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?

Our Hours:

Monday - Saturday
10 am to 7 pm;
Sunday
Noon to 5 pm
Open 24/7 on our  website!

We're proud
to be your
bookstore.

Thank you for supporting local businesses!


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).


New in Paperback
Broadway Books
A Great Little Store with Great Big Service
August 2014 Newsletter
 
 

Although it seems to be "back to school" time at many stores around town, we here at BB are still basking in the glorious days of summer. In fact, this time of year in Portland tends to offer the most glorious days of summer. And that means wonderful weather for reading good books in a warm shady spot with your favorite cold beverage.

We have something for everyone to read, whatever your age, favorite genre, or inclination.  We're taking it a little easy on our number of readings this month, in light of August travels, but not on the quality: we have three great events lined up.

Next month we'll be thinking about school. For now, we're squeezing in as much summer reading as possible. We hope you are, too.  

Roberta Dyer and Sally McPherson
Broadway Books
1714 NE Broadway, Portland, OR 97232
(503) 284-1726
bookbroads@qwestoffice.net
July Readings
Tuesday, August 12, 7 pm: Brian Benson
Join us tonight for a presentation by the author of Going Somewhere: A Bicycle Journey across America (published by Plume Books/Penguin). Portland author Brian Benson grew up in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. At a point in his life when he had a million vague life plans but zero sense of direction, he met a self-possessed young woman with a daydream of bicycling across the United States. Soon they embarked on a ride from northern Wisconsin to Somewhere West, infatuated with the promise of adventure and each other.

Going Somewhere tells the story of their cross-country adventure, a journey that eventually landed them in Portland. Mile by mile, they dealt with merciless winds and brutal heat, broken bikes and bodies, and each other - and the looming question of what comes next. Told in a voice that is "as hilarious as it is wise" (Cheryl Strayed), Going Somewhere is a candid tale of the struggle to move forward.

Currently teaching writing through Write Around Portland and the Attic Institute, Brian has, over the years, built rock walls in northern Michigan, played jazz guitar in western Guatemala, edited a magazine for bohemian travelers, served egg rolls to Madisonian suburbanites, taught Spanish to five-year-olds and English to fifty-year-olds, and taught people how to fix tiny bikes for tiny children.
 
Tuesday, August 19, 7 pm: Woodshop Writers 
Broadway Books is pleased to welcome the local writing collective known as The Oregon Woodshop Writers to present their new anthology, Why in the Road: Forgive, Forget, Regrets.

This anthology includes humorous and emotional personal essays, poems, and short fiction. Contributing authors in this year's anthology are Corky Bentwood, Jaimie Caulley, Kathy Eaton, Dave King, Shirley Lewton, Susan MacMillan, Catherine Magdalena, Kerry McPherson, Mark Robben, and June Selis.

All of the writers are students of Nancy Woods, who will also be reading tonight from her newest book.

Thursday, August 21, 7 pm: Chris Leslie-Hynan
First-timenovelist Chris Leslie-Hynan will be here tonight to present his book, Ride Around Shining (published by HarperCollins).

All stories about sports in America are stories about race and class. In this dazzling and provocative debut novel, the author discusses the most overlooked theme of the nation's sports pages.

In the tradition of The Great Gatsby, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and Shakespeare's Othello, this story is narrated by Jess, a nobody from nowhere with a master's degree and a gig delivering takeout. Jess tells a few lies to get a job as a chauffeur for an up-and-coming Trail Blazer named Calyph West and his young wife, Antonia. Antonia is white and Calyph is black, and Jess becomes fascinated by all that they are that he is not. In striving to make himself indispensable to them, he causes Calyph to have a season-ending knee injury, then brings about the couple's estrangement, before positioning himself at last as their perverse savior.

Ride Around Shining attempts to say the unsayable about white fixation on black culture, particularly black athletic culture --  something so common in everyday life it has gone all but unaddressed.

Chris Leslie-Hynan is originally from Wisconsin and received his MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 2008. He lives in Portland.
New Artwork
We are pleased to be showcasing new artwork in the store by local paper artist Laurie Ann Greenberg. Laurie is an artist, stylist, and entrepreneur who loves color, texture, shapes, and cutting paper. She creates work that is minimal, colorful, three dimensional, and somewhat whimsical.

Her most recent paper collection is inspired by the beauty and grace of the feminine. Each piece is one of a kind, hand cut, matted, and framed by Laurie. She uses only quality color paper that is acid free and UV protected. She cuts and layers each image using up to ten or more layers of different colors. The single black and white image in this collection is one piece of paper fixed over plexiglass, then matted and framed. She developed this style of paper cutting through hours of cutting, blood, sweat, and a few tears.

