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

Extended Holiday Hours:
Monday - Saturday 10 am to 9 pm; Sunday 10 am to 7 pm
(starts Nov 28th)

Always open 24/7 on our  website!

We're proud
to be your
bookstore.

Thank you for supporting local businesses!
Literary Awards!
There are some wonderful books on the short list for this year's National Book Awards.

Here is the short list for fiction (winners will be announced on Nov. 19):

Rabih Almaeddine,  An Unnecessary Woman
Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See
Phil Klay, Redeployment,
Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven
Marilynne Robinson, Lila

You can read about the finalists for the other categories at the NBA website.


Download the free Kobo app to read on your phone or tablet.


Multnomah County Library has announced its selection for the Everybody Reads program for 2015:
The Residue Years
by Mitchell S. Jackson, who was born and raised in Portland and currently lives in Brooklyn.


New in Paperback


It's hard to imagine that it's already time to start thinking about such things, but we hope you will love our carefully selected boxes of holiday greeting cards. Come in soon to take advantage of the best selection!
Broadway Books
A Great Little Store with Great Big Service
November 2014 Newsletter
 
 

And so the rains begin. It almost feels as if we jumped directly from summer to winter, with the briefest of falls. But no complaints here. We love reading, whether we're sitting outside in the sun or snuggled inside on a dark and rainy day.

As we mentioned last month, this is one of the most exciting seasons of the year for booksellers -- and thus for you, dear reader -- as every day brings us boxes of book deliciousness: novels, nonfiction, books of poetry, colorful children's books, all filling our tables and shelves to near bursting and awaiting your happy perusal.

We are excited (and frankly somewhat terrified) to be taking the reins as Roberta steps away from full-time ownership of the store; but not to worry, we won't let her step far. She will continue to play a big role in who we are and what we do, and you will continue to see her smiling face in the store.

We have lots of exciting events planned for you this month. Please join us when you can!

Best wishes to you.
Sally McPherson and Kim Bissell
Broadway Books
1714 NE Broadway, Portland, OR 97232
(503) 284-1726
bookbroads@qwestoffice.net
November Readings
Wednesday, November 5, 7 pm: Elizabeth Lopemen in conversation with Mary Rechner 
Elizabeth Lopeman is the author of the newly published short story collection, Trans Europe Express (Propeller Books). Across these six stories, Lopeman captures the expatriate experience like no other writer. Her characters experience art, work, love, and tragedy as richly strange and sometimes dangerous when carried over borders or translated across cultures. A collection of vivid images and fascinating characters, Trans Europe Express is a smart, exciting new chapter in the literary tradition of Americans searching Europe not only for experience but, ultimately, for identity.

For this event, Lopeman will be joined by Mary Rechner, author of the collection of stories Nine Simple Patterns for Complicated Women (Propeller Books), to discuss fiction, travel, and Lopeman's newly published debut collection.
Sunday, November 9, noon to 5 pm: Celebrating 23 Years of Roberta and Welcome to Kim! 
Please join us today to celebrate Roberta Dyer and Kim Bissell, as Roberta steps away from full-time ownership of Broadway Books and Kim joins us as our new co-
owner.

We'll have beverages and cupcakes and a photobooth and a memory book and all kinds of fun. And to thank you for your 23 years of supporting Broadway Books, we're offering you 23% off any purchase you make this day. We look forward to seeing you!

Monday November 10, 7 pm: Garth Stein 
We are thrilled to welcome Garth Stein, reading from his new novel A Sudden Light. 

This long-awaited novel from the author of the bestselling book The Art of Racing in the Rain is described as spellbounding and atmospheric, a touching and empathetic story of a son's discovery of long hidden secrets in his prominent Northwest family.  

 A Sudden Light is rich with unconventional characters, scenes of transcendent natural beauty, and unforgettable moments of emotional truth that reflect Stein's outsized capacity for empathy and keen understanding of human motivation.

Stein is also the author of the novels Raven Stole the Moon and How Even Broke His Head and Other Secrets and the children's picture book Enzo Races in the Rain.  
 
Wednesday, November 12, 7 pm: Molly Gloss 
One of our dear friends,  Portland author Molly Gloss -- who is a fourth-generation Oregonian -- returns to read from her new book Falling from Horses.

This newest novel from Oregon Book Award winning author Gloss takes Bud Frazer, the main character, from Harney County, Oregon, to the world of movie-making in Hollywood. This rich, coming of age novel extends the story of Martha and Henry Frazer, characters from Gloss's award winning novel The Hearts of Horses. Author Ursula K. LeGuin describes the new book as "a beautiful, moving novel, cut from the American heartwood."

