Setptember 13, 2007
|  |  | phone: 541-754-7668 address: 227 SW 2nd Street, Corvallis, OR
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| | Your Chance to Vote on a National Book Award
| | | | | The Quills Awards program celebrates the best books of the year in nineteen categories, ranging from general fiction to biography to graphic novels to cookbooks. It has the distinction of being the only televised literary prize. The voting proceeds in several phases, and the final phase belongs to YOU. In the first phase, a selection committee nominates 5 candidates in each of the 19 categories. Then, over 6,000 invited booksellers and librarians vote for the category winners. Finally, each of the 19 category winners is a candidate for Book of the Year. That's where YOU come in. It's easy to cast your vote for Book of the year. Visit the voting site: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19589213/ It lists all thirteen contenders, and you just click your choice. If you want to explore further, and see a list of the 5 nominees in each of the 19 categories, visit: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19051684/ This year's awards show will be aired on Oct. 22. (If you're a fan, you might want to know that Stephen Cobert is one of the presenters.) | | | ^ back to Table of Contents | |
| Five Good Books
| | | | The Stuff of Thought
Pontoon: A Novel of Lake Wobegon
The City of Dreaming Books
Let 'Er Buck: A Story of the Passing of the Old West
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
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Steven Pinker
Bestselling Harvard psychology professor Pinker ( The Blank Slate) investigates what the words we use tell us about the way we think. Language, he concludes, reflects our innate brain structure, and he addresses "how a mind that evolved to think about rocks and plants and enemies can invent physics and math." As in all his writings, he translates his advanced ideas about evolutionary psychology into real-world examples. Hardcover, $29.95
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA), ISBN-13: 9780670063277
| | | | | | Pontoon: A Novel of Lake Wobegon Garrison Keillor
In this novel (Keillor's first Wobegon fiction since Lake Wobegon Summer 1956 was published in 2001), we meet Evelyn, a good church-going Lutheran and devoted mother with a dying wish: a cremation at the center of Lake Wobegon. This puts her family at odds with a millionaire determined to have a lake wedding. But as Garrison Keillor's fans know, the winds blow strangely on Lake Wobegon, and plans run awry. Hardcover, $25.95
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA), ISBN-13: 9780670063567
| | | | | | The City of Dreaming Books Walter Moers
German author and cartoonist Moers ( 13 1⁄2 Lives of Captain Bluebear ) returns to the mythical lost continent of Zamonia in his third fantasy adventure to be translated into English. In this imaginative and zany story, Optimus Yarnspinner finds himself marooned in the subterranean world of Bookholm, the City of Dreaming Books, where reading can be dangerous and ruthless Bookhunters fight to the death. Hardcover, $00.00
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA); ISBN-13: 9781585679751
| | | | | | Let 'Er Buck: A Story of the Passing of the Old West Charles Wellington
Let `Er Buck, an account of the Pendleton Round-Up, was first published in 1921 to educate the "effete, lily-livered youths" of America about the values of an "honorable physical contest" - the rodeo. Out of print for over eighty years, it has at last been reprinted in this stunning reproduction, entirely faithful to Furlong's original, beautifully photographed outdoor epic. Hardcover, $25.00
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA); ISBN-13: 9781585679751
| | | | | | The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Junot Diaz
This highly original first novel (Diaz's first published work was the collection of short stores, Drown) has been described as Mario Vargas Llosa meets "Star Trek" meets David Foster Wallace meets Kanye West. It is a funny, street-smart tale of a second-generation Dominican geek and about the myths of our New World. Set in New Jersey, and haunted by the vision of Trujillo's brutal reign over the Dominican Republic, the novel is a rousing hymn about the struggle to defy hard history with ordinary, and extraordinary, love. Hardcover, $24.95
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA); ISBN-13: 9781594489587
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| Featured for Young Readers
| | | | | Foundling (Monster Blood Tattoo, Book 1)D.M. CornishThe Monster Blood Tattoo trilogy is a world of predatory monsters, chemical potions and surgically altered people. The story follows an orphan named Rossamend Bookchild as he ventures out into the Half-Continent, a society where humans wage an unending battle against the shadowy monsters. During his journey from boy to man, Rossamend has his share of adventures, encounters a variety of colorful characters, and learns that the world is more complex and perilous than he was raised to believe. With an extensive glossary and pages of maps, diagrams, and character portraits, Cornish's world-building novel has an intricacy reminiscent of J. R. R. Tolkien. Hardcover, $18.99
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group; ISBN-13: 9780399246388 To learn more about the world of Half-Continent, visit: www.monsterbloodtattoo.com
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| Music
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*Vic Chesnutt $15.95
This poetic iconoclast sings in a vulnerable, wavery voice, usually accompanied by conservative acoustic instrumentation. Chesnutt's lyrics are very carefully constructed to surprise the listener with unexpected combinations and a mastery of the English language.
