A poignant and visually stunning tribute to used bookstores.
Brown celebrates Seattle’s used bookstore scene in this nonfiction book.
“While the magic may reside in the books,” the author writes in the introduction to this work, the libraries, bookstores, and personal bookshelves that house them “offer both a refuge from exterior chaos and the thrill of possibility within their rows and nooks.” While libraries have historically discouraged socialization for quiet, individual study, and homogeneous big-box chain bookstores are designed to maximize profit, used bookstores offer bibliophiles a friendly respite. In addition to their randomized inventories, which include offbeat and out-of-print titles, they promote “a sense of comfort and accessibility that invites one to look, read, and stay for a while.” Labeled as a “love note to books, print, and a thank-you note to the booksellers,” this book is a celebration of the used bookstores that dotted Seattle’s landscape over the last two decades. The milieu is also an effective lens through which Brown explores broader changes in Seattle’s recent history: The Seattle of 1999 was an eclectic city defined by its underground music scene, bohemian sensibility, and a proliferation of bookstores. Following the internet and tech boom—driven in large part by Seattle’s own Amazon and Microsoft—the city shortly thereafter became a center of American capitalism, with a new aesthetic of homogeneous neighborhoods and traffic gridlock. The declining presence of used bookstores in today’s Seattle is emblematic, per the author, of these larger cultural changes. The origins of the book stem from a college project completed by Brown in an architectural photography class, and the book blends its astute analysis with photographs taken by the author of Seattle’s used bookstores (both interior and exterior shots) in addition to images of owners, book lovers, and store cats. Sadly, many of the city’s used bookstores open in 1999 have since closed; Brown makes an effective case that the “literacy, community, and human connection” that such institutions engender are an invaluable “way to hold on to some of the best parts of our cities and societies in the coming decades.”
A poignant and visually stunning tribute to used bookstores.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2023
ISBN: 9798886406627
Page Count: 124
Publisher: Ewings Publishing LLC
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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