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New Book of the Week
Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco
by Alia Volz
When an advance copy of Home Baked arrived at the store, I took it home hoping merely to escape into the iconic 1970s San Francisco setting. I never anticipated that this memoir would give me an in-depth education on both the history of the era and the politics surrounding marijuana. Home Baked tells the story of the underground, and extremely illegal at the time, first known pot brownie business, Sticky Fingers. The author’s mother, Meridy, known to many simply as “The Brownie Lady,” and her friends expanded the operation through the swinging ‘70s and into the AIDS epidemic of the ‘80s and ‘90s, when marijuana went from a recreational drug to one that could mean life or death to many of their friends suffering from the disease. This book is about so much more than a homespun "magic brownie" business and the people whose lives it touched. It’s the story of a 20th century family, a movement, and an era. Whether you’re a square like me or an experienced pothead, I "highly" recommend Home Baked! —Haley
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Old Book of the Week
A Long Way from Verona
by Jane Gardam
Jessica Vye is a 13-year-old girl living in the North of England during World War II. Yet she maintains that the “violent” experience that shaped her was being told, at the age of 9, by visiting author Arnold Hanger that she is “a writer beyond all possible doubt!” At 13, Jessica has internalized the sentiment that she is a born writer and also believes herself to be a mind-reader and a compulsive truth-teller. She’s smart, funny, odd, and widely misunderstood by her fellow students and teachers, who worry that she’s getting above herself. In this short, sweet coming-of-age novel, the eccentric young Jessica Vye paints a vivid picture of her school days, family life, and social sphere amidst the bleak realities of wartime: food rations, gas masks, and the threat of air raids. At the end of my reading, I’m inclined to agree with Arnold Hanger. What a wonderful writer!. —Anika
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Old Book of the Week
Phinney by Post Book #64
Memoirs of Hadrian
by Marguerite Yourcenar
I really think of this as two books. There's the novel itself, a beautiful, thoughtful channeling of the great late-Roman emperor that is graced by an elegant, regal reticence and one of the rare powerful-but-admirable main characters in literature. And then there's Yourcenar's twenty-page afterword, "Reflections on the Composition of Memoirs of Hadrian," which is one of my very favorite pieces of writing from any time or anywhere, a romance of passion and patience between author and subject that distills Yourcenar's thirty-year struggle, through war and exile, to write the book you hold before you. —Tom
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Link of the Week
More Literary Fundraiser T-Shirts
If you'd like, you could create an entire wardrobe of virus-era literary t-shirts (perhaps a good idea if you have to go out to do your laundry): some of our favorite stores nationwide have, like Madison Books, created timely and attractive designs, including Solid State Books in D.C., Green Apple Books in S.F., East Bay Booksellers in Oakland, Greenlight Books in Brooklyn, Madison Street Books (no relation!) in Chicago, and Point Reyes Books in, yes, Point Reyes, as well as the out-of-work indie booksellers represented by the Bookstore at the End of the World. But we're also drawn to the shirt from our local friends at Fantagraphics, featuring a new design from Fanta superstar Gilbert Hernandez, created to benefit BINC, the Book Industry Charitable Foundation.
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Cover Crop Quiz #183
I'm guessing this will be on the tough side, so a hint: a first edition from 1992 (also used as the longtime paperback cover) that brought its author, at age 84, new recognition in a long, and often silent, career.
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Last Week's Answer
Yes, it was a child's dress on the cover of one our all-time bestselling books, Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend, book one in the Neapolitan novels.
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Phinney Books
7405 Greenwood Ave. N
Seattle, WA 98103
206.297.2665
www.phinneybooks.com
info@phinneybooks.com
Facebook page
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But the original IBD date is not entirely forgotten, and we Seattle booksellers have decided to honor it by celebrating a favorite book of ours, Ross Gay's 
And as you may remember, Bookstore Day 2019 was also the opening day of our own Madison Books, which means that this Monday, April 27, is Madison's first birthday. Like so many birthdays this spring, we can't celebrate it with the kind of party we had hoped for, but the Madison folks are marking it with a new selection of commemorative apparel that I, for one, have already ordered a few of. James has tweaked the Madison logo to add a "Stay Home. Read Books." message, and the folks at Bonfire have made it possible to order that design on a 
