Looking Back, Moving Forward: 160 Years of Jewish Life in BC by Michael Schwartz (editor) Vancouver: Jewish Museum and Archives of BC, [2020] $50.00 / 9780969126881 Reviewed by Richard Kool To place an order, contact the museum at (604) 257-5199 or email at info@jewishmuseum.ca * The urge to establish formal organizations, clubs, societies, buildings, cemeteries…
Read more 1791 Honey, you forgot the Island
Ron Thom, Architect: The Life of a Creative Modernist by Adele Weder Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2022 $37.95 / 9781771643221 Reviewed by Rhodri Windsor-Liscombe * Ron Thom, reflecting in the early 1980s on his work as a creator of living and lived-in spaces averred, “any form of design or expression is locked in time. Whether it…
Read more 1790 Thom’s modernist masterpieces
Galena Bay Odyssey: Reflections of a Hippie Homesteader by Ellen Schwartz Victoria: Heritage House Publishing, 2023 $26.95 / 9781772034455 Reviewed by Catherine Owen * In the mid to later 70s, I was raised by hippie-ish parents. Which seems odd seeing as how they were religious and lived in the suburbs of Burnaby. But my father…
Read more 1789 Tiny community living
Superfan: How Pop Culture Broke My Heart. A Memoir by Jen Sookfong Lee Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (McClelland & Stewart), 2023 $24.96 / 9780771025211 Reviewed by Jessica Poon * A rather unfortunate acquaintance of mine suffers, periodically, from foot in mouth disease. It’s not her fault — but it’s not not her fault, either…
Read more 1788 Chinese daughters and mothers
Lot by Sarah de Leeuw Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2022 $20.00 / 9781773860763 Reviewed by Harold Rhenisch * This book is a walk in an intertidal zone between peoples, logs, rocks and languages. It is at once a map and a woman turned to salt, looking back. In Lot, Sarah de Leeuw looks back to…
Read more 1787 A Lot of Haida Gwaii
The Runaway Heiress by Meg Tilly Toronto: Penguin Random House Canada (Berkley), 2021 $10.99 / 9780593201084 Reviewed by Valerie Green * Who better than an Oscar-nominated actress to write a story about the quirky, unconventional lifestyle of Hollywood? Author Meg Tilly does not disappoint us in her novel The Runaway Heiress. After an unconventional beginning…
Read more 1786 A first-rate thriller
Between Good and Evil: The Stolen Girls of Boko Haram by Mellissa Fung Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2023 $36.99 / 9781443456081 Reviewed by Isabel Nanton * Canadian Journalist Mellissa Fung has written an important book which amplifies her documentary Captive, the story of three Nigerian girls captured by Boko Haram (which translates as “Western education is…
Read more 1785 Lost in Sambisa Forest
Century of White Pass & Yukon Route Equipment by Carl E. Mulvihill, edited by Keith Nore Whitehorse: Yukon Transportation Museum, 2022 $59.00 / 9781777544317 Reviewed by Robert D. Turner * The White Pass & Yukon Route’s fascinating international railway has a history going back to the Klondike Gold Rush in the Yukon. It was built…
Read more 1784 Along the White Pass & Yukon
Blood Atonement by S.M. Freedman Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2022 $22.95 / 9781459750241 Reviewed by Myshara Herbert-McMyn * S.M. Freedman‘s Blood Atonement is shocking and thrilling, terrifying from the moment you realize the broad accuracy of the events it describes the aftermath of. And of course, this is a situation where it pays to pay attention….
