Well, it looks and feels like we’re back to the usual Washington, DC summer weather. It was a nice break, those few breezy, cool, no humidity days, but we’ll soldier on a little sweaty but certainly not surprised.

I do have something surprising to tell everyone, though. We’ve lucked into some signed copies of Khaled Hosseini’s breath-taking new novel A Thousand Splendid Suns. The stock is limited, but we have copies at all of our stores. It’s the perfect hardcover addition to our Penguin Paperbacks Buy 2, Get 1 Free Sale going on now through July 26th. You can pick up a copy of The Kite Runner and a couple of Penguin Classics that you’ve always meant to read and you’ll be set for all your summer reading needs.

On another topic altogether, don’t you love it when you read two books at about the same time and find that although they don’t seem to bear any resemblance to each other, they complement each other? A couple of weeks ago I was talking about Powell’s Out of the Book project that resulted in a short, thoughtful film about Ian McEwan’s latest work On Chesil Beach. Well, I forgot to mention then that I’d read the book and enjoyed it quite a lot.

I picked up On Chesil Beach while I was reading Haruki Murakami’s most recent offering After Dark. At first glimpse they have very little in common. McEwan’s excruciating journey through the first night of Edward and Florence’s marriage is a fascinating exercise in pace, control, and language. After Dark is an ethereal journey through the night. While Mari, a young denizen of Tokyo, wends her way through the late hours, drinking coffee at Denny’s, meeting a cast of night owls; her sister lies in a bed in an entranced coma-like state.

What linked them for me was the slow, intense build of their stories all under cover of night. They’ve both created wonderful mood pieces. McEwan and Murakami play with time, speeding it up and then slowing it down to an achingly slow pace. Murakami does this with Mari experiencing the night as it unfolds at its various intensities, while for her sister time is creaking along, if moving at all. McEwan builds a precarious tableau out of Edward and Florence’s courtship that unfolds in excruciating second-by-second detail.

I highly recommend both of these novels. It was a pleasure to read them both additionally heightened by reading them alongside each other. Well, I hope you all get a chance to read some good books over the next week. It’s the perfect weather for lying out and reading while the pages wilt in your hands.

I apologize in advance... I am phoning it in a little bit today. It's been a busy week full of appointments and I have hardly had time to sit down and read anything.

My reading energy has been spent cleaning ...piles of books, that is, but still cleaning and not reading. A few days ago in a fit of manic energy I cleaned my apartment, which to anyone who's been there can tell you means that although there may have been some dusting and vacuuming and dish-washing, really the bulk of tha action was in re-arranging piles of books. The three-tiered system in my bedroom went through a pretty devastating evaluation process resulting in a pretty significant shift in titles most close in line to be read. Now Denis Johnson and Valerie Martin sit in the hot seat.

Out in the front of my apartment my dining table has revealed its surface once again. It's probably been months since I last ate off of it, but no more! And what's more exciting than rediscovering an eating surface that enables one to eat and read at the same time?? The coffee table really didn't cut it - too much leaning over or holding the book in one hand while operating a utensil with the other. Danger!

What I have been reading this morning after seeing a review of it on Salon.com is Terry Eagleton's new book The Meaning of Life. The bad boy of Literary Criticism has crafted a long essay that seems to be trying to fill the niche that Harry Frankfurt's On Bullshit did two years ago.

Eagleton is most known for his work Literary Theory: An Introduction, but he's made some ripples lately with a pretty scathing review of Richard Dawkin's bestseller The God Delusion. This new work is certainly not as polarizing, but he doesn't shy away from controversy. Eagleton writes this philosophical tract just like you'd expect a Literary Theorist to. It's all about the words. But, he remains adept and skillful with these words and really quite accessible, too.

