May News
We love this time of year at the bookshop. Our buyers are going through Fall catalogs and we're all getting excited about this year's Fall lineup of new releases. The sun makes its first appearance in months. The Sunday market is hopping, and the shop is getting visitors from all over the country with tourist season picking up. Mother's Day, graduations, and summer vacations are fast approaching and we get to make the best displays for you! Below you'll find info on Indie Bookstore Day, Kevin's write-up highlighting Small Presses, and more book recommendations than you'll know what to do with!
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Independent Bookstore Day 2023
Saturday, April 29th
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Join us THIS Saturday, April 29th for Independent Bookstore Day! Like last year, participants will have 10 days to complete the challenge to visit all participating local independent bookstores in the city of Seattle for a 25% single-use discount at each store. Click HERE for more information.
Come celebrate indie bookstores and all that they contribute to the community!
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Kevin Paints a Terrifying Picture of a Future Without Small Publishers
The year is 2027. It has been a while, but you walk back into your favorite local bookshop. You remember the sound of tinkling bricks, a warm greeting from a friendly bookseller, and walls of colorful diverse titles. What you find now is something altogether different.
Where once there was a table of curated fiction with personalized staff recommendations, there are now only stacks of the Cormac McCarthy AI chat-bot’s nearly incomprehensible twelve volume hardcover novel. You browse the children’s section. There are only cheaply produced and lazily illustrated books by Mark Cuban, Kevin O’Leary, Lori Greiner, and all the other co-hosts of ABC’s Shark Tank. The bookseller behind the counter can barely muster a smile. Utterly defeated, they are there simply to direct you to the most recent book about Donald Trump by someone who profited one way or another from his time in office. There is no joy here. Everything reeks of a transparent cash grab for someone/something, but not for you, and certainly not for the disheveled bookseller in tattered rags behind the counter.
A year’s long effort to gobble up competition in the publishing industry has left us with only a few monopolistic publishing houses. We saw the strikes at Harper Collins. We watched the anti-trust hearings of Penguin Random House. We accepted the creeping rise of book costs. Now you ask yourself, “How did this happened?! Why didn’t I buy from small independent publishers when I had the chance?”
Publishers like: Pluto Press
With fabulously designed covers and leftist content from activists and longtime journalists, Pluto Press will teach you something new. A few of our current favorites are Practical Anarchism: A Guide for Daily Life by queer and trans author, Scott Branson, which blends philosophy and praxis, Radical Intimacy by Sophie K. Rosa presenting a new way of looking at personal relationships and the influence of capitalism and politics on them, and Transgender Marxism, a collection of essays which “explore the pressures, oppression and state persecution faced by trans people living in capitalist societies, their tenuous positions in the workplace and home, and give a powerful response to right-wing scaremongering against ‘gender ideology’.” What’s not to love?
Reaktion Books publishes fine histories on obscure topics by leading experts. Delve into the world of wigs with The Wig: A Hairbrained History, or the lure and mystery of werewolf mythology from ancient times to Twilight with Shapeshifters: A History, or Dinner in Rome: A History of the World in One Meal in which author Andreas Vistaed argues “food is history’s driving force” and explores “the origins of wheat and its role in Rome’s rise as well as downfall” and how “the fried artichoke antipasto… explain(s) olive oil’s part in the religious conflict of sixteenth century Europe.” If it exists, there is a good chance the nerds at Reaktion Books put out a history of it.
University of Minnesota Press is one of the leading publishers of indigenous voices. Bookseller Andrew endorses Making Love with the Land by Joshua Whitehead, who he says is “hands-down one of the greatest writers of our time.” He reads a lot and you should believe him. I read Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies by Michi Saagig Nishnaabeg writer and artist, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. It was unlike anything I have ever read in its poetic beauty and complexity. Writers should challenge us to consider new ways of thinking and being in the world, and the multiple chapters in Noopiming from the perspectives of geese in flight are some of the best examples I have come across of an author doing just that. I still can’t stop thinking about this stunning book.
Ask a bookseller to point out some of our small press titles next time you visit and do you part to delay our inevitable dystopian collapse.
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Coming in May...
(Click the titles for more information on our website)
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by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
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This book rocketed its way to the top of my all-time favorite books list. It is absolutely brilliant. It's not a new premise - death row inmates are offered a path to freedom by fighting other inmates to the death in a gladiator style arena - but Adjei-Brenyah has taken these games to new heights with his tortured characters, his footnotes that tether his not-so-unbelievable plot to real world issues in our mass incarceration system, and the shifting perspectives that provide a glimpse into the conflicted morality of the spectators. This is a redemption story like no other. It is a stunning, epic, and important book. I want this one to be on all the award lists this year. And yes, I do play favorites and I made the cover bigger because I loved it so much.
