Carmichael’s Bookstore

Ginseng Roots: A Memoir by Craig Thompson

, , , ,
Ginseng Roots: A Memoir by Craig Thompson
buy this book

Buy from your local indie.

Craig Thompson bursts back onto the Comix scene with this exquisitely crafted hybrid memoir/socio-cultural essay that explores his youthful experience working Wisconsin’s Ginseng farms and the fascinating history of this prized root as a bridge between Eastern and Western cultures. A book as rich in information as it is beautifully adorned.

Ginseng Roots: A Memoir by Craig Thompson, (List Price: $35, Pantheon, 9780593700778, April 2025)

Reviewed by Jonathan Hawpe, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky

Ginseng Roots: A Memoir by Craig Thompson Read More »

Precious Rubbish by Kayla E.

, ,
Precious Rubbish by Kayla E.
buy this book

Buy from your local indie.

Kayla E. is a ferociously inventive and blisteringly effective comix maker with an incredibly focused, original vision. Something of Chris Ware’s laser-honed visual sense and brutally tragicomic writing is in her artistic DNA, but melded with a rawer, bodily expression not unlike Lynda Barry or Phoebe Gloeckner’s. Precious Rubbish almost violently morphs and subverts the bubblegum slapstick of Nancy, Little Lulu, et al, and subverts the candy shine surfaces of 20th C. commercial illustrations, to make a universe of pain, sorrow, and black humor go down like a Coke and a smile mixed with acid and lye. Utterly brilliant.

Precious Rubbish by Kayla E., (List Price: $29.99, Fantagraphics, 9781683969280, April 2025)

Reviewed by Jonathan Hawpe, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky

Precious Rubbish by Kayla E. Read More »

Tongues, Volume 1 by Anders Nilsen

,
Tongues, Volume 1 by Anders Nilsen
buy this book

Buy from your local indie.

Tongues is a masterpiece, and with it Anders Nilsen fulfills the most ambitious possibilities of the graphic novel as a medium. Rarely have images and words, form and function, been married so beautifully; his pages and panels bursting with innovative, jewel-like complexity and cascading, organic beauty. The story marries the erudite and the bawdy, political and mythical, violent and meditative, in ways that you find only in literature’s greatest: Utopia, Candide, Gulliver’s Travels, The Plague, The Castle, Cosmicomics, The Master and Margarita, White Noise. This book belongs in the pantheon.

Tongues, Volume 1 by Anders Nilsen, (List Price: $35, Pantheon, 9781524747206, March 2025)

Reviewed by Jonathan Hawpe, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky

Tongues, Volume 1 by Anders Nilsen Read More »

Dear Writer by Maggie Smith

, ,
Dear Writer by Maggie Smith
buy this book

Buy from your local indie.
Get the audiobook

So much more than a “how-to,” this book is a perfect primer for cultivating creativity within oneself. A cheerleader of a book in the best sense, it gives exercises to expand one’s artistic soul. This is a winner of a book and one to return to over and over and over.

Dear Writer by Maggie Smith, (List Price: $28.99, Washington Square Press, 9781982170844, April 2025)

Reviewed by Johanna Hynes, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky

Dear Writer by Maggie Smith Read More »

Luminous by Silvia Park

, , ,
Luminous by Silvia Park
buy this book

Buy from your local indie.
Get the audiobook

An absolutely stunning debut that will enthrall literary and sci-fi readers alike. Luminous is set in a future unified Korea filled with robots, but at its heart it is a novel about three fractured siblings: robot personality programmer Morgan, who struggles to make meaningful human connections; robot crimes detective Jun, haunted by his past in the war, and their robot brother Yoyo, forever twelve, who lives in a scrapyard and makes friends with nearby schoolchildren. This novel is a rush to the senses, gorgeous, glorious, luminous.

