Karen's Recommends
$13.00
ISBN-13: 9781936365449
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: McSweeney's Books, 11/2011
Dream of Paris, dream of winter. Written after a fourteen year silence, these "dreams" (fiction? memory? koan?) are a delightful companionable and mysterious lot. Written in French, published in French and English.
$40.00
ISBN-13: 9781570616938
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Sasquatch Books, 10/2011
MOHAI Public Historian Lorraine McConaghy's fascinating look at Washington history draws from marriage records, posters, tickets, letters, pictures and much more. A sky River poster, Twin Teepees menu, a letter from a wartime assembly center. IWW songbook, CCC history...take a look.
$14.99
ISBN-13: 9780061934704
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Harper Perennial, 11/2011
Journalist Fariba Nawa emigrated from Afghanistan when she was a child, returning after 9-11 to document what has happened to her country. This account is her own but also includes significant historical detail. And she's one of only a few to link child brides to the narcotic state. Essential reading.
$15.99
ISBN-13: 9781416986898
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers, 8/2010
I could read this book 20 times with all the funny voices. Only haughty, naughty, children (and grown ups) will like this snarky tale. Not for the well-behaved. Really. No.
$35.00
ISBN-13: 9781553655725
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Douglas & McIntyre, 4/2011
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!
$14.95
ISBN-13: 9780307475275
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Vintage, 9/2011
NPR's Michele Norris' discoveries about her family prompted her to write this book (and ask others to share their own family stories). This prompted her six-word Racial Autobiographies Project online. Finding out what you don't know can enrich your life.
$14.00
ISBN-13: 9780767928892
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Broadway, 4/2010
After over a decade as pastry chef at Chez Panisse and his partner's sudden death, David Lebovitz moved to Paris. Starting over wasn't easy, but his travails provide plenty of material and that makes this book such a delight. He not only includes recipes for macaroons but also for carnitas because that's what you cook for your friends in Paris).
$15.00
ISBN-13: 9780374532864
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Farrar Straus Giroux, 4/2011
OK, you know who he is so you can just imagine who he admires, right? No, no, no, no. This book is not for the easily offended (or even not-so-easily offended). This is one man's twisted aesthetic and he’s proud of it. I’m mystified, offended, intrigued. You?
$24.95
ISBN-13: 9780295990842
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: University of Washington Press, 3/2011
How much do you know about your city? in the sixties, this was still a "sundown" area and the members of CORE worked across racial lines to end school segregation, job and housing discrimination, and get a cross-town bus (#48!). Their work is not finished. These four inspiring women were part of the movement.
$15.95
ISBN-13: 9781936070718
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Akashic Books, 3/2011
A mixed race child is left in a community filled with guns and white supremacists and even if her family loves her, will they protect her from the inevitable? Wingshooters
$40.00
ISBN-13: 9780811876926
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Chronicle Books, 10/2010
Guinea Pig Zero, Hey 4 Eyes, Broken Pencil, Bomp, Vacuum Boots—all zines that we read or maybe you wrote your own? DIY history, fully illustrated with notes and essays. See more zines at Zap! the Hugo House zine archives and check out our zine selection. Priceless and essential.
$19.95
ISBN-13: 9781604691245
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Timber Press (OR), 12/2010
Are you dreaming about gardens? Whether you have a little plot, a side yard or a balcony like me, use this handy guide to plan your herb and flower and veggie growing. Soil, composting and design are well explained. Bellamy also shows how to seed bomb that unsightly vacant lot. Get planting.
$25.95
ISBN-13: 9781594202841
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Penguin Press HC, The, 1/2011
There's been lots of talk about what's in this book, which blows open the myth of magic Asian genius and reveals the hard work and perhaps over-the-top determination behind it. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
$16.95
ISBN-13: 9781583227206
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Seven Stories Press, 5/2006
The holidays are not everyone's favorite time. If you're feeling left out, shut out, sad and like the world would be a better place without you (maybe), check out these 101 alternatives. Each essay is written with humor, love and snark for teens but non-teens will also find love and inspiration here.