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Ani Difranco $19.95
Canon is a double-disc retrospective. There are also five new songs from this confrontational, cutting edge folkie.
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Ann Wilson 17.95
This solo album from Heart's lead singer features Ann's strong voice singing songs mostly drawn from the '60s and '70s The surprise is that many of the arrangements of these familiar songs owe more to acoustic folk than to stadium rock. Guests include Alison Krauss, Shawn Colvin and Elton John.
| Voodoo Love Inna Champeta Land Colombiafrica $16.95
Here's a new twist to Afro-Latin music: combining pan-African musicians (from Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea and the Democratic Republic of Congo) with their brothers from the Colombian coast. It's a fusion that seems perfectly natural and delightfully funky. Contributors include Rigo Star and Justo Valdez.
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Taraf de Haidouks $16.95
This is true gypsy music (and the fourth album) from a Romanian ensemble. Their lively music was featured in the documentary Latcho Drom.
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| Remembering Madeleine L'Engle
| | | | | Editor's note: Our customer survey showed that you were interested in reading author biographies. We thought you might enjoy learning more about this wonderful writer. Madeleine L’Engle (A Wrinkle in Time), an author whose childhood fables, meditations, and fanciful science fiction transcended genre and generation, died on last Thursday in Litchfield, Conn. She was 88. Her works, which included poetry, plays, autobiography and books on prayer, were all deeply personal. But it was in her vivid children’s characters that readers most clearly glimpsed her passionate search for answers to the questions that mattered most. She sometimes spoke of her writing as if she were taking dictation from her subconscious. L'Engle wrote her first story at the age of five, and started keeping a journal when she was eight. These early literary attempts did not translate into success at the New York City private school where she was enrolled. A shy, clumsy child, she was branded as stupid by some of her teachers. Unable to please them, she retreated into her own world of books and writing. L'Engle attended Smith College from 1937 to 1941. Her first book, The Small Rain, was published in 1945. She married actor Hugh Franklin in 1946. In 1952 the family moved to a 200-year-old farmhouse in rural Connecticut. To replace Franklin's lost acting income, they purchased and operated a small general store while L'Engle continued with her writing. It was during a 10-week cross-country camping trip that L'Engle first had the idea for A Wrinkle in Time. She completed the book in 1960, but more than two dozen publishers rejected the story before Farrar, Straus and Giroux finally published it in 1962. It proved to be her masterpiece, winning the John Newbery Medal as the best children’s book of 1963 and selling, so far, eight million copies. It is now in its 69th printing. In her Newbery Medal acceptance speech, she said, "A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe." “Wrinkle” has been one of the most banned books in the United States, accused by religious conservatives of offering an inaccurate portrayal of God and nurturing in the young an unholy belief in myth and fantasy. When asked in a 2001 interview with the New York Times what she thought of these accusations, she replied, “It seems people are willing to damn the book without reading it. First I felt horror, then anger, and finally I said, ‘Ah, the hell with it.’ It’s great publicity, really.” You can learn more about Madeleine L'Engle by visiting her web site: Visit www.madeleinelengle.com | | | | ^ back to Table of Contents | |
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