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Book Reviews in December 1992 Issue

Welcome Home Travels on Smalltown Canada
by Stuart McLean,

pages $7.99 MM
ISBN: 0140231854
The Run of the River Portraits of Eleven British Columbia Rivers
by Mark Hume,

224 pages $14.95 TP
ISBN: 0921586000
Compass American Guides Canada
by Garry Marchant, Kathleen Griffin, Martin Gamon, Ken Straiton,

Fodor's Travel Publications, Incorporated
308 pages $14.95 TP
ISBN: 1878867121
Book Review
Tourists on Our Own Land
by Wayne Grady
Either Canadian readers are easily impressed when a foreigner comes here to tell us what we're like, or else Canada is so entirely superficial that its quintessence can be grasped by a not particularly perceptive observer in a few short months.
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By A Lady
226 pages $60
ISBN: 0140169555
Our Chiefs & Elders Words & Photographs of Native Leaders
by David Neel,

University of Washington Press
192 pages $39.95 TC
ISBN: 0295972173
Charles Pachter
176 pages $90
ISBN: 0771069251
Cougar Ghost of the Rockies
by Karen McCall, Jim Dutcher,

Peter\Smith#Publisher, Incorporated
pages $25.5 TC
ISBN: 0844668753
Sabine's Notebook
by Nick Bantock,

48 pages $24.95 CT
ISBN: 0920417108
Peregrine Falcons
by Candace Savage, Adrian Forsyth,

160 pages $35 CT
ISBN: 1550540106
The Magdalens Islands of Sand
by George Fischer, Claude Richard,

88 pages $24.95 TC
ISBN: 155109018X
Guardians of the Whales The Quest to Study Whales in the Wild
by Bruce Obee, Graeme Ellis,

192 pages $34.95 UN
ISBN: 1551100347
Book Review
Some Things Worth Saying
by Merilyn Mohr
Gift books, usually, are books only in the most general sense of the word. Shiny, big books held up by coffee tables. Books too bulky to take to bed. Gifts of substance for special occasions. Books bought to be admired but, too often, not to be read.
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New Chatelaine Cookbook
by Rosenberg,

pages $22.95 TP
ISBN: 0771592434
If This Is the Microwave Why Am I Getting Cable TV
200 pages $16.95
ISBN: 0921165234
The Harrowsmith Country Life Baking Book
by Sandra J. Taylor,

224 pages $18.95 TP
ISBN: 0944475280
Aces - More Recipes from the Best of Bridge
232 pages $19.95 SP
ISBN: 0969042558
The Copper Bay Lodge Cookbook Recipes from the Queen Charlotte Islands
by Maria Ernst,

160 pages $13.95 TP
ISBN: 1550170643
Canadian Heritage Bread Making
by Debra Rebryna,

pages $6.95 TP
ISBN: 1551050161
Ontario Beer Guide
by Jamie MacKinnon,

pages $12.95 TP
ISBN: 1895121159
Cupcakes All-Occasion Treat - Hearty & Healthy to Delicate & Delicious
by Annette Stevens,

104 pages $9.95 SP
ISBN: 1895292093
Cookies & Muffins
by Marg Ruttan,

120 pages $10.95 SP
ISBN: 1895292115
Book Review
Let Us Eat Cupcakes
by Pat Barclay
Whatever your taste, somewhere in Canada there's a cookbook writer who's determined to satisfy it. Or so I decided, after salivating through this year's batch of guides to good eating.
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Curling to Win
by E. Lukowich, A. Hackner, R. Lang,

160 pages $16.95 MM
ISBN: 0075494426
Images of Glory
by James Duplacey,

pages $0 TP
ISBN: 007551351X
Golf in Canada A History
by James A. Barclay,

pages $50 TC
ISBN: 077101080X
Stanley Cup One Hundred Years of Hockey at Its Best
by Darcy Jenish,

pages $16.99 PT
ISBN: 0771044070
More All-Time Hockey Lists
by Stan Fischler, Shirley Fischler,

DIANE Publishing Company
117 pages $14 TP
ISBN: 0788153900
Hockey Scouting Report, 1993-1994
by Sherry Ross,

