Essay collection relates the “great pleasure of strolling in great cities” and offers an appealing and illuminating “window into a wider world.” —Bill Paul reviews The Coincidence Problem: Selected Dispatches 1999-2022, by Stephen Osborne (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2024) $24.95 / 9781551529653
“The Deerholme Foraging Cookbook proved to be truly inspiring. This book will appeal to well-established foragers, but also to those, like me, who want to think outside the supermarket norm.” Trish Bowering reviews The Deerholme Foraging Cookbook: Wild Ingredients and Recipes from the Pacific Northwest, revised and updated, by Bill Jones (Victoria: TouchWood Editions, 2024) $40 / 9781771514378
“The text is an accessible reference resource that will be useful to students and budding archaeologists, field technicians working with/for First Nations communities, and any interested visitors traveling through coastal First Nations’ territories.” Bryn Letham reviews Indigenous Heritage Features Handbook by A. Mackie, R. Inglis, Qixitasu (E. White), and K. Neary (The Province of British Columbia and Coastal First Nations Great Bear Initiative, 2024)
“Understanding this science, is a major step to encourage all of humanity to ‘think carefully about our options, and find a new course.'” Natalie Virginia Lang reviews Runaway Climate: What the Geological Past Can Tell Us About the Coming Climate Change Catastrophe, by Steven Earle, PhD (Gabriola Island: New Society Publishers, 2024) $24.99 / 9780865719897
“On a recent summer hike along Vancouver Island’s Cowichan River, we enjoyed referring to Collin Varner’s flora pocket guide to keystone species, “keystone” being organisms that define and support an entire ecosystem thus filling a vital ecological niche.” Isabel Nanton reviews 50 Keystone Flora Species of Coastal British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest: A Pocket Guide & 50 Keystone Fauna Species of Coastal British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest: A Pocket Guide by Collin Varner (Victoria: Heritage House, 2024) $19.95 / 9781772034776 / 9781772034943
“Newland’s talent with the architecture of sentences never detracts from the exhilaration of his plot, with its strange events and estranged sense of time.” —Peter Babiak reviews The Marysburgh Vortex (Volume 1: Jack Wenland, Time Guardian), by Trevor Newland (Vancouver: Simply Read Books, 2024) $22.99 / 9781772291001
A boldly illustrated kids book in memoir form is “a simple, heartwarming story that offers life lessons to the young—and perhaps to older readers as well.” —Ron Verzuh reviews Adventures in Desolation Sound, by Grant Lawrence (illustrated by Ginger Ngo) (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2024) $24.95 / 9781990776878
“[F]orested with a wide variety of poems, or rather, communities of poems, both in style and subject matter,” the volume’s meditations startle and surprise. —Al Rempel reviews Cathedral/Grove, by Susan Glickman (Montréal: Véhicule Press, 2023) $19.95 / 9781550656350
Novelist sets out to “destroy it all … and start over with a handful of survivors, to see if they could build something better,” and then imagines the fraught next steps. —Dana McFarland reviews Post Civ, by Julianne Harvey (Surrey: Ruby Finch Books, 2024) $25.00 / 9780987797841
Terrific essay collection covers agri-business, beans on toast, a century-old family recipe for trifle, gender politics, potatoes, and a whole lot more.
—Brett Josef Grubisic reviews Hearty: On Cooking, Eating, and Growing Food for Pleasure and Subsistence, by Andrea Bennett (Toronto: ECW Press, 2024) $24.95 / 9781770411
“Harrington devotes a separate chapter to each of the fifteen largest islands, namely Gabriola, Thetis, Salt Spring, North and South Pender, Saturna, Mayne, Galiano, Hornby, Denman, Quadra, Cortes, Savary, Bowen, Gambier, and Lasqueti, in that order.” Jack Little reviews Voices for the Islands: Thirty Years of Nature Conservation on the Salish Sea
by Sheila Harrington (Victoria: Heritage House, 2024) $34.95 / 9781772034929
“There’s an entire library of books about the marvels of a province that so many put at the bottom of their vacation bucket lists, certainly too many to cite here. But a few recent titles in the not-so-often-reviewed list caught my eye.” Stephen Hume reviews On the Trail: 50 Years of Engaging with Nature by Langley Field Naturalists (Surrey: Hancock House, 2023) $19.95 / 9780888397591, Gumboot Guys: Nautical Adventures on British Columbia’s North Coast by Lou Allison and Jane Wilde, (Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2023) $26 / 9781773861180, Fried Eggs and Fish Scales: Tales from a Sointula Troller by Jon Taylor (Madeira Park, Harbour Publishing, 2024) $24.95 / 9781990776656 & Backpacking on Vancouver Island: The Essential Guide to the Best Multi-Day Trips and Day Hikes by Taryn Eyton (Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2024) $26.95 / 9781778400100
“So, he transplants himself to a new life, a new take on things. How many of us would like to do the same if we only had the courage?” Harvey De Roo reviews The Road to Appledore: or How I Went Back to the Land Without Ever Having Lived There in the First Place, by Tom Wayman (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2024) $26.95 / 9781990776632
“As I pull off the road and down the drive toward my home on Sumas Mountain, where I will take a walk in the woods, there is one thinker’s phrase that nags as I come to terms with the reality of this doublethink, doublespeak, society. Thoreau’s prophetic statement in an 1860 letter to Harrison Blake, is all too relevant– ‘What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?’ Author and essayist Natalie Virginia Lang writes the timely essay “Living with Oil?”
“The book suggests that future efforts should prioritize rebuilding Lytton with a strong focus on sustainability and resilience. This involves implementing policies that address the root causes of vulnerability, such as historical injustices and environmental degradation.” Amy Tucker reviews Lytton: Climate Change, Colonialism and Life Before the Fire by Peter Edwards and Kevin Loring (Toronto: Random House Canada, 2024) $36 / 9781039006157
“These are fully realized observations, absolute and searing impressions of the profoundly joyful, as well as the unavoidably difficult.” —Cathy Ford reviews Islander, by Mona Fertig (Salt Spring Island: Mother Tongue Publishing, 2024) $22.00 / 9781896949895
“As our current news media make painfully clear, claims and counter claims over national boundaries often lead to devastating violence. It is a prompt to reflection, therefore, to consider the border disputes in the past, distant world of this book.” Theo Dombrowski reviews Arctic Patrol: Canada’s Fight for Arctic Sovereignty by Eric Jamieson (Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2024) $28.00 / 9781773861333
“If all you do is read the textile manifesto, you’ll come away with a lot to think about. But this book really shines in later sections, where McCabe brings us the stories of the people who work on the land and share relationships with their fibre, all combined with useful reference material.” Sarah Thornton reviews Fleece and Fibre: Textile Producers of Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands by Francine McCabe (Victoria: Heritage House, 2023) $34.95 / 9781772034530
In an illustrated history of the Pacific Northwest, the venerable Columbia River recalls the ups and downs of its 20-million-year lifespan. —Ron Verzuh reviews The Heart of a River, by Eileen Delehanty Pearkes (illustrated by Nichola Lytle) (Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2024) $25.00 / 9781771606998
“Pearkes has issued an environmental warning…” Ron Verzuh reviews A River Captured: The Columbia River Treaty and Catastrophic Change by Eileen Delehanty Pearkes (Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2024) $25 / 9781771605236