Gloss is also the author of The Jump-Off Creek (winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award and the Oregon Book Award), The Dazzle of Day (winner of the PEN Center West fiction prize), and Wild Life (winner of the James Tiptree Jr. Award).

Tuesday, November 18, 7 pm: Nancy Woods
Portland author Nancy Woods, editor of The Hollywood Star News, joins us to read from her newly published book of essays, Under the Influence of Tall Trees. This book of short, quirky, personal essays focuses on work, family, home, and Pacific Northwest destinations and oddities.

Sometimes tender, sometimes cranky, Under the Influence of Tall Trees presents Wood's take on everything from the miracle of birth to her failure as a gardener. Along the way, she reveals herself as perhaps Portland's most warm-hearted curmudgeon. Original photographs, line drawings, and cartoons round out this book of essays, Wood's second collection.

Friday, November 21: Our Annual Holiday Catalog
Our annual Holiday Catalog hits the streets today. Many of you will find it delivered with today's Oregonian. If you don't get one, we'll have them at the store for you. This year's catalog is better than ever, providing tons of gift ideas for the upcoming holidays -- you'll probably even find several that you'll want for yourself! And look for our special one-time-use discount coupon on the back page.

Thursday, November 27: Happy Thanksgiving!
Broadway Books will be closed today When we re-open on the 28th, we'll expand our store hours for your shopping convenience. We'll be open from 10 am to 9 pm Monday through Saturday, and from 10 am to 7 pm on Sundays. And, as always, we're happy to giftwrap any of your purchases from our store, at no charge. 

Saturday, November 29, 10 am to 4 pm: Indies First Day and Small Business Saturday 
Last year Sherman Alexie challenged authors throughout the country to take this day to support their local independent bookstores, working at the store to hand-sell some of their favorite books.

This year we're excited to welcome Chelsea Cain, David Shafer, Brian Doyle, Karen Karbo, Brian Benson,Whitney Otto, Ben Parzybok, Natalie Serber, Liz Crain, and oodles more.

Last year this was the happening place to be, with authors talking books -- their own and their favorites -- and having a ton of fun. Please join us and our authors to support and celebrate your neighborhood independent bookstore and let us know that it's important to you that we stick around.

Thursday, December 4, 5 pm to 9 pm: Ladies Night Out on NE Broadway 
Join the merchants on the Broadway/Weidler corridor as we cheer in the holidays with specials sales and surprises at several of your favorite shops and restaurants. At Broadway Books we'll have a calendar sale on all 2015 calendars.

We'll have some beverages and treats to add to the festivities of your holiday shopping. And we'll have our new Holiday Catalog on hand as well. In the interest of fair play, gentlemen are also invited to join in the festivities.  
Booklights!
You've been asking, so we deliver! We're excited to bring to the store a new line of booklights, from the small and easily portable UltraThin ($9.99), to the brighter and more flexible XtraFlex2 ($16.99), to the Big Mama of them all, the HammerHead, with six LEDs ($19.99). We also have a booklight with rechargeable batteries that you can charge on your computer ($29.99). For reading in bed or on a plane or anywhere you need a little extra light, we've got a solution for you!
The Man Booker Prize
This year's winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction is The Narrow Road to the Deep North, by Richard Flanagan.Taking its title from one of the most famous books in Japanese literature, written by the great haiku poet Basho, Flanagan's novel has as its heart one of the most infamous episodes of Japanese history, the construction of the Thailand-Burma Death Railway in World War II.

Set both in 1943 in a Japanese POW camp on the Thai-Burma Death Railway and in contemporary Australia, this savagely beautiful novel tells a story of love, death, and family, while exploring the many forms of good and evil, war and truth, guilt and transcendence, as Australian surgeon Dorrigo Evans comes of age and prospers, only to discover all that he has lost. NPR said about the book that "Richard Flanagan has written a sort of Australian War and Peace."
New Nonfiction in Hardcover
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End,
Atul Gawande
From a medical perspective, we are a culture that tends to focus on cures, not comfort. In Being Mortal, bestselling author Gawande explores how our hypermedicalized culture is failing those at the end of their lives, and failing their families as well. Doctors, uncomfortable with discussing patients' fears and anxieties about death, fall back on false hopes and treatments that are actually shortening lives instead of improving them. And families go along in their attempts to do their best for their loved ones.

In his book, Gawande tells us stories of people who can show us how to have the hard conversations, to ensure that we never sacrifice what people care most about. Riveting, honest, and humane, Being Mortal shows how the ultimate goal is not a good death but a good life -- all the way to the very end.
Not That Kind of Girl, Lena Dunham
From the acclaimed creator, producer, and star of HBO's "Girls" comes a hilarious, wise, and fiercely candid collection of personal essays that establishes Lena Dunham as one of the most original young talents writing today.

