“‘The response we get from these untamed companions is a gentle reminder to relax, drop our troubles, jettison the ego, and find our own better nature’ advises Bumann. Another way into the world of animals is to come up with names for them, and after awhile individuals will begin to respond to their names, even if they are in a herd of animals. Say their name and they will come to you.” DC Reid reviews Eavesdropping on Animals: What We Can Learn From Wildlife Conversations, by George Bumann (Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2024) $34 / 9781778400209
“Geselbracht, an environmental journalist and lawyer from Nanaimo who has written for Canadian Geographic and The Globe and Mail, has no time for climate denialism. Instead, he’s out to prove that climate action around the globe is making a difference; that there’s been progress in the effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and slow the planet’s warming.” Daniel Gawthrop reviews Climate Hope: Stories of Action in an Age of Global Crisis, by David Geselbracht (Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2024) $24.95 / 9781771624268
“Throughout this book, the reader is taught that Yah’guudang (respect) should guide all aspects of daily living, and as the book progresses, we see more specifically how this practice should be carried out while one is out on the land for harvesting and when materials are being processed for basketry.” Sharon Fortney reviews From A Square to A Circle: Haida Basketry by Ilskyalas, Delores Churchill (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2024) $34.95 / 9781990776854
An “honourable and compassionate compendium of heartfelt statements from people who were willing to go to jail for their beliefs.” Sadly, it’s “over-long and at times tediously repetitive” too. —Ron Verzuh reviews Standing on High Ground: Civil Disobedience on Burnaby Mountain, edited by Rosemary Cornell, Adrienne Drobnies, and Tim Bray (Toronto: Between the Lines Books, 2024) $29.95 / 9781771136631
“Consider the evocative words of the book’s subtitle: ‘A Year Inside the Life of a Chronic Adventurer.’ The three key words? ‘inside,’ ‘life,’ and ‘chronic.’ Why? As much as this is the account of three long expeditions, it is also a frank and supercharged self-portrait. Holding back is not something Wolf does. On the contrary.” Theo Dombrowski reviews Two Springs, One Summer: a year inside the life of a chronic adventurer, by Frank Wolf (Victoria: Rocky Mountain Books, 2024) $28 / 9781771606844
“Amos connects Hughes’ reflective style of painting to his personal association with place in a way that illuminates man, art, and location to the reader.” Matthew Downey reviews two books by Robert Amos: E.J. Hughes Paints Vancouver Island, new edition (Victoria: Touchwood Editions, 2024) $30 / 9781771514248 & E.J. Hughes: Life at the Lake (Victoria: Touchwood Editions, 2023) $25 / 9781771514194
The selection of 50 poems highlights “sites of feeling,” which is to say “sites of inquiry, resistance, resilience, regret, provocation, play, grief, desire, glee.” —Mary Ann Moore reviews Best Canadian Poetry 2025, selected by Aislinn Hunter (Windsor: Biblioasis, 2024) $23.95 / 9781771966320
Attractive and handcrafted, a trio of chapbooks also showcase poets with unique gifts for observation and reflection. —Heidi Greco reviews Warp and Weft, by Carla Stein (Chilliwack: Tigerpetal Press, 2024) $15.00 / 9780995863972), Future Tense, by Lauren Peat (London: Baseline Press, 2024) $15.00 / 9781998521005), a tangle of words, by Yvonne Adalian, Mavis Beggs, Elektra Harris, Natalie Hryciuk, barb snyder, and B. Violet [self-published, 2024]
“Karen Bakker was a visionary scientist and scholar as well as something of a poet in the way she presents her research.” Carol Matthews reviews The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants by Karen Bakker (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022) $33 (USD) / 9780691206288
“Climate change impacts human life on all levels; we feel its effects as individuals, families, communities, and nations. As Wiebe notes, these effects unfold within staggered and discordant timeframes: unfolding both quickly and slowly.” Petra Chambers reviews Hot Mess: Mothering Through a Code Red Climate Emergency by Sarah Marie Wiebe (Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2024) $25 / 9781773635668
“On July 4, 2021, Greg hiked to the summit of Frosty Mountain, the highest peak in the park. From this high perch he could look out on the panorama below, the terrain in which he had spent five months searching for Jordan.” Paul Geddes reviews Called by Mother Earth: A Father’s Search for His Son
by Greg F. Naterer (St. John’s: Breakwater Books, 2024) $24.95 / 9781778530142
“Rhenisch jam-packs his songs with ideas, zooming and spanning, yet with the grace of a skilled composer; a song might jar and rattle while at the same time carry a croon that compels. A reader cannot help but be swept and stilled simultaneously in the lyric experience.” —Steven Ross Smith reviews The Salmon Shanties: A Cascadian Cycle, by Harold Rhenisch (Regina: U Regina Press, 2024) $19.95 / 978177940154
“Going to Seed is prefaced with an introduction that effectively situates the reader around Neville’s central thesis— consider what ‘being constantly occupied’ does to both an individual’s quality of life and the collective health of a community, society, and natural environment.” Natalie Virginia Lang reviews Going to Seed: Essays on Idleness, Nature, & Sustainable Work, by Kate J. Neville (Regina: University of Regina Press, 2024) $30.95 / 9781779400000
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
