Anthony Doerr Luncheon

Next up for our Ravenna Luncheon Series, we welcome Anthony Doerr, author of The Shell Collector and the dazzling new novel, All the Light We Cannot See.  Michael, Erin J., and Emily A. all had the chance to read advance copies of the book and they can't stop raving.  The book itself won't be released until May 6th, but Michael has said multiple times that he can't wait to be able to sell it to people.  And their excitement in contagious.  Here's what Emily has to say about it:

I'm absolutely enchanted by this book. The imagery is so vivid, the characters so human, their circumstances so perfectly rendered - I wanted to wallow in the gorgeous prose and bathe in the words. 2014 is a great year for fiction so far, but since I read an advance copy last summer, this book has ruined me for all other books. Dare I say I liked it more than The Goldfinch?

Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure's reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum's most valuable and dangerous jewel. 

In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure's converge. 

Doerr's "stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors" ("San Francisco Chronicle") are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, "All the Light We Cannot See" is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer "whose sentences never fail to thrill" ("Los Angeles Times").

And check out the video below to learn more about the novel and the inspiration behind it.



Anthony Doerr will be at our Ravenna location on Friday, May 9th, at 1:00 PM. The luncheon series takes place in the warm and inviting Third Place Pub. The Pub provides a private, intimate setting for authors to read, speak, and answer questions from a small audience limited to about 40 people. It's a wonderful alternative to the larger format readings that many authors and readers are traditionally used to.

A ticket is required in order to attend. Tickets are $40 and include a copy of the book, as well as a delicious lunch provided by Vios. Seating is limited for this exciting event. Call the Ravenna location for more information and ticket purchases. 206-525-2347.

Bookseller Spotlight

Wendy

Wendy has been with Third Place, in her words, "since before the dawn of time." Or 16 years.  You'll find Wendy out at Lake Forest Park working hard coordinating all the great events at both locations and buying all those adorable sidelines and gifts.  She's into Crossfit, really, really into it.  And she's got two adorable chihuahuas named Mimi and Harriet.  She was once obsessed with Elvis Presley...but who hasn't been?

"I was obsessed with Elvis Presley my 8th grade year, only listened to Elvis music and only watched Elvis movies, documentaries and made for TV movies. I used to have a gold poofy cover Elvis book that cost $30 (a ton of dough at the time) that I kept in my locker and would only let my friends look at it if they washed their hands. I miss that book."

How long have you been a bookseller? I got my first job as a bookseller in Everett Washington at a small store called Port Gardner Bay books when I was 21...so that long.

What's your favorite section in the store? Fiction.

What book do you recommend most? The one I have a chance at selling is Confederacy of Dunces, you're a dunce if you haven't read it. The one I WISH I could sell more of, The Ice Trilogy.

Favorite bookstore, besides Third Place?  I really like Elliot Bay's new digs. And there was a super cute store in Palmer, AK that I loved (editor's note: I think she means this one).

What are you reading now? Uhhhh...textbooks and really poorly scanned pages from books provided by my professors. I'm in school. 

Can you read more than one book at a time? Yes, but only fluff books.

Do you have to finish a book once you've started, or do you give up on books? I give a book 30-50 pages, if it hasn't grabbed me I let it go. There are waaay too many books I'm NOT reading to spend more time with a book I don't like.

A book you regret not reading sooner or a book you regret never having read. There are a lot, in high school my English teacher ONLY assigned Steinbeck...and maybe a little Shakespeare. I love Steinbeck, don't get me wrong...but I wasn't introduced to the broader world of literature until I started working at bookstores. I really wish someone would have introduced me to Daniil Kharms, Joan Didion and Balzac.

Favorite author, or three, or five. Daniil Kharms, Joan Didion, Edith Wharton, Balzac!!!

Least favorite author. Norman Mailer.

Do you have an all-time favorite book? Count of Monte Cristo AND The Confederacy of Dunces

Guilty reading pleasure. Vampire novels...so embarrassing but NOT Twilight..puhlease.

Do you keep books? I only keep 50 books in my house, if I start to get over the limit, I purge. I DO have multiple copies of The Confederacy of Dunces and Daniil Kharm's book Today I Wrote Nothing, to give away.  Borrow them? No. Lend them? I give books away, I don't want them back...see 50 book rule.

