November 2018: Staff Reviews, The Holiday Catalog, New in Humor, and More!

November 2018: Staff Reviews, The Holiday Catalog, New in Humor, and More!
 
We've got two new Staff Favorites for you. Looking for some great books for the holidays? The PNBA Holiday Catalog is here to help. Also, check out what's new in our Humor section. But first.....
 
New and Upcoming Releases
 
These three books are gonna be big! Click on a cover or title to order from our website.
by Michelle Obama
Out Now!
 
In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her—from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it—in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations—and whose story inspires us to do the same.
by Louise Penny
Out: November 27th
 
A peculiar letter arrives inviting Armand Gamache to an abandoned farmhouse, and the former head of the Sûreté du Québec discovers that a complete stranger has named him one of the executors of her will. When a body is found, the terms of the bizarre will suddenly seem far more menacing. But it isn't the only menace Gamache is facing. Enough narcotic to kill thousands has disappeared into inner city Montreal. With the deadly drug about to hit the streets, Gamache races for answers. As he uses increasingly audacious, even desperate, measures to retrieve the drug, Gamache begins to see his own blind spots. And the terrible things hiding there.
by Anna Burns
Out: December 11th
 
The novel that won the 2018 Man Booker Prize is soon to be released in the U.S. In an unnamed city, middle sister stands out for the wrong reasons. She reads while walking, for one. And she has been taking French night classes downtown. So when a local paramilitary known as the milkman begins pursuing her, she suddenly becomes "interesting," the last thing she ever wanted to be. Despite middle sister's attempts to avoid him—and to keep her mother from finding out about her maybe-boyfriend—rumors spread and the threat of violence lingers. Milkman is a story of the way inaction can have enormous repercussions, in a time when the wrong flag, wrong religion, or even a sunset can be subversive. Told with ferocious energy and sly, wicked humor, Milkman establishes Anna Burns as one of the most consequential voices of our day.
 
Staff Favorites
by Alexandra Rowland
by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko
reviewed by Ruby
 
Alexandra Rowland's A Conspiracy of Truths is a fun, satisfying caper. Despite the false accusations of witchcraft and spying that got him locked up in a chilly prison, the bard-like traveler Chant has a plan. With the help of his apprentice, his apprentice's new boyfriend, a bitter lawyer, and quite a few stories, Chant is going to get his name cleared (or at least escape prison)--even if it means bringing the government that locked him up to its knees. Rowland studied folklore and mythologies and the storytelling traditions she created for this tale are immersive.
Vita Nostra is a spookier tale. At times psychedelic and often brutal, Marina and Sergey Dyachenko's novel tells the story of Sasha, a young woman who struggles to free herself from fear and the manipulative power of the mysterious provincial university she attends. Sasha is compelling, and so is her struggle to come in to her own power. This crisp and dynamic translation is well worth reading.
by Jonathan Drori and Lucille Clerc
reviewed by Matt
 
Did you know that the world's heaviest known organism is a stand of Quaking Aspen that has been sending up new trunks for 80,000 years? Or that the wood of choice for rifle stocks in the nineteenth century US spawned the phrase "shouldering walnut" for military service? Or that goats enjoy climbing and eating from Argan trees in Morocco? Or that the cashew tree's cousin is poison ivy? Drawing from his connection to London's Kew Gardens and experience as a producer of science documentaries, and teaming with illustrator Lucille Clerc, Drori brings us a lovely book in which we can savor a page or two at a time about the wonder of some of the world's many fascinating trees. Moving through eleven regions of the world, these brief portraits capture all sorts of historical, botanical, cultural and quirky notes. And, if you read my favorite novel of the year, Richard Powers's The Overstory, this book makes an excellent companion.
 
