Summer Reading on Display

Courtney fills you in on both of our theme tables dedicated to summer reading:

If you are prone to sun rashes like me, summer is the best time of the year to stay indoors. There's nothing I enjoy more than a beautiful sunny day spent avoiding the heat and the plethora of bugs, from the comfort of my cave troll like apartment. Better yet, there's nothing better than spending a whole summer reading. And...getting rewarded for it!

For grades k-12 you can pick up one of our Summer Passports to Reading at any Third Place Books location and receive a stamp in your passport for every book you read. And if the excitement and joy of reading isn't enough of a reward, every two stamps earns a new prize. One of which, is a delicious cookie or treat from our restaurant partners. Much like Scooby-Doo, Cookies are my biggest incentive to do anything so I totally understand if this is more rewarding than say...reading about extraordinary places you've never been to or fantastical worlds you can only imagine! No judgement guys.

Completed passports will be entered into a drawing for a $50 Third Place Books gift certificate. You can complete and enter as many passports as you like!

If you don't know where to get started, our amazing children's department booksellers have put together a wonderful arrangement of books. From Roald Dahl's terrifying book about the big friendly giant, to a class hamster who stars in a hamster race, they have you covered. Want a book about a friendship between a girl and her unicorn? Got it. What about a story about two seventh graders venturing into a dangerous and magical forest in the middle of Portland, Oregon? Done and Done. How about a young witch teaming up with a clan of six inch high blue men in order to rescue her baby brother?? Absolutely. Read away young ones.

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And if you happen to be the type of person who does enjoy the outdoors well then gee whiz do I have some news for you!! This year marks the 100th birthday of the National Parks Service. A program older than Betty White by six years and ten years older than the Queen of England. If the National Park Service was a dog, it would be 413* human years old, that's 280 years older than Maggie, the World's oldest dog who died at 30 (133). 

You don't even have to go outside to celebrate the National Parks. Just check out our display table with all the rad books about National Parks instead! What a fabulous way to avoid sunburn. Read about the history of several pacific northwest parks, memoirs regarding experiences, a guide to backpacking the parks and make sure to check out The National Parks: An Illustrated History, and Terry Tempest Williams latest, The Hour of Land : A Personal Topography of America's National Parks, because they definitely count as visiting the parks.

Check out both of our theme tables at the Lake Forest Park Store for more Summer Reading!

-Courtney

*Super scientific dog years converter

Grieving Through Reading

Whether reeling from personal tragedy, or the public grief of senseless violence, these books examine the beauty of life and love, the profound sadness of loss, and the importance of elegy and remembrance. 

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

Meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family's Victorian home, a third-generation funeral home director, a high school English teacher, an icily distant parent, and a closeted homosexual. Through narrative that is alternately heartbreaking and fiercely funny, we are drawn into a daughter's complex yearning for her father. And yet, apart from assigned stints dusting caskets at the family-owned "fun home," as Alison and her brothers call it, the relationship achieves its most intimate expression through the shared code of books. When Alison comes out as homosexual herself in late adolescence, the denouement is swift, graphic -- and redemptive.

Gratitude by Oliver Sacks

My predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved. I have been given much and I have given something in return. Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure. 

-Oliver Sacks

The Guardians by Sarah Manguso

Harris was a man who "played music, wrote software, wrote music, learned to drive, went to college, went to bed with girls." In "The Guardians," Manguso grieves not for family or for a lover, but for a best friend. With startling humor and candor, she paints a portrait of a friendship between a man and a woman in all its unexpected detail and shows that love and grief do not always take the shapes we expect them to.

The Men We Reaped by Jessamyn Ward

"What I meant to say was this: You will always love him. He will always love you. Even though he is not here, he was here, and no one can change that. No one can take that away from you. If energy is neither created nor destroyed, and if your brother was here with his, his humor, his kindness, his hopes, doesn't this mean that what he was still exists somewhere, even if it's not here? Doesn't it? Because in order to get out of bed this morning, this is what I had to believe about my brother... But I didn't know how to say that." -Jesmyn Ward

The Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala

“A haunting chronicle of love and horrifying loss. . . . Memory, sorrow, and undying love.” -Abraham Verghese

“Stories of grief, like stories of love, are of permanent literary interest when done well. . . . Greatness reverberates from [Deraniyagala’s] simple and supple prose.” -The New York Times

“An amazing, beautiful book.” -Joan Didion

“Out of unimaginable loss comes an unimaginably powerful book. . . . I urge you to read Wave. You will not be the same person after you’ve finished.” -Will Schwalbe

“Beautiful and ravaging . . . faultless prose.”-Daily Herald

The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace by Jeff Hobbs

Part biography, part sociological expose on poverty, race, and education; all heart. Huge, huge heart. It's an honest portrayal of the life of an eager and vibrant young man. His family and friendships; trials, struggles, and successes; researched and uncovered by his college roommate and friend. And it clearly is the work of a friend, because the sense of loss and reverence in Hobbs' words is palpable.

Even knowing the inevitable end won't stop you from barreling through to the last page. A touching elegy and rumination on the senseless loss of our young men. It's a beautiful and essential book and it will break your heart. Read it. -Erin