$14.00
ISBN-13: 9780982636404
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Black Lawrence Press, 7/2010
Poet Larry Matsuda was born in Hunt, Idaho (which is short hand for Minidoka) and the consequences of this simple fact reverberate through this collection. I was so moved, reading these poems again and again, to myself and out loud. A part of history comes to life through the poet's artistry.
$30.00
ISBN-13: 9781439107959
Availability: Temporarily out. Orders usually back in stock in 1-5 days
Published: Scribner, 9/2010
This "biography" of cancer is a page turner and one of the best books I've read in years. So many advances were made by people who were way ahead of their time (and paid for it). If you or your family or friends have had cancer, or if you're a med student or grad student, this is a must read.
$22.00
ISBN-13: 9780374191924
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 9/2010
As you'd expect, Alan Bennett's own story is as captivating as any play he's ever written. You see the worst bits and all of the shortcomings—but that makes him more funny and real. And makes you wonder about your own life.
$14.95
ISBN-13: 9780547394565
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Mariner Books, 11/2010
A gay blue stater travels to Frisco, TX to check out Christmas as practiced in the other America: big box blow outs, designer decorating, synchronized over-the-top light extravaganzas...Check it out on YouTube as it's hard to believe. Also related to undocumented workers as these enterprises require many hands. Both jaw dropping and funny.
$15.00
ISBN-13: 9780812981223
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2/2011
A retired major and a shopkeeper bond over their love of literature ... but will they be able to fight off meddling friends and relatives? Love set in an English village filled with eccentrics. My idea of a great vacation read.
$22.95
ISBN-13: 9780393332575
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: W. W. Norton & Company, 9/2009
Love Soup + Farmer's market (Sunday, Broadway and Thomas) = score.
$22.00
ISBN-13: 9781400068494
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Random House, 8/2010
Scot Simon's love letter to his daughters (both adopted from China) celebrates the joy of international adoption without ignoring some of its tougher realities. He shares his own story and that of other families (adoptees, adoptive families, some birth parents) emphasizing that he is grateful for the daughters he and his wife so love. Charming.
$16.00
ISBN-13: 9780452287631
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Plume, 10/2006
Why gay marriage? Read all about it in Dan Savage's memoir, the Commitment. He’s not a saint—just a dad, partner to Terry and he writes a sex advice column. You’ll learn more from reading this than from a sheaf of policy statements. And he’s funny. TMI! I miss his mom.
$15.00
ISBN-13: 9780143117667
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Penguin (Non-Classics), 7/2010
"Extraordinary kids aren't born that way," writes veteran teacher and father-of-four Rafe Esquith. They become extraordinary because the adults have helped these kids realize their gifts. Not an easy task, and he learns as much from his failures as from his successes. Not preachy and not about perfection. A real gift.
$13.95
ISBN-13: 9780547336244
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Mariner Books, 4/2010
An author reads from his work at a bookstore and his mind wonders. And wanders. And you're not sure what's the story on the page and what's in his mind. If you've ever thought, "What's he thinking up there?" be prepared. Priceless.
$16.00
ISBN-13: 9781594485022
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Riverhead Trade, 3/2011
Spoon Fed
$13.95
ISBN-13: 9780393331400
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: W. W. Norton & Company, 4/2008
Martin Espada, poet/storyteller, his poems each hid a gem, a joke, a song, a political aside, a biography. One for Dennis Brutus, another for Pinochet (and his political kin), one for you.
$13.95
ISBN-13: 9780393338003
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: W. W. Norton & Company, 12/2009
Unconventional as always. Unsparing of herself and others. Expansive ideas of family and fidelity. Editor and author of many books, Diana Athill (b. 1917) writes about what we don't discuss: our changing bodies and preoccupations and our full lives. Brilliant.
$14.99
ISBN-13: 9780061670923
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Harper Perennial, 1/2011
Terry Castle's witty, soul-bearing, and frequently hilarious tales of academe (in the 70s for naive lesbians), fame (as a sometime appendage to Susan Sontag... until she wasn't), the "woman-identified" 80s, and travel with an aged parent are captivating, essential reading.
$15.00
ISBN-13: 9780312430009
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Picador, 1/2011
Sometimes the simplest ideas are the most brilliant. If you've ever taken a plane flight or gone into a skyscraper, a checklist helped keep you alive. Now checklists might help you survive a surgery. Atul Gawande is a master storyteller. This book read like a thriller!
