Broadway Books - Independently owned and supporting the NE Portland community since 1992.

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Did you know?

That you can order books 24/7 on our website? Select "pay in store/pick up in store," and we'll notify you when they're ready for you to pick up!


That we sell Kobo eReaders and eBooks that you can read on any device (including your iPad) except Kindle devices?

That we happily gift wrap any of your purchases from us at no additional charge?

That our gift certificates never expire? If we don't expire, they don't expire!

That more than almost anything else we love helping you choose just the right gift? So don't hesitate to ask for ideas if you're stuck.

That we are long-time supporters of local literary and educational activities?



 


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Sunday
Noon to 5 pm
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Read this year's Multnomah Country Library's Everybody Reads book - just out in paperback:
 
Learn more
We can't resist telling you about this new uber-cool book,
Thou Spleeny Swag-Bellied Miscreant: Create Your Own Shakespearean Insults, by Sarah Royal and Jillian Hofer.

Use this mix-and-match book to invent your own bawdy Shakespearean insults: "You pernicious, deboshed flirtgill!" Or perhaps "You ruttish, rump-fed ruffioan." More fun than a barrel of monkeys. And very handy for office parties.


New in Paperback


 
    Learn more....
Snail Mail Rocks!

We've got your favorite card lines --
 
Mincing Mockingbird, Curly Girl, Letterary Press, Lark Press, Rifle Paper Co., Mina Lee, New Yorker Cartoons, and many more  -- for every occasion
See you next month!
Broadway Books
A Great Little Store with Great Big Service
March 2014 Newsletter
 
 

Since we find ourselves living in a world of listicles, we offer up a list of our own:

Six Reasons We Love March

1. The spring publishing season . It's a bit smaller than the fall season, but oh, so tasty!
2. Crocoses (croci?)
3. Four readings in the store, featuring six authors. A few first-timers and a a few seasoned veterans: the best mix.
4. A huge new shipment of sale books now being received and shelved. Such goodies! Such bargains!
5. Daylight Savings Time
6. Every week, more new card lines making an appearance in the store. They are by turns beautiful, funny, timely, fresh, and different. Many of them are locally produced. Thanks, Kate!

Roberta Dyer and Sally McPherson
Broadway Books, 1714 NE Broadway, Portland, OR 97232
(503) 284-1726
March Readings

Thursday, March 6th, 7 pm:Tony Wolk 

The Parable of You, a collection of stories, is published by Portland's Propeller Books. In these stories, a shipwrecked sailor discovers the island he has landed on is not as deserted as he thought; a lone survivor describes an extraterrestrial invasion surprising in its circumstance; a woman wakes up to find a stranger in her bed; twins compete for a woman's affection; and a vessel trapped in the Antarctic ice becomes a site of dread and desperation. In the tradition of literary fantasists like Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino,Wolk delivers a feast of stories that challenge our assumptions about history, reality, and what stories reveal about their tellers.

 

Author Molly Gloss said "It's a rare book that can make me, on reaching the last page, turn back to the first page and begin reading again. The Parable of You is that book. A slim set of stories, beautifully wrought, that wander into strange and wonderful territory. Stories that are unexpected, funny, unsettling, and moving. Stories that amaze, provoke, and puzzle. Writing doesn't get any better than this."

 

Wolk has been an English professor at PSU since 1965, riding his bike to campusevery day. He is the author of the novels Abraham Lincoln: A Novel Life, Good Friday, and Lincoln's Daughter.

 

Tuesday, March 11th, 7 pm: Averil Dean and Suzy Vitello

Alice Close Your Eyes (Mira Books) by Averil Dean is described by Kirkus as "a haunting, intense novel that is at once psychologically compelling and emotionally unsettling." Dean spins the chilling tale of Alice Croft, whose life was sent tragically off-course ten years earlier. Now she has a chance to right that wrong -- and she thinks she's found the perfect man to carry out her plan. After watching him for weeks, she breaks into Jack Calabrese's house to collect the evidence that will confirm her hopes. Soon Alice finds herself drawn into a labyrinth of terrifying surrender to a man who is more dangerous than she could have imagined. As their relationship spirals toward a breaking point, Alice begins to see just how deep Jack's secrets run -- and how deadly they could be.

 

Suzy Vitello's The Moment Before (Diversion Books) is technically a young adult novel, but it readily crosses over to adult readers as well. It's been called "a compelling novel about sisterhood, love, and loss" and is a Junior Library Guild selection for 2014. Set in a version of Portland's West Hills, the novel follows 17-yr old Brady Wilson's quest for answers in the wake of her sister's accidental death. In the process, Brady discovers more about her family, her friends, and her own capacity for courage than she bargained for.

 

Light refreshments will be served following the reading.

