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New Book of the Week
On Juneteenth
by Annette Gordon-Reed
Gordon-Reed made her name, and won a Pulitzer, as a historian of Virginia, and specifically of Thomas Jefferson's estate of Monticello, as she told the history of its black residents alongside its white ones in unprecedented detail. But she was raised in Texas, East Texas specifically, and her little handbook about Juneteenth, the local holiday that is finally becoming a national one, gives the history behind the celebration, as well as a very personal history of the presence of black people—alongside white and indigenous people—in that one-of-a-kind state. She loves the state in which she was raised, and for that very reason, she is compelled to tell its honest history. —Tom
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Old Book of the Week
Phinney by Post Book #78
Thomas and Beulah
by Rita Dove
I had always wanted to choose a book of poetry for Phinney by Post, and I knew, when we did, it would be one in which the poems truly made a book, something Dove leaves no doubt about at the beginning of hers: "These poems tell two sides of a story, and are meant to be read in sequence," she declares in boldface. The sequence is "Thomas" and then "Beulah," two halves that imagine the lives, mostly in Ohio, of her grandfather and grandmother, but as I've read the sequences over and over, they've gained their value to me by knocking against each other, as different moments speak to me, and to each other, two lives gaining their shapes from moments held in memory, fleeting and forward-borne. —Tom
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Kids' Book of the Week
Phinney by Post Kids Book #66
Toasty
by Sarah Hwang
What is the proper level of preposterousness for a picture book, especially one about a piece of toast that thinks it's a dog? Whatever it is, Sarah Hwang hits the perfect balance of logic and absurdity in her debut. Can a piece of toast, like our hero Toasty, roll in a puddle like a dog? Of course not: it gets soggy! But can Toasty bark like a dog? Surprisingly, yes! You'll laugh and root for this intrepid piece of bread as he finds his ideal home. (Ages 2 to 5) —Tom
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Link of the Week
Baldwin in 1979
With James Baldwin returning to bestseller lists (including ours: The Fire Next Time was #36 on our top 100 last year), a former producer for ABC's 20/20 has unearthed a profile he and reporter Sylvia Chase made of Baldwin on the publication of his last novel, Just Above My Head. The segment never aired, but you can see it now, and hear his still-relevant judgment, as state legislatures in our day attempt to control the teaching of history, that "The American sense of reality is dictated by what Americans are trying to avoid."
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Cover Crop Quiz #213
A fairly recent first edition is all I will say about this one.
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Last Week's Answer
If you looked close enough, you might have been able to spot the chickens on the 1945 first edition of Betty MacDonald's Olympic Peninsula memoir, The Egg and I.
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New to Our 100 Club
Circe
by Madeline Miller
(61 weeks to reach 100)
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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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