The Long Haul

No publishing professional would expect that early June would be the time when some of the year's biggest books would appear, but it feels a little that way around the store this week. Not only has the book I've been telling everybody about all spring finally arrived—Finn Murphy's fantastic trucker memoir, The Long Haul (see below)—but this week we have two new releases that the wider world has (for good reason) been waiting for: Roxane Gay's Hunger and Sherman Alexie's You Don't Have to Say You Love Me. For all of Gay's stunning recent success as an essayist, novelist, and short-story writer, this book, a memoir of her "wildly undisciplined" body, seems like it might be an even further breakthrough for her. And while I haven't had a chance to read Alexie's memoir of his complicated relationship with his mother yet, some of our local bookselling peers are already speaking of it as one of the best books they've read in years.

And meanwhile, an early note for your summer calendar: the next event in our Dock Street Salon reading series will be on Saturday, July 15, at 7 pm, featuring three writers from the other side of our state. Leyna Krow will be be reading from her new collection of stories, I'm Fine, but You Appear to Be Sinking, and she'll be joined by poets (and fellow Spokanites) Tim Greenup and Ben Cartwright. There's going to be a little summer newsletter hiatus between now and then (more on that in next week's newsletter), which means I won't have quite as many chances to remind you of their visit, so please mark your calendars and join us for some fresh Washington literature.
Thanks—Tom, Laura, Kim, Liz, and Haley