Luminous by Silvia Park, (List Price: $29.99, Simon & Schuster, 9781668021668, March 2025)

Reviewed by Fisher Nash, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky

Luminous by Silvia Park Read More »

Milk White Steed by Michael Kennedy

,
Milk White Steed by Michael Kennedy
buy this book

Buy from your local indie.

Michael Kennedy’s comix are somewhere between jazz, surrealism, Greek tragedy and Krazy Kat. Suffused with the grain and pain of hard luck life, these strange tales dot along the timeline of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora like messages from the Gods drawn in blood and fruit juice.

Milk White Steed by Michael Kennedy, (List Price: $24.95, Drawn and Quarterly, 9781770467590, February 2025)

Reviewed by Jonathan Hawpe, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky

Milk White Steed by Michael Kennedy Read More »

Inverno by Cynthia Zarin

, ,
Inverno by Cynthia Zarin
buy this book

Buy from your local indie.
Get the audiobook

Elegant and beautiful prose. This books reads like memory, floating from thought to thought and back again. Looping ideas and theories, childhood revelries and desires. A slender and stunning example of literary experimental fiction where love and life coincide.

Inverno by Cynthia Zarin, (List Price: $17, Picador, 9781250338174, January 2025)

Reviewed by Rachel Brewer, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky

Inverno by Cynthia Zarin Read More »

Blob by Maggie Su

, ,
Blob by Maggie Su
buy this book

Buy from your local indie.
Get the audiobook

The most surprisingly accurate description of being at loose ends in your early twenties that I’ve read. Vi is in the midst of an epic tailspin—a breakup, a failed class, an abandoned education—when she decides to take care of an apparently sentient blob she finds late one night behind a bar. Vi feels like the antihero of her own life, with disappointment all around her, but she, like the alien blob she nurtures, has to find a way to live in the world, too. This is the funny, thoughtful, antithetical romance novel you never knew you needed—but now you do.

Blob by Maggie Su, (List Price: $26.99, Harper, 9780063358645, January 2025)

Reviewed by Emma Aprile, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky

Blob by Maggie Su Read More »

The Harder I Fight the More I Love You by Neko Case

, , ,
The Harder I Fight the More I Love You by Neko Case
buy this book

Buy from your local indie.
Get the audiobook

As far as music memoirs go, the supremely talented Neko Case brings a new and often mind-blowing perspective to an often paint-by-numbers genre. Mostly centered around her harrowing childhood and teen years and her fraught relationships with her parents, there’s loads to unpack, with shocks and trauma you will not believe. And the music! Her influences, how she got her start, and the joy and sorrow of the life on the road. Highly recommended!

The Harder I Fight the More I Love You by Neko Case, (List Price: $30, Grand Central Publishing, 9781538710500, January 2025)

Reviewed by Seth Tucker, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky

The Harder I Fight the More I Love You by Neko Case Read More »

Sunday by Olivier Schrauwen

,
Sunday by Olivier Schrauwen
buy this book

Buy from your local indie.

Olivier Schrauwen’s Sunday is an epic of interiority, emerging like a psychological hologram out of one fragile, mundane, ridiculous, precious human mind to commune with a world of love, sex, art, work, time, and experience at the nexus of the goofy and the transcendent: imagine James Joyce’s Ulysses as a comic book.

Sunday by Olivier Schrauwen, (List Price: $39.99, Fantagraphics, 9781683969679, October 2024)

Reviewed by Jonathan Hawpe, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky

Sunday by Olivier Schrauwen Read More »

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy 25th Anniversary Edition by Douglas Adams

, , , ,
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 25th Anniversary Edition by Douglas Adams
buy this book

Buy from your local indie.
Get the audiobook

The perfect compendium for a beloved sci-fi classic, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy 25th Anniversary Edition holds five novels that follow the adventures of a British man (Arthur Dent) as he’s whisked away through the galaxy with a strange set of comrades to save the Earth, the Galaxy and themselves. Adams balances humor, wit, and some scientific insight in this series; be amazed to read about sentient dolphins who have their own language and singing abilities, a supercomputer who finally figures out the meaning of life, and many other zany characters.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy 25th Anniversary Edition by Douglas Adams, (List Price: $22, Crown, 9781400052929, August 2004)

