Librarians offer summer reading recommendations focused on Pacific Northwest authors

Are you looking for the perfect book to dive into this summer? Pacific Northwest authors have a lot to offer. Whether you’re an adult or a kid, looking for something serious or fun, there are lots of options. We hear recommendations from Isy Ibibo, the Black cultural competency teen librarian at the North Portland Library and Alison Kastner, reader services librarian for Multnomah County Library. We’ll also hear some suggestions from listeners. Check out Kastner and Ibibo’s full list of recommendations.

You can also listen to “Think Out Loud” interviews with some of the authors mentioned in this conversation:

• Lidia Yuknavitch on “Thrust”
• Susan DeFreitas on “Dispatches from Anarres”
• Omar el Akkad on “What Strange Paradise”

The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We turn now to summer reading. For many people, summer vacations can provide the kind of downtime and free time that is often in short supply, meaning it can be a good time to finally do some reading. We’ve invited two Portland librarians on today to give us some book suggestions for readers of all ages, with a focus on writers from the Northwest. Isy Ibibo is a Black cultural competency teen librarian at the North Portland Library, and Alison Kastner is a reader services librarian for Multnomah County Library. Welcome to you both.

Guests: Thank you. Thanks for having us.

Miller: We also asked listeners on social media for their suggestions, and we’re going to hear some sprinkled throughout. We can start right now with this voicemail from Kristy who called in and who is a public librarian from Corvallis.

Voicemail: I would recommend the summer reading books of ‘Trespassers’ by Portland author, Breena Bard. It’s a graphic novel that’s perfect for tweens, about a group of new friends who are enjoying the summer at the lake as usual but decide to trespass into an old lake house to try to solve the mystery of a mysterious disappearance of a glamorous couple from the past. For teens and adults, a good swoony read by a Pacific Northwest author would be ‘Daughter of Smoke and Bone’ by Laini Taylor, who is also a Portland author. ‘Daughter of Smoke and Bone’ is a swoony paranormal romance of what happens when a devil, or a demon, falls in love with an angel. It is full of adventure and intrigue, really colorful – literally – characters and is sure to be a compelling read to pull you through not only the first book but the next two in the series. Thank you so much.

Miller: That was Kristy, who is a public librarian in Corvallis. We have two librarians with us as well, as I noted. Isy Ibibo and Alison Kastner. Isy, one of your suggestions on the list that you provided for us is ‘The Game of Love and Death’ by Martha Brockenbrough. What is this?

Isy Ibibo: Yeah, this is actually a historical fiction book. It’s one that I have on my list to read as well this summer. But it’s a great choice, especially for those who enjoyed ‘The Book Thief.’ It is a story of love between Flora and Henry who are two pawns actually chosen by Love and Death in a chess game. The novel follows Flora, who’s a Black nightclub singer, and Henry, who is a golden boy who’s grown up with everything. They are living in depression-era Seattle, so the stakes are really high. It’s a book that will keep you on the edge of your seat waiting to see if Love will conquer all or if Death will win in the end. So it’s a really fun story where Love and Death are two of the principal characters.

Miller: Alison Kastner, what’s one of the books at the top of your list right now?

Alison Kastner: Well, there are a bunch of us in the library who are really looking forward to reading Lidia Yuknavitch’s new book, ‘Thrust.’ It just came out at the end of June I believe. It’s a story of… well, if you know Yuknavitch, she is a very creative writer, and roams back and forth. In this story, the Statue of Liberty is a recurring image, and it’s a very surreal story of a girl named Laisvė who can time travel on the back of a box turtle. There’s a picture of a dire future New York where people still take that boat ride to see the iconic statue, however now only her arm and head rise above the surging waters. Laisvė is able to travel back through time to the building of the statue to interrogate what it means when Lady Liberty is meticulously constructed by the very laborers she is meant to welcome but who will struggle to find belonging in America well into the future.

Miller: I should note that Randy Blazak on Twitter wrote: ‘Reading Thrust by Lidia Yuknavitch and loving it! A perfect summer read and destined for the big screen.’ Lydia Yuknavitch recently joined Think Out Loud in a conversation with Geoff Norcross. So folks can listen to that interview about the book before or after you read it. Let’s listen to another voicemail.

Voicemail: Hi Dave, my name’s Kirk and I live in Portland. A good summer read for everyone out there is by a local Portland author named Suzy Vitello. The book is called ‘Faultland’ – Faultland, all one word – and it’s all about the big earthquake that’s going to shake up Portland. There’s lots of Portland locations in it. It’s a wonderful story of a family overcoming this disaster, and it’s a real page turner. I’d love to turn it on to other people. Suzy Vitello is the author and ‘Faultand’ is the book.

Miller: Isy Ibibo, another of your recommendations is ‘The Steep and Thorny Way’ by Cat Winters. Who would this be for?

Ibibo: This is a murder mystery which is for teens, but I recommend it for any readers who love a good mystery. This one is also set in the Pacific Northwest and follows a young girl who’s trying to figure out what happened to her father. There’s a big mystery surrounding his death, so she is kind of racing to figure out what happened.

Miller: Alison Kastner, another book on your list is ‘Remarkably Bright Creatures’ by Shelby Van Pelt. What’s this?