How are your bookshelves arranged at home? Size.

Do you judge books by their covers? Yes, of course.

Favorite book as a kid. Little Women, I still have my original copy!

Have you read Ulysses? No, and I won't.

Wendy didn't mention a book she's read lately and loved, mostly because she's working hard in school AND at work AND at Crossfit.  So I'm going to mention a book she convinced me to read which I loved.

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

In 1951 John Wyndham published his novel The Day of the Triffids to moderate acclaim. Fifty-two years later, this horrifying story is a science fiction classic, touted by The Times (London) as having “all the reality of a vividly realized nightmare.” 

Bill Masen, bandages over his wounded eyes, misses the most spectacular meteorite shower England has ever seen. Removing his bandages the next morning, he finds masses of sightless people wandering the city. He soon meets Josella, another lucky person who has retained her sight, and together they leave the city, aware that the safe, familiar world they knew a mere twenty-four hours before is gone forever. 

But to survive in this post-apocalyptic world, one must survive the Triffids, strange plants that years before began appearing all over the world. The Triffids can grow to over seven feet tall, pull their roots from the ground to walk, and kill a man with one quick lash of their poisonous stingers. With society in shambles, they are now poised to prey on humankind. Wyndham chillingly anticipates bio-warfare and mass destruction, fifty years before their realization, in this prescient account of Cold War paranoia.

2014 Philip K. Dick Awards

Annie, our new Sci Fi and Fantasy Section Head at Lake Forest Park has got the scoop on this year's Philip K. Dick Awards...

The 2014 Philip K. Dick Award winner was announced on Friday right here in SeaTac at Norwescon.  It's no surprise that Countdown City by Ben Winters won. It's his second book about a world-ending asteroid and a detective who refuses to stop solving murders. Genre-bending and full of chaos and mystery, Winters fully deserves this accolade and any others that come his way. Self-Reference Engine by Toh EnJoe also won a special citation during the ceremony.

Many of Dick's novels and short stories were fueled by his own addictions and paranormal experiences. His twin sister died at only six weeks old, but continued to influence his life and writing until Dick himself passed away from a stroke at the age of 53. Despite his struggles Dick is considered one of the greatest science fiction writers and left behind 44 novels and roughly 121 short stories that other authors, directors, and musicians still draw on today for inspiration. The PKD Award was first awarded in 1983, the year after Dick passed away. The first author to win was Rudy Rucker with his novel Software. 

The 2014 other hopefuls were:

A Calculated Life by Anne Charnock
The Mad Scientist's Daughter by Cassandra Rose Clarke
Self-Reference Engine by Toh EnJoe, translated by Terry Gallagher
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
Life on the Preservation by Jack Skillingstead
Solaris Rising 2: The New Solaris Book of Science Fiction edited by Ian Whates

These nominees proved to be stiff competition, the best the science fiction world has to offer. They explore everything from dystopia to madness to an asteroid on its way to smash into Earth. Full of rich language and fascinating characters, each of these wonderful books is absolutely worth reading.

Countdown City: The second book in the Detective Hank Palace series follows this intriguing character as he continues his work of tracking down criminals - while wading through chaos caused by an apocalyptic asteroid headed straight for Earth. With three months left before the world is torn to pieces, Palace is hired by a powerful business man to track down his errant son. The case gets murkier the deeper Palace digs. 

Self-Reference Engine: This is perhaps the most surreal book of the bunch. Written in vignettes, EnJoe instructs his readers to read each chapter in order - because it's not a novel, novella, or a collection of short stories. This is Self-Reference ENGINE. Cracking the cover is the only way to find out exactly what EnJoe means.

Ancillary Justice: Leckie takes the artificial intelligence trope and turns it upside
down and inside out with this lovely space opera. Breq, formerly a massive AI warship controlling thousands of corpse soldiers, is stuck on an ice planet trapped inside one remaining delicate human body. Determined to avenge the treachery that landed her in such a position, she single-handedly searches for the warship AI that betrayed her

-Annie

I DID IT!: A Personal Account of How it Feels to Win the Pulitzer Prize...Sort Of

I love the Pulitzer Prizes.  I mean really, really love them; especially the prize for fiction. It's my favorite literary prize.  Ami thinks it's weird to have a favorite literary prize.  But I don't care, I do have a favorite, and it's this one.

