The Impostor’s Daughter Laurie Sandell

A daddy’s girl gets a rude awakening. And bad credit.

Books Maybe if Laurie Sandell had read Dr. Robert Hare’s seminal book on psychopathy, Without Conscience, she might have recognized the truth about her father. A psychopath is distinguished by a lack ...   More

 

Wednesday, August 5, 2009 Adrienne So

Jeff Johnson Tattoo Machine

The secret world of ink according to a local needle-slinger.

Books “This, my friend, is a pussy-eating swamp panther.” So the wide-eyed, clear-skinned reader is introduced to the world of tattoo in Jeff Johnson’s Tattoo Machine: Tall Tales, True Sto ...   More

 

Wednesday, July 22, 2009 Caitlin Mccarthy

Portland Queer

A new anthology keeps Portland predictable.

Books According to a definition cited by Ariel Gore, editor of this LGBT-themed story collection, the word “queer” means “unusually different.” Different from what? From you. Unless ...   More

 

Wednesday, July 8, 2009 JOHN MINERVINI

A Bounty Of Local Summer Books

Jim Lynch Border Songs

A Northwest author takes readers north of the border, up Canada way.

Books At one point in Jim Lynch’s new novel, an elderly cancer patient is mistaken for a terrorist after the radiation therapy he’s just received sets off a detector at the U.S. Border Patrol. B ...   More

 

Wednesday, June 24, 2009 MATT BUCKINGHAM

Ali Sethi The Wish Maker

Well wished: This Pakistani debut is a hit.

Books For American readers, Pakistan is both dazzling and unfamiliar—a land of cosmopolitan lady diplomats and hard-headed generals, sophisticated poets and orthodox imams, rickshaws and Palm Pilots, ...   More

 

Wednesday, June 17, 2009 JOHN MINERVINI

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Seth Grahame-Smith (and Jane Austen)

Jane Austen and zombies—so hot right now.

Books A 200-year-old drawing-room satirist brought Seth Grahame-Smith’s career back from the dead—or at least from the brink of obscurity. Last year, the author of The Spider-man Handbook collab ...   More

 

Wednesday, June 10, 2009 KELLY CLARKE

Portland Noir

If looks could kill, she’d still be a barista.

Books When the kleptomaniac boozehound heroine of Monica Drake’s short story “Baby, I’m Here”—the midway point of the new anthology Portland Noir—hits the ladies’ r ...   More

 

Wednesday, June 3, 2009 AARON MESH

Aleksandar Hemon Love And Obstacles

Obstacles win, hands down.

Books Writing about Dickens, George Orwell mused, “He is all fragments, all details—rotten architecture, but wonderful gargoyles.” Aleksandar Hemon’s new collection of short stories, ...   More

 

Wednesday, May 27, 2009 JOHN MINERVINI

Matt Lemay Elliott Smith’s XO (33 1/3)

Deconstructing the myth behind the white suit.

Books Elliott Smith was not a guitar-toting troubadour. Or really that much of a sad sack. A longtime Portland resident, Smith was one of the best songwriters of the ’90s before he tragically died in ...   More

 

Wednesday, May 20, 2009 MICHAEL MANNHEIMER