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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Lists
by Kim Tano and Madeline Shier, June 11, 2021 8:57 AM
2019 marked the 50th anniversary of the Stonewell uprising, demonstrations against the 1969 police raid on the Stonewall Inn gay bar. That uprising was a watershed moment in LGBTQ+ history, and led to annual Pride celebrations in the month of June. As cities around the U.S. and the world tentatively reopen for Pride celebrations this year, we wanted to take a moment to celebrate the visible growth in LGBTQ+ titles available for kids and teens.
Where in the past we've had to make due with a few old faithful standards ( Heather Has Two Mommies continues to be a nostalgic classic), we're thrilled that in recent years, and this year in particular, we had a difficult time narrowing our list of recommended LGBTQ+ kids’ and teen titles. We're especially thrilled to see more and more unique identities, intersectional identities, and Own Voices narratives represented on these shelves...
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Original Essays
by Aiden Thomas, June 7, 2021 9:01 AM
My debut novel, Cemetery Boys, is the first fiction book about a trans character written by a trans author to ever hit the New York Times bestseller list. It’s taken far too long for that to happen, and it’s certainly not going to be the last.
A common question I got asked when I entered publishing was, “When was the first time you saw yourself in a book?” There was always a moment of panic where I’d race to think of a book that had one aspect of my identity that I could use as an answer.
The sad truth is that according to media, people like me (Latinx, transgender, and queer) didn’t exist. When I was growing up, I thought there wasn’t a place for me in publishing. I never saw Latinx characters in books, let alone ones that were queer, and certainly not trans. While there’s still a huge need for more diverse stories in the world, finally having books that reflected parts of my identity ( Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Córdova being a huge one) is what made me think I could finally write a book like Cemetery Boys, and people would want to read it...
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Lists
by Keith Mosman, June 1, 2021 8:47 AM
Happy Pride!
When offered the chance to write a post highlighting some LGBTQ+ titles, I knew I wanted to show how broadly our stories are disbursed throughout the bookstore, often in categories you might not expect. Because, to borrow a title from Leighton Brown’s and Matthew Riemer’s beautiful history of queer liberation: We Are Everywhere.
I’ve focused on recently published nonfiction, because, well, there’s been a lot going on and these books didn’t get the attention they deserved. I feel a real kinship with these titles because, like me, they came out at a difficult time...
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Lists
by Michelle Carroll, May 26, 2021 9:32 AM
Way back in April of 2020, I attended a virtual panel called The Asian American Experience. Cathy Park Hong, Kevin Nguyen, and Mira Jacob were phenomenal, and I’d highly recommend watching the recording of the event. Because it was the early days of all-virtual-everything, there were some technical difficulties as the event was kicking off, and a magical thing happened: the attendees started enthusiastically recommending books to each other.
This list is inspired by that excited energy, but a little more homegrown. These are the titles that keep popping up in my group chats, and that make my phone overheat because everyone wants to talk about them...
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Ask Aunt Paige
by Aunt Paige, May 25, 2021 8:23 AM
Sweethearts, we are at a crux. COVID restrictions are lifting, but that doesn't mean everyone feels ready to resume life as we knew it. I've heard from readers already mourning the loss of quiet spaces and time to read, and from others who can't wait to attend in-person events. Some folks want to break out of a year-long habit of "easy" reading, but I've also heard from a lot of people who haven't cracked a book in 14 months. It's clear to me that everyone is trying to establish where their comfort zone starts and ends while dealing with the fracas of an entire, often discordant society doing the same. How do we be patient and kind, with ourselves and with others, while still moving in a positive direction? Here are some of my favorite recent letters on the subject.
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Dear Aunt Paige,
An unexpected silver lining of social distancing has been getting more quiet time to read. Now that life is beginning to pick up speed, I’ve been wanting to create a private space I can sneak away to when I just need to get lost in a story — and away from my housemates. Do you have any recommendations on how to go about building one...
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Lists
by Jeremy Garber, May 21, 2021 9:33 AM
From the Syrian Civil War to linked novellas by a 19th-century Austrian writer to the short stories of an early to mid-20th-century Hungarian nobleman, from a “feminist inversion of a domestic drama crossed with Oulipian nursery rhyme” to the conclusions of two wildly different trilogies (one French, one German), from Chile to Korea, Japan to Spain, the month of May offers a trove of newly translated fiction from abroad.
The Touch System
by Alejandra Costamagna (Trans. Lisa Dillman)
A finalist for the prestigious Herralde Prize in 2018, The Touch System is Chilean author Alejandra Costamagna’s English debut. Weaving disparate formats into a novelistic whole, The Touch System is a stylistic story of family, memory, and identity. Costamagna’s writing has enjoyed praise from the likes of Roberto Bolaño, Alejandro Zambra, Mariana Enríquez, and Daniel Alarcón — and heralds another powerful voice from the Southern Cone...
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Q&As
by Claire Fuller, May 19, 2021 9:48 AM
Photo credit: Adrian Harvey
Describe your latest book.
Unsettled Ground is about 51-year-old twins, Jeanie and Julius, who still live with their mother Dot in rural isolation and relative poverty in the English countryside. They don’t have a bank account, don’t have any qualifications, don’t own a car, and have very little access to technology. They’ve managed for all their lives like this — growing vegetables and doing odd jobs for people for a bit of cash. But when Dot dies at the start of the book, Jeanie and Julius discover that she left them with a lot of debt, and the cottage they live in isn’t actually theirs. They suddenly have to negotiate life outside the bubble they’ve been living in. And they don’t do it well.
They might not have enough money, but what Jeanie and Julius do have is music. Jeanie plays the guitar, Julius plays the fiddle, Dot played the banjo, and their father the piano. They would play folk music together at home, and it’s not until Jeanie is forced to play publicly that everyone realizes how skilled she is...
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Lists
by Rhianna Walton, May 10, 2021 11:22 AM
A lot of people dislike short stories, but it’s Short Story Month and worth reevaluating how you feel about the form. For one thing, short stories are the perfect length for waiting in line, reading before bed, or taking a bath; if you struggle with attention span, short stories are generous in their brevity. But if craft is your passion, consider the economy short stories require. There’s no room for extraneous plot or characters or philosophical musings. They don’t have the luxury of getting interesting 50-100 pages in. When experimental, short stories must be 100% committed to their form. My favorite short stories, by authors like Kelly Link, Nathan Englander, and Lauren Groff, are darkly humorous and unsettling enough to flicker through my brain years later, but the form is also ideal for zeroing in on everyday dramas or interior spaces that often go overlooked...
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Lists
by April Streeter, May 4, 2021 8:39 AM
For years, I scoured the Net for a certain type of bicycle book. I was eager to find others who biked the way I biked, to dig in to stories about people who used their bicycles for getting around. I had keyword terms for my somewhat obsessive searches: city biking, city cyclist, cycle chic, women on wheels.
Before 2014, manuals for road cyclists abounded, but that wasn’t me. Periodically there would be a book here or there that appealed, classics that may not have been exactly on topic but were important to start my bike-book library. The Chainbreaker Bike Book, for example, appeared back in 2007. It’s a quintessential DIY bike repair manual, somewhat gritty yet still important for a skirt-and-sunglasses, fair weather cyclist like myself...
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