The PNBA Holiday Catalog
 
The Pacific Northwest Booksellers Holiday Catalog is here! Look for it in today's Southwest Community Connection and in person at Annie Bloom's. The catalog is full of great gift-giving selections for all. Come in to browse the books at the front of the store. Below are a few of the highlights:
by Ursula K. Le Guin
 
The Earthsea novels are some of the most acclaimed and awarded works in literature—they have received prestigious accolades such as the National Book Award, a Newbery Honor, the Nebula Award, and many more honors, commemorating their enduring place in the hearts and minds of readers and the literary world alike. Now for the first time ever, they're all together in one volume—including the early short stories, Le Guin's "Earthsea Revisioned" Oxford lecture, and a new Earthsea story, never before printed. With a new introduction by Le Guin herself, this essential edition also includes fifty illustrations by renowned artist Charles Vess, specially commissioned and selected by Le Guin, to bring her refined vision of Earthsea and its people to life in a totally new way.
by Jane Mount
 
Book lovers rejoice! In this love letter to all things bookish, Jane Mount brings literary people, places, and things to life through her signature and vibrant illustrations. Readers of Bibliophile will delight in: touring the world's most beautiful bookstores, testing their knowledge of the written word with quizzes, finding their next great read in lovingly curated stacks of books, sampling the most famous fictional meals, and peeking inside the workspaces of their favorite authors. Bibliophile is pure bookish joy and sure to enchant book clubbers, English majors, poetry devotees, aspiring writers, and any and all who identify as book lovers.
by Jill Lepore
 
Written in elegiac prose, Lepore's groundbreaking investigation places truth itself—a devotion to facts, proof, and evidence—at the center of the nation’s history. The American experiment rests on three ideas—"these truths," Jefferson called them—political equality, natural rights, and the sovereignty of the people. And it rests, too, on a fearless dedication to inquiry, Lepore argues, because self-government depends on it. But has the nation, and democracy itself, delivered on that promise? To answer that question, Lepore traces the intertwined histories of American politics, law, journalism, and technology, from the colonial town meeting to the nineteenth-century party machine, from talk radio to twenty-first-century Internet polls, from Magna Carta to the Patriot Act, from the printing press to Facebook News.
by Rene Redzepi and David Zilber
 
The restaurant's chefs share never-before-revealed techniques to creating Noma’s extensive pantry of ferments. And they do so with a book conceived specifically to share their knowledge and techniques with home cooks. With more than 500 step-by-step photographs and illustrations, and with every recipe approachably written and meticulously tested, The Noma Guide to Fermentation takes readers far beyond the typical kimchi and sauerkraut to include koji, kombuchas, shoyus, misos, lacto-ferments, vinegars, garums, and black fruits and vegetables. And—perhaps even more important—it shows how to use these game-changing pantry ingredients in more than 100 original recipes.
by John Dodge
 
The Columbus Day Storm of 1962 was a freak of nature, a weather outlier with deadly winds topping one hundred miles per hour. The storm killed dozens, injured hundreds, damaged more than fifty thousand homes, and leveled enough timber to build one million homes. This unrivaled West Coast windstorm fueled the Asian log export market, helped give birth to the Oregon wine industry, and influenced the 1962 World Series. It remains a cautionary tale and the Pacific Northwest benchmark for severe windstorms in this era of climate change and weather uncertainty. In A Deadly Wind, veteran journalist John Dodge tells a compelling story spiced with human drama, Cold War tension, and Pacific Northwest history.
by Jarrett J. Krosozka
 
In kindergarten, Jarrett Krosoczka's teacher asks him to draw his family, with a mommy and a daddy. But Jarrett's family is much more complicated than that. His mom is an addict, in and out of rehab, and in and out of Jarrett's life. His father is a mystery--Jarrett doesn't know where to find him, or even what his name is. Jarrett lives with his grandparents--two very loud, very loving, very opinionated people who had thought they were through with raising children until Jarrett came along. Jarrett goes through his childhood trying to make his non-normal life as normal as possible, finding a way to express himself through drawing. Only as a teenager can Jarrett begin to piece together the truth of his family, reckoning with his mother and tracking down his father. Hey, Kiddo is a profoundly important memoir about growing up in a family grappling with addiction, and finding the art that helps you survive.
by Jacqueline Woodson
 
