First Quiet City Blog Post

It's been a long time since I have kept up with a blog, so pardon me while I crack my knuckles and work my creaky wordsmithing.

On this blog you will find information about new arrivals at the shop, special events and visitors, my own reading list and amateur book reviews/recommendations, and a fair amount of me just nerding out about books and writers and writing and art and the city of Lewiston.

The last book I read and loved was Snow Angels by Stewart O'Nan, a novel narrated by an adult looking back on his teen years and a tragedy that shook his small Pennsylvania town one bitter autumn. My friend Sean recommended Stewart O'Nan to me; I read and loved The Speed Queen earlier this year, so now I need to read everything else he has written. 

It's not exactly an upper of a story (obviously, by my brief description above) but is perfectly paced, unsentimental, and compellingly observant of the core characters. 

Three books ago, I read A Home at the End of the World by Michael Cunningham. This story is told in chapters narrated by a rotation of four characters, and follows their lives from adolescence to adulthood. It details the ways they become entwined and eventually, how those twists become tight or loose by turns, or break altogether. It was a lovely novel, not for leaving a feel-good vibe after I finished, but for the connections to the characters I felt.

You can find gently used copies of Snow Angels, The Speed Queen, and A Home at the End of the World in the fiction/literature section of Quiet City Books.