Powell's Books

“You know the fact that very small children make brilliant art and slightly bigger children, when they get slightly bigger, they can’t do it anymore?

Yes, it’s in part because they learn: this is how you draw a tree. This is how you draw a house. This is how you draw the sun. On the one hand, they want to please, and on the other, they fall prey to convention. What was unique and particular about the scrawls that they made or their bursts of color or whatever, slowly is normalized and the little pictures they draw become less interesting. And less interesting to them as well, which is why so many kids stop making art. Which means that the ones who don’t stop making art are pretty interesting because they’re holding onto something that others are losing, which is some sense that there is a way to convey experience that is outside convention, that isn’t a purely conventional expression.”

An excerpt from our interview with Claire Messud about her new book, The Woman Upstairs: http://powells.us/13zSRIS

“Despite modern sensitivities, experience tells me most sons are still birthed solely to be thrown into a lifelong cage fight with their fathers.

Blame it on nature if you will, this exercise in testosterone management, this cruel Darwinian doctrine impelling one generation of angry, imperfect males to give birth to another generation of angrier, even more imperfect males. Considering Oedipal tradition, I happen to believe all this happens to keep the entire globe from going up in flames on a biweekly basis. My father in particular — largely by fault of the modern day Sparta referred to by most Americans as Massachusetts — was never able to integrate his bellicose New England credos* into suburban Colorado, where he and my mother had decided to make their home. But me, on the other hand, that was another story. I was fair game. Even though I never competed in sports, the man had named me after a Patriots Running Back. For all that is sacred, I didn’t stand a chance.”

Read the rest of Samuel Sattin’s post on the Powells.com blog: http://powells.us/126i36W

*Roughly: fuck you for looking at anyone or anything without utter indignation.

“There are certain places that feel charged. Visiting them gives me an electrical surge, as if I have plugged in to some current. The headwaters of the Metolius River are like that. So is Short Sands Beach on the Oregon Coast. And the tunnels snaking beneath Edinburgh. And the Von Trier bar in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The horror section at the downtown Powell’s makes me feel the same way. I grew up in Central Oregon, but my grandparents lived in Portland, so every few months, we’d cram into the truck and growl over the mountains for a visit. We had no local bookstore — outside of the sad little Waldenbooks in the Bend River Mall — so the Powell’s visit took a lot of time and strategy. This was our literary haul for the next two months. We had to choose wisely.

For those who have never visited, the downtown Powell’s takes up a whole city block. A giant concrete split-level sarcophagus of books. There is a ghost that haunts the water fountain. An urn of cremated remains that moves from room to room, depending on space. The shelves spill books, used and new, and the aisles buzz with the kind of diversity you’ll only find at the DMV: dudes in suits and dudes in mud-caked cowboy boots, a woman with dreads and a woman with a tiara and a woman with bright blue hair. A carnival of wonders for a kid from the boonies.

We would push our way through the 10th and Burnside doors, and the smell of paper and ink and glue (and oftentimes patchouli) would result in a sensory overload. I would feel jittery and starved. I cut through the Blue Room (which I always thought of as English class, home to all of the serious lit-e-ra-ture) and slowly, slowly made my way through the Gold Room, where all the sci-fi and fantasy and thrillers and horror novels could be found.

The smell there — sort of mildewy earthworm meets mottled paper — is one of my favorite smells. I remember the horror aisle as shadow-soaked, far from any window. Over the next few hours, I would pull down books and read from them and build a dark tower of mass-market paperbacks, the greatest treasure of my childhood.”

Author Benjamin Percy is guest-blogging all week at Powells.com: http://powells.us/11QAmNa

“Don’t you know what that is? It’s spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want ― oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!” ― Mark Twain (http://powells.us/11I5mip)

7 Books That Changed Josh Hanagarne’s Life

I’d predict that 99 percent of the small talk in the staff elevator at my library involves the following question and its answers:

“Are you reading anything good?”

Most recently I asked this of a woman holding The Poisonwood Bible, which I adored.

“Yes!” she said, waving the book in front of me. “I’m almost done. This book has changed my life.”

Hearing that a book changed someone’s life is one of my greatest pleasures. I can’t think of a better compliment an author could hear. Unfortunately, my follow-up question doesn’t always yield a satisfying answer:

“How?” I said. Meaning, how did it change your life?

“Because it was amazing!” she said.

This is a pretty typical response, and I know I do it sometimes as well.

“Because it was just so good!”

“It was incredible!”

“I loved it!”

These are all great to hear, but none of them indicate any clues about how a life might have been changed, not that anyone owes me an explanation if I ask. Still, “This changed my life!” is pretty high praise and shouldn’t be interchangeable with “This book is really good!”

Now, I don’t go around watching everyone I talk to, so that I’ll be able to pounce from dark alleys, proclaiming, “I knew your life hadn’t changed!” And of course, every book you read changes your life, if only because you are now a slightly different person — the person who now has one more book kicking around in their brain.

But saying something “changed my life” really isn’t something I want to note casually. So, as someone who tries (and often fails) to heed Mark Twain’s admonitions about using the correct word, I’ve been trying to figure out if any books have actually changed my life, and how.

Find out which seven books ACTUALLY changed author Josh Hanagarne’s life on the Powells.com blog: http://powells.us/11CNsxp