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New Book of the Week
The Fighters: Americans in Combat in Afghanistan and Iraq
by C.J. Chivers
How do you tell the story of America's decade and half at war (during a time when much of America hardly felt like it was at war at all)? Chivers, the Pulitzer-winning New York Times correspondent and former Marine, chooses a grunts'-eye view, focusing on the lives of six soldiers, from enlisted corpsman to fighter pilot, who have fought through surges and drawdowns in wars whose purposes and strategies have only become more elusive over time. He gives full weight to the idealism, professionalism, and heroism of his subjects, and to their frustrations, mistakes, and tragedies. It's both a soldier's book and one of the most damning indictments of the Iraqi and Afghan wars you can imagine. —Tom
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Old Book of the Week
Suite Française
by Irene Nemirovsky
Sometimes a book takes the world by storm and, nearly as quickly, recedes from awareness. Buoyed in part by the drama of its writing and rediscovery (Nemirovsky wrote this fictional account of the French occupation as she was experiencing it herself, leaving it unfinished when she was sent to her death in the camps in 1942), it was one of the books of the year when it appeared in the U.S. in 2006, but I had hardly thought of it myself in recent years until a customer, for the first time in over a year, bought a copy last week. But what a book it is: beautiful and complex, full of human warmth and human pettiness and human evil (much of which is implicit, in the book's cruelly unfinished state). It's worth a second look. —Tom
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Kids' Book of the Week
Adrian Simcox Does NOT Have a Horse
by Marcy Campbell and Corinna Luyken
How could Adrian Simcox have a horse? He lives in town, in a tiny house, and horses are expensive! Chloe's sure that the red-headed dreamer in her class is telling lies, and she makes sure everyone knows it. As you might expect, she learns better, but what makes her illumination most believable are the gorgeous illustrations by Corinna Luyken (whom you may know from her wonderful Book of Mistakes), which make Adrian's imagination so vivid you'll believe in his horse too. (Age 2 to 5) —Tom
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Non-Book of the Week
Slow Loris T-Shirt #2!
Our second t-shirt of the month has arrived from Slow Loris: they call it Bear Lee, Afloat, and I'm told it's their most popular item. (It's adorable.) Get yours, in a variety of sizes, while they last!
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Link of the Week
Tom Clark, 1941-2018
I first encountered the poet Tom Clark via the greatest quickie sports biography of all-time, No Big Deal, by '70s flash phenom Mark "the Bird" Fidrych, in which Clark, the ghostwriter, managed to capture a lot of the Bird's wide-eyed weirdness. I soon learned that Clark was as much of a character as the Bird: a prolific poet, biographer, and baseball junkie, longtime poetry editor of the Paris Review, and the proprietor of a wonderful, engaged, and idiosyncratic blog, which he updated right up to his death this week at the hands of a Berkeley motorist. The SF Chronicle and an old colleague at the Paris Review have appreciations of a man who deserves to be encountered, and remembered.
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Link of the Week
Debbie Sarow
I don't mean to make this the obituary corner of the newsletter, but I also wanted to mention the passing of another important book-world figure you may not have known: Debbie Sarow, who owned the superb Mercer Street Books in lower Queen Anne, perhaps the neatest and most thoughtfully curated used-book store I've ever had the pleasure of browing in. The folks at the Seattle Review of Books have been professionally and personally connected to Mercer Street since they started, and they have a short note about Debbie, as well as two previous profiles that are worth revisiting.
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Cover Crop Quiz #109
A paperback first edition from 1978, very different from any other cover I've seen for this one, but perhaps guessable from the image.
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Last Week's Answer
Yes, all you bookish romantics, that was Nick Bantock's Griffin and Sabine, from 1991.
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New to Our 100 Club
So You Want to Talk About Race
by Ijeoma Oluo
(30 weeks to reach 100)
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Phinney Books
7405 Greenwood Ave. N
Seattle, WA 98103
206.297.2665
www.phinneybooks.com
info@phinneybooks.com
Facebook page
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Some news from us: we are opening a second store! (I can't quite believe I wrote that sentence, but it's true.) We had no plans to expand, but an opportunity arose that was too good for us to pass up: ever since Madison Park lost its bookstore in 2005, a lifelong resident of the neighborhood, Susan Moseley, has been trying to fill that void. She found a space and made a generous offer to help a store there get going, and we've decided to take her up on it. It's a tiny space, but it bears a remarkable resemblance to our current building, and it's in a wonderful location (right in the heart of Madison Park, a couple of blocks from the lake). The space needs a lot of work yet (for example, a floor), but we're going to do our best to have it open, in some form, in November. It's going to be called Madison Books, and it's going to be managed by our friend James Crossley, longtime bookseller at Island Books (and before that a colleague of Liz's at Bailey/Coy Books), whom we're delighted to have joining our team.