Sterling Publishing Company, Incorporated
480 pages $12.95 TP
ISBN: 1550540947
Book Review
Levels of the Games
by Brian Fawcett
After the Toronto Blue Jays' World Series win it is hard for sports fans to remember that there are sports other than baseball, and that hockey is supposed to be Canada's national sport.
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Home Fires
by K. Radu,

pages $14.95 PT
ISBN: 1550650319
Book Review
Lonely in Montreal
by Carole Giangrande
The idea of home has many aspects hearth and shelter, land of birth, human connection, and the native tongue in which our thoughts abide. All of these are part of Kenneth Radu's lengthy and engrossing new novel.
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Such a Good Boy
by Lisa H. Birnie,

pages $27.95 TC
ISBN: 0771591535
Book Review
Bad Seeds
by Heather Robertson
True crime stories are hot, particularly in Hollywood, and Lisa Hobbes Birnie seems to have lucked into a particularly macabre case.
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Flight Paths of the Emperor
by Steven Heighton,

208 pages $12.95 TP
ISBN: 0889841462
Sun Angel
by Chris Fisher,

144 pages $12.95 PT
ISBN: 1550500392
Book Review
Sense of Strangeness
by Ann Copeland
Steven Heighton's stories are sophisticated and elegantly told. They explore sometimes with dazzling intricacy, always with imaginative verve -- the ambiguities of flight and the complexity of return.
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Lives & Works
by Bruce Meyer, Brian O'Riordan,

pages $16.95 TP
ISBN: 0887532233
Northrop Frye in Conversation
by David Cayley,

pages $16.95 PT
ISBN: 0887845258
Book Review
Interior Designs
by Michael Darling
Canadian interviewers need not worry, however, unless they take it upon themselves to visit Mordecai Richler, that their interviewees will regard them as intrusive boors.
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Power & Influence
by David Hayes,

pages $29.95 CT
ISBN: 1550132946
Book Review
The Globe Grows Up
by Sherman Elliott
Some papers have borrowed from television technique short stories, lots of colour, charts and graphs, and emphasis on human interest rather than analysis -- to keep their readers.
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Snapshots The New Canadian Fiction
128 pages $14.95
ISBN: 088753256x
The Deconstruction of Wesley Smithson
by Sarah Murphy,

pages $12.95 TP
ISBN: 0920544940
Book Review
Intensity of Effect
by Joan Thomas
Like the other two pieces in this collection, "Cassie, Cassie" has the vigour of writing that is grounded in a concern with how the world works.
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Anatomy of Arcadia
by D. Solway,

pages $18 PT
ISBN: 1550650262
Book Review
The Imperial Eye
by Stan Fogel
Arcadia, as anyone who has failed to match a tourist experience with a glossy travel brochure knows, is constructed of such lush, pulpy, cliched prose or is the product of a reverie.
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Alice Munro A Double Life
by Catherine S. Ross,

97 pages $14.95 TP
ISBN: 1550221531
Dorothy Livesay Patterns in a Poetic Life
by Peter Stevens,

74 pages $14.95 PT
ISBN: 155022154X
Stephen Leacock The Sage of Orillia
by James Doyle,

79 pages $14.95 TP
ISBN: 1550221558
Book Review
Brief Lives
by Clint Burnham
Through its Canadian Biography Series, ECW Press is filling a gap in our knowledge of writers, at the same time as it is publishing biographies of well-known Canadians in other fields.
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Sheepish Beauty, Civilian Love
by Erin Moure,

136 pages $9.95 TP
ISBN: 1550650289
Book Review
Maps of Our Knowing
by Charlene Diehl-Jones
The book is an unflinching and delicate exploration of the absolute dangerousness of any world one might inhabit, the knots and losses and confusions and revelations that accompany our attempts to speak and love ourselves to life.
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Man & His World
by Clark Blaise,

pages $12.95 PF
ISBN: 0889841489
Book Review
Quality of Desperation
by Joel Yanofsky
This hasn't been a good decade for white males, not so far anyway. The dead ones -- like Christopher Columbus -- have been reassessed and found wanting, recalled like defective Pintos.
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Behind the Glory
by Barris,

pages $19.95 TP
ISBN: 0771590075
Dieppe Tragedy to Triumph: A Firsthand & Revealing Critical Account of the Most Controversial Battle of WW II
by Denis Whitaker,

