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Did You Know? What do you know about ABFAS?

Leavenworth, Plain, Peshastin, Monitor, Entiat, Waterville, Lake Wenatchee, Cashmere, Wenatchee, East Wenatchee, and all points between... Everywhere we look, people are reading and Book Clubs are on the rise!

It's fun to get together with other people to discuss the latest book you've read! Some groups meet in coffee shops or restaurants, others trade off going to each other's houses every month. Some Book Clubs read science fiction, others romance novels, still others classic literature. A vast number of them like to try something different every month.

Did You Know...
A Book for All Seasons keeps a record of what the local Book Clubs are reading so that your members will always have a place to check in AND we also offer a 15% discount for all Book Group Selection purchases!
We can even make getting your books easier! Just call us and tell us how many copies of your monthly book selection you'll need for everyone in your group and
we'll take care of everything from there!
In-stock orders take only a day or two so we'll have the books waiting when your members stop in!
You'll have the book ready to pick up locally and with a discount!
Give us a call at 509-548-1451 or stop in if you have questions!
In the meantime, keep reading, keep discussing, and enjoy!

Toss a SIGNED copy of One Last Scream lovingly into your cart for $6.99

Place a SIGNED copy of A World Too Near lovingly in your cart for $25.00

BOOK REVIEWS

Theresa D-Litzenberger Reviews:
The Street of a Thousand Blossoms by Gail Tsukiyama

The Street of a Thousand Blossoms by Gail Tsukiyama takes the reader on a poetic journey into World War II Japan. She follows a family that suffers and overcomes many tragedies with patient acceptance. Their love for one another survives anything that life brings their way. From this story, one learns more about the history of Japan, the people, the culture, and depth of character.

Toss The Street of a Thousand Blossoms lovingly into your cart for $24.95

Kid's Book Review:
Karol Ramos reviews
Little (Grrl) Lost by Charles De Ling

A terrific tale of a little and big friendship between two different girls, who are really alike. Read about their adventure as they search for an author and some other fairytale characters.
Toss Little (Grrl) Lost lovingly into your cart for $17.99

Food, Glorious Food!
Straying a bit from the Cookbook Nook!

As every good cook knows, good food often takes time. Well sometimes good cookbook reviews take time as well so instead of a review this month, we're going to stray just a bit from the norm.

With a bad case of spring fever, I was walking around ABFAS the other day and in no time at all, I realized there was Food, Glorious, Food all around me, in every genre! Some titles I'd read, some I hadn't, but that's when I realized what a fun experiment it would be to pick a theme and go with something completely different by picking my next book out of one of these Food Finds! Care to join me? Here's some that I found.

In Fiction you could try the delicious book, Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel, or books with just food in the title like Fruit of the Lemon by Andrea Levy, or perhaps Honey in the Horn by H.L. Davis.

How about Mysteries? Earl Emerson has Catfish Cafe or there's Dead and Berried by Karen MacInerney and Diane Mott Davidson has a whole series of food related books such as The Grilling Season and Dark Tort.

A couple of non-fiction titles to peek at are The Vinegar of Spilamberto: And Other Italian Adventures with Food, Places and People by Doris Muscatine, or the popular Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert. For something different try Garlic & Sapphires - The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise by Ruth Reich. Another great escape would be to go straight to a cooking master and reading My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud'homme.

For a good laugh, check out our humor section! Not even remotely about food, Banana Sunday by Root Nibot and Colleen Coover and Sardine in Outer Space by Emmanuel Guibert and Joann Sfar still qualify in my book because they're just fun picks!

So stop in and take a look around to see what you might find. Try a "taste" of something new and break out of the norm! It's a sure cure for Spring Fever!

A Verse From a Poetic Mind

Trees
by Mark Haddon

They stand in parks and graveyards and gardens.
Some of them are taller than department stores,
yet they do not draw attention to themselves.

You will be fitting a heated towel rail one day
and see through the louvre window,
a shoal of olive-green fish changing direction
in the air that swims above the little gardens

Or you will wake at your aunt's cottage,
your sleep broken by a coal train on the empty hill
as the oaks roar in the wind off the channel.

Your kindness to animals, your skill at the clarinet,
these are accidental things.
We lost this game a long way back.
Look at you. You're reading poetry.
outside the spring air is thick
with the seeds of their children.


From The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and The Village Under the Sea by Mark Haddon.

Mark Haddon is the bestselling author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and A Spot of Bother

Toss a bit of poetry lovingly into your cart! The Talking Horse and The Sad Girl and The Village Under the Sea is $13.95!

