Books

Growing up in Spokane, Minda Dentler once handed water to Bloomsday runners as a volunteer, but competing in events of that sort seemed off-limits to her.

There was once a slogan, “You’ve read the book. Now see the movie.” These days, if one is lucky, the opposite might apply. But still I wonder: If you loved “Poor Things,” the Oscar-nominated film starring Emma Stone, will you read the book? That would be Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel, “the most sheerly entertaining pseudo-Victorian romance since A.S. Byatt’s ‘Possession,’ ” as I put it in my 1993 review of the American edition. Gray – who died in 2019 at the age of 85 – was arguably the major Scottish literary figure of the 1980s and ’90s. “Poor Things” is just one title in his wide-ranging bibliography, though he singled it out as his “happiest novel.”

Here are the bestsellers for the week that ended Saturday, Feb. 24, compiled from data from independent and chain bookstores, book wholesalers and independent distributors nationwide, powered by Circana BookScan © 2024 Circana. (Reprinted from Publishers Weekly, published by PWxyz LLC. © 2024, PWxyz LLC.) HARDCOVER FICTION 1. "The Women: A Novel" by Kristin Hannah (St. Martin's) Last week: 1 ...

The title “The Year of the Locust” suggests a novel of biblical proportions. And it is.

Feb. 22 is National Tooth Fairy Day, but author Edie Higby celebrates all year long.

Grief takes the center stage in author Erin Pringle’s work.

In Nick Romeo’s diligently researched and admirably principled new book, “The Alternative: How to Build a Just Economy,” he argues that the world wrought by neoclassical economics is “perfectly logical” – but horrifically inhumane.

In real life, unexpected weather events are a sense of stress, wonder and, sometimes, a struggle to survive.

“If you are not rich, you’re not getting rich,” the writer Fran Lebowitz once quipped about life in contemporary America. Judging from “Get the Picture,” Bianca Bosker’s mesmerizing new book about New York’s contemporary art scene, Lebowitz might as well have been talking about cultural capital. If you’re not born with it, you probably won’t amass much of it, because the gatekeepers in this book make it clear that they’re not sharing any wealth. “The art world is the way it is because not everyone has access to it. And not everyone understands it. And that’s sort of what creates interest and intrigue,” a gallerist on the Lower East Side tells the author.

In kitchens, in Michael Jackson’s “Rock with You,” in turtles, in deepest failures. These are some of the places students from the Spokane area encounter Black joy, as they shared at Thursday night’s Black Voices Symposium Northwest Passages event.

In light of Black History Month and the Sunday relaunch of the Black Lens newspaper, the Spokesman-Review’s Northwest Passages is hosting its third annual Spokane Black Voices Symposium Thursday night.

It's chilly out there, people. It's reading time! Year-end holidays are the most popular season to give books. And now we're heading into the best time to read them — while nestled in a Slanket, with a cup of tea, of course. Fortunately, publishers are keeping the promising titles coming. As you plot your reading Excel spreadsheet for winter and spring (that's a thing, right?), here are ...

Author Carla Crujido has lived all over the country but Spokane has always been special to her.

Anyone who’s ever fantasized about sex with Tinker Bell, but wasn’t sure how that would happen, Carla Crujido has you covered. But flings with flying sprites is only a start to the wild world of “The Strange and Beautiful” series of short stories and fiction writing debut for Crujido.

Like a lot of great ideas, Nancy Pearl‘s “Rule of 50” arrived in a flash. The librarian and best-selling author was fielding questions on a public radio show when a woman called in and explained she wasn’t enjoying the book she was reading but felt guilty about abandoning it.

By the numbers, Page 42 Bookstore is like the little engine that could. Though the bookstore comes in at around 1,200 square feet, the employees process more than 10,000 books a month.

Here are the bestsellers for the week that ended Saturday, Dec. 30, compiled from data from independent and chain bookstores, book wholesalers and independent distributors nationwide, powered by Circana BookScan © 2024 Circana. (Reprinted from Publishers Weekly, published by PWxyz LLC. © 2024, PWxyz LLC.) HARDCOVER FICTION 1. "Iron Flame" by Rebecca Yarros (Red Tower) Last week: 3 2. "Fourth ...