15 South Dubuque St. • Iowa City, IA 52240 • 319-337-2681 • 800-295-BOOK • Open 9:00 a.m. daily
paul's corner
RSS
About Paul
Unique selections of books from our book buyer Paul Ingram. He compiles great lists of books on varying topics.
If you have any requests for recommendations, send Paul an email at paul@prairielights.com
-
Elizabeth Strout Reading
March 26, 2013 - 11:42am The Burgess BoysApril 9 at the Iowa City Public Library Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, Elizabeth Strout (Olive Kitteridge), will talk about her beautiful new novel, The Burgess Boys. With her usual precise characterizations and her incomparable prose, Strout gives us the story of a family from small-town Maine, haunted by the tragic death of a father, which leaves all three children holding on to the blame through their adulthoods, and sending hot shot attorney Jim and his worshipful kid brother, Bob straight to New York City and away from the guilt and sorrow of Shirley Falls, Maine. Their depressed sister, Susan, stays in Maine, single parenting her desperately lonely teenage son, Zach. Strout’s skill is such that, with every chapter, the characters deepen. A character the reader likes early on in the book becomes less likeable as more information comes to the fore. Small delightful surprises abound to the extent that talking about it at all threatens to make you a spoiler.
PAUL
-
Paul's Book Club Selection - April 17
March 25, 2013 - 11:47am Clara CallanClara Callan is a novel by Canadian novelist, Richard B. Wright,
which won the Governor General’s Award and the Giller Prize,
Canada’s two greatest literary honors in 1990. Only Michael
Ondaatje has equaled this feat.Clara Callan takes place in small-town Ontario, during the
1930s. The title character and her sister Nora must decide
what to do when their father, the school superintendant, dies.Clara decides to keep her position teaching in the local public
school, while the more outgoing Nora moves to New York City,
where against all odds she becomes a star of American radio
soap opera. The novel consists of Clara and Nora’s letters from
Ontario to New York, and Clara’s diary entries.Clara is shy and sensitive, a writer of poetry, an Emily
Dickinson type. Nora is outgoing and cheerful.Doesn’t sound like much. Oh but it will steal your heart.
How the reader aches for the sisters as each tries to help
her counterpart. Clara Callan takes place in the mid-thirties.
Canada suffers from the economic depression and the drums of
war are beating in Europe.Both Clara and Nora long for children and a domesticity,
which seems to elude them both. The inexperienced Clara is
particularly vulnerable to the advances of sly men on the make.We sold hundreds of copies when Clara Callan first came out.
Book Club at Prairie Lights April 17 at 7 PM
-
A Weschler Table, in no particular order
March 5, 2013 - 6:08pmLawrence Weschler was in town recently and stopped by the store. In talking with Jan and Paul, he mentioned that he had a list of recommended books. Here it is:
A Weschler Table, in no particular order
Rachel Cohen, A Chance Meeting
Rebecca Solnit, River of Shadows (Muybridge)
Jonathan Schell, Unconquerable World
or better: Observing the Nixon Years
Curzio Malaparte, Kaputt
Joseph Mitchell, Joe Gould’s Secret (or the whole Up in the Old Hotel collection)
Geoff Dyer, Out of Sheer Rage
John Berger, Ways of Seeing
Selected Essays
David Graeber, Debt
Ian Frazier, Out of New York
Great Plains
William Finnegan, Cold New World
Ryszard Kapuscinski, The Emperor
Oliver Sacks, Awakenings
David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again
Dave Eggers, Zeitoun
Walter Murch, In the Blink of an Eye
Mark Salzman, True Notebooks
Richard Halpern, Norman Rockwell: The Underside of Innocence
Edward Snow, Inside Breughel
Harry Berger, Manhood, Marriage & Mischief (Rembrandt’s Night Watch)
Benjamin Binstock, Vermeer’s Family Secrets
Herman Melville, Moby Dick (but the U Calif /Arion Press edition!)
David Eagelman, Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlife
Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels
Larry McMurtry, Duane’s Depressed
Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
Ford Madox Ford, The Fifth Queen,
or The Good Soldier
Emma Donahue, Room
Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories and Forty Stories
(though if they were available, I’d prefer: Sadness, and Amateurs)
Grace Paley, Selected Stories
(though if they were available I’d prefer Enormous Changes…)
David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress
Bruce Duffy, The World as I Found It
Jose Saramago, Blindness, or
The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
Robert Coover, The Universal Baseball Assn, J. Henry Waugh proprietor
Maira and Tibor Kalman, Unfashion
Michael Benson, Beyond
Dennis Adams, Double Exposure
Chris Marker, La Jetee (the book, but also the DVD)
W.H. Auden, Poems (would have preferred Thank You, Fog)
Nazim Hikmet, Things I Didn’t Know I Loved
Wislawa Szymborska, Collected Poems
Zbigniew Herbert, Barbarian in the Garden
Report from the Besieged City
Czeslaw Milosz, Collected Poems
Christopher Logue, War Music
Chris Ware, Jimmy Corrigan Smartest Boy in the World
Lauren Redniss, Radioactive
Alison Bechdel, Fun Home
Overflow (Others I wish I could have included, but this is getting ridiculous):
John Berger, G.
Nicholas Mosely, Hopeful Monsters
John McPhee, The Control of Nature
Janet Malcolm, The Crime of Sheila McGough
John D’Agata and Jim Fingal, The Lifespan of a Fact
Sarah Vowell, Take the Cannoli
Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures
Noelle Oxenhandler, The Eros of Parenthood
Rebecca Solnit, Infinite City
Hope in Dark Times
Danilo Kis, A Tomb for Boris Davidovich
Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It
WG Sebald, The Rings of Saturn
Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone
Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger
Philip Roth, The Great American Novel
The Breast
Mark Salzman, Lying Awake
- ‹ previous
- 2 of 46
- next ›
