6
FROM THE SHELF
JULY 13�20, 2022
CHECKING OUT THE
WORLD OF BOOKS
Paperback reads for those sunny days
By Scott Greenstone
The Seattle Times
It’s summer, and here with it are all the pleasures of
reading outside. Consuming a good book out in the world
binds you closer to it: I can still remember the exact feel,
smell and location of the grassy hill where I fi nished “Harry
Potter and the Deathly Hallows” during summer more than
a decade ago. Here are some newly released paperbacks.
‘WAKE: THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF
WOMEN-LED SLAVE REVOLTS’ BY REBECCA
HALL, ILLUSTRATED BY HUGO MARTÍNEZ
“Wake” is a graphic novel that revises our reading of
history and at the same
time tells of its author-
historian’s struggle to
bring that history to light.
It tells of scholar Rebecca
Hall’s eff ort to uncover
the truth about women
whose roles in slave
revolts have been erased
from history. NPR reviewer
Etelka Lehoczky said
that “Wake” “sets a new
standard for illustrating
history” and named it a
best book of the year.
Simon & Schuster/TNS
‘ONCE THERE WERE WOLVES’
BY CHARLOTTE MCCONAGHY
Charlotte McConaghy’s second novel was highly
anticipated last year after her fi rst drew comparisons to
Moby Dick. “Once There Were Wolves,” like that Mel-
villian fi rst novel, brings the reader into a world where
humans have beaten the world into submission and out
of balance, and mixes literary eco-fi ction with elements
of mystery and thriller novels.
In the book, an Australian wolf biologist named Inti
Flynn arrives in Scotland to reintroduce 14 gray wolves
into the remote Highlands. But the locals are less than
open to the idea, and when someone meets their end in
the woods, a traumatic event in Flynn’s past also bubbles
to the surface.
‘BEAUTIFUL WORLD, WHERE ARE YOU’
BY SALLY ROONEY
Sally Rooney’s name and work seems like it’s every-
where these days, from international bestseller lists
to headlines to Hulu. Her third novel after “Conver-
sations with Friends” and “Normal People” continues
on the path of reimagining romance in realism for the
Millennial generation, telling the story of four people
in and around Dublin — two women and two men they
consider whether to fall in love with.
New York Times reviewer Brandon Taylor said this
is Rooney’s best novel yet, with “the arid, intense
melancholy of a Hopper painting,” yet “funny and
smart, full of sex and love and people doing their
best to connect.”
‘THE ANTISOCIAL NETWORK: THE
GAMESTOP SHORT SQUEEZE AND THE
RAGTAG GROUP OF AMATEUR TRADERS
THAT BROUGHT WALL STREET TO ITS KNEES’
BY BEN MEZRICH
A book for those who, like me, read news coverage
(and lots of tweets) about one of the strangest finan-
Happy Hour!
All Day Sundays!
cial stories in years — the GameStop short squeeze,
where hobby traders online brought Wall Street to a
standstill — in bewilderment last year. In “The Anti-
social Network,” Ben Mezrich (perhaps best known
for writing the book Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher
turned into “The Social Network”) tells the story beat
by beat in easy prose.
While it’s slick, Mezrich did produce it speedily, sell-
ing the movie rights to a book proposal a week after
the short squeeze happened, and has been accused
in the past of playing fast with facts. Many characters
are composites and Mezrich as usual fills in gaps in
facts with his imagination, but the book can still help
you understand the mechanics of what happened in
an entertaining way.
‘THE BOMBER MAFIA: A DREAM,
A TEMPTATION, AND THE LONGEST NIGHT
OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR’
BY MALCOLM GLADWELL
Malcolm Gladwell has long been intrigued by a stray
German bomb, dropped during World War II in his
grandparents’ back garden outside of London, which
didn’t go off . In his new book, he follows an obsession
born of that intrigue: bombers.
He tells the World War II story of a small band of
idealistic strategists, the “Bomber Mafi a,” who asked:
What if precision bombing could weaken the enemy
and make war far less lethal? Nearly a century later,
Gladwell examines their legacy, calling the book “a case
study in how dreams go awry. And how, when some
new, shiny idea drops down from the heavens, it does
not land, softly, in our laps. It lands hard, on the ground,
and shatters.”
Electric Sundown
14 SE 3rd Street, Pendleton
Miner’s Jubilee Hours
Tues-Sat 10am-6pm
Sun 10-3
Pendleton
Hermiston
241 S Main Street 201 E Main Street
(541) 377-2434
(541) 371-4114
Locations open 11am - 8pm every day!
Pendleton’s premier party house and event
space! Follow our regular weekend events or
book your own at electricsundown.com
1813 Main St, Baker City, OR
(541) 523-7551
https://bettysbooks.indielite.org