book review

Portland Poet David Biespiel Reflects on Judaism and Texas in “A Place of Exodus”

This is not his first memoir, or his first book––in fact, it is his 12th––but it is Biespiel’s first effort to make something out of the spiritual arc of his childhood, a cinematic story of devotion, conflict and exile.

With “The Iconist,” Author Jamie Mustard Believes He’s Solved the Riddle of Artistic Success

Bands drop thousands of dollars on publicity campaigns in hopes of getting picked up by blogs. Writers go to countless seminars and networking events, desperate for a publishing deal. But according to Jamie Mustard, standing out in today’s hypersaturated media landscape isn’t a question of independent wealth or industry connections—it’s a matter of appealing to humans’ primal instincts.

Chuck Klosterman’s New Short-Story Collection Is the Sound of One Man Arguing with Himself

A linking theme, at times expressed more obliquely than at others, is our current techno-reality, which conjures obvious Black Mirror comparisons, but it’s less like reading a literary version of the show than watching two critics argue the meaning of each episode on Twitter. Only, in this case, both critics are Chuck Klosterman.

In His Book “Shadowlands,” Poet Anthony McCann Ponders the Meaning of the Malheur Occupation

It could go wrong in so many ways, all of them ponderous. There are pages of Shadowlands in which this threatens to happen. But the book works more often than not—and when it does, it’s fantastic.

In “Aloha Rodeo,” Two Portland Authors Tell One of American History’s Forgotten Underdog Sports Stories

Like all of the best sports stories, Aloha Rodeo is a triumphant underdog tale, both in terms of how deeply the paniolos were underestimated at Frontier Days and how Wolman and Smith are able to successfully blow up a piece of historical minutia into a sweeping epic.

David Biespiel’s “Republic Cafe” Is a Book-Length Poem About Love Ripped Apart by Historic Tragedy

The collection, 55 poems numbered in the order they appear, tells the story of a pair of lovers in Portland in the time before, during and immediately after the planes hit the towers.

In Her Memoir “Mother Winter,” Sophia Shalmiyev Mourns the Parent She Hardly Knew

The connective tissue in the book is her quest to grieve and grow.

In “Jail Blazers,” Portland Sports Columnist Kerry Eggers Revisits the Most Controversial Team in Trail Blazers History in Painstaking Detail. But It Doesn’t Tell the Whole Story.

While thorough in its retelling of what happened, there’s disappointingly little exploration of why the team mattered, and how they ended up as Portland folk heroes.

A New Biography Examines the Impressive Rights and Many Wrongs of Winston Churchill

Roberts makes the hard choices to condense Churchill’s life into less than 1,000 pages.

In “Okay Fine Whatever” Courtenay Hameister Faces Her Fears, From Waxing to Polyamory

General anxiety disorder can be a real time-suck. No one knows this better than Courtenay Hameister. For 12 years, she was the venerable host and head writer of Live Wire Radio, the “live in front of a Portland studio audience” podcast that became nationally syndicated during her tenure.

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