One of the only book-related things I love more than the fiction Pulitzer (at least currently) is Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch.  It's possible I've mentioned this a time or two (still waiting on that commission check).  Actually, Goldfinch is in my top four all-time favorite books. These are the books I know I will always love, no matter what happens in my life or how my reading tastes change; these books will always be special.  It might seem weird to have a top four; why four, why not five?  Because it's my list and that's just how elite and magical the list is.

I love The Goldfinch so much that when I finished it, I couldn't find anything else to read, so I just read it again. It's the kind of book that destroys any aspirations I've ever had of being a writer because I could not possibly write anything that spectacular.  Love isn't a strong enough word for how I feel.  I'm a little insane for The Goldfinch.

Given these feelings, of course I wanted it to win the Pulitzer.  But I didn't really think it would.  As much as I love the award, I have never predicted the winner.  I've never even read the winner before it's been announced...

UNTIL THIS YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I could not be more pleased!  Just look at how happy I am! On the day the prizes were announced I marched around the store all afternoon chanting, "GOLDFINCH, GOLDFINCH!"  It's as if my favorite sports team finally won a championship.  You Seahawks fans get me, right?  And I feel weirdly vindicated over some of the more nasty reviews (I'm looking at you Francine Prose).  It's like I won the prize, even though I did nothing but read it, and love it, and recommend it to customers, and then buy many, many copies to give to friends and family (seriously, Donna, did that check get lost in the mail?).

So why does it matter to me?  

It's funny, but there is a unique vulnerability in being a bookseller.  Books aren't just our job, books are a fundamental part of our lives.  I challenge you to find a bookseller anywhere who doesn't consider reading to be their passion, or at least their favorite hobby.  Sometimes the book we're recommending means a lot to us; sometimes it's on our Super-Awesome, Mega-Elite, Best Books Ever List; sometimes the book we're recommending has changed our life.  And that's a pretty personal thing.  We're not just trying to sell you any old book, we're handing you something important to us, hoping it will be important to you too.  

So when I recommend a book I love to someone, and they don't love it back...heartbreak! One of my favorite customers did not love The Goldfinch, and I was honestly a little devastated.  But if I recommend a book I love and they love it too, it feels great. And when something like this happens, when a book I love so fiercely is honored with a big award; well, that feels a little magical.  But it's not unlike the feeling I get when you buy a book I think you'll like, and when you come back and tell me how much it meant to you. I guess, in some strange way, that's why I feel this Pulitzer win so deeply.

Of course, now I face a dilemma.  Usually my mid-April reading is decided by the prize announcement (except in 2012 when there was no fiction winner, and I spiraled into a Pulitzer-induced depression).  What do I read now?  I suppose I could dip into the older winners I haven't read yet.  I was thinking maybe the 1919 winner The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington or maybe I should finally read The Age of Innocence... 

Oh, who am I kidding, I'm just going to read The Goldfinch again.

Posted by Erin B.

2014 Pulitzer Prize Winners

Announced today... here are the Pulitzer winners for 2014!

  Fiction

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Biography

Margaret Fuller: A New American Life by Megan Marshall

History

The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832 by Alan Taylor

Poetry

3 Sections by Vijay Seshadri

General Nonfiction

Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation by Dan Fagin 

April Theme Tables

If you haven't been to the Lake Forest Park store this month, you haven't seen our beautiful new displays.  On the Tree Table, we're featuring books set in Seattle. You might be surprised at just how many books take place here.  Very fun.  Here are just a few of the books you'll find on the table.  Pick one up today and read about your city!

Black Hole by Charles Burns

The setting: suburban Seattle, the mid-1970s. We learn from the outset that a strange plague has descended upon the area’s teenagers, transmitted by sexual contact. The disease is manifested in any number of ways — from the hideously grotesque to the subtle (and concealable) — but once you’ve got it, that’s it. There’s no turning back.

As we inhabit the heads of several key characters — some kids who have it, some who don’t, some who are about to get it — what unfolds isn’t the expected battle to fight the plague, or bring heightened awareness to it , or even to treat it. What we become witness to instead is a fascinating and eerie portrait of the nature of high school alienation itself — the savagery, the cruelty, the relentless anxiety and ennui, the longing for escape.

