 

“Namaskara, Varuna,” I’d call out. “Hege ideera? How are you?”...

I woke early on our first morning on Kaua‘i. Early, because I always have a hard time sleeping my first night in any new bed, and early because my body was two hours ahead, on Portland time. I started a pot of Kona coffee and opened the curtains to the lanai. In Portland, the sun had already risen, but I knew it was still dark, cold, wet — the 45th parallel in February. In the tropics, darkness faded into purple and gray shadows, revealing the outline of swaying palms. The peculiar physics of the condo’s location on C-shaped Keoniloa Bay meant that, somehow, you could see the sun both rise and set, dawn to dusk, beginning then ending then beginning again. 

My back and legs hurt from being crammed into an airplane seat the previous day, and my arm and neck from the accident that totaled my car three months earlier...

This week we're taking a closer look at Powell's Pick of the Month The Best Coast: A Road Trip Atlas by Chandler O'Leary.

We’re enthralled by artist Chandler O’Leary’s road trip guide to the West Coast, The Best Coast: A Road Trip Atlas. It’s not just that Portland gets its own mini-chapter featuring Powell’s (although we’re not immune to flattery). It’s that The Best Coast may be the quirkiest, prettiest, and most enthusiastic guide/love letter to the coast we call home to ever land on our desks.

O’Leary is a veteran road tripper, having logged over 100,000 road trip miles across the lower 48 states. This makes her not just an authoritative guide to sightseeing highlights throughout the U.S., but an expert in what to pack and prepare for. The early sections of The Best Coast are devoted to trip planning and safety, covering what to wear (the geographical and climatic diversity of our coast being vast), how to secure your belongings, how to maximize your budget, and how to take care of your vehicle, plus delightful, unexpected tips...

It happened when Michael Corleone saw Apollonia Vitelli for the first time in The Godfather. Thunderstruck. He just knew. It was a light bulb flick, the eureka moment when everything else melts away and you’re faced with an unexpected future — if you accept the challenge.
 
Several years ago, in a museum in London, I was gobsmacked by an idea that hit me as I stared at portraits of trailblazing women from the 18th century. They reminded me of my own unconventional mother, a woman who had skirted the rules all her life, concocting her own version of womanhood — and motherhood — in the same determined manner. I suddenly knew that I had to learn more about them and then write about her. 
 
I had begun untangle our complex mother-daughter relationship during another trip to London the year before. More than 20 years after her death, I was still caught in a wrenching cycle of love and longing for the larger-than-life, extraordinarily beautiful woman...

Whenever we’re feeling blue, a stroll through the kids’ sections at our stores perks us right up. The rainbow of covers, happy families browsing books, and enthusiastic Kid Pick customer recommendations never fail to delight us. Here are some recent reading suggestions from the witty, adorable future booksellers of America.

Eight years ago I was standing on the subway in New York City, leaning on a pole, with eight different boxes of candy taped together, trying to sell it to anyone who would hear me out. If you would have told me that I would have written a book, opened four restaurants, and appeared on national television by now, I would have called you crazy. But why is that crazy? Why do we think that the possible is impossible? I think there are many answers to that question. Our path and the people we surround ourselves with contribute to that for sure. We measure success by the most successful person we know. The only way to change that perspective is by growth and getting out of that comfort zone. Now, I am not saying to just stop what you’re doing and go straight into something with no training. But taking that next step without knowing where it may lead you is key...

For many years now I have been studying, writing, and thinking about what environmental justice means for Indigenous peoples. In my most recent book, As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice From Colonization to Standing Rock, I take on the topic in very broad but specific ways. I see United States settler colonialism as a history of environmental injustice; in other words, colonization and environmental injustice go hand in hand for Native people.

In general, the field of environmental justice (EJ) refers to injustice as the ways people of color are disproportionately exposed to toxic development and other processes that place them at higher risk of illness and other attendant harms (such as lower property values and gentrification). EJ is based on the concept of environmental racism...

One of the perks of researching my new book, The Best Coast: A Road Trip Atlas, has been sampling the local flavor of each place I wrote about and illustrated. And thanks to its famous network of food trucks, nowhere on the West Coast has more local flavor than Portland. Since I live just two hours away in Tacoma, Washington, I’ve had a lot of time over the years to visit the Rose City and wander around with my sketchbook — and each time I do, I try to visit a different food cart (though sticking to this “rule” is hard when I just want to resample old favorites again and again).

For me, dining at Portland’s food trucks isn’t just about the ease of grabbing street food, or the proximity when I’m drawing outside. It’s also an easy way for me to support local, independent, and immigrant businesses, in a city where the battle lines are drawn between diverse residential enclaves, hipster culture, and slick real estate developers...

This week we're taking a closer look at Powell's Pick of the Month Women Talking by Miriam Toews.

Women Talking, Miriam Toews's stunning new novel, should be boring. It’s a book-length conversation between a contentious group of women who rarely complete a thought, and whose discourse is being captured by a hopelessly lovelorn and socially isolated young man. The women burst into song, argue philosophy, and talk in circles; August Epp, their scribe, goes on metaphorical tangents that confuse characters and reader alike. In lesser hands, Women Talking risks being the book equivalent of an Ethan Hawke film. In Toews’s hands, it is cutting and brilliant.

One of the startling reminders of Women Talking is that women talking — being allowed to think aloud and faultily, being heard, questioning their purpose in a way that leads to real change — is still a revolutionary act. The fact that Toews’s characters are Mennonite women contending with a long series of brutal rapes by their kinsmen heightens the radicalism inherent in female conversation...