372 pages $15.95 TC
ISBN: 0850523095
Book Review
Long-Term Strategies
by Martin Dowding
Popular wisdom and many standard historical sources have convinced most of us that the raid on Dieppe on August 19, 1942, was a bloody mistake, caused by the gross incompetence of Allied military commanders.
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Likely Stories A Postmodern Sampler
313 pages $19.95
ISBN: 0889104468
Book Review
It Seems to be a Textbook
by Margaret Sweatman
Thsi "sampler" is a peculiar and wonderful product. Rebellious, twisted, and narcissistic. Those are the white guys. The Others are brilliant, too. It's such an odd party, this book. So meta-liberal.
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The Selected Journals of L. M. Montgomery, 1921-1929
by Lucy Maud Montgomery, Mary Rubio, Elizabeth Waterston,

464 pages $34.95 TC
ISBN: 0195409361
Book Review
Success in Private
by Laurel Boone
Montgomery's moving and perceptive account of the formation of the United Church of Canada will make Volume III of 'The Selected Journals' indispensable for social historians.
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Interviews
The Ascension of Nino
by John Doyle
Nino Ricci talks about 'Lives of Saints' and what he's going to do for an encore.
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Letters to Editor
Letters to Editor
Letters may be edited for length or to delete potentially libellous statements. Except in extraordinary circumstances, letters of more than 500 words will not he accepted for publication.
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Prose/Poetry
Looking for Poetry
by J Carpenter
A toast to the prestigious festivals and funky hotels that marked one young pilgrim's literary progress.
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Prose/Poetry
Pemba Jade
by Fred Ward
A dark blue, wool saucer tam with the knot in the center, supported by an octagon base and grey every-which-a-way hair covered her head.
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Profiles
Life at Full Tilt
by Ann Diamond
Fred Ward brings a writer's eye and a musician's ear to his mysterious but familiar worlds.
Read more...
The Skystone The Forging of Arthur's Britain
by Jack Whyte,

Tor Books
352 pages $22.95 TC
ISBN: 0312860919
Passion Play
by Sean Stewart,

208 pages $0 MM
ISBN: 0441652417
In Love with Then
by Ellison Robertson,

220 pages $14.95 TP
ISBN: 0864921373
Hellman's Scrapbook
by Robert Majzels,

pages $14.95 TP
ISBN: 0920953786
Wafer Thin
by Elin Elgaard,

118 pages $12.95 PT
ISBN: 0920953824
First Novels
First Novels - Difficult Loves
by Douglas Hill
SET IN A SOUR future of blasted cities, fundamentalist politics, and vigilante patrols, Sean Stewart's Passion Play (Beach Holme, 231 pages, $6.95 paper) is a stylized cyberpunk thriller with more flash than fire. The narrator, Diane Fletcher, a freelance hitwoman with the powers of an empath (she can read emotional patterns in other people), is hired by the authorities to find the killer of a famous actor; in the process she must risk her own burned-out soul. Stewart writes vividly, if at times
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Field Notes
Field Notes - The Ondaatje Mystique
by Keith Nickson
It was the night of Yom Kippur, exactly one week before it was announced that Michael Ondaatje had shared this year's Booker Prize.
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Field Notes
Field Notes - Eden's Idyllic Mills
by Michael Redhill
On a bright, cloudless day this past September, I had my first chance to visit Eden Mills and witness its annual love-in, the Eden Mills Writers' Festival.
Read more...
George Fetherling
Last Words - Literary Illusions
by Alec McEwen
Before the Saskatchewan election last year, rant Devine was reported to have said that the failure of Roy Romanow to state clearly his political beliefs was the NDP leaders "single biggest Achilles' heel."
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Journey Prize Anthology 4
by Mccland & Stewart Staff,

pages $16.99 TC
ISBN: 077104433X
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Fiction
by Merna Summers
Sandra Birdsell and her jury are to be complimented on their choices. Never mind the ranking. In this competition, the real winner is the reader.
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Food for Thought
128 pages $12.5
ISBN: 0889104581
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Non-Fiction
by Maggie Helwig
'Food for Thought' is a valuable and eyeopening book for anyone not already aware of the extent of hunger in Canada the Good. Those already informed about the problem, or active on the issue, will want considerably more than Webber offers.
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Looking Around
by Witold Rybczynski,

pages $24.95 TC
ISBN: 0002157934
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Non-fiction
by Rhea Tregebov
Rybczynski's reputation as a skilled, readable stylist is indeed well deserved. Furthermore, it is easy to see why readers are seduced by his apparently iconoclastic approach to architecture, which combines social criticism with historical analysis.
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Letting the People Decide The Dynamics of a Canadian Election
by Richard Johnston, Andre Blais, Henry E. Brady, Jean Crete,