And then the murders start.

As hypnotically beautiful as it is horrifying, Black Hole transcends its genre by deftly exploring a specific American cultural moment in flux and the kids who are caught in it- back when it wasn’t exactly cool to be a hippie anymore, but Bowie was still just a little too weird. To say nothing of sprouting horns and molting your skin…


Gemini by Carol Cassella

Dr. Charlotte Reese works in the intensive care unit of
Seattle's Beacon Hospital, tending to patients with the most life-threatening illnesses and injuries. Her job is to battle death--to monitor erratic heartbeats, worry over low oxygen levels, defend against infection and demise. 

One night a Jane Doe is transferred to her care from a rural hospital on the Olympic Peninsula. This unidentified patient remains unconscious, the victim of a hit and run. As Charlotte and her team struggle to stabilize her, the police search for the driver who fled the scene.

As Charlotte finds herself making increasingly complicated medical decisions that will tie her forever to Jane's fate, her usual professional distance evaporates. She's plagued by questions: Who is Jane Doe? Why will no one claim her? Who should decide her fate if she doesn't regain consciousness--and when? Perhaps most troubling, Charlotte wonders if a life locked in a coma is a life worth living.

Enlisting the help of her boyfriend, Eric, a science journalist, Charlotte impulsively sets out to uncover Jane Doe's past. But the closer they get to the truth, the more their relationship is put to the test. It is only when they open their hearts to their own feelings toward each other--and toward life itself--that Charlotte and Eric will unlock Jane Doe's shocking secret, and prepare themselves for a miracle. Filled with intricate medical detail and set in the breathtaking Pacific Northwest, Gemini is a riveting and heartbreaking novel of moral complexity and emotional depth.

Larry Get Lost in Seattle by John Skewes

Larry Gets Lost in Seattle is an interactive, highly visual children’s story about a young boy (Pete) who goes to Seattle with his family and is temporarily separated from his cute little dog, Larry, while sightseeing. In his search for Pete, Larry encounters many Seattle landmarks and cultural attractions before the two are reunited.

This month, the Small Table is dedicated to authors from Africa.  It's a big continent, and there are a lot of great authors, too many to fit on this little table.  Take a look at this gorgeous poster for many more.

All Our Names by Dinaw Mengestu

From acclaimed author Dinaw Mengestu, comes an unforgettable love story about a searing affair between an American woman and an African man in 1970s America and an unflinching novel about the fragmentation of lives that straddle countries and histories. 

All Our Names is the story of two young men who come of age during an African revolution, drawn from the safe confines of the university campus into the intensifying clamor of the streets outside. But as the line between idealism and violence becomes increasingly blurred, the friends are driven apart—one into the deepest peril, as the movement gathers inexorable force, and the other into the safety of exile in the American Midwest. There, pretending to be an exchange student, he falls in love with a social worker and settles into small-town life. Yet this idyll is inescapably darkened by the secrets of his past: the acts he committed and the work he left unfinished. Most of all, he is haunted by the beloved friend he left behind, the charismatic leader who first guided him to revolution and then sacrificed everything to ensure his freedom. 

Elegiac, blazing with insights about the physical and emotional geographies that circumscribe our lives, All Our Names is a marvel of vision and tonal command. Writing within the grand tradition of Naipul, Greene, and Achebe, Mengestu gives us a political novel that is also a transfixing portrait of love and grace, of self-determination and the names we are given and the names we earn. 

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

One of The New York Times's Ten Best Books of the Year and an NBCC Award Finalist An NPR "Great Reads" Book, a Chicago Tribune Best Book, a Washington Post Notable Book, a Seattle Times Best Book, an Entertainment Weekly Top Fiction Book, a Newsday Top 10 Book, and a Goodreads Best of the Year pick. 

A powerful, tender story of race and identity by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun. 

Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Fifteen years later, they reunite in a newly democratic Nigeria, and reignite their passion—for each other and for their homeland.

National Poetry Month

Among other things, like Financial Literacy Month, School Library Month, and my favorite, National Multiple Birth Awareness Month, April is also National Poetry Month.  National Poetry Month was founded by the Academy of American Poets in 1996 as a way to celebrate the impact poetry has had on our society and culture.

In honor of Poetry Month, and this being a bookstore blog and all, check out this great piece on some of the best "book spine poetry" on the internet.  Maybe you should try your own!

