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New Book of the Week
Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?
by Seamas O'Reilly
If you noticed me laughing out loud on my walk home in the last week or so, I was probably listening to this new memoir, which, despite being about the death of O'Reilly's mother when he was five, against the backdrop of the violent Troubles in their Northern Irish city of Derry, also manages to be about dinosaurs, his goofy and loving father, the largest and best-documented home-taped VHS archive in the known universe, and growing up the ninth of eleven children in an Ireland where families didn't get that large any more. Only after finishing did I realize that O'Reilly first found fame with his viral Twitter thread about meeting the President of Ireland while on ketamine, which, in its nerdy embrace of life's absurd embarrassments, turned out to be an excellent preview of how warm, charming, and, yes, laugh-out-loud funny his first book would become. —Tom (download the audiobook from our partners at Libro.fm)
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New Book of the Week
The Men
by Sandra Newman
In 2019, Sandra Newman published a novel, The Heavens, that landed on my year's best list, a book that "asks profound questions about what kind of world we want to live in and what lengths we'll go to change it." She's asking those questions again, with more insistence, in The Men, which is a virtual lock for this year's best list. It posits an inexplicable disaster in which all men (everyone with a Y chromosome, that is) vanish overnight, not a wholly original trope, but one that Newman handles expertly—she has anticipated and resolved with satisfaction whatever doubts one may have about that premise. Her dystopia is as sharply described and gripping as classics by the likes of Margaret Atwood and Emily St. John Mandel, but it advances beyond those works before all is said and done, taking a turn into literary territory that feels altogether new. —James (from the Madison Books newsletter)
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Old Book of the Week
Annihilation
by Jeff VanderMeer
VanderMeer has created such an atmospheric and foreboding landscape in Area X, and I found myself drawn deeper and deeper into it by the beauty and mystery there. Instead of seizing up with dread or shouting at our protagonist, the biologist of the twelfth expedition, to stop, turn around, and go back when encountering the strange and horrifying, I was eager to stay on her heels and inside of her head. I love a good slow burn and unreliable narrator, particularly when I can tell that even if I don't know exactly what's going on—and especially if the protagonist doesn't—I'm certain the author does. While I'm more than satisfied with Annihilation as a standalone novel, I'm excited to dive into the next installment, to venture further into Area X and embrace more of what I don't and can't know. —Anika
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Young Adult Book of the Week
Exactly Where You Need to Be
by Amelia Diane Coombs
Sometimes I pick up a book and I just know we're going to get along. This sweet YA novel ticked so many of my boxes. Positive mental health rep? Check. A post-graduation road trip with surprising diversions along the way? Check. A supportive best-friendship founded on shared love for a murder podcast? Check and check. There's also a swoony friends-to-lovers romance. But what I loved most about this big-hearted, adventurous summer romp was the powerful message at its core: that having OCD like Florie (or anxiety like me!) doesn't mean you have to live a small, sheltered life. Venturing outside of your comfort zone is how you grow. —Anika
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Link of the Week
Mr. Difficult Podcast
If you, like me, find yourself strangely invested in the literary career of Jonathan Franzen, and in the ambivalent passions this mild-mannered but brilliant, ambitious, and publicly awkward novelist evokes, the Mr. Difficult podcast, which has almost completed an ironic-but-astute book-by-book discussion of his oeuvre-in-progress, might be the catnip you are looking for.
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Other Link of the Week
John Hartl, 1945-2022
I had to add another link as soon as I read Moira MacDonald's lovely tribute to her former colleague, John Hartl, the movie critic for the Seattle Times for three and a half decades, which doubles as a tribute to his marriage to fellow Times critic Michael Upchurch, a partnership that was nearly as long-lived.
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Cover Crop Quiz #237
This isn't the first cover from the hundreds Edward Gorey designed for Anchor Books in the '50s that we've cropped. Perhaps his illustration includes enough of its Gorey-ish plot (as summarized in its three-word title) to guess this 1897 novel.
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Last Week's Answer
It turns out there were (at least) two correct answers to this one. I had in mind one of my favorite books, and the very first NYRB Classic, Richard Hughes's A High Wind in Jamaica, but one guesser pointed out that the same Henry Darger painting (and the same girl carrying a giant strawberry) was also used on the cover of John Ashbery's book-length poem (inspired by Darger), Girls on the Run.
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Phinney Books
7405 Greenwood Ave. N
Seattle, WA 98103
206.297.2665
www.phinneybooks.com
info@phinneybooks.com
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One of the side pleasures of having a neighborhood bookstore that I did not expect is having a baseball team named after you. With our fond memories of being a Ballard Little League family for a few years (not to mention fond memories of 