It all starts when six kids have to meet for a weekly chat--by themselves, with no adults to listen in. There, in the room they soon dub the ARTT Room (short for "A Room to Talk"), they discover it's safe to talk about what's bothering them--everything from Esteban's father's deportation and Haley's father's incarceration to Amari's fears of racial profiling and Ashton's adjustment to his changing family fortunes. When the six are together, they can express the feelings and fears they have to hide from the rest of the world. And together, they can grow braver and more ready for the rest of their lives.
by Jory John and Lane Smith
 
Can you guess what's making this giraffe self-conscious? Could it be . . . HIS ENORMOUS NECK?? Yes, it's exactly that--how on earth did you figure it out? Edward the giraffe can't understand why his neck is as long and bendy and, well, ridiculous as it is. No other animal has a neck this absurd. He's tried disguising it, dressing it up, strategically hiding it behind bushes--honestly, anything you can think of, he's tried. Just when he has exhausted his neck-hiding options and is about to throw in the towel, a turtle swoops in (well, ambles in, very slowly) and helps him understand that his neck has a purpose, and looks excellent in a bow tie.
 
New in Humor
by Brooke Barker
 
No one ever said it was easy being young, and it's especially true if you’re a little creature out in the jungles, forests, deserts, and oceans of the big, bad world. Following on the success of her Instagram feed and first book, Sad Animal Facts, Brooke Barker continues her examination of the various foibles and pitfalls of the zoological world, but with its fledgling members this time around. Featuring more than 100 entries, the book is organized into the categories of Mammals, Birds, Reptiles, Amphibians, Insects & Miscellaneous Invertebrates, Marsupials, Fish, and Aquatic Mammals. Every animal gets a hand-drawn image, an informative caption, and a wry quotation, and in the back, there's an appendix with further zoological details and humor to flesh out each entry.
by Erin Gibson
 
Since women earned the right to vote a little under one hundred years ago, our progress hasn't been the Olympic sprint toward gender equality first wave feminists hoped for, but more of a slow, elderly mall walk (with frequent stops to Cinnabon) over the four hundred million hurdles we still face. Some of these obstacles are obvious: unequal pay, under-representation in government, reproductive restrictions, lack of floor-length mirrors in hotel rooms. But a lot of them are harder to identify. They're the white noise of oppression that we've accepted as lady business as usual, and the patriarchy wants to keep it that way. Erin Gibson has a singular goal--to create a utopian future where women are recognized as humans. In Feminasty--titled after her nickname on the hit podcast "Throwing Shade"--she has written a collection of make-you-laugh-until-you-cry essays that expose the hidden rules that make life as a woman unnecessarily hard and deconstructs them in a way that's bold, provocative, and hilarious.
by Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman
 
They came from completely different families, ignored a significant age difference, and were separated by the gulf of several social strata. Megan loved books and art history; Nick loved hammers. But much more than these seemingly unsurpassable obstacles were the values they held in common: respect, decency, the ability to mention genitalia in almost any context, and an abiding obsession with the songs of Tom Waits. Eighteen years later, they're still very much in love and have finally decided to reveal the philosophical mountains they have conquered, the lessons they've learned, and the myriad jigsaw puzzles they've completed. Presented as an oral history in a series of conversations between the couple, the book features anecdotes, hijinks, photos, and a veritable grab bag of tomfoolery. This is not only the intoxicating book that Mullally's and Offerman's fans have been waiting for, it might just hold the solution to the greatest threat facing our modern world: the single life.
by Abbi Jacobson
 
When Broad City co-creator and co-star Abbi Jacobson announced to friends and acquaintances that she planned to drive across the country alone, she was met with lots of questions and opinions: Why wasn't she going with friends? Wouldn't it be incredibly lonely? The North route is better! Was it safe for a woman? The Southern route is the way to go! You should bring mace! And a common one... why? But Abbi had always found comfort in solitude, and needed space to step back and hit the reset button. As she spent time in each city and town on her way to Los Angeles, she mulled over the big questions-- What do I really want? What is the worst possible scenario in which I could run into my ex? How has the decision to wear my shirts tucked in been pivotal in my adulthood? In this collection of anecdotes, observations and reflections--all told in the sharp, wildly funny, and relatable voice that has endeared Abbi to critics and fans alike--readers will feel like they're in the passenger seat on a fun and, ultimately, inspiring journey.