I went to the Warehouse Theater last night to attend the screening, nay, the DC premiere of the first in the Out of the Book Film Series hosted by Olsson's. This event included a 30 minute film about Ian McEwan and his latest book On Chesil Beach produced by the fine folks of Powell's Books in Portland, OR. The film series is an endeavor that Powell's has undertaken to bring a little bit more to the reading experience, to bring a little more community and conversation to the table. And, of course, to bring a side of the author that many readers are clamoring for that we may not get from the usual radio and TV talk show circuit.

I'd actually already seen the film at a special screening at the BEA with a very special talk with Mr. McEwan afterwards, but I enjoyed it so much I wanted to see it again and I also wanted to drag a friend of mine to it. There is a bit at the end of the film after his readings and the very intelligent commentaries on his writing where the film crew takes an assortment of pebbles that Mr. McEwan had removed from Chesil Beach back to the beach lest he be prosecuted for environmental vandalism. A bit of levity after a somber meditation on a well-crafted, compact, and earnest novella.

Before I went to sleep last night I spent some more time with a collection of short stories called Beware of God by Shalom Auslander. I am reading these in preparation for the publication of his memoir The Foreskin's Lament. I'd read his piece "Playoffs" in The New Yorker back in January and I almost immediately picked up Beware of God, which was originally published in 2005. But after losing it to one of my many piles of books I uncovered it upon hearing of his forthcoming work.

Reading Auslander is like watching really good comedy. It incorporates painfully intelligent and incisive observations into a rhythm of almost uncomfortable restraint followed by face-smacking delivery. I think I like it. Auslander's subject matter is almost always religion. He was raised in an isolated Orthodox Jewish community in New York State and has spent the bulk of his adult life reconciling his lack of orthodoxy with his staggering guilt. This has resulted (to his reader's benefit) in some painfully hilarious and often seething prose that is an absolutely enthralling read.

Starting Friday you'll be able to pick up three paperback Penguins for the price of two! Olsson's is going in for another round of our now legendary Buy 2, Get 1 Free Sale, this time with a whole host of Penguin, Berkley, Riverhead, and Penguin Classics to choose from.

I’m back from the BEA and it looks like I spent all my witty repartee and clever observations over the weekend. I’m not sure when I’m due for a refill, so pardon my humorless approach.

I arrived at the Brooklyn Marriott on Wednesday night with Tony Ritchie in tow. And Thursday he and I hit the Education Day seminars. Friday and Saturday brought the exciting and exhausting trade show. The Javits Center was clogged with people on Friday but the gang - Alex, Andrew, Ryan, Tony, and I - had a pretty good game plan. And since the Javits gets excellent cell phone reception there was always the opportunity to call for help if you got trapped in a bookseller stampede. Ryan, Tony, and I took a train back from the festivities on Monday and had a nice debriefing over a glass or two of Amtrak’s best white wine.

Nine hours in the jury room 111 on Tuesday resulted in a un-selection for me. They tell you not to take it personally.

And then finally Wednesday, it’s back to the office and the usual routine.

Although I exercised a considerable amount of restraint and only picked up a handful of books, I managed to get a few that I am quite excited about. I acquired a galley of a book called The Arsonist’s Guide to Writer’s Homes in New England by Brock Clark. You’ll be hearing more about this book from me, as it gets closer to publication, which isn’t until September, so I have plenty of time to prepare my remarks… I read it a couple of months ago in manuscript form and I really enjoyed it. The lovely people at New Directions gave me copies of Distant Star and Last Evenings on Earth so I can further my knowledge of Roberto Bolano’s work in preparation for the translation of his final novel. I am still reading The Savage Detectives in little spurts and it is turning out to be one of my favorite books this year. Yet another book I picked up was Hocus Potus by local-ish Malcolm MacPherson. A Iraq war farce that is based on his own experiences covering the post-invasion period, MacPherson’s book is fictionalized only because the story is so outrageous.

There were a few other books I picked up that I am excited about and many, many more that I did not that I am also excited about. I kept a list so that I wouldn’t forget the ones I had to leave behind. And now, here’s hoping I find some time to read a few of these books this weekend!