At Third Place Books, we celebrate National Poetry Month with 20 percent off all poetry titles for the entire month (both locations).  It's a great time to pick up a few verses from your favorite poet, or maybe try someone new.  Here are a some suggestions:

Jimmy's Blues and Other Poems by James Baldwin

I just read and fell in love with Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin, so when this new volume of his poetry came into the store, I snatched it up for my Poetry Month reading.  It's wonderful.

During his lifetime (1924–1987), James Baldwin authored seven novels, as well as several plays and essay collections, which were published to wide-spread praise. These books, among them Notes of a Native Son, The Fire Next Time, Giovanni’s Room, and Go Tell It on the Mountain, brought him well-deserved acclaim as a public intellectual and admiration as a writer. However, Baldwin’s earliest writing was in poetic form, and Baldwin considered himself a poet throughout his lifetime. Nonetheless, his single book of poetry, Jimmy’s Blues, never achieved the popularity of his novels and nonfiction, and is the one and only book to fall out of print. 

This new collection presents James Baldwin the poet, including all nineteen poems from Jimmy’s Blues, as well as all the poems from a limited-edition volume called Gypsy, of which only 325 copies were ever printed and which was in production at the time of his death. Known for his relentless honesty and startlingly prophetic insights on issues of race, gender, class, and poverty, Baldwin is just as enlightening and bold in his poetry as in his famous novels and essays. The poems range from the extended dramatic narratives of “Staggerlee wonders” and “Gypsy” to the lyrical beauty of “Some days,” which has been set to music and interpreted by such acclaimed artists as Audra McDonald. Nikky Finney’s introductory essay reveals the importance, relevance, and rich rewards of these little-known works. Baldwin’s many devotees will find much to celebrate in these pages.

Incarnadine : Poems by Mary Syzbist

Or maybe you might be interested in this year's National Book Award winner for poetry.

The troubadours knew 
how to burn themselves through,
how to make themselves shrines to their own longing.
The spectacular was never behind them. 
 -from “The Troubadours etc.” 

In Incarnadine, Mary Szybist restlessly seeks out places where meaning might take on new color. One poem is presented as a diagrammed sentence. Another is an abecedarium made of lines of dialogue spoken by girls overheard while assembling a puzzle. Several poems arrive as a series of Annunciations, while others purport to give an update on Mary, who must finish the dishes before she will open herself to God. One poem appears on the page as spokes radiating from a wheel, or as a sunburst, or as the cycle around which all times and all tenses are alive in this moment. Szybist’s formal innovations are matched by her musical lines, by her poetry’s insistence on singing as a lure toward the unknowable. Inside these poems is a deep yearning—for love, motherhood, the will to see things as they are and to speak. Beautiful and inventive, Incarnadine is the new collection by one of America’s most ambitious poets.

Walter Kirn Luncheon

We are getting excited to welcome author Walter Kirn next week for the latest in our Ravenna Luncheon Series.  The author of Up in the Air and Lost in the Meritocracy, Kirn will be here to talk about his new book Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery and a Masquerade.  The book is Kirn's account of his 15-year relationship with a man who turned out to be an impostor, a con-man, a sociopath, and ultimately a murderer.  Join us Wednesday, April 9th at 1PM.  Tickets required!

The memoir is getting rave reviews, including this one from The New York Times.  Also from The New York Times, is this piece featuring Mr. Kirn interviewing himself.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Check it out, it's pretty great.

Robert read Blood Will Out a few months ago and really enjoyed it.  Here's what he has to say:

What a ride! Besides being an incredibly gripping story about a bizarre con-man, this book is a fascinating look inside the mind of a writer. Kirn's own culpability about being duped and what that says about writers and the human psyche is the real engine that drives this book. Highly recommended!

The luncheon series takes place in the warm and inviting Third Place Pub. The Pub provides a private, intimate setting for authors to read, speak, and answer questions from a small audience limited to about 40 people. It's a wonderful alternative to the larger format readings that many authors and readers are traditionally used to.

A ticket is required in order to attend. Tickets are $40 and include a copy of the book, as well as a delicious lunch provided by Vios. Seating is limited for this exciting event.  Call the Ravenna location for more information and ticket purchases.  206-525-2347.