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Portland author Patrick deWitt is a pig for romance. “I’m an old softy, you know,” deWitt tells EW, “a fool for love and all that; a pig for it.” Continue reading
Entering into the gloriously tattered tradition of strung-out criminal lit ranging from Hubert Selby’s Last Exit to Brooklyn to Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son, Seattle rocker turned author Danny Bland has written a novel that reads like a beastly scream into the dark mythology of ‘90s Seattle — a gilded wasteland where junkies reared on Iggy and Sabbath turned filthy power chords into gold and cosmonauts of the apocalypse pimped hip to the culture vultures. Continue reading
Jon Krakauer doesn’t start Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town (Doubleday, $28.95) with one of the worst scenes in the book; he eases into it with the police pulling up to tell a young woman named Allison Huguet that her rapist has confessed. Only a couple pages later does Krakauer tell of the assault and of Beth Huguet’s horror when her daughter calls her at 4 am gasping with panicked sounds into the phone before screaming, “He’s chasing me! Help me! Save me! Mom!” Continue reading
When we heard Christian Appy talk about his new book at a Morse Center event on the UO campus last month, we knew American Reckoning was a must read for more understanding of the “Vietnam War and Our National Identity,” as he subtitles it. Appy is a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the author of two previous books on the Vietnam War. Continue reading
With the movie Wild garnering national success in theaters around the country, book author Cheryl Strayed hasn't forgotten her Oregon loyalties — she's speaking tomorrow, Jan. 15, at Oregon State University as part of its DISCOVERY Lecture Series. From OSU's website: Continue reading
To steal a name from that vast bookstore in Portland, Eugene is a city of books — and of readers. Our small local bookstores and excellent city library, not to mention free and inexpensive book sources such as Gertie the Bookbus and St. Vincent dePaul, ensure that Lane County’s literary lovers can have a book with their coffee or kombucha to curl up with this winter. Continue reading
fiction The Slow Regard of Silent Things by Patrick Rothfuss. DAW Books, Inc., $18.95. Continue reading
Top 10 Books at Tsunami Books Lila by Marilynne Robinson. Farrar Straus Giroux, $26. The Co-Creation Handbook by Alida Birch. Luminaire Press, $12.95. Falling From Horses by Molly Gloss. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $25. (See review this issue) Roadside Geology of Oregon, Second Edition by Marli B. Miller. Mountain Press, $26. (See review this issue) The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell. Random House, $30. The Magicians by Lev Grossman. Plume, $16. Continue reading
The title of her new book is Falling from Horses, Oregon author Molly Gloss clarifies, not Falling off Horses. The preposition might seem to be a fine distinction, but Gloss says the title is meant as a metaphor — when you say falling off a horse, it is just about falling off a horse, she says. Continue reading
Many of the best graphic novels published this year detail stories of expanding frontiers. Some of these transgressed borders are physical, while others are spiritual or emotional. All of these books, however, celebrate the spirit of exploration that comics so vividly bring to life. Continue reading