$14.95
ISBN-13: 9781564784919
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Dalkey Archive Press, 6/2009
The allure of that other, hidden place (first discovered between the pages of a very strange book) is what entices a traveler to embark on a surreal journey. Yes, it is Prague, but which Prague and when? We're left to wonder, enchanted.
$25.00
ISBN-13: 9781580089814
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Ten Speed Press, 9/2009
Cold, tired and hungry? It's time for Japanese Hot Pots . Food from all over Japan—I like Hiroshima Oyster Hot Pot (with or without noodles), and Salmon Hot Pot from Hokkaido. Begins with an illustrated ingredients guide but nearly everything here is easy to find and easy to cook. Dig in.
$16.00
ISBN-13: 9780977857685
Availability: Temporarily out. Orders usually back in stock in 1-5 days
Published: Archipelago Books, 7/2009
This could be a book about childhood or about old age or about what childhood and old age have in common. Also about sport or craft, and how each can invade your mind and body. These stories spread out like the roots of a tree and then you're back at the plant.
$14.99
ISBN-13: 9781401210984
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Vertigo, 6/2009
A young newspaper reporter, black but passing for white, unravels a series of secrets in a small Southern town in this gripping graphic novel. Some things can be said best through pictures.
$21.95
ISBN-13: 9780679600473
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Modern Library, 2/1993
What kind of city do you want to live in? Jane Jacobs helped save some of the best parts of New York City and helped us realize that progress can be defined as restoring and preserving varied streetscapes and walkable neighborhoods. This book spells out what we know intuitively: combine the old with the new. And it tells us why. Essential reading.
$14.00
ISBN-13: 9780312428471
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Picador, 7/2009
How Fiction Works
$15.95
ISBN-13: 9780393334760
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: W. W. Norton & Company, 8/2009
For the Anglophiles and the relatives, a shocking, funny, and very entertaining study of our friends across the pond. Often jawdropping and I had to keep asking my friends "is this true?" Well, you couldn't make this stuff up.
$8.99
ISBN-13: 9780316040105
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 10/2010
A healer's daughter, orphaned and in the clutches of an evil stepmother is haunted by a ghostly visitor in this retelling of Cinderella. Not normally my kind of thing but I was spellbound!! A gread read for young adults and for older folks too. True love comes in all stripes.
$14.00
ISBN-13: 9780312427801
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Picador, 2/2009
A young single mother goes to work for a professor whose short term memory resets every day in this beautiful, bittersweet novel. This is a story of friendship and of love (including the love of baseball), a dreamy little novel.
$16.00
ISBN-13: 9781594484575
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Riverhead Trade, 4/2010
Is it possible to resist Mark Kurlansky's enthusiasm for food, for history, or for life? No. Here he edits and comments upon Depression-era food writing for the WPA. Washington state school lunches? An innovation! Discover tacos, menudo, mullet, geoducks, and hush puppies, and see Diddy-Wah-Diddy through Zora Neal Hurston's eyes.
$15.95
ISBN-13: 9781933149318
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Manic D Press, Inc., 6/2009
To paraphrase... "there are people who bend under the weight of the world, people who wrestle it and people who bend the world to them." All of these women are present in this lyrical story of the successive generations of lesbian communities in a small California town. Love, mysteries, and family in its many forms.
$16.95
ISBN-13: 9781570616686
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Sasquatch Books, 8/2010
Audrey Young M.D. has written a moving insider's view of health care as delivered at Seattle's Harborview Hospital. She's a terrific storyteller who brings to life the dilemmas, problems, and successes of public care hospitals who also provide care for the insured. Stories of the providers and of the patients will haunt you. Info also on what you can do.
$20.00
ISBN-13: 9781598530421
Availability: Temporarily out. Orders usually back in stock in 1-5 days
Published: Library of America, 4/2009
"I speak here of poetry as a revelatory distillation of experience," wrote Audre Lorde and it is just those poems collected by poet/essayist Honor Moore in this stunning collection. A perfect companion, inspiration, call to action.
