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Book Reviews in November 2004 Issue

Photographic Atlas of the Body
by Science Photo Library, Susan Greenfield

Firefly Books $59.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 1552979733
Book Review
A Review of: Photographic Atlas of the Body
by Olga Stein
The Photographic Atlas of the Body (Firefly, 288 pages) is marvelous from the start-in fact from the start of its foreword, written by Baroness Susan Greenfield. She begins with the following: "This book truly spans the science/art divide. Indeed, it goes one better: it shows how once can merge into the other. Science can actually be art, and in turn, in the exquisite and ultimate mechanisms and function of biology, there is an intrinsic beauty." Further down, she writes of the section on the nervous system and the brain, "I hope that you will be able to capture some of the excitement that I had when I was first ...
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Focus on Freshwater Aquarium Fish
by Geoff Rogers, Nick Fletcher

Firefly Books $35 Hardcover
ISBN: 1552979369
Book Review
A Review of: Freshwater Aquarium Fish
by Olga Stein
If you were impressed with the magnificent parade of acquatic life animated in the recently-released Fish Tales, you'll find this book delightful. Mind you, the fish studied here are freshwater species, but the variety, exoticism, and beauty of these creatures makes them no less exciting than their Fish Tale counterparts. Best of all, with this collection of 150 fish types, you're looking at the real deal-live fish shot from multiple angles, with numerous images of each type smartly arranged against a white backround, rendering all of their unique, charming, and sometimes bizarre, attributes fully ...
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Last Chance to Eat: The Fate of Taste in a Fast Food World
by Gina Mallet

McClelland & Stewart $34.99 Hardcover
ISBN: 0771056532
Book Review
A Review of: Last Chance To Eat: The Fate of Taste in a Fast Food World
by Brian Fawcett
Gina Mallet has written a wonderfully crabby-and timely-memoir Last Chance To Eat: The Fate of Taste in a Fast Food World. Mallet was the Toronto Star's much feared drama critic during the 1970s and the early 1980s, and has since had stints writing perceptive restaurant reviews for the Globe and Mail. Her approach to restaurant reviewing acknowledges that people actually drink wine and talk during meals. From that I understood that she clearly loves and understands good food. This book takes my regard for her into a higher dimension. She has some firm ideas about what does and doesn't constitute good ...
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Book Review
A Review of: Short Journey Upriver Toward Oishida
by Richard Carter
About four centuries ago, a middle-aged poet was trekking along a rough country road north of Tokyo. Relying on the hospitality of strangers, and open to the weather's fitful moods, he delighted in what he saw, smelled and heard: rainwater on leaves; frog splash in a pond; mountains in the distance; cragged mossy temples. The traveller-known as Basho (1644-1694)-was an acute observer whose poems attract readers with their vivid precision and brevity. Here are two examples: "The morning glories ...
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The Address Book: Poems
by Steven Heighton

House of Anansi Press $16.95 Paperback
ISBN: 088784698X
Book Review
A Review of: The Address Book
by Richard Carter
Nowhere is Heighton's taste for the sonorous smack of words more obvious than in the final section of his The Address Book, called "Fifteen approximations", which contains a marvellous array of translations from such poets as Arthur Rimbaud, Rainer Maria Rilke, Sappho and Horace. I have no way of properly judging these poems as translations-my French is poor, and my German non-existent. But as poems in their own right, many are stirring. Take stanzas 2-5 from Heighton's translation of Arthur Rimbaud's "The Drunken Boat": "I was unmoved, cared nothing for any crewmen, ...
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The Burning Eaves
by David Manicom

Oolichan Books $15.95 Paperback
ISBN: 0889822026
Book Review
A Review of: The Burning Eaves
by Richard Carter
David Manicom benefits from a sensitive ear and an imaginative intelligence. While, Like Heighton, Manicom has done some translating. The Burning Eaves includes a powerful rendering of "The Convex Mirror" by Yves Bonnefoy. Like Bonnefoy, Manicom can arrange images to develop thoughts. Here are the first two stanzas of Manicom's translation of Bonnefoy: "Look at them, there at the crossroads, Who seem to hesitate, who set out again. The child runs before them: they have gathered ...
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Splitting Off
by Triny Finlay

