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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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Our Hours:
Monday - Saturday
10 am to 7 pm;
Sunday
Noon to 5 pm
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We're proud
to be your
bookstore.
Thank you for supporting local businesses!
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Purchase tickets here for our evening with Jacqueline Winspear, reading from her new historical novel The Care and Management
of Lies.
Tuesday, July 15th
7 pm
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Download the free Kobo app to read on your phone or tablet. Or buy an e-reader from us. We have two new outstanding models: The Kobo Aura ($139.99) and the Kobo Aura HD ($169.99).
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Broadway Books
A Great Little Store with Great Big Service
June 2014 Newsletter
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June is, as they say, bustin' out all over! Time to be making a list and checking it twice:
1. Is there a dad in your life you can do a little something special for this month, like tell him you love him or bake him a cake or spend time with him or buy him a book? Note: he needn't be your dad, just a dad, or someone who has been dad-like, to you or someone you love.
2. Do you know someone who is graduating this month who deserves a "well-done" and "I'm so proud of you" pat on the back, or a little cash, or a fancy meal, or a book? It could be someone just finishing grade school, or high school, or college, or beauty school, or graduate school, or any school whatsoever.
3. Have you sorted out your summer reading? That is, the reading you will do just for you, just for fun, just because you can and just because you want to. Summer reading should not be a task but a choice, a vacation, and a pleasure.
4. Do you know a young or struggling student who hasn't yet discovered the exquisite joy of reading a great book? Can you think of something to give them? Perhaps a book that might be a perfect summer story, the gateway to a lifetime of good reading?
We'll stop at four things for your list this month. Do you need help with any of them? Who you gonna call?
Roberta Dyer and Sally McPherson
Broadway Books
1714 NE Broadway, Portland, OR 97232
(503) 284-1726
[email protected]
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Thursday, June 12, 7 pm: Tony Brasunas
Tony Brasunas, the author of Double Happiness: One Man's Tale of Love, Loss and Wonder on the Long Roads of China grew up on a commune in West Virginia.
He had never left the United States when he arrived in Guangzhou, China. Speaking just a little Chinese, Tony was thrown in front of thirty-seven ninth graders who wanted to learn English. Having never taught anything in his life, he was in way over his head. Trial and error in the classroom, trickery and generosity in the street markets, and conversations with new friends fueled a hunger to understand China and drew him deeper into his new community.
When the school year ended, Tony set off alone with a backpack across the Silk Road in the north and to ancient Tibet in the west. His rugged path brought friendship, danger, romance, and wild encounters with fate that transformed his basic understanding of right and wrong, beauty and love, suffering and happiness.
Tony's book is available in both paperback and hardcover versions.
Tuesday, June 17, 7 pm: Teaching with Heart
 Teaching with Heart: Poetry that Speaks to the Courage to Teach (Jossey-Bass/Wiley) is a book that asks the questions "How do teachers sustain their spirit and resolve in the classroom?" and "How do teachers keep committed and vital during the long stretch of the school year?"
Teaching is tough and demanding work. To do it well requires heart, fire, and courage.
In this new book, ninety teachers, educators and administrators have each identified a poem that matters to them and each wrote a commentary about how the poem taps into the joys, challenges, and struggles that define their work and identity as teachers.
The poems are from our most treasured poets, including Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Billy Collins, Maya Angelou, and Mary Oliver.
Three contributors to the book will be with us on June 17th: Maureen Geraghty, Leanne Grabel, and John Mayer. Ms. Geraghty has been teaching for more than twenty years. She is involved with the Oregon Writer's Project. Ms. Grabel has thirty years' experience as a poet and writer and eleven as a special education/language arts teacher. Mr. Mayer began his career as a preschool teacher in Washington, D.C. and currently teaches first and second grade at Catlin Gabel School.
Tuesday, June 24, Harold Johnson
 Harold Johnson will be here to read from his new book of poems, Citizenship, published by Many Voices Press.
Harold Johnson was born during the heart of The Great Depression into the small African-American community of Yakima, Washington where his family had resided since the late 1890s. He came to Portland to attend college and earned degrees from the University of Portland and Portland State.
