“‘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
This memoir, a “whimsical look at the fall of the British Empire,” features anecdotes about the author’s assorted encounters with celebrities over the decades. —Valerie Green reviews Celebrities Who Have Met Me: A Child of the Lost Empire, by John D’Eathe (Vancouver: Adagio Media, 2024) $21.99 9781999433925
“With Farrant’s impeccable talent for language, her story is beautifully detailed…This story will bring back memories to all who remember being a teenager in Greater Victoria in the 1960s.” Valerie Green reviews My Turquoise Years: A Memoir (Twentieth Anniversary Edition), by M.A.C. Farrant (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2024) $21.95 / 9781772016369
“It is the story of her survival expressed through her art, her poetry, and especially through the letters she writes to her grandson telling him stories of where his ancestors came from while hoping for a brighter future for him.” Valerie Green reviews Dear Arlo: letters to my grandson
by Olga Campbell (Vancouver: Jubaji Press, 2024) $21 / 9789981291130)
“So perhaps it’s not surprising that there is no chapter on the Pacific Province. Oh, there is plenty here on the ‘West,’ but in Globe geography the West stopped at the Rockies.” Ron Verzuh reviews A Nation’s Paper: The Globe and Mail in the Life of Canada, by John Ibbitson [ed.] (Toronto: Penguin Random House [Signal], 2024) $34 / 9780771006289
“At first, I questioned the notion that we could rely on technology to solve the problems caused by technology. It seemed a slippery slope. But McDonald explores ways that using current technology could lead us out of the impending darkness.” Ron Verzuh reviews The Future is Now: Solving the Climate Crisis with Today’s Technologies, by Bob McDonald (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2022) $23 / 9780735241961
“The poor will always be with us. Reverend Al’s book challenges each of us on how we are going to respond. Do we, in Sonia Furstenau’s memorable phrase, continue to ‘drive our Lamborghinis through the tent city on Pandora Avenue?’ We can do better.” Richard Butler reviews Muddy Water: Stories from the Street, by Al Tysick (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers [Resource Publications], 2024) $25 (USD) / 9798385215010
“The enduring image provided by Manthorpe – one that bookends On Canadian Democracy – is the comparison of the state of Canada to that of the official home of its Prime Minister. The reader is brought to ponder the neglected crumbling façade of 24 Sussex, overgrown by weeds, infused with mould, and seemingly abandoned by its caretakers.” Matthew Downey reviews On Canadian Democracy by Jonathan Manthorpe (Toronto: Cormorant Press, 2024) $19.95 / 9781770867543
“I felt, sometimes, as if I had agreed to listen to a storyteller and was met with impatience and anger, as if I, this white woman here reading, had disappointed him or frustrated him. I don’t even know if he would want my review of his memoir. Here it is, anyway.” Wendy Burton reviews Crooked Teeth: A Queer Syrian Refugee Memoir, by Danny Ramadan (Toronto: Penguin Canada [Viking], 2024) $26.95 / 9780735242210
“Her career has left marks on her stories of her life from beginning to (almost) end. Reading the memories in a collection, I hear her academic voice: wry, witty, reticent.” Wendy Burton reviews A Life in Pieces, by Jo-Ann Wallace (Saskatoon: Thistledown Press, 2024) $24.95 / 9781771872560
“This tightly-written, 131-page extended essay contains 11 pages of references well-mined from film theory and queer theory in both English and German. Its three chapters cover the film’s production, including the melodrama between genre cinema and public health discourse…” Daniel Gawthrop reviews Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others) by Ervin Malakaj (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023) $19.95 / 9780228018681
“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
“Whistler Hiking is divided into three main sections with, understandably so, the front stage given to a detailed, visual, and evocative approach to the shorter, medium, and longer treks in the Whistler area.” Ron Dart reviews Whistler Hiking by Marc Bourdon (Squamish: Quickdraw Publications, 2024) $34.95
“Wind sets out the many ways that Israeli institutions of higher education are enlisted in Israel’s settler-colonial project. Some are strategically situated to anchor Israeli territorial expansion, often standing literally on the sites of razed Palestinian villages.” Larry Hannant reviews Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom, by Maya Wind (London: Verso, 2024) $39.95 / 9781804291740
“Probably my favorite chapter is ‘Adventures in Sexism: Media, Music and Mucking up the Boys’ Club,’ which begins, ‘It’s hard to pinpoint the first time I realized I mattered less to somebody because I was a girl.’ She then carries on beyond her own personal experience to pastiche media critiques of her main four female musicians, demonstrating the cruel extent to which they had to combat multiple forms of reductionism, from being compared to other women performers, to being dismissed as mere puppets of their Svengalis.” Catherine Owen reviews We Oughta Know: How Celine, Shania, Alanis and Sarah Ruled the ’90s and Changed Canadian Music by Andrea Warner (Toronto: ECW Press, 2024) $24.95 / 9781770417748
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
“In her introduction, Denter herself explains ‘When we find our thing, the thing we’re good at, it’s like a life raft in the stormy sea of life.’ For some of the women she writes about it is writing. For others it is to start a business, to become a photographer, or to act. There are so many excellent examples of women who were driven to do what they simply must.” Valerie Green reviews Bloom Across Canada: 50 Inspiring Conversations by Beka Shane Denter (Victoria: Heritage House Publishing, 2024) $42.95 / 9781772035001
“George went back to post secondary school at the University of Lethbridge with the goal to becoming a high school history teacher. With every history course she made the point of viewing the narrative through an Aboriginal lens.” Sage Birchwater reviews ALHA DISNII – My Truth: Words from a Wet’suwet’en Woman by Corinne George (Calgary: Medicine Wheel Publishing, 2024) $19.99 / 9781778540417