Reviewed by Hilton Airall, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy 25th Anniversary Edition by Douglas Adams Read More »

The Hotel Balzaar by Kate DiCamillo

, , ,
The Hotel Balzaar by Kate DiCamillo
buy this book

Buy from your local indie.
Get the audiobook

The Hotel Balzaar reminds me a bit of a Wes Anderson film. The story plays out as collection of highly stylized scenes, gathered into Acts, with the artifice on full display alongside the narrative. Not unlike watching a play unfolding upon a stage, and all to a very pleasing effect! The Hotel Balzaar brings an experienced reader a familiar setting and a familiar character in Marta, a curious young girl living out of sight in an old but posh hotel where her mother is a maid and her father is away at war. The hotel and its denizens are described in just enough rich detail to make it real but not so much as to get in the way of its magical story. Marta and the mysterious Countess, who arrives one day with a glorious parrot upon her shoulder and stories to share, are quite dynamic and engaging characters for a novella-length book.A great companion piece to the first of the Norendy Tales, The Puppets of Spellhorst.

The Hotel Balzaar by Kate DiCamillo, (List Price: $17.99, Candlewick, 9781536223316, October 2024)

Reviewed by Tracy Billing, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky

The Hotel Balzaar by Kate DiCamillo Read More »

The Black Utopians by Aaron Robertson

, ,
The Black Utopians by Aaron Robertson
buy this book

Buy from your local indie.
Get the audiobook

A book that feels groundbreaking: ambitious in scope and deeply felt. The Black Utopians is a necessary book, redefining the very Euro-centric image many of us hold of intentional communities that are rooted in the American experience. This is my favorite kind of history book- a re-visioning of not just of place and ideas but also a reframing of how we look forward. Robertson offers an elegant book of hope and expansiveness.

The Black Utopians by Aaron Robertson, (List Price: $30, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 9780374604981, October 2024)

Reviewed by Johanna Hynes, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky

The Black Utopians by Aaron Robertson Read More »

Dive, Dive into the Night Sea by Thea Lu

, , , , , , ,
Dive, Dive into the Night Sea by Thea Lu
buy this book

Buy from your local indie.

Dive, Dive into the Night Sea opens vertically. I mean, physically, the book’s orientation is 90 degrees from typical; which was delightful to discover! A lone diver, cloaked in darkness, plunges into the night sea. Together we descend, down, down, to where hidden creatures and their dwellings are revealed. Cleverly illustrated pages buoy the children’s story along with flaps that open to offer the science behind the scene. Thea Lu’s beautiful, monochromatic book shines light into the inky depths, a blend of picture-book storytelling and engaging non-fiction. Great for children with an interest in the ocean and its creatures or science in general. Or anyone with a strong sense of curiosity!

Dive, Dive into the Night Sea by Thea Lu, (List Price: $19.99, Candlewick Studio, 9781536234152, October 2024)

Reviewed by Tracy Billing, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky

Dive, Dive into the Night Sea by Thea Lu Read More »

The Girl in Question by Tess Sharpe

, ,
The Girl in Question by Tess Sharpe
buy this book

Buy from your local indie.
Get the audiobook

Tess Sharpe has absolutely knocked it out of the park with this follow-up to her 2021 hit The Girls I’ve Been. Readers follow Nora as she is hunting and being hunted by her stepfather with Wes and Iris in tow. Sharpe’s writing is impossible to put down, and the tension at the end left me in tears from the sheer overwhelming nature of it.

The Girl in Question by Tess Sharpe, (List Price: $18.99, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 9780316574914, May 2024)

Reviewed by Emma Presnell, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky

The Girl in Question by Tess Sharpe Read More »

Scroll to Top