Recommended by Becky
Available May 2nd
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An unreliable narrator and master of deception navigates the end of summer in long island, leaving chaos in her wake. A dark, tense, and unputdownable new novel by Emma Cline, author of The Girls. Readers of literary thrillers won't want to miss this one!
Available May 16th
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You may know R.F. Kuang from her fantasy epic, Babel, or from The Poppy War Trilogy. But Kuang is breaking out of the fantasy genre for her newest book, focusing instead on the publishing world. When June Hayward witnesses the tragic accident that takes her literary rival, Athena Liu's life, she steals her manuscript and passes it off as her own. What lengths will June go to protect her secret? Propulsive and timely, this novel is bound to make waves.
Available May 16th
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Author, Jonathan Eig, has written the first comprehensive biography of Martin Luther King Jr. in decades - including information from recently declassified FBI files. It's a sweeping biography that has already received multiple starred reviews and dives into the personal and emotional life of the civil rights leader.
Available May 16th
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Any book Samantha Irby puts out is an auto-read for me, because I know I will be laughing at all of the marvelously relatable cringe encased within its contents. Quietly Hostile is, naturally, a hilarious and binge-able collection of essays, with enough unapologetic wit to give you rock-hard abs in no time from busting a gut as you read it. If you also frequently waver between being very anxious and very badass, you will delight in Irby's writing and way with words.
Recommended by Andrew
Available May 16th
$17.00 in paperback
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I first discovered Justin Cronin's work when I was working at Elliott Bay Book Company back in 2010 with the release of his book, The Passage. It was one of those books that was discussed at length among the staff - mostly arguing over whether it belonged in Horror or Fiction because it was one that defied genre. I read all three books in the trilogy and loved every one of them. Now, seven years since the release of his last book, Cronin is back with another eery genre-bender. We'll let you know when we decide which section it belongs in.
Reommended by Becky
Available May 2nd
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Sussman's last book, Funny You Should Ask, took us by surprise with it's immediate popularity. It jumped to our bestseller list within a couple weeks of hitting the shelves. If you're one of our avid romance reader customers, get ready for another fantastic romance for your TBR list, about a former pop star who's ex asks her to join him in a broadway show and sparks fly...
Available May 30th
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First there was The One and Only Ivan, a gorilla with an eye for painting. Then there was The One and Only Bob, a dog with some serious sass. Now there is The One and Only Ruby, the sweetest baby elephant ever to hit the page. These three found each other in the first book and have stayed together through all kinds of tragedies and adventure. These are perfect family read-aloud books.
For readers 8-12
Available May 2nd
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Jessixa Bagley is a beloved local author//illustrator, and this may be her best book yet. Set in Paris, and filled with stunning illustrations of the city, this little picture book about a street musician who is forced to adapt to a quickly changing world is absolutely sweet and a little bit heartbreaking. "Love, like a song, is always better when it's shared," and this book is obviously made and filled with love and we can't wait to share it with you.
Recommended by Mary
Available May 9th
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Staff recs coming in paperback this month... |
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by Ada Zhang
The world of Ada Zhang is wise and patient in its understanding of the human soul - how tender it is, how resilient and capacious. Each story arrives carrying the treasures of entire lives lived. Zhang's writing is transportive and timeless.
Available now!
Recommended by Lucy
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by Elif Batuman
The follow-up to Batuman's 2017 novel, "The Idiot" - we meet Selin again, now in her sophomore year at Harvard. It's a year of discovery and experimentation. Either/Or brings the same humor, self-awareness, and philosophical musings that made "The Idiot" one of my all-time favorite novels. It was everything I was hoping for and more!
Available May 23rd
Recommended by Becky
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by Mieko Kawakami
A vibrant and thoughtful novel with a focus on existentialism, the speed of light, and the paths we choose in life for comfort or happiness. Like the light, Fuyuko absorbs the inner workings and relations of the few people that orbit around her semi-reclusive lifestyle as a freelance copy-editor, in turn ruminating on the route she's taking in her own livelihood. Quiet, contemplative, and bittersweet.
Available May 23rd
Recommended by Andrew
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by Alice Elliott Dark
I thoroughly enjoyed immersing myself in the long lives of forever friends Agnes & Polly. This story magnifies the beauty of their neighboring homes on the coast of Maine. These 80-year-olds have weathered it all. The strong characters are feminists & environmentalists who sought to hold on to what & who mattered to each of them.
Available May 9th
Recommended by Mary
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We are open for browsing 11am-6pm on weekdays, and 11am-5pm on weekends
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