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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

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Book World: Two great new basketball books set the mood for March Madness

Eighty years ago, an extraordinary collegiate basketball game took place. It’s such a shining moment, it’s madness that March 12 isn’t an annual hoops holiday. On that Sunday morning in 1944, when most folks (including local cops) were at church, the Duke University medical school team traveled across town to play the all-Black North Carolina College Eagles behind locked gym doors. “The Secret Game” – a legitimate contest with a referee and a game clock but no spectators – was the first college game in the segregated South with Black and white players on the same court. The Eagles’ fast break helped them torch Duke, 88-44, but the competitive juices were still flowing afterward, so the young men did something even more extraordinary: On a Jim Crow hardwood, at a time when Black teams weren’t even allowed in the NCAA or NIT tournaments, they split up the teams and ran it back, shirts and skins.
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Review: Forget Huck Finn. Novel ‘James’ tells us what Jim thought on the Mississippi

Everyone should know the name Percival Everett by now. His "Also by Percival Everett" lists read like discographies, revealing more than 30 novels with resonant, sometimes playful titles such as "The Trees," a Booker Prize contender, or "Dr. No," published by Graywolf Press. Movie "American Fiction," which just won a screenplay Oscar, is based on his 2001 satire "Erasure."

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Thought ‘Poor Things’ was weird? The novel is, too — in a good way.

There was once a slogan, “You’ve read the book. Now see the movie.” These days, if one is lucky, the opposite might apply. But still I wonder: If you loved “Poor Things,” the Oscar-nominated film starring Emma Stone, will you read the book? That would be Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel, “the most sheerly entertaining pseudo-Victorian romance since A.S. Byatt’s ‘Possession,’ ” as I put it in my 1993 review of the American edition. Gray – who died in 2019 at the age of 85 – was arguably the major Scottish literary figure of the 1980s and ’90s. “Poor Things” is just one title in his wide-ranging bibliography, though he singled it out as his “happiest novel.”
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This week’s bestsellers from Publishers Weekly

Here are the bestsellers for the week that ended Saturday, Feb. 24, compiled from data from independent and chain bookstores, book wholesalers and independent distributors nationwide, powered by Circana BookScan © 2024 Circana. (Reprinted from Publishers Weekly, published by PWxyz LLC. © 2024, PWxyz LLC.) HARDCOVER FICTION 1. "The Women: A Novel" by Kristin Hannah (St. Martin's) Last week: 1 ...
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It’s alive! EC Comics returns

EC Comics, which specialized in tales of horror, crime and suspense, and was shut down in the “moral panic” of the 1950s, is making a comeback.
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A journalist goes undercover to reveal the absurdity of the art scene

“If you are not rich, you’re not getting rich,” the writer Fran Lebowitz once quipped about life in contemporary America. Judging from “Get the Picture,” Bianca Bosker’s mesmerizing new book about New York’s contemporary art scene, Lebowitz might as well have been talking about cultural capital. If you’re not born with it, you probably won’t amass much of it, because the gatekeepers in this book make it clear that they’re not sharing any wealth. “The art world is the way it is because not everyone has access to it. And not everyone understands it. And that’s sort of what creates interest and intrigue,” a gallerist on the Lower East Side tells the author.
A&E >  Books

This week’s bestsellers from Publishers Weekly

Here are the bestsellers for the week that ended Saturday, Jan. 27, compiled from data from independent and chain bookstores, book wholesalers and independent distributors nationwide, powered by Circana BookScan © 2024 Circana. (Reprinted from Publishers Weekly, published by PWxyz LLC. © 2024, PWxyz LLC.) HARDCOVER FICTION 1. Fourth Wing. Rebecca Yarros. Red Tower 2. Iron Flame. Rebecca ...
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19 new books to get you through winter

It's chilly out there, people. It's reading time! Year-end holidays are the most popular season to give books. And now we're heading into the best time to read them — while nestled in a Slanket, with a cup of tea, of course. Fortunately, publishers are keeping the promising titles coming. As you plot your reading Excel spreadsheet for winter and spring (that's a thing, right?), here are ...
A&E >  Books

Ron Sylvester: Real magic in ‘The Strange Beautiful’

Anyone who’s ever fantasized about sex with Tinker Bell, but wasn’t sure how that would happen, Carla Crujido has you covered. But flings with flying sprites is only a start to the wild world of “The Strange and Beautiful” series of short stories and fiction writing debut for Crujido.