Portland’s Top Reads: May

Here’s what the city’s been reading this month.

Top Reads: May (Courtesy of Penguin Random House, Haymarket Books, Forest Avenue Press)
By WW Staff

This month, we asked Literary Arts, Annie Bloom’s Books, Powell’s Books, and Broadway Books what their No. 1-selling books were for the month of May. Here’s what we learned:

Broadway Books:

We Can Do Hard Things by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach and Amanda Doyle

The podcast-gone-book We Can Do Hard Things claims itself “a guidebook for being alive,” weaving together advice from more than a hundred voices on how to get through the hard stuff.

Annie Bloom’s Books:

Imagine a Door by Laura Stanfill

OK, we’re cheating a bit because the top-selling book was still Sunrise on the Reaping, but the second top seller was by local author Laura Stanfill. This how-to guide, aimed mostly at writers, examines everything from creative habits to query letters—maybe not your thing, or very much your thing.

Powell’s Books:

No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain by Rebecca Solnit

Maybe not a guide, but a reflection on feminism, climate change, and navigating the unpredictability of this highly flawed world. As Solnit notes in her intro, “you can’t see the future, but you can understand the patterns and possibilities if you know the past.”

Literary Arts:

The Hollow Half by Sarah Aziza

In her new debut memoir, Sarah Aziza mines the past as well. The Palestinian American writer examines how her fight through trauma and anorexia aligns with the displacement of Palestinian people, following three generations from Gaza to the Midwest to New York City.

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