A Nature Passage

The Sacred Balance - Rediscovering Our Place in Nature by David Suzuki
with Amanda McConnell & Adrienne Mason
Updated & Expanded

Like any other species, human beings have survived because we possess certain traits that have helped us secure a place on Earth. We are not distinguished by an armoury of weapons such as quills, fangs or talons, nor are we possessed of exceptional speed strength or agility. Our sensory acuity cannot compete with that of other animals; we cannot hear as well as a bat, smell as well as a dog or see as well as an eagle. Yet not only have we survived we have flourished within a remarkably brief time on the evolutionary scale. The key to our success is the possession of the most complex structure on Earth: the human brain.

Weighing a mere 1.5 kilograms and occupying the space of two fists, the brain consists of 100 billion neurons. Each neuron can form up to ten thousand connections with other cells, thereby creating the potential for more combinations than there are stars in the heavens.
Some Scientist compare the brain to a relay station that merely coordinates incoming signals and outgoing responses, whereas others see it as an immense computer that processes information and then arrives at an appropriate response. Francois Jacob, the French molecular biologist and Nobel laureate, suggests that the human mind is far more; it has a built-in need to create order out of the constant flow of information coming from its sensory organs. In other words, the brain creates a narrative, with a beginning, a middle, and an end - a temporal sequence that makes sense of events. The brain selects and discards information to be used in the narrative, constructing connections and relationships that create a web of meaning. In this way, a narrative reveals more than just what happened; it explains why. When the mind selects and orders incoming information into meaning, it is telling itself a story.

But our story is not written at birth; it is fluid throughout our lives. Our story is continually being edited and shaped because our brains physically change as we experience the world...

Excerpts from Pages 19-20 The Sacred Balance - Rediscovering Our Place in Nature by David Suzuki, with Amanda McConnell & Adrienne Mason.
Ten Years after this important book was first published, the author re-examines our place in the natural world in light of the recent sweeping environmental changes and advances in scientific knowledge. This new edition is an extensively revised and amplified edition of David Suzuki's best-selling book.

Toss The Sacred Balance lovingly into your cart today for only $17.95!

The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America's Deadliest Avalanche by Gary Krist

In February 1910, a monstrous, record-breaking blizzard hit the Northwest. Nowhere was the danger more terrifying than near a tiny town called Wellington, perched high in the Cascade Mountains, where a desperate situation evolved: two trainloads of cold, hungry passengers and their crews found themselves marooned. For days, an army of the Great Northern Railroad's most dedicated men worked to rescue the trains, but just when escape seemed possible, the unthinkable occurred - a colossal avalanche tumbled down, sweeping the trains over the steep slope and down the mountainside. Centered on the astonishing spectacle of our nation's deadliest avalanche, The White Cascade is the masterfully told story of a never-before-documented tragedy.

Toss lovingly into cart - $15.00

#2 February Bestseller

The Last Town on Earth by Thomas Mullen

Deep in the mist-shrouded forests of the Pacific Northwest is a small mill town called Commonwealth, conceived as a haven for workers weary of exploitation. For the adopted son of the town's founder, it is a haven in another sense; as the first place in his life he's had a loving family to call his own. And yet, amidst the backdrop of a world war raging, another shadow has fallen across the region in the form of a deadly illness striking down vast swaths of surrounding communities.
Inspired by a little-known historical footnote regarding towns that quarantined themselves during the 1918 epidemic, The Last Town on Earth is a remarkably moving and accomplished debut.

Toss a copy lovingly into your cart - $13.95

#3 February Bestseller

Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace... One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson

In 1993 Greg Mortenson was the exhausted survivor of a failed attempt to ascend K2, an American climbing bum wandering emaciated and lost through Pakistan's Karakoram Himalaya. After he was taken in and nursed back to health by the people of an impoverished Pakistani village, Mortenson promised to return one day and build them a school. From that rash, earnest promise grew one of the most incredible humanitarian campaigns of our time - Greg Mortenson's one-man mission to counteract extremism by building schools, especially for girls, throughout the breeding ground of the Taliban. The powerful and profoundly moving story of how one man really is changing the world - one school at a time.

Toss lovingly into cart - $15.00

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan

The bestselling author of The Botany of Desire explores the ecology of eating to unveil why we consume what we consume in the twenty-first century.
"What should we have for dinner?" To one degree or another this simple question assails any creature faced with a wide choice of things to eat. Anthropologists call it the omnivore's dilemma. Choosing from among the countless potential foods nature offers, humans have had to learn what is safe, and what isn't - which mushrooms should be avoided, for example, and which berries we can enjoy. Today, as America confronts what can only be described as a national eating disorder, the omnivore's dilemma has returned with an atavistic vengeance. The cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast-food outlet has thrown us back on a bewildering landscape where we once again have to worry about which of those tasty-looking morsels might kill us. At the same time we're realizing that our food choices also have profound implications for the health of our environment. The Omnivore's Dilemma is bestselling author Michael Pollan's brilliant and eye-opening exploration of these little-known but vitally important dimensions of eating in America.