$14.95
ISBN-13: 9781932859683
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Bywater Books, 4/2009
Fun, sexy debut novel about a newly sober film student with a very messy love life. Falling for your ex-girlfriend (again)—likely to enrage her husband. Also, dating nuns is likely to bring on trouble. Published by Bywater Books, a small press specializing in lesbian fiction.
$15.00
ISBN-13: 9780743291484
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Simon & Schuster, 9/2008
That's right, a whole year, new testament and old, beginning with 18 single spaced pages of Biblical directives. What makes this book so good and so much fun is that he does take it seriously and it becomes a sort of spiritual quest. It made me long for a chat with his long suffering wife....
$16.99
ISBN-13: 9781602860742
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Weinstein Books, 5/2009
Traitor or savior? This novel of World War II intrigue, set in Penang and centered upon the ambiguous relationship of a young, mixed race boy and a foreign diplomat is gripping, beautiful, and heartbreaking. A complex and stunning debut.
$15.95
ISBN-13: 9780330433914
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Macmillan UK, 9/2006
Settle in, remember, dream about your own love affair as you read this book-length series of poems about a relationship. I picked this one up at a bookstore in London (Daunt's) and then Carol Ann Duffy was named poet laureate of Britain. Here's to serendipity!
$18.00
ISBN-13: 9781931236706
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Hanging Loose Press, 4/2009
Read this because you love poetry or hate poetry or loved Sherman Alexie's fiction and are curious. Read it because some of these lines will make you weep and moan and make you feel uncomfortable or give you the chills because they're that beautiful. Or maybe you've heard him read one or two and you wondered if they're that good on the page. They are.
$24.95
ISBN-13: 9781580089654
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Ten Speed Press, 4/2009
Hot, cold, classic, and fusion—what could be better? Make your own broth or dipping sauce (avoiding preservative laden instants), even make your own buckwheat noodles. Okay, maybe not, but try the Crab Udon, Shio Ramen, Curry Rice Noodles. Vegetarian and not, mix and match.
$15.00
ISBN-13: 9781416535034
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Free Press, 3/2009
You thought you'd write something someday or maybe you started and stopped. Take this writers workshop-in-a-book and get started. Get nosy. What are you waiting for? Now.
$14.00
ISBN-13: 9781594483981
Availability: Temporarily out. Orders usually back in stock in 1-5 days
Published: Riverhead Trade, 9/2009
A young Korean American girl leaves home for life on the streets of New York in this touching debut novel. As much a portrait of the unseen people in our community as of a particular person's life, Miles From Nowhere
$25.00
ISBN-13: 9780374100742
Availability: Temporarily out. Orders usually back in stock in 1-5 days
Published: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 12/2008
What shapes a great intellect might also in some ways crush her spirit. Susan Sontag, one of our great public intellectuals, was a survivor. Her journals underscore the ways in which she pushed the culture (and the personal costs when the culture pushed back.) I miss her.
$13.99
ISBN-13: 9780446407427
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Grand Central Publishing, 10/2010
A marmalade cat shows up in a small town library's book drop ... just in time, it turns out. Dewey Dewey lives.
$15.00
ISBN-13: 9780307276766
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Vintage, 8/2009
Through this seemingly small story of a family of convenience, Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison tells a story about the American psyche. This is what made us. A great book, one of Toni Morrison's finest. Also available as an audiobook read by the author.
$21.95
ISBN-13: 9780816654741
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: University of Minnesota Press, 8/2008
Looking for inspiration? Looking for a reason to keep writing? Looking for a reason to break your silence? Looking for some words to remind you? Michelle Cliff's words are all of these and more for me.
$13.00
ISBN-13: 9781416537939
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Simon & Schuster, 10/2009
Sex, love, desire, obsession, addiction—are the lines between them all that firm? This is both Susan Cheever's own story and a meditation on all of the above. Smart and intriguing—you can read it in one sitting but you'll want to go back and read it again.
$37.50
ISBN-13: 9780307338358
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Clarkson Potter, 6/2006
Ridiculously simple and delicious! It's all in the ingredients in these recipes from London's River Cafe. Crab-fennel-radicchio, potato and green beans with olive oil. Splurge on those local cheeses, artisan breads and heirloom tomatoes.
