June 28, 2025

Port Book and Newsletter June 2025

It's summer! We certainly have a lot to catch up on.

The new year started with potentially the biggest possible events: new owners, Crystal and Orion, took over the store (see an interview with Crystal below). It was the start of a busy few months meeting customers and extracting as much perspective and knowledge from Alan and Cindy before they took a well-deserved retirement.

Before we knew it, we were facilitating a book signing with Nalini Nadkarni during her Field Hall event for her book Tree Notes. What a fun time that was, and what a refreshing gem of a book. Next, we were sitting with wildlife tracker, photographer and author David Moskowitz at the North Olympic Land Trust Annual Conservation Breakfast. Talk about someone who has seen just about every animal you could possibly see in this neck of the woods. Turns out his #1 bucket list, never-seen-with-his-own-eyes animal is... a badger. We hope you see one soon, David!

April brought what felt like an early Easter, complete with an egg hunt in the store, and then Indie Bookstore Day, with bingo, a raffle and very limited-edition buttons.

Orion Paulsen of Port Book and News, Teena Woodward and Ian Mackay.

In May, we helped launch the book Ian's Ride for local legend Ian Mackay with an event at the Port Angeles Library. Ian is an incredible speaker and his story has really caught on with folks. Later in the month, we sold books at multiple events for Peninsula College Writer in Residence, Caroline Fraser. Hearing her speak about her Pulitzer Prize-winning Prairie Fires, on the subject of Laura Ingalls Wilder, was a treat, and her new book is a surefire hit (out this Tuesday, more on that below).

Now we are swinging into the summer. staying busy doing a lot of spring early summer cleaning moving some things around to showcase a lot of new books and staff picks. If you haven't browsed the new Romantasy section or the updated Employee Recommendations, you are in for a treat. We have a big day of doing some store maintenance planned for July 8, and the store will be closed for browsing the entire day while we make that happen. If you have a special order or specific title to pick up, we can still accommodate you.

Save the date for our event with Lynda Mapes (more on that below), and if you can't stop in soon then check out an interview with new owner Crystal McCormick!

Come by and say hello!

 

Let's talk Forests and Salmon with Lynda Mapes

Join author Lynda Mapes, river scientist Tim Abbe and cultural conservation science coordinator for Panthera Vanessa Castle for a discussion of Lynda's new book, The Trees are Speaking, Dispatches from the Salmon Forests for our next author event at the Dungeness River Nature Center.
Lynda Mapes

Lynda, along with Dr. Abbe, who has worked extensively on restoration of the Elwha River, and Castle, who worked as fisheries and wildlife technician for the Lower Elwha Kallam Tribe, will talk about the intertwined lives of salmon and forests, and how we need to learn to see and think about our forests, rivers and salmon as co-creating beings that sustain countless species, including us.
Cover of The Trees are Speaking

The Trees are Speaking

The Trees are Speaking is published by University of Washington Press.
Our Next In-Person Author Event
Lynda Mapes in Conversation
2025-08-02
Dungeness River Nature Center
More Info/RSVP

 

Meet the New Proprietor of Port Book and News

If you haven't already, be sure and read our Interview with Crystal McCormick.

 

New Books
Cover of Bury our Bones
Cover of Atmosphere
Cover of Problematic
Cover of Haiku
Cover of Original Sin
Cover of Baking Across America
Cover of Never Flinch
Cover of When it All Burns

 

The Most Book-adjacent Non-Book Item in the Store: Book Nooks!
Book Nook

The new "book nooks" we are selling make pretty much the most amazing book-end ever, but you can place it on your desk, shelf, or anywhere you want to infuse a bit of literary magic into your surroundings.

You'll find yourself lost in the allure of this book nook as if peering into a magical portal that transports you to a world where the love for books knows no bounds.

Allow yourself time to put it together, supply your own AAA batteries to power its tiny LED bulbs, and enjoy this magical little world of your own!

 

Books We Are Excited About
Cover of Is a River Alive
Is a River Alive
by Robert Macfarlane

Nobody living on the Olympic Peninsula (a place which resident poet and naturalist Tim McNulty memorably called "an Island of Rivers") is likely to need convincing that rivers are important to human flourishing. The health of our home is the health of our rivers.

It was specifically regarding the Elwha and its inspiring regeneration following the dam removal that Robert Macfarland notes in his new followup to 2018's magnificent Underland: "Hope is the thing with rivers." To which we say, "Preacher, meet choir."

Macfarlane has a passion for the natural world which makes even mundane subjects fascinating, but it his attunement to language that makes his books such a joy to read, re-read and put in other people's hands.

With his trademark blend of adventure travel, profound ecological observation and lyrical prose now trained on the subject of rivers, Macfarlane explores rivers as the key frontier of a "profound reimagining process" underway regarding our societal duties to the natural world. This is a great nature writer at the peak of is powers.

-Steven
Cover of Murderland
Murderland
by Caroline Fraser

Murderland is an exhaustively researched and captivating exploration of the literally toxic landscape of postwar America (and most specifically, the Puget Sound region) with a chilling and difficult-to-argue-with observation at its heart.

Fraser painstakingly catalogs the horrifying escalation of violent crime which occurred in areas with concentrated heavy metal pollution, most notably in the area surrounding the Asarco smelter in Tacoma. For decades we poisoned our own communities with lead and arsenic, and the people who grew up in the plumes of these facilities were at shockingly increased risk of catastrophic health outcomes, including clear correlations impaired brain development and accompanying violence and impulse control.

While filled with an overwhelming number of grisly and horrifying incidents, this book transcends the landscape of true crime it surveys to identify something very dark at the heart of our culture. Eye-opening and disturbing, this is the kind of book you won't be able to shut up about for weeks after you read it.
Cover of Automatic Noodlle
Automatic Noodlle
by Annalee Newitz

Legends and Lattes meets Becky Chambers Monk and Robot in this tale of found family, hope in the face of a potentially grim future, and the healing power of truly great street food.

This new novella from Annalee Newitz punches way above its weight, with a cozy but tightly plotted story of scrappy robots opening a noodle shop in a post-apocalyptic California.

Newitz offers implicit commentary on our real-life technological, economic and social challenges while providing characters, stories and relationships that help us simultaneously escape from the despondency those challenges can cause. You'll finish this wanting a big bowl of noodles, and probably wanting to turn back to page one again.

Preorder for August 5th release.