In Not That Kind of Girl, Dunham illuminates the experiences that are part of making one's way in the word: falling in love, feeling alone, being ten pounds overweight despite eating only health food, having to prove yourself in a room full of men twice your age, finding true love, and, most of all, having the guts to believe that your story is one that deserves to be told. Exuberant, moving, and keenly observed, this collection is a series of dispatches from the frontlines of the struggle that is growing up.
From the author of the bestselling biography of Apple founder Steve Jobs comes a book that delves further back in time to explores the story of the people who created the computer and the internet, setting the stage for Jobs and the digital age.

Isaacson explores the talents that allowed certain inventors and entrepreneurs to turn their visionary ideas into disruptive realities, starting with Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's daughter, who pioneered computer programming in the 1840s. The book is also a narrative of how these people's ability to collaborate and master the art of teamwork made them even more creative.
New Fiction in Hardcover
Some Luck, by Jane Smiley 
Pulitzer-Prize-winner Jane Smiley returns with a powerful novel of a remarkable family over three transformative decades in America. Each chapter in Some Luck covers a single year, beginning in 1920 and going through the early 1950s, as the country stands on the edge of enormous social and economic change.

As the Langdons branch out from Iowa to both coasts, the personal and the historical merge seamlessly. Taking us through the cycles of births and deaths, passions and betrayals, Some Luck is the first part of a dazzling epic trilogy that will come to span a century in America.
 Nora Webster, by Colm Toibin
Set in Wexford, Ireland, Colm Toibin's eighth novel introduces the formidable, memorable, and deeply moving Nora Webster. Widowed in her forties, with four children and not enough money, Nora has lost the love of her life. She is drowning in her own sorrow and blind to the suffering of her young sons. When she begins to sing again, after decades, she finds solace, engagement, and a haven for herself. In Nora Webster, Toibin has created an iconic and engaging character who will be remembered for decades.

 The Handsome Man's De Luxe Cafe, by Alexander McCall Smith
Precious Ramotswe returns in the fifteenth installment of the enduring bestselling series The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. A kindhearted brother and sister have taken in a woman known only as "Mrs."-- a woman with no memory of her name or of how she came to Botswana. And so it's up to Precious Ramotswe and her new co-director, Grace Makutsi, to discover the woman's identity.

Meanwhile, motherhood proves to be no obstacle to Mma Makutsi's professional success. As she settles into her role as partner at the agency, she also launches a new enterprise of her own: The Handsome Man's De Luxe Cafe, a restaurant for Gaborone's most fashionable diners. As always, McCall Smith's vivid observations of small gestures and Botswanan customs and culture are incorporated seamlessly into his tales of his beloved characters.
New Cookbooks
Hmmm. I'm not sure whether to classify these books under fiction or nonfiction, because when it comes to my approach to cooking  (that being Sally), I am in agreement with the lines on one of our new greeting cards: I read recipes in the same way I read science fiction. I get to the end and think "Well that's never going to happen."

But many of you are actually real cooks, who like to cook and even to read cookbooks just for the enjoyment. Three hot new cookbooks have arrived in the store this month; we're sure you'll want to check them out. From the author of the bestselling cookbooks Plenty and Jerusalem, Yotam Ottolenghi, comes his latest book, Plenty More; from the well-loved Barefoot Contessa, Ina Garten, comes Make it Ahead; and from those well-known masters of the kitchen (say what?), Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein, comes The Portlandia Cookbook: Cook Like a Local. Your kitchen just won't be complete without this threesome.
The Best American Everything
Whatever your genre (well, almost), we've got a "Best American" anthology for you, hot off the press!

The series includes collections of essays, short stories, mysteries, poetry, sports writing, travel writing, science and nature, comics, and infographics (yes, infographics -- the series continues to evolve). We also have the latest anthologies of O'Henry Prize winners and Pushcart Prize winners -- something for everyone!
2015 Calendars are Here!
It's calendar time! We've got datebooks, page-a-days, and gorgeous wall calendars of all sizes.

Now is truly the best time to get your calendars, while the selection is at its best -- many of these calendars cannot be reordered if we run out. Where else can you get such beautiful art that changes every month at such a reasonable cost? Even if you keep your appointment schedule electronically, you still need a calendar -- or two or three -- in your life, don't you think?
 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
Sally McPherson or Kim Bissell
Broadway Books
(503) 284-1726
bookbroads@qwestoffice.net