Toss lovingly into cart - $16.00

#5 February Bestseller

Skinny Bitch: A No-Nonsense, Tough-Love Guide for Savvy Girls Who Want to Stop Eating Crap and Start Looking Fabulous by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin

A no-nonsense, tough-love guide for savvy girls who want to stop eating crap and start looking fabulous! Not your typical boring diet book, this is a tart-tongued, no-holds-barred wakeup call to all women who want to be thin. With such blunt advice as, "Soda is liquid Satan" and "You are a total moron if you think the Atkins Diet will make you thin," it's a rallying cry for all savvy women to start eating healthy and looking radiant. Unlike standard diet books, it actually makes the reader laugh out loud with its truthful, smart-mouthed revelations. Behind all the attitude, however, there's solid guidance. Skinny Bitch espouses a healthful lifestyle that promotes whole grains, fruits, and vegetables, and encourages women to get excited about feeling "clean and pure and energized."

Toss lovingly into cart - $13.95

#7 February Bestseller

Death Pans Out by Ashna Graves

Things don't always pan out as you expect...
In the mid-1800s miners used the phrase "pan out" to describe their mining success. On a good day, their pans were filled with precious gold; on a bad day their pans were filled with dirt. But in Death Pans Out Ashna Graves demonstrates that sometimes it's what you don't expect to find at the bottom of the pan that proves most interesting.
Journalist Jeneva Leopold doesn't expect much out of life after her double mastectomy, but her uncle's idle gold mine proves the perfect place to rekindle her enthusiasm for living. However, when a young miner turns up dead in the eastern Oregon town and Jeneva begins to investigate, she uncovers her own family secrets.

While they last, nab a SIGNED copy of this great Mystery!

Toss a SIGNED copy lovingly into cart - $14.95

#8 February Bestseller

The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream by Barack Obama

Echoing themes he sounded in his extraordinary keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Senator Barack Obama speaks in this book to Americans of all stripes who are weary of the smallness of U.S.politics today, and who long for something rooted in the faith and decency of the American Dream.

Toss a copy lovingly into cart $14.95

#9 February Bestseller

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

When Elizabeth Gilbert was around thirty, she had everything an educated, ambitious American woman was supposed to want - a husband, a house, a successful career. But instead of feeling happy and fulfilled, she was consumed with panic, grief, and confusion. She went through a divorce, a crushing depression, another failed love, and the eradication of everything she ever thought she was supposed to be. To recover, Gilbert took a radical step. She got rid of her belongings, quit her job, and undertook a yearlong journey around the world - all alone. Eat, Pray, Love is the absorbing chronicle of that year. Her aim was to visit three places where she could examine one aspect of her own nature set against the backdrop of a culture that has traditionally done that one thing very well. In Rome, she studied the art of pleasure, learning to speak Italian and gaining the twenty-three happiest pounds of her life. India was for the art of devotion, with four uninterrupted months of spiritual exploration. In Bali, she studied the art of balance between worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence. An intensely articulate and moving memoir of self-discovery, Eat, Pray, Love is about what can happen when you claim responsibility for your own contentment and stop trying to live in imitation of society's ideals. It is certain to touch anyone who has ever woken up to the unrelenting need for change.

Toss a copy lovingly into cart for $15.00

#10 February Bestseller

Mountain Madness - Scott Fischer, Mount Everest, and a Life Lived on High by Robert Birkby

"You're either cruisin' or you're bummin', so you might as well cruise." -- Scott Fischer
Mountain climber Scott Fischer's mantra would lead him to scale the highest and most treacherous peaks on earth. Best known as one of the guides who perished near the summit of Mount Everest during the tragic spring of 1996, Scott Fischer became for many an iconic symbol of audacity, hubris, and the limits of human endurance. But to those who knew him well, Scott was much more than an action figure at the heart of a modern-day cautionary tale. Now in this vivid, candid biography, Robert Birkby - one of Scott's close friends - gives us a fascinating, in-depth portrait of who Scott Fischer really was and what led him to the top of the world.

We still have SIGNED copies on hand - get one while they last!

Toss a SIGNED copy lovingly into cart - $24.95

COMING FROM THE WEST:

A LINK to LEAVENWORTH ON-LINE

There's always something going on in Leavenworth! Festivals, shopping, concerts, outdoor activities, hiking, skiing, tubing, sleigh rides... An endless number of possibilites!

Click here to see what's happening in Leavenworth!

A LINK TO MOUNTAIN PASS & WEATHER REPORTS

Washington's mountain passes are beautiful to behold, but when your plans include traveling through them during inclement weather it's best to check the pass reports before before setting out!
So click on the link below, be safe, and enjoy the drive!

Pass & Weather