During a long teaching career (English, art) in Portland he has been active in music, sports, visual arts, and writing. He has given many public readings of his poems and been published in numerous small journals and on-line. For two years he co-edited Fireweed: Poetry of Western Oregon. He has published two chapbooks. Citizenship is his first full-length volume of poetry. He is also the author of a novel, The Fort Showalter Blues, which is forthcoming in the next year.
Retired from teaching since 1995, Johnson is a between-wars veteran of the US Army where he served as a bandsman in the 62nd Army Band at Fort Bliss, Texas. He, his wife Anne, and son Miles are longtime residents of Portland's Irvington neighborhood.
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Broadway Books - the store that almost never closes - will be closed on Friday, July 4th. Please have a safe holiday weekend! We'll be back in the store bright and early (if you consider 10 am to be bright and early) on Saturday for our regular hours.
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Two Kudos and a Raspberry
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 The gorgeous window display Kate created for us this month honors two events. First, we applaud Oregon for doing the right thing and establishing marriage equality in the state. Second, we support the Hachette Book Group and their authors in their struggle to be treated fairly by Amazon.
Amazon is taking steps to make books by Hachette authors difficult or impossible to purchase through them, unless Hachette agrees to do business with Amazon at terms that no publisher can afford.
We proudly carry Hachette titles. All of the books in this window display are published by Hachette.
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Sports books, fishing books, fast-paced thrillers, big thick historical tomes - yes, we have all of those for Dad, in spades, as they say. In fact, we have a whole table of ideas. Here are some further ideas that might let you step out of the box a bit.
 The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food by Dan Barber.Based on ten years of surveying farming communities around the world, executive chef Barber's book offers a radical new way of thinking about food that will heal the land and taste good too. "The first plate," our traditional way of dining, centered on a large cut of meat with a few vegetables. The farm-to-table movement has championed "the second plate," where meat is from free-range animals and the vegetables are locally sourced - an improvement but still damaging to the planet. Barber proposes that we move to "the third plate," where good farming and good food intersect, a national cuisine that is as sustainable as it is delicious.  The Consolations of the Forest: Alone in a Cabin on the Siberian Taiga by Sylvain Tesson (translated by Linda Coverdale) In a Thoreauesque quest to find solace, French journalist Tesson exiles himself to a wooden cabin on Siberia's Lake Baikal, a full day's hike from any "neighbors." Alone with his thoughts and his books, along with a couple of dogs, Tesson records his impressions in the face of silence, his struggles in a hostile environment, his hopes, doubts, and moments of pure joy in communion with nature. Rich with observation, introspection, and the good humor necessary to laugh at his own folly, Tesson's memoir is about the ultimate freedom of owning your own time. The book won the French literary prize Le Prix Medicis. The Sea Inside by Philip Hoare
In colorful prose and lively line drawings, Hoare sets out to rediscover the sea and its islands, birds, and beasts. Brilliantly weaving together literary and natural history, Hoare starts at his home on the shores of Britain's Southampton Water and moves in ever-widening circles, exploring London, the Isle of Wright, the Azores, Sri Lanka, Tasmania, and New Zealand. Mark Kurlansky, author of Salt (among others), calls this book "everything you want from a book. It is unpredictable and amusing and informative and original, cavorting between biology, history, travel writing, and memoir..."  The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human by Noah Strycker
Drawing from personal experience, cutting-edge science, and colorful history, Strycker spins captivating stories about the birds in our midst and illuminates the startling intimate coexistence of birds and humans. As we learn more about the secrets of bird life, we are unlocking fascinating insights into memory, relationships, game theory, and the nature of intelligence itself. Between field seasons, Strycker lives in Eugene.  The Confabulist by Steven Galloway . From the author of the highly praised novel The Cellist of Sarajevo comes a new novel that uses the life and sudden death of magician Harry Houdini to create a brilliant tale of intrigue, love, and illusion.What is real and what is an illusion? Can you trust your memory to provide an accurate record of what has happened in your life? A cast of memorable characters spins around the magician's celebrity-driven life: from the Romanov family, soon to be assassinated, to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Spiritualists, to the heads of the Secret Service and Scotland Yard. Historically rich and cleverly told, The Confabulist is a novel about fame and ambition, magic and memory, reality and illusion, and the power of love.  To Rise Again at a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris
Described by author Steven King as not quite "the Catch-22 of dentistry, but it's sort of in that ballpark," Ferris's new novel tells the story of Paul O'Rourke - dentist extraordinaire, ambivalent New Yorker, avowed atheist, disaffected Red Sox fan, and connoisseur of the afternoon mochaccino. But he is also a man totally out of touch with modern life. One day someone begins to impersonate Paul online, building a website, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account in his name to promote a little-known ancient religion. What begins as an outrageous violation of privacy soon becomes something far more soul-frightening: the possibility that virtual "Paul" might be a better version of the man in the flesh. This dazzlingly inventive comic novel cuts to the very heart of modern existence: the meaning of life, the certainty of death, and the importance of good dental hygiene. |
 Returning to the nineteenth-century cowboy life he portrayed in Lonesome Dove, McMurtry tells the story of the closing of the American frontier through the travails of two of its most immortal figures: Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. The author traces their friendship from the town of Long Grass, Texas, to Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in Denver, then back to Texas and finally to Tombstone, Arizona, where the story culminates with the famed gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
As harsh and beautiful and brutal and captivating as the open range it depicts, The Last Kind Words Saloon shows the genius of one of our most original American writers.