Her studio (and home) is located in NE Portland's Sullivan's Gulch.  You can learn more about the artist and her work at https://www.etsy.com/shop/LaBoutiques. All of her artwork on display at the store is available for purchase.
New in Hardcover
A New York Times bestselling author  returns with a white-knuckle tale of polar exploration and survival in the Gilded Age. In the late nineteenth century, people were obsessed by one of the last unmapped areas of the globe: the North Pole.

James Gordon Bennett, the eccentric and stupendously wealthy owner of The New York Herald, had recently captured the world's attention by dispatching Henry Morton Stanley to Africa to find Dr. David Livingstone. Now he was keen to re-create that sensation on an even more epic scale. So he funded an official U.S. naval expedition to reach the Pole, choosing as its captain a young officer named George Washington De Long, who had gained fame for a rescue operation off the coast of Greenland. De Long led a team of thirty-two men deep into uncharted Arctic waters, carrying the aspirations of a young country burning to become a world power.

Two years later, the men found themselves marooned a thousand miles north of Siberia with only a few meager supplies. Thus began their long march across the endless ice -- a frozen hell in the most lonesome corner of the world. Facing everything from snow blindness and polar bears to ferocious storms and frosty labyrinths, the expedition battled madness and starvation as they desperately strove for survival. This true story offers twists and turns worthy of the best thrillers. (This book will be available August 5th.)

Ben Macintyre is the author of one of our favorite books, Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal, which he followed up with Operation Mincemeat and  Double Cross: The True Story of D-Day Spies.

Continuing on this theme of spies and betrayal, Macintyre has written a book about Kim Philby, probably the greatest spy in history, and certainly the most well-known. Philby was a brilliant and charming man who rose to head Britain's counterintelligence against the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War -- while he was secretly working for the enemy. The stunning truth of his betrayal had devastating consequences on the two men who thought they knew him best, and on the intelligence services he left crippled in his wake.

Told with heart-pounding suspense and keen psychological insight, and based on personal papers and never-before-seen British intelligence files, this book of narrative nonfiction is Macintyre's best book yet -- quite an accomplishment considering the high bar set by his previous books.
The Hundred-Year House, by Rebecca Makkai 
Building on the success of her debut novel, The Borrower, Rebecca Makkai's new novel is "a funny, sad, and delightful romp through the beginning, middle, and end of an artists' colony."  The Hundred-Year House unfolds a generational saga in reverse, leading the reader back in time on a literary scavenger hunt.

The house in question served as the Laurelfield Arts Colony from the 1920s to the 1950s, where once resided poet Edwin Parfitt. Doug Devohrs is an out-of-work academic whose only hope of a future position is securing a book deal for his work on a biography of Parfitt. But when Doug begins to poke around the colony's records he finds them fiercely guarded, raising questions about what secrets the house may be hiding.

Charming, clever, funny, and suspenseful, The Hundred-Year House explores the complexities of ambition, sexism, violence, creativity, and love.
California, by Edan Lepucki
 In her debut novel, California, Edan Lepucki conjures a vision of the future that is frighteningly realistic and deeply disturbing.

The world Cal and Frida have always known is gone, and they've left the crumbling city of Los Angeles far behind them. They now live in a shack in the wilderness, working side-by-side to make their days tolerable in the face of hardship and isolation. Mourning a past they can't reclaim, they seek solace in each other. But the tentative existence they've built for themselves is thrown into doubt when Frida learns she's pregnant.

Terrified of the unknown and unsure of their ability to raise a child alone, Cal and Frida set out for the nearest settlement, a guarded and paranoid community with dark secrets. These people can offer them security, but Cal and Frida soon realize this community poses dangers of its own. In an unfamiliar world, where everything and everyone can be perceived as a threat, the couple must quickly decide whom to trust.

The novel's success has been bolstered by endorsements from  Stephen Colbert and Sherman Alexie, the latter calling it "an earnest page turner." Lepucki says of herself "I have a darker imagination than most people. If you don't ponder the end of the world on a regular basis, I don't think you're really human."

The Stories of Jane Gardam, by Jane Gardam
 Short story collections in hardcover can be a tough sell, unless the author's name is Alice Munro. But this newly published collection has the merit to pull it off.

Jane Gardam is the author of the delightful Old Filth trilogy of novels. Gardam is the only author to have twice been awarded the Costa (formerly Whitbread) Award for Best Novel. She has been a finalist for a Booker Prize, the Orange Prize, and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize. NPR's Maureen Corrigan describes Gardam as "the best British writer you've never heard of."

The stories in this collection, which span the entirety of her long career, showcase Gardam's keen grasp of human emotions and her confident and dazzling command of language and dialogue.
 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
bookbroads@qwestoffice.net