 

Tuesday, March 18th, 7 pm: Willy Vlautin and Peter Brown Hoffmeister

Willy Vlautin's fourth novel, The Free (Harper), tells the stories of Leroy Kervin, a severely wounded vet of the war in Iraq; Freddy McCall, the night man at Leroy's group home; and Pauline Hawkins, a nurse who cares for the sick and wounded, including Leroy.

 

Cheryl Strayed describes Vlautin's prose as "direct and complex in its simplicity," adding that "his stories are sturdy and bighearted and full of lives so shattered they shimmer." Ann Patchett describes The Free as "A portrait of American life that is so hard and so heartbreaking that it should be unbearable, but it isn't. The straightforward beauty of Vlautin's writing and the tender care he shows his characters turns a story of struggle into indispensable reading."

 

Vlautin's third novel, Lean on Pete, won the Oregon Book Award for Fiction in 2011, as well as the Readers' Choice Award. He also the author of the novels Northline and The Motel Life. Vlautin, who lives near Portland, is also a singer/songwriter and the founder of the band Richmond Fontaine and his new band, The Delines.

 

Peter Brown Hoffmeister's newest book is Graphic the Valley (Tyrus Books), "a vigorously original retelling of the Samson and Delilah story set in Yosemite,"  in which Tenaya must choose between his new relationship with Lucy and the Valley, terrorism and legend, and the sacred versus the material.

 

Hoffmeister is also the author of a memoir, The End of Boys, and the book Let Them Be Eaten by Bears: A Fearless Guide to Taking Our Kids into the Great Outdoors. His fiction collection Loss won a 2006 Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship. Hoffmeister teaches at South Eugene High School and is a writer, rock climber, public speaker, outdoor expert, and gear tester for Nike.

  

Tuesday, March 25th, 7 pm: Floyd Skloot 

Revertigo: An Off-Kilter Memoir (Terrace Books) is an intimate memoir that follows a loose chronological sequence from shortly before the author's thirteenth birthday to age sixty-five. The impetus for the book is an inexplicable attack of vertigo that struck Floyd Skloot in March of 2009 and ended 138 days later, as suddenly as it had begun.

 

Revertigo is Skloot's account of that increasingly vertiginous period, which prompts further musings on the forces of uncertainty, change, and displacement that have shaped him from childhood to late middle age, repeatedly knocking him awry, realigning his hopes and plans, even his perceptions. In this book, Skloot attempts to make sense of a life's phantasmagoric unpredictability.

 

Skloot, who splits his time between Portland and Chicago, is the recipient of many awards, including three Pushcart Prizes and the PEN USA Literary Award for Creative Nonfiction. He is the author of eighteen books and the father of Rebecca Skloot, author of  The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. The two Skloots co-edited  The Best American Science Writing 2011. In 2010, Poets & Writers named him among "50 of the Most Inspiring Authors in the World."

    

Who's Reading What?
This month we're featuring Karin Anna, our most recent Book Broad. Karin comes to us with decades of experience in the world of bookselling. Here's what she has to say about some of her recent favorites:

We all have authors whose books we read whenever they have something new. The following newish titles are from some of those must-read authors for me. 
 
I have recently read the concluding book in the MaddAddam Trilogy by Margaret Atwood, the outstanding novelist, poet, and essayist. Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, and MaddAddam are brilliant, dystopic, and darkly humorous. The series presents some possible consequences of genetic engineering (intended and unintended) on the world. An intriguing cast of characters and the resultant reconfiguring of a society propel the final novel through to its mysterious and dramatic conclusion. 
 
Richard Powers, winner of the National Book Award for The Echo Maker, has a new novel out: Orfeo. This book features a frustrated septuagenarian chemist who has spent his life as an avant-garde composer. Late in life, as he attempts to combine science and music, his experiments become the focus of a post 9/11 Joint Security Task Force. Like Orpheus, he descends into hell (on the run), seeking the turning points as he revisits people and places of his past. Powers has done the research necessary for this story and writes with great depth.

The Pure Gold Baby is the first novel in five years from Margaret Drabble, who writes about the lives of seemingly ordinary women. From early works like The Millstone to this newest title, her novels are internal landscapes, meditations on women in their time. The Pure Gold Baby, a book both gentle and fierce, is an observation by an unnamed narrator of the lives of a mother and her golden (though mentally impaired) child.   

Here and Now: Letters 2008-2011, presents the high-spirited letters between Paul Auster and J.M. Coetzee, a correspondence that began after their first meeting in 2008.  These are two master writers, one a Nobel Laureate from South Africa living in Australia, the other a bestselling author living in Brooklyn. Topics large and small are explored: family, films, books, sports. Their own works and writing processes are discussed. But most of all this is a correspondence of friendship, philosophy, and worldviews. 
   