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 Weaving together the stories of new characters with those of some familiar characters from Three Junes, Glass tells the story of a quest for an unknown father. Kit Noonan is an unemployed art historian with twins to help support and a mortgage to pay -- and a wife frustrated by his inertia. Raised by a strong-willed, secretive single mother, Kit has never known the identity of his father -- a mystery his wife insists he must solve to move forward.
And the Dark Sacred Night is an exquisitely memorable tale about the youthful choices that steer our destinies, the necessity of forgiveness, and the risks we take when we face down the shadows from our past.
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 In this shattering and iconic debut novel, Portland author Smith Henderson explores the complexities of freedom, community, grace, suspicion, and anarchy, brilliantly depicting our nation's disquieting and violent contradictions. Set in Montana, where Henderson was born and raised, the book tells the story of social worker Pete Snow, a nearly feral eleven-year-old boy, and the boy's profoundly disturbed survivalist father. Henderson is a Pushcart Prize winner and the recipient of a PEN Emerging Writers Award in fiction.
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Think Like a Freak, by Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner  With their trademark blend of captivating storytelling and unconventional analysis, the Freakonomics authors offer a blueprint for an entirely new way to solve problems, whether minor life issues or major global reforms.
As always, no topic is off-limits, ranging from business to philanthropy to sports to politics -- all with the goal of retraining your brain. You will learn to say "I don't know," to think like a child, to appreciate the upside of quitting, to persuade people who don't want to be persuaded, and more.
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Capital in the Twenty-First Century, by Thomas Piketty
 It's not often that an academic publisher hits the bestsellers list, and it's even rarer that a hard-core economics book appeals to the general population, so we think the editors at Harvard University Press must be tickled pink with the success of this book. Paul Krugman says this book "will be the most important economics book of the year - and maybe of the decade." Piketty masterfully explains the history of the accumulation and distribution of wealth over the past two centuries, uncovering economic and social patterns using data collected from twenty countries. From this, he postulates that we are well on our way to a period of extreme inequalities in wealth distribution in this century - inequalities that threaten to stir discontent and undermine democratic values. But economic trends are not acts of God. Political action has curbed dangerous inequalities in the past, he says, and may do so again. Thomas Piketty is Professor at the Paris School of Economics.
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 Nobody writes World War II espionage novels better than Alan Furst. His new one takes place in Paris in 1938. As the shadow of war darkens Europe, a brilliant and handsome Spaniard living in Paris is asked by the embassy of the Spanish Republic to help a clandestine agency supply weapons to the Republic's beleaguered army. This effort puts his life at risk in the battle against facism. Battling the secret agents of Franco and Hitler, Cristian Ferrar and an unlikely group of men and women (from arms traders to aristocrats) do their business in shady Paris nightclubs, New York City law firms, Istanbul brothels, and Polish dockyards. This is a spellbinding portrait of a continent marching into a nightmare - and the heroes and heroines who fought back against the darkness.
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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.
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