“How fun is this book?!? Farm Anatomy is an informative and whimsical visual encyclopedia of all things farm: animals, machines, plants, recipes. Learn about hay baling, cheese making, and much more via Rothman’s charming step-by-step illustrations. A great coffee table book and conversation starter!”—Beth, Third Street Books, McMinnville, OR. Buy Farm Anatomy from Third Street Books.
I ended up working in a hospital by accident.
I attended not one minute of college. I had all kinds of jobs, several in warehouses or factories, but at a certain point I’d been unemployed for a while and decided to take the Civil Service Test, see where that might lead. I was offered a job at the Veterans Hospital. The VA in Portland is up on a hill, its buildings old and run-down. The hospital atmosphere was something new and strange to me.
I was squeamish about sickness and blood. When I soon ended up as the clerk in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit, I knew that the involuntary experience would be good for my writing. I had never seen anyone die.
The first one I remember was named Donald Davis. He had undergone brain surgery that I guess hadn’t worked. He was in a bed in a corner, soothing beeps and whooshes of respirators and monitors all around. It was maybe 10 o’clock at night. I touched his arm. He was DNR (Do Not Resuscitate), so there was no alarm. His head was bandaged almost in a kind of turban. His eyes were shut, a disconnected tube from the no longer needed respirator still taped in his slack mouth. He was at most 40 years old. (more…)
“You’ve bought rapina and shiitake mushrooms at the Broadway Farmer’s Market (p.100) or maybe potatoes and tomatoes (p. 74). Soon, eggplant and fresh beans (p. 128). Make your own paneer (it’s easy) and zucchini soup with ginger (p. 81) from Vancouver’s famed restaurant, home cooking. Delicious!” —Karen, Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle. Buy Vij’s at Home from Elliott Bay Book Company.
“This story begins as several others have: City girl meets country boy, falls in love, moves to country. Yet there is so much more to this tale. When Kristen travels to Pennsylvania to interview Mark for an article on organic farming, he is too busy to talk and puts her to work hoeing broccoli, followed by an evening slaughtering a pig. After two days of farm work in her expensive clothes, she finally gets her interview and discovers a healthy attraction to the dynamic farmer. Fast forward six months and the two move to Essex Farm, 500 acres near Lake Champlain, house in disrepair, fields and equipment much the same. The book covers the first year of their ambitious attempt to run a CSA, growing everything a community would need. Every Friday evening, their customers would arrive to pick up meat, eggs, milk, maple syrup, grains, flours, dried beans, herbs and 40 different kinds of vegetables. Though they’ve expanded, added a few employees and refined their farming, they remain committed to their all-encompassing approach. After six years, Kimball sums it up: “Cook things, eat them with other people. If you can tire your own bones while growing the beans so much the better for you.” I was exhausted just reading this book! Kimball does not romanticize farming, but the sheer scope of their endeavor and the discovery that it works is awe-inspiring and satisfying.”—Barb, Paulina Springs Books, with locations in Sisters and Redmond, OR. Buy The Dirty Life from Paulina Springs Books.
“Absurdity colors Joseph Heller’s writing. It’s fitting then, that his genius with words—the trait that makes him more interesting than the blurb on the back of a book—hides the fact that at life he was no genius. His famous friends and privileged lifestyle are dazzling to read about, but at least one of the author’s companions, absent of the knowledge or perspective of Heller’s achievements, finds him to be nothing more than a charming old man with funny friends. A worthy read for any Heller fan . . . And P.S. Tracy Daugherty, the author of this book, is an instructor at OSU.” – Joe, The UO Duck Store. Buy Just One Catch from your local indie.
Dropping words like “gadabout” and “pulchritude” to set the mood, Denis Johnson brings the daily grind and grit of early twentieth century life in rural Idaho into sharp focus in this miniature masterpiece. (more…)
“It doesn’t matter that Pluto has since been demoted to the status of a dwarf planet or that the outcome of the story is a foregone conclusion. Michael Byers has written an engaging story of discovery–a gentle but intriguing adventure set in the late 1920s and told from the perspective of the elderly Clyde Tombaugh (the real-life discoverer of Pluto) in a long narrative flashback where he reveals the story of the planet’s discovery.