We all know Kurt Vonnegut, a simple-seeming genius and unwavering teller of truths. In the newly published collection of his letters (Kurt Vonnegut: Letters, edited by Dan Wakefield) we see the whole man, the minor and the major aspects. The first letter (a must read!) is his letter home from Dresden in 1945 as a POW, the basis for Slaughterhouse-Five. Another extraordinary letter is one to the draft board on behalf of his son seeking C.O. status. Perfect.Vonnegut's work was a gift to us all. In this collection of letters we are able to see the whole person as he is living his life. 
  
I also loved these treasures by Portland authors:

The Plover by Brian Doyle (due in April). A character is plucked from Mink River and cast out to sea.

The Parable of You by Tony Wolk. A collection of wise and wondering short short stories.

Sea of Hooks by Lindsay Hill. A novel written in short, poetic bursts.   
New Art in the Store
Many of our customers have enjoyed the original art we always have hanging in the store. Some of it is for sale, and some is not. At the end of this month, we'll be changing it all up for a few months.

We are happy to be hosting a reception and art show on Sunday, March 30, from 1 pm to 5 pm. "Broadway Books Features Mt. Scott Studio Painters and Friends" will feature original work from many artists, and most of it will be for sale. We'll leave the show up for two months, but we encourage you to come to our reception to meet the artists!

Scheduled exhibitors are Kate Bennison, Mary Burke, Elizabeth Ereckson, Honnie Sorenson Freyer, Joan Gordon, Louise Gray, Pat Reser, Kerry Stevenson, Paula Wade, Nancy Walsh, Pati Waterfield, Cjantal Wyatt, and a few others.
Many of these artists have studied with the northwest treasure Bonnie Allen. Please come check out these new pieces of art -- perhaps you'll find one that's just right for your home!
New in Hardcover
The long-awaited new collection by Lorrie Moore, one of America's most beloved and admired short-story writers, has finally arrived! Here are people beset, burdened, and bouyed. Gimlet-eyed social observations, the public and private absurdities of American life, dramatic irony, and enduring half-cracked love wend their way through each of these narratives in a heartrending mash-up of the tragic and the laugh-out-loud.
The Museum of Extraordinary Things, Alice Hoffman
Mesmerizing and illuminating, Alice Hoffman's latest novel is the story of an electric and impassioned love between two vastly different souls in New York during the volatile first decades of the twentieth century.

Jodi Picoult says "As always, Alice Hoffman amazes me with her ability to use words the way other master artists use watercolors, painting the dreamlike world of a girl who grows up in a hall of wonders only to learn that something as ordinary as love is the greatest marvel of all."
The ninth and final novel in Armistead Maupin's classic Tales of the City series, The Days of Anna Madrigal, is the triumphant resolution to a sage of urban family life that has enchanted and enlightened readers around the world since 1976.

Now ninety-two and committed to the notion of "leaving like a lady," Mrs. Madrigal has seemingly found peace with her "logical family" in San Francisco. While some members of her family are bound for Burning Man, Anna has another destination in mind: A lonely stretch of road outside of Winnemucca where the sixteen-year-old boy she once was ran away from the whorehouse he called home.

Dept. of Speculation, Jenny Offill
This compact, thoughtful book is a portrait of a marriage. It is also a beguiling rumination on the mysteries of intimacy, trust, faith, knowledge, and the condition of universal shipwreck that unites us all.

With cool precision, in language that shimmers with rage and wit and fierce longing, Offill has crafted an exquisitely suspenseful love story that has the velocity of a train hurtling through the night at top speed.
The Martian, Andy Weir
Did "Gravity" win any Oscars? It's still up in the air (pun intended) as we write this newsletter. The Martian, a new space thriller, tells the story of astronaut Mark Watney. Six days ago he became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Then the return vehicle took off without him. Now he's sure he'll be the first person to die on Mars.

But Mark's not ready to quit. Armed with nothing but his ingenuity and his engineering skills -- and a gallows sense of humor that proves to be his greatest source of strength -- he embarks on a dogged quest to stay alive, and even hatching a mad plan to contact NASA back on Earth. Does he make it home? The Martian is an impossible-to-put-down suspense novel that manages to read like a real-life survival tale.
 
The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert 
Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us.

In The Sixth Extinction, two-time winner of the National Magazine Award and New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert draws on the work of scores of researchers in half a dozen disciplines, including geologists, botanists, and marine biologists, accompanying many of them into the field. Her stories provide a moving account of the disappearances occurring all around us, and they are firmly grounded in scientific research. Reviewers have called this book powerful, riveting, fascinating, frightening, epic, important, witty, and beautifully written. This is a book destined to become "one of the most important and defining books of our time."
 Is your book club looking for ideas for new books? We're always glad to brainstorm with you. And we're happy to let you know if books are readily available, and when they'll be out in paperback.
 
Contact Information
Roberta Dyer or Sally McPherson
Broadway Books
(503) 284-1726
[email protected]