Crack Open Brand New Titles at Couth Buzzard!

What's that? You say you're looking for newest Stieg Larsson, the latest in the Hunger Games books, or that novel topping the Booklist this month? Look no further! Couth Buzzard employees have specially chosen a selection of brand spankin' new titles for you to read.

Did you know that China Mieville's British Science Fiction Award-winning and Arthur C Clarke Award-winning masterpiece The City & The City is now in paperback? We've got it! Wanted to pick up Michael Pollan's foodphiliac works, all now in softcover? We have each of his latest releases on our front table. Gary Shytengart's Super Sad True Love Story is sitting cheek-by-jowl with Tinkers (Paul Harding), Abraham Verghese's Cutting For Stone, and Jedediah Berry's fantastical mystery ride debut, The Maunal of Detection.We've even beefed up our Northwest Authors section, so you're likely to find lots of work by some of the Northwest's best exports, including; Sherman Alexie, Chuck Palahniuk, Octavia C Butler, Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, Nicola Griffith, Jonathan Raban and David Guterson. 

And not only did we score great adult reads, but we now have some of the most sought-after young adult books on our shelves! From The Hunger Games to werewolfpireromance title Shiver (Maggie Stiefvater), Scott Westerfeld's World War I steampunk fantasy Leviathan to the whole Percy Jackson series, we have it all! Come check out what's left in stock, and let us know what new titles you would be interesting in snatching from us, your independent bookseller!

Better Book Titles

Much has been made about redesigning book covers to better suit their interiors--entire blogs and fora are devoted to the subject. But what about scrapping those misleading book titles altogether? Over at Better Book Titles the tongue is firmly in cheek when they reinvent Frankenstein as "A Zombie Learns French" and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay as "Killing Nazis." See how many you've read!

"Zero History" brings William Gibson's Modern trilogy to a close

The trailer for William Gibson's "Zero History" promises the same sorts of forays into the dizzying morass of technology and surveillance that he undertook with "Pattern Recognition" and its sequel, "Spook Country." Though the cyberpunkian author is best known for his older work in the1980s--"Neuromancer," the short story "Johnny Mnemonic"--his newest works have cleaved closer to our current time and technology. No longer content (or able?) to cast his speculative net wide into the future with the scary precision of his previous books, Gibson's post-2000 works have crept closer and closer to the modern day. Whether this grinding spotlight focus on today's world detracts or adds to his narratives is of personal preference: certainly it puts more pressure on his character and plot building skills--never terrible strong to begin with--but it also makes for an easier read for those unused to the zipping grandeur of cyberpunk. But is it still cyberpunk? Or has his genre caught up with him, transforming futuristic fiction to simple fiction?

It's a Page Turner--More Surprises in the World of Bookstores

Just as bookselling behemoth Barnes and Noble admits it is weighing its options and may sell itself to an investment group this week, New York Magazine publishes an upbeat article about the unlikely resurgence of independent bookstores. Is this the way the pendulum now swings, the newest trend in a suddenly chaotic industry? Perhaps. Well, for this week, at least. Or maybe just for today.
No one is certain enough to prognosticate the future of books and bookstores--and the ones loudly proclaiming their clairvoyance on the subject are often most clueless of all--so the kind of dichotomy these two articles provide is telling. For the moment, we at *this* independent bookstore are just happy to read the enthusiastic press at New York Mag and to nod our heads sagely: that's right, we ARE here to stay, in a community-minded way!