Read more 1783 Hooked from the start
Moonlight Serenade: Embracing Aging Mindfully by Gordon Wallace Victoria: FriesenPress, 2022 $28.49 / 9781039133020 Reviewed by Lee Reid * “If not now, when?” How often do we contemplate this rhetorical refrain as we question how to live well, if not more fully, through our remaining moonlight years? The catchy refrain is frequently invoked in Moonlight…
Read more 1782 Whispers from the future
The Whole Animal by Corinna Chong Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2023 $19.95 / 9781551529158 Reviewed by W.H. New * Corinna Chong’s first book, The Whole Animal, introduces a startling new writer, one who is drawn to the disruptions of contemporary life and clearly unafraid of using the blunt language of her generation. The characters here…
Read more 1781 Briefs
Knight of the Rails by Christine Welldon Toronto: Red Deer Press, 2022 $14.95 / 9780889956698 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Move Over Dickens: Meet a Canadian Pip and An Unusual Artful Dodger Novels for teenagers rarely cross my desk these days. In my youth I revelled in the adventures of the Hardy Boys until Mom…
Read more 1780 Move over Dickens
In Our Youth: The Lives, Adventures, and Sacrifices of Early Canadian Flyers by Angus Scully Victoria: Heritage House Publishing, 2022 $29.95 / 9781772034219 Reviewed by Matthew Downey * In In Our Youth, Angus Scully of the Vancouver Island Military Museum tasks himself with an ambitious mission: to evoke the history of Canadian aviation in the…
Read more 1779 Canada’s Great War airmen
Thank you, Yosef Wosk by Sasha Colby * Dear Students, Alumni, and Graduate Liberal Studies Affiliates, It is my great pleasure to write and let you know that Dr. Yosef Wosk, patron of our GLS Journal on the site of the BC Review, has decided to renew his commitment to funding the journal after an…
Read more 1778 Thank you, Yosef Wosk
Double Karma by Daniel Gawthrop Toronto: Cormorant Books, 2023 $24.95 / 9781770866836 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski * In many different ways Double Karma, by New Westminster writer Daniel Gawthrop, feels huge. Spanning decades, linking lives in the United States with lives in Burma (misleadingly called Myanmar by the military junta, as we learn) it is…
Read more 1777 Burmese disguises
Dinner on Mars: The Technologies that will Feed the Red Planet and Transform Agriculture on Earth by Lenore Newman and Evan D.G. Fraser Toronto: ECW Press, 2022 $24.95 / 9781770416628 Reviewed by Eleanor Boyle * Dinner on Mars: A Delicious Thought Experiment I’ve never thought that high-tech inventions would solve the complex problems that bedevil…
Read more 1776 New food for an old planet
Elliot Jelly-Legs and the Bobblehead Miracle by Yolanda Ridge (text) and Sydney Barnes (illustrations) Victoria: Orca Book Publishers, 2023 $12.95 / 9781459833791 Reviewed by Cassidy Lea * In Canada, hockey is kind of our thing. A lot of us have played it, a bunch of us watch it, and if most of us were asked…
Read more 1775 The hockey talisman
Sunset and Jericho: A Wakeland Novel by Sam Wiebe Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2023 $24.95 / 9781990776236 Reviewed by Brett Josef Grubisic * Regarding Sunset and Jericho, an expected question might be “So, is it any good?” Happily, the unhesitant answer (“Yes, absolutely”) inspires a better follow-up: “Oh, what’s so worthwhile?” The easy reply is…
Read more 1774 Hardwired for defiance
ChatGPT and me by Larry Hannant * The media today is agog with artificial intelligence and its boundless possibilities to expand mere mortals’ striving towards perfection, or to relegate them to the scrap heap. The intensity quickened on March 14, with the release by OpenAI of version 4 of ChatGPT. In a thoughtful Globe and…
Read more 1773 ChatGPT and me
Rare Merit: Women in Photography in Canada, 1840-1940 by Colleen Skidmore Vancouver: UBC Press, 2022 $39.95 / 9780774867054 Reviewed by Maria Tippett * Anyone who ever doubted the presence of female photographers in Canada from the middle of the nineteenth century ought to read Rare Merit: Women in Photography in Canada, 1840-1940. Colleen Skidmore begins…
Read more 1772 Daguerreotype to Kodak