$15.00
ISBN-13: 9780307275370
Availability: Temporarily out. Orders usually back in stock in 1-5 days
Published: Vintage, 1/2008
For all of you with Grey's Anatomy withdrawal... Final Exam
$14.95
ISBN-13: 9780306816536
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Da Capo Press, 4/2008
Oh no—what's fielder's choice? The infield fly rule? And who puts mud on the baseball and why? Baseball Field Guide
ISBN-13: 9784770030436
Availability: Out of Print
Published: Kodansha USA, 6/2007
A lonely young Japanese mother and an entrepreneur become friends, not realizing that they're both survivors of bullying—and that their experiences continue to shape their lives into the present day. Though the book is set in Japan, I suspect that most women will see themselves somewhere in this book. You'll want to talk about it! Spellbinding.
$20.00
ISBN-13: 9780615141299
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Seattle Architecture Found, 2/2008
This portable guide to downtown buildings West of I-5 (plus Seattle Center) includes information about year of construction, architect, original and current use. A portable, perfect companion for a casual stroll or a more elaborate walking tour. Full color pictures of all of the buildings, easy to use maps and thoughtful historical asides make this an essential Seattle guidebook.
$17.95
ISBN-13: 9780618872367
Availability: Temporarily out. Orders usually back in stock in 1-5 days
Published: Mariner Books, 7/2007
Choice or chance?
A long dead Seattle man gradually awakens to the fact of his own suicide (and how he got to that point) after a stranger moves into his house. Accompanied by an unusual companion, he realizes that even now he has the capacity to act. Savor this novel...it's one of my favorite books of 2006.
$16.00
ISBN-13: 9780143038283
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Penguin (Non-Classics), 4/2007
Debt, overly amitious military campaigns, and religious crusades predict the fall of an empire. Sound familiar? Prescient, convincing, frightening...don't miss this powerful book by the conservative "Nixon Republican" who predicted the rise of the south and sunbelt. Essential reading!
$14.95
ISBN-13: 9781400076970
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Vintage, 5/2006
A Pakistani immigrant fears for his recently disappeared brother in this rich, moody novel.
$14.99
ISBN-13: 9781580086806
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Ten Speed Press, 6/2005
Take home a piece of Seattle's most famous market. Gorgeous pictures, fun facts, and delicious recipes. My favorite: smoked salmon, shiitake relish, cornbread pudding (p. 28) or eat it at Etta's Seafood at lunch or dinner.
$15.00
ISBN-13: 9780767906319
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Anchor, 4/2002
NPR's This American Life 's David Rakoff is at his sardonic best in this hilarious collection. Why endure a retreat with Buddhist master Stephen Segal if you can read about that (and many, many other adventures) here? Also available on CD.
$16.00
ISBN-13: 9780375754555
Availability: Temporarily out. Orders usually back in stock in 1-5 days
Published: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 8/2004
Travel between the U.S. and Japan opened new worlds to people on both sides of the Pacific. Melville, Henry James and Frank Lloyd Wright all appear here, but the story of Okakura, author of the classic Book of Tea particularly fascinated me. It's a great story about an exuberant creative era.
$24.95
ISBN-13: 9780060722791
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: William Morrow Cookbooks, 6/2004
Hot summer days, ripe tomatoes, fresh bread (from Grand Central Bakery?), herbs, veggies...Enjoy these fast, simple, elegant recipes for small plates, picnics and snacks. My favorites are the roasted eggplant and olive crostini and the barely cooked mussels with herbs and wine. Delicious!
$14.95
ISBN-13: 9780385721271
Availability: Temporarily out. Orders usually back in stock in 1-5 days
Published: Anchor, 3/2005
Who knew that one of the greatest lay interpreters of Christian/Jewish/Muslim history in the West began her life's work hurt by her own religious tradition? I couldn't put this down! A great lesson for me: Your life's work might not be what you think it will be!
$29.95
ISBN-13: 9780415968188
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Routledge, 8/2003
Yes! A new book from tireless writer/activist hooks, taking her ideas about teaching outside the classroom in order to engage the community in working for social change. she writes with her usual candor, intelligence and humor, encouraging us--and keeping us honest.