Stanford University Press
288 pages $42.5 TC
ISBN: 0804720770
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Non-fiction
by Desmond Morton
To help ensure that their findings will be considered scientific as well as informative, the authors adopt a prose style as ingratiating as that of the average computer manual.
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Foxspirit A Woman in Mao's China
by Zhimei Zhang,

pages $15.95 PF
ISBN: 1550650254
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Non-fiction
by Elaine Naves
The book's thrust, as promised in the subtitle, concerns the terrors and absurdities of life in Maos China, but its snapshots of customs and attitudes in pre-revolutionary China are alone worth the price of the book.
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The Mother Zone Love, Sex, & Laundry in the Modern Family
by Marni Jackson,

Henry\Holt#& Company, Incorporated
224 pages $19.95 TC
ISBN: 0805017097
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Non-fiction
by Diane Schoemperlen
Jackson's book is an important contribution to filling that gap. As she says, "Motherhood is like Albania -- you can't trust the brochures, you have to go there."
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A Book of Strange
by Sylvia Fraser,

Doubleday
376 pages $14.95 MM
ISBN: 0385254245
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Non-Fiction
by Jeff Walker
Sylvia Fraser seems blissfully unaware of the many devastating critiques to which anyone intrigued by her subject matter would inevitably be drawn.
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My Father's Son Memories of War & Peace
by Farley Mowat,

352 pages $0 TC
ISBN: 0395650291
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Non-Fiction
by George Kaufman
Mowat, one of Canada's ablest self-promoters, has put at least some of himself into all of his many books (and much of himself into some of them). And the Second World War is not a historical event that has gone undocumented.
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Apprenticed in Crime
335 pages $26
ISBN: 0770424651
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Non-fiction
by George Kaufman
The crimes committed by young offenders that make it to the pages of our newspapers are so outrageous and sensational that they have created a polarized national debate over the Young Offenders Act itself.
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Girl on the Subway & Other Stories
by Crad Kilodney,

pages $12.95 TC
ISBN: 0887532020
Miss Pamela`s Story
127 pages $11.95
ISBN: 0889104506
Oedipal Dreams
by Evelyn Lau,

Consortium Book Sales & Distribution
pages $12.95 PT
ISBN: 0889104905
Open to Currents
by Kenneth Sherman,

86 pages $12 TC
ISBN: 0919897290
Scream Blue Living New & Selected Poems
by Robert Priest,

pages $14.95 TP
ISBN: 0920544924
Preludes & Fugues
by Fred Candelaria,

72 pages $10.95 TC
ISBN: 0921870191
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Poetry
by Maurice Mierau
With the enormous amount of poetry published in this country one might think -- wrongly -- that there would be a Rabelaisian profusion of voices, styles, and subject matter.
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The Cracks
by Anne Dandurand,

pages $11.95 TP
ISBN: 0920544932
Brief Reviews
Brief Reviews - Fiction
by Valerie Mansour
With appealing humour (her cat, for example, is named Chapter Two), Anne Dandurand takes us with her through a very difficult time, which she refers to as the "minuscule chaos of my own life."
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There Were Monkeys in My Kitchen!
by Sheree Fitch,

32 pages $8.95 TP
ISBN: 0385254709
Emily
by Michael Bedard, Barbara Cooney,

40 pages $16 TC
ISBN: 0385306970
Murphy
by Tatiana Tonks, Carlos Freire,

pages $4.95 PT
ISBN: 0590737597
The Year of Fire
by Teddy Jam, Ian Wallace,

48 pages $20.5 MM
ISBN: 0689505663
The Magic Flute
by Linda Rogers,

36 pages $14.95 TP
ISBN: 0889841292
The Moon & the Oyster
by Donia B. Clenman, Laszlo Gal,

32 pages $12.95 TC
ISBN: 0920501834
I Can't Sleep
by Patti Farmer, Ron Lightburn,

24 pages $4.95 TP
ISBN: 0920501842
Katherine & the Garbage Dump
by Martha Morris, Yvonne Cathcart,

24 pages $12.95 TC
ISBN: 0929005392
Sara Nohair
by Gillian K. Johnson, Gillian K. Johnson,

56 pages $12.95 TC
ISBN: 1550372114
Children's Books
Children's Books - Surprise Packages
by Anne Denoon
The preliterate id in search of ocular and aural gratification heeds neither publishers' blurbs nor educators' endorsements, and is highly intolerant of both condescension and attempts at moral improvement disguised as fun.
Read more...
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