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
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
Home is where the street is: Commercial Drive photos and poems by Rodney De Croo * I’ve lived in East Vancouver for thirty-five years. East Van is where I rented my first basement suite apartment after living on the streets as a young man struggling with addiction. It was in the basements of churches and…
Read more 1767 Home is where the street is
If It Gets Quiet Later On, I Will Make a Display by Nick Thran Gibsons: Nightwood Editions, 2023 $22.95 / 9780889714489 Reviewed by Sheldon Goldfarb * What a quiet charming title, If It Gets Quiet Later On … And Nick Thran, the poet and bookseller, uses it more than once to open sections of this…
Read more 1766 Trees, books, meditations
Announcing the BC Review interview series by Richard Mackie * In November 2022, at the most recent board meeting of the Ormsby Literary Society, the chair, Byron Sheardown, suggested that we open a YouTube channel and start an interview series. Board member Trevor Marc Hughes jumped at the suggestion. “I’ve got filmmaking experience,” he said,…
Read more 1757 Announcing interview series
Anthony Thorn. For the Honour of Art: Essays and Opinions by Lyndon Grove, Ihor Holubizky, and Brent Raycroft (editors), with contributions by Anthony Thorn, Robert Amos, and Garry Gaudet Victoria: Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, and Regina: the MacKenzie Gallery, 2022. Printed by Friesens, Altona, Manitoba $34.99 / 9780888853868 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski Note: interviews…
Read more 1749 Calling Anthony Thorn
Jerry Zaslove: the summing up by Talonbooks editorial staff * Last summer, Talonbooks was delighted by the arrival of the long-awaited Untimely Passages: Dossiers from the Other Shore, a collection of essays by the late Jerry Zaslove, who taught at Simon Fraser University from 1965 until his retirement in 2000. He retained an office in…
Read more Jerry Zaslove: the summing up
On editorial illustration by Mariken Van Nimwegen * “You were an editorial illustrator? So you did the cartoons in the newspaper?” Well no, I say. Cartooning is a genre of drawing that’s usually part of the editorial pages where it satirizes a current news item, either local or international, and tends to be positioned close…
Read more 1739 The art of editorial illustration
Don’t Tell: Family Secrets by Donna McCart Sharkey and Arleen Paré, editors Bradford, ON: Demeter Press, 2023 $44.95 / 9781772584240 Reviewed by Mary Ann Moore * Sisters Donna McCart Sharkey and Arleen Paré have gathered contributions of essays and poetry from sixty-one writers for Don’t Tell: Family Secrets. McCart Sharkey who grew up in Montreal…
Read more 1731 Secrets spared and shared
Ariadne Then and Now: The Labyrinth and the End of Times (third edition) by Carol Matthews Seattle and elsewhere: NeoPoiesis Press, 2022 $21.95 ($16.95 (U.S.) / 9798985833607 Reviewed by Lenore Rowntree * A modern labyrinth in the classical Cretan-style with the addition of Chartres-style double-ax shapes at the turning points. A stone construction labyrinth surrounded…
Read more 1728 Out of the labyrinth
An essay by Patrick A. Dunae Naming British Columbia * The British Columbia Review is a year old. Previously known as The Ormsby Review (2016), it was renamed The British Columbia Review on February 10, 2022. The new name was greeted enthusiastically, for the most part.[1] A few readers were unhappy that it had ‘British…
Read more 1721 Naming British Columbia
An essay by Brian Smallshaw: Out of Options with the Freedom Convoy? * Whatever you think about the Freedom Convoy’s occupation of Ottawa and the blocking of border crossings in Windsor and Coutts, the Canadian government’s decision to invoke the Emergencies Act to shut down a protest should be of concern to every Canadian who…
Read more 1700 Freedom Convoy: out of options?
Imminent Domains: Reckoning with the Anthropocene by Alessandra Naccarato Toronto: Book*hug Press, 2022 $23.00 / 9781771667753 Reviewed by Graeme Wynn * In the 1870s, John Ruskin, Slade Professor of Fine Art in the University of Oxford, initiated a scheme to improve the rough and muddy path into the village of North Hinksey on the outskirts…
Read more 1698 On Ruskin’s road
Fortune Knox Once: More Musings from the Edge by Jack Knox Victoria: Heritage House, 2022 $22.95 / 9781772034172 Reviewed by Valerie Green * We all need a little Knox humour in our lives these days and Jack Knox has delivered just that once again in his latest book Fortune Knox Once: More Musings from The…
Read more 1667 The mixture we all need
The Tree Whisperer: Writing Poetry by Living in the World by Harold Rhenisch Kentville, NS: Gaspereau Press, 2021 $29.95 / 9781554472314 Reviewed by Adrienne Fitzpatrick * I have spent the last few weeks in the company of a tree whisperer going from tree to tree on Sylix lands, absorbing the fruits revealed by light and…
Read more 1641 The wisdom of trees
The Knot Wound Round Your Finger: An Anthology of Memory, History, & Inheritance by Devon Field (editor) Vancouver: Bell Press Books, 2021 $20.00 / 9780994812728 Reviewed by Theo Dombrowski * In a short story called “Lethe’s Share,” author Carsten Schmitt writes, “It’s our memories who make us who we are. “ Most of us would…
Read more 1635 Depending on memory
The Call of the Red-Winged Blackbird: Essays on the Common and Extraordinary by Tim Bowling Hamilton, ON: Wolsak & Wynn, 2022 $22.00 / 9781989496428 Reviewed by Valerie Green * It is always a delightful surprise to discover a book you would not normally read, only to find it extremely enjoyable. Such was the case for…
Read more 1625 Fraser River waterways
Love in Vile Places: Military Hospitals as the Site of Care and Nurture by Jo-Anne Fiske * For Remembrance Day 2022 we present a memoir by Jo-Anne Fiske of Fraser Lake, in BC’s north-central interior, of her father Humphrey William Fiske (1886-1959). At the time of his enlistment in Kelowna in 1916, the Norfolk-born Fiske…
Read more 1617 Love in vile places
When We Are Broken: The Lake Elegy by Luanne Armstrong New Denver: Maa Press, 2020 $30.00 / 9780987838414 Reviewed by Diana Hayes * Luanne Armstrong, a prolific writer who has published twenty-five books of fiction, memoir, and poetry, has crafted a soulful and meditative narrative in her book, When We Are Broken – The Lake…
Read more 1612 Bigger than adolescence
Art, Research, Play: The Midnight Sun Camera Obscura Project by Donald Lawrence, Josephine Mills, and Emily Dundas Oke (editors), foreword by W.F. (Will) Garrett-Petts Lethbridge: University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, 2021 $39.95 / 9781927770115 Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve * “This is a book that arrests attention but won’t stand still.” Thanks to W.F. Garrett-Petts for this assertion…
Read more 1594 The celebrated camera obscura