Byers has created several story lines, including an amateur heavyweight in Boston who falls haplessly in love with a sweet but volatile woman who is convinced she has a horn growing out the back of her head; the heir to a chemical fortune who decides his life’s calling is to hunt dinosaur bones in the desert; and Alan Barber, a Harvard graduate of astronomy who capriciously names a newly discovered comet after a woman he hopes to marry.
But the storyline that draws the reader into the book is Tombaugh himself. A farm boy from Kansas with a passion for the stars, he grinds the glass pieces for his home-built telescopes in the family barn and dreams of someday going to college to study astronomy. In a desperate effort to get out of Kansas, Tombaugh sends a letter of inquiry to the folks at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona and lands himself a job doing the most tedious of scientific work.
In alternating chapters, Byers draws each of his eccentric characters to Arizona where the story of Planet X’s discovery unfolds with its own drama. I loved the detailed descriptions of discovery and setback in the search for the new planet and the unearthing of fossilized dinosaur bones. It’s an interesting juxtaposition that in the late 1920s dinosaur bones and planets were both the focus of scientific inquiry. But, it’s Clyde’s story that truly makes this book work. I loved the richly drawn characters and the way Byers pulled his multiple storylines together. Definitely put this book on your reading list.” —Wendee, Queen Anne Books, Seattle. Buy Percival’s Planet from Queen Anne Books.
Carl Adamshick, a poet in Portland, won the prestigous Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets for his first book, Curses and Wishes, which was published earlier this year. His poems are spare, quietly intense, and quite moving, perhaps in part because they lack bombast. In a way his work resembles Raymond Carver’s – simple and very effective.
Listen as Oregon Poet Laureate Paulann Peterson ‘covers’ Adamshick’s poem “Work Dream” here.
John W. Marshall of Open Books interviewed Adamshick over email.
I love that in your mercifully spare acknowledgments to Curses and Wishes you include: “For the books: Charles Seluzicki.” Thank you, Carl, from all of us in the trade for acknowledging a bookseller! What books did he put in your hands? How did they influence your writing and your reading? What (any genre) are you reading now? Charlie has a way of putting whatever book I ask for in my hands. He’s a master. I’ve come to call him the sage of the page. Reading influences writing just like writing influences writing. You just get enthralled with a book, or a sentence and it makes you think and you like that sensitive, expansive thinking. Then you want to sing with the singers. As for genres, I don’t think in terms of schools, groups, camps or movements. It makes no difference. I try not to define anything. In the end, those definitions are limiting. They limit the experience of knowing that individuals have let something come forth from their deep need to express what it is to live, and that they do that for you, for us.
“For lovers of Scandinavian noir mysteries, The Keeper of Lost Causes will introduce you to a great new character, and to the darker side of modern Denmark. Copenhagen homicide detective Carl Morck was one of the best until a bullet almost ended his life. Morck recovers from his wound, but not from the guilt of seeing two of his colleagues die while he was unable to draw his own gun. Returning to the force, Morck receives an unexpected promotion – to lead a new division called Department Q, a special investigation unit that will reexamine the coldest of cold cases. Morck soon discovers that he leads a department of one, with a depressing office in the basement that clearly says “out to pasture” on the door. No one is more surprised than he when a five-year old case of a missing politician catcheshis interest. His colleagues upstairs may be laughing about his new assignment, but Carl is sure he can solve the case, and maybe redeem himself in the process.”—Kristine, The Snow Goose, Stanwood, WA. Buy The Keeper of Lost Causes from your local indie.
“Here’s a seasonal kid’s book that you will still get a kick out of even after the season is over. I have had no trouble selling the heck out of it, because it’s a treasure and priced at only $9.95. Joy Sikorski and now Nick Sunday have partnered to bring this gem to us just in time for All Hallows Eve. But don’t expect anything really scary: I mean, the book is for kids age Five and Up (!) and for adults like me who have never grown up and are fond of a cat named Little Man . . . Happy Halloween!”—Jan, University Book Store. Seattle. Buy How to Draw a Happy Witch and 99 Things that Go BUMP in the Night from University Book Store.
