Heather Brittain Bergstrom’s novel is outstanding for its evocation of place. In a promotional interview, she notes that she was born and raised in Moses Lake, Washington, between two large Indian reservations, the Colville and the Yakama. Now living in northern California, she sometimes longs for the Pacific Northwest’s rugged, open landscapes, cowboys, Indians, wind, sage, large rivers, dams, and miles of “nothingness.”
A review of Wolves at Our Door by Jim and Jammie Dutcher
Wolves are usually viewed as very dangerous animals, yet dogs domesticated from wolves are known as man’s best friend. Jim and Jamie Dutcher’s Wolves at Our Door gives an insight into what wolves are really like. Inspired by the Endangered Species Act of 1967, the Dutchers, in 1990, decided to set up the “Sawtooth Wolf Pack” on the edge of Idaho’s’ Sawtooth Wilderness. Jim wanted to film a documentary about wild wolves similar to his three earlier documentaries: Water, Birth, the Planet Earth, and A Rocky Mountain Beaver Pond, and Cougar, Ghost of the Rockies.
A review of The Forgotten Roses by Deborah Doucette
Doucette heightens the suspense and tension with sinister details; for instance, Dietzhoff’s eyes are “compelling, dark at the centre, glittery like tacks”. A big scary bronze owl hangs just outside the window of Serena’s old room. A mysterious metal box is discovered by a workman who is searching for the septic tank cover.
A review of Juicing, Fasting, and Detoxing for life by Cherie Calbom
Interestingly, considering its title, this book contains more information than juicing information, although juicing is its primary focus. The title and the table of contents do not convey the wealth of information about general detoxing. If one reads enough health books, one discovers that healthbooks and diet books often tread the same paths. Thus, this book has chapters dealing with such issues as parasites, GMO-foods, massages, toxic emotions, vitamins, and heavy metals. But this book seems like the best of all health books.
A review of Others of My Kind by James Sallis
It is not a conventional crime novel by any means, but then you wouldn’t expect convention from Sallis. The horrors are to be read, in part, in the voice: disconnected, spare, skittish, lambent, haunted. In part they’re there in the portrait of an alternative present or a credible near-future: a world where America has a black woman president, where acts of terrorism are common and the weather weirdly erratic.
A review of The Silver Age of DC Comics by Paul Levitz
This Brobdingnagian book measures about 24cm by 33cm across and has 400 or so pages, pretty much all in colour.
At the very start there is an interview with the great Neal Adams, a comic book artist with a cinematic style who graced Batman with a sinister elegance (his Batman was modelled on Christopher Lee’s Dracula, if I remember aright), paving the way for Frank Miller’s later and even more radical reimagining of the Dark Knight.
A review of Vassily Ivanchuk: 100 Selected Games by Nikolay Kalinichenko
Kalinichenko presents a vivid portrait of this brilliant player, still active and creative in his mid-‘40s, and does a good job of making his inspirational games accessible to a wide audience.
A review of Finding Chess Jewels by Michael Krasenkow
Krasenkow’s introduction gives some thoughts and tips on how to analyse a position and calculate variations, both when solving puzzles and in an actual game, and this is followed by about 250 tactical exercises arranged in three sections. Most positions have the neutral instruction ‘White to Play’ or ‘Black to Play’ but very occasionally there is a more specific question for you to answer.
A review of Winning Chess by Irving Chernev and Fred Reinfeld
A welcome reissue, in algebraic notation, of a book that will be familiar to many. For myself, I remember receiving it as a present one Christmas and steadily working through the positions over the holidays.
It is a primer on chess tactics, successive chapters covering topics such as the pin, the knight fork, the skewer, discovered attack, double check and so on; and it is a worhwhile introduction still.
A review of My Journey by Olivia Chow
Olivia Chow’s memoir is an inspirational account of her rise from immigrant poverty and a troubled childhood to a position of fame, influence and respect. It is also about how she found and lost the great love of her life.