Kastner: Although this isn’t typical detective fair, one of the characters in this book is a sleuth of the highest order. It focuses on one of the voices: Marcellus is a captive octopus who keeps his brilliant mind busy by trying to figure out the motivations of the humans who work around him at the Sewell Bay Aquarium. He can clearly see that the meticulous night cleaner named Tova Sullivan has never gotten over the loss of her son in the waters of Puget Sound some 30 years before. He’s equally sharp when it comes to sizing up Cameron, who’s a young grifter who’s supposed to take over Tova’s duties when she retires. So this is a story of unlikely friendships and surprising connections. I would say it’s a pretty perfect summer read if you can suspend your disbelief around the narration of a sardonic and judgmental octopus. This one is particularly good on audio, and you can listen by way of the Libby App, which is free with your library card, little plug. This is a great book for those who like really compelling characters, a plot that moves along and a bit of escapism.

Miller: Let’s have a listen to another voicemail recommendation right now.

Voicemail: ‘Hi, I’m Pam Bergen and I strongly recommend the book called As The World Burns, the new generation of activists and the landmark legal fight against climate change by Lee van der Voo, an author based in Portland. It’s the story of the 21 youth suing the federal government, many of them from Oregon. It’s an amazing book. It would be a great read for this summer.’

Miller: And here is another voicemail recommendation. This is Georgina Egleston calling from Portland Oregon:

Voicemail: ‘And summer is the optimal time for people to work through deep grief. So I’m responding today to your invitation to suggest books to read this summer. And one of them is A New Mourning. Discovering the gift in grief, a way for people to access and the wisdom of the body to process their grief. Have a wondrous day. Bye bye.’

Miller: So Alison Kastner and Isy Ibibo, I’m curious to get your thoughts on a couple of these, because so from listeners among the suggestions that we heard are just now, this is a book about grief, a book about climate activism, a non-fiction book by the Portland journalist Lee van der Voo, and then earlier, a novel about the big one, about the Cascadia subduction zone earthquake. Alison first: these all seem like meaty serious topics in various ways, which maybe goes against the sort of the idea of beach reading. I’m curious if you think of summer reading as its own special category, where you read stuff that doesn’t really matter, or if that’s an old fashioned idea about what summer reading is.

Kastner: That’s such an interesting question, because I mean it depends on the reader, right? But as librarians, we would never tell people that some reading is less important than others or that they should spend their time in reading about serious things and not in escapism. But I think there’s a place for all of that kind of reading, and reading is its own virtue in my opinion. Reading promotes mindfulness and focus and it builds empathy, regardless of whether it’s an intense topic or whether it’s an enjoyable story about people connecting.

Miller: Isy Ibibo, when young people come to you and ask for advice about what to read, what kinds of details do they give you about what they’re looking for? How specific are they?

Ibibo: That definitely depends on the reader. But I have a reader that isn’t particularly specific about what they’re looking for. So some of them come in and they know exactly what they’re looking for: Dog Man, they’re looking for the next book in the series, and other times I will have young readers come in and so I may have to pull it out of them. I’ll ask them what’s the last book they read that they really enjoyed, or if there’s subject matter or voice that they aren’t particularly fond of anything that absolutely don’t want to read, and I take all of that into account when picking out books to recommend.

Miller: We have some suggestions that came on social media. Doris Jay wrote on FaceBook: ‘a friend loaned me Deep River by Karl Marlantes. So far, it’s looking like a really good book.’ John S Burke agreed, writing: ‘fabulous recommendation. I adored that book as well as what it is like to go to war.’ Several listeners recommended Sometimes A Great Notion by Ken Kesey and Mink River by the late Brian Doyle. And then Leah Holland on Twitter suggested Summer in the City of Roses by the PDX Chicana author Michelle Ruiz Kyle. Alison Kastner, what’s another book on your list right now?

Kastner: Well, I think we’d be remiss if we didn’t talk about Portlander Ursula K Le Guin. A lot of us are still mourning her loss, but yet she continues to inspire writers and readers. So there’s a new book called Dispatches From Anarres, Tales in Tribute to Ursula K Le Guin, edited by Susan DeFreitas. DeFreitas calls this collection a literary mixtape, and it features a lot of Northwest writers, including people like Renee Donenfeld, Curtis Chen, Molly Glass, Julia Kim and each of those stories. It was so interesting to hear them talk about archaeology and anthropology, because each of these stories explore some aspect of Le Guin’s wide-ranging ideas. She often wrote about anthropology, about utopian societies, and gender and social roles. So I just love how these writers take her ideas and use them as a springboard for their own speculations. So this is going to be a great book for people who want a short read. They need to read in short bits and all of those of us who are touched by Le Guin’s life and work.

Miller: And that includes listeners who got in touch with us to recommend The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas and The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin. And I should say that if you want to hear a conversation about that new collection of stories in celebration of Le Guin, we had a conversation with the editor and two of the authors of those stories back in March of this year. You can find that on our website. Isy Ibibo, you have some recommendations for younger readers: books by iAmMoshow, The Cat Rapper. Who is he? And what are his books?

Ibibo: So iAmMoshow is a local rapper and also a big lover of cats. That’s the name. And one of the books that I’ve got here is A New Cattitude, which is a really great book, actually about mindfulness, and it’s set up picture book style. So it can be read really fast all in one sitting, or if there’s a specific message that you need for the day, you can go ahead and flip to that page and a little reminder to take a breath and to be mindful. These books are also part of our Black Pacific Northwest collection here at the North Portland Library. So if you’re into iAmMoshow or any of these other authors, you can go into our branch and find a whole collection of books by and about Black Pacific North Westerners.

Miller: Isy Ibibo and Alison Kastner, thanks so much.

Guests: Thanks for having us. Thank you.

Miller: Isy Ibibo is the black cultural competency teen librarian at the North Portland Library. Alison Kastner is a reader services librarian for Multnomah County Library.

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