BookBar's blog

The forward to Peter Mishler’s collection Fludde begins “Occasionally, poetry provides us with raw proof of what it is to be alive, perceptions that never stray far from sensations, an illumination of sparks as opposed to, or at least in addition to, the steady artificial light of reason” (ix). This collection incorporates visual, concrete imagery that bends the mind to compare, or at least consider, seemingly displaced objects. Mishler keeps the reader ensnared in their body, experiencing the work – breathing it – engaging in a visceral, as opposed to cerebral, process.

Deep Creek – BookBar Book Review

Stephanie Vessely  
 

“For now,” writes Pam Houston in Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country, “I want to sit vigil with the earth…I want to write unironic odes to her beauty, which is still potent, if not completely intact.”

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone Review

By Kateri Kramer

The Collected Schizophrenias Book Review

by Stephanie Vessely 

Donna Hay begins her beautiful new book, MODERN BAKING: CAKES, COOKIES, AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN with “Anyone who knows me will tell you baking is my therapy- it’s my own form of mindfulness meditation! Plus, it’s the way I nurture the people I love. When I can’t sleep, I often tiptoe into the kitchen and, in the calm quiet of the early morning, will begin to measure and mix- maybe a batch of oat cookies for my boys, a cake for a girlfriend’s birthday, or some raw caramel slice for my team at the office.

On Being 40(ish) – BookBar Book Review
by Stephanie Vessely

Rachel Hamalain: In your new book, Desert Cabal, you confront the claims that Edward Abbey made in his book, Desert Solitaire – on its 50th anniversary. What inspired you to make this confrontation?

Icelanders really know how to celebrate the holiday season. Each year, families and friends get together on December 24 and exchange books before heading to bed with a book and some chocolate. The tradition is so important to Icelandic culture, that it creates Jolabokaflod or “The Christmas Book Flood.” Because most books in Iceland are purchased between September and December in preparation for the tradition, Kristjan B. Jonasson of the Iceland Publishers Association remarks that it’s “the backbone of the publishing industry”

By: Stephanie Vessely

“No more nice girls,” writes Rebecca Sive in Vote Her In: Your Guide To Electing Our First Woman President, quoting early feminist writer Ellen Willis. “Forget turning a blind eye. Forget nicely insisting. Forget being polite. Forget wearing the white suits, hoping imagery will sufficiently motivate. We now know #TimesUp for all that.”

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Gillian Philip is one of the authors under the pen name, Erin Hunter. She has written for the Survivors series, along with Inbali Iserles. She lives in the northeast Scottish Highlands with her husband, three dogs, two cats, and hamster.

By: Julie MacKissock

Whenever I read a book, I am looking for that line. You know the one. The line that tells me everything I didn’t know about the world before reading the book in my hands. In Abby Geni’s The Wildlands, it came late, almost at the end.

 “The milestones were less marvelous than the minutiae” (p. 338).

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Review courtesy of Stephanie Vessely

"Back then," Nicole Chung writes in her memoir, All You Can Ever Know, "I still had to think of adoption as an unqualified good, a benefit to every adoptee, sure proof of unselfish love, because to do otherwise felt like a betrayal of my family and their love for me."

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I work for Nicole Sullivan but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of her agenda and her worst inclinations. Nicole is facing a test to her bookstore ownership unlike any faced by a modern bookseller...  READ MORE

Beignets, Bourbon Street, and books. Mint Juleps, Gumbo, and books. Hot and steamy humidity, books, more books, and authors galore! The American Booksellers Association ABC Children's Insitute conference in New Orleans was definitely the hot spot to learn all about soon-to-be published books and meet countless authors alongside other booksellers across the country, all with one common love; children's literature. READ MORE