Nightwood $16.3 Paperback
ISBN: 0889711984
Book Review
A Review of: Splitting Off
by Zach Wells
Sonnet L'Abb, in a recent review in the Globe and Mail, had this to say about Triny Finlay's debut collection, Splitting Off: "To say Finlay achieves a note-perfect CanLit voice is both praise and admonishment: Her measured tone announces her craftsmanship, but doesn't yet distinguish her among contemporaries." L'Abb gets it half right. Poets who sound too much like their contemporaries effectively consign their work to instant oblivion; competent craftsmanship provides temporary surcease at best. If such poets merit praise, it is the very faint praise of "fitting in." Significant poetry of any age ...
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Toronto Between the Wars: Life in the City 1919-1939
by Charis Cotter

Firefly Books $29.95 Paperback
ISBN: 1552978990
Book Review
A Review of: Toronto Between The Wars: Life In The City 1919-1939
by Greg Gatenby
Charis Cotter sagely remarks in Toronto Between The Wars that most of the buildings for which Toronto has been known for decades were built between World Wars I and II: the Royal York Hotel, Maple Leaf Gardens, the Bank of Commerce head office, Eaton's College Street, and Union Station. These buildings are of only modest architectural interest. Nevertheless they became symbols of the City because Toronto was so profligate in destroying its masterpieces from the Victorian era it had little better to offer. Those looking for plangent discussion of what WWI and the Depression meant to Torontonians will have to look ...
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Framed: America's Art Dealer to the Stars Tells All
by Tod Volpe

ECW Press $28.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 1550226150
Book Review
A Review of: Framed: AmericaÆs Art Dealers To The Stars Tells All
by Greg Gatenby
>From friends who are professional painters and sculptors I have heard horror stories over the decades about dealers who are years late in paying, who don't lift a finger to promote or sell, yet demand a 50% commission, and who make artists jump through hoops where no author of similar stature would even lift a toe. But such gallery-meisters are unpromising amateurs compared to Ted Volpe, a pathetic arriviste who, even after a long time in jail for defrauding friends and other investors in his New York and Los Angeles art galleries, finds it impossible to fully acknowledge his own role in his downfall. His ...
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Rupert Hart-Davis: Man of Letters
by Philip Ziegler

Chatto & Windus $54.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 0701173203
Book Review
A Review of: Rupert Hart-Davis: Man Of Letters
by Greg Gatenby
Although Rupert Hart-Davis died less than five years ago, already the noted biographer Philip Ziegler has produced a wonderfully readable account of the man and his career. Part of Ziegler's success is due to his own felicitous, often witty writing. But the success is also due to the fact that the career of Hart-Davis spanned most of the twentieth century and so his personal history in many ways is a history of British publishing for the same period. After a shaky start at Heinemann, where he befriended H.G. Wells and J.B. Priestly among other eminent authors, Hart-Davis became an editor at Jonathan Cape in ...
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The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish with CD (Audio)
by Neil Gaiman

Harper Collins Canada $23.99 Hardcover
ISBN: 0060587016
Book Review
A Review of: The Day I Swapped my Dad for Two Goldfish
by Olga Stein
Neil Gaiman's and Dave McKean's The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish has both a good story, for children 5 to 9 years of age, and impressive illustrations. The text is inserted graphic-novel-style in a font that resembles handwriting. Line-drawn illustrations are superimposed on a background that often consists of colour washes on newsprint or other textured surfaces. The result of this layering is gorgeous, and the frequently created contrast between dark and light colours gives some objects the appearance of being illuminated. Many of the pages look a touch eery and dream-like. The line drawings ...
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When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer
by Walt Whitman

Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing $24.5 Hardcover
ISBN: 0689863977
Book Review
A Review of: when I heard the learnÆd astronomer
by Olga Stein
When I Heard the learn'd astronomer contains text based on a poem by Walt Whitman. There are only eleven lines, but each is meaningful and elegant. A young boy is made to put on a jacket and tie before attending, along with his parents, a lecture to be given at a university. Inside the neo-classic building a gathering of people awaits the lecture, and the boy, meanwhile, explores on his own, looking at scientific miscellanea. Loren Long's illustrations are haunting in their depiction of a child temporarily disconnected from the world of adults. Long captures the boy's solitariness even in the ...
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Gonna Roll the Bones
by Fritz Leiber

Milk & Cookies $21.33 Hardcover
ISBN: 0689035918
Book Review
A Review of: Gonna Roll the Bones
by Olga Stein
Gonna Roll the Bones, a story based on text from a Hugo Award-winning novella by Fritz Leiber, has been superbly rendered here with pencil on vellum by David Wiesner. The story, a fantastical western, obviously leaves out some important original material, but the reader is given enough to guess that Joe Slattermill, the central character, has some special gift when it comes to rolling bones' (or dice). Since he lives in an old, run down cabin with his wife and mother, we can surmise that he doesn't normally gamble for personal profit, but on this occasion, restless and curious about The Boneyard, the new ...
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The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon: A Pop-Up Book
by Stephen King

Simon & Schuster Canada $35.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 0689862725
Book Review
A Review of: The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
by Olga Stein
Stephen King's The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is a pop-up book. Why is it being reviewed here? First, it has many panels with enough text to fill a regular kids' book. Second, it's a marvel of design and engineering-an amazing creation one might not want to let a child read unsupervised for fear that clumsy little hands might cause damage. Nine-year-old Trisha becomes separated from her mother and older brother while on a hike on the Appalachian Trail that runs between Maine and New Hampshire. Lost in this vast, forested part of Maine, Trisha decides to follow a stream on the principle that "water leads ...
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Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Madness
by Edgar Allan Poe

Atheneum $26.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 0689848374
Book Review
A Review of: Edgar Allan PoeÆs Tales of Mystery and Madness
by Olga Stein
Edgar Allan's Poe's Tales of Mystery and Madness contains four of Poe's stories: "The Black Cat", "The Masque of the Red Death", "Hop-Frog", and "The Fall of the House of Asher". All four tales are disturbing enough to furnish illustrator Gris Grimly with ample fodder for his black pen. This book borrows a great deal from the dark graphic novel, but while the drawings often seem better suited to graphic books or magazines for adults, the overall design and use of colour is artistically appealing, and the content is toned down just enough (though I wouldn't give the book to a preteen). The book has ...
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Magic Off Main: The Art of Esther Warkov
by Beverly J. Rasporich, Esther Warkov

Univ of Calgary Pr $37.69 Paperback
ISBN: 1552380998
Book Review
A Review of: Magic Off Main: The Art of Esther Warkov
by Olga Stein
Magic off Main arrived in my office late in December 03, too late to be included in last year's gift books column. This was unfortunate because the small book, with its tasteful but unassuming cover, immediately revealed itself as a treasure. Esther Warkov's work is completely unconventional, brilliant, disturbing, confounding, and at all times fascinating. So striking is Warkov's art, I wondered why I had never heard of her before. Fortunately, Magic Off Main does not merely reproduce Warkov's paintings and three-dimensional art, the book is an expertly written study of the artist's oeuvre, her personal ...
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In the Place of Last Things
by Michael Helm

McClelland & Stewart $32.99 Hardcover
ISBN: 077104125X
Book Review
A Review of: In the Place of Last Things
by Eric Miller
Michael Helm's In the Place of Last Things is a good novel. It not only provokes thought, but it also sustains thought well beyond its conclusion. I say this despite the fact that I have never thrown a punch in all my adult life or picked a physical fight-violence is as alien to me as it is familiar to Helm's protagonist, the 230-pound Russ Littlebury. Helm gets the reader inside the mind of a man whose strong intellect cannot suspend a reflex toward the exercise of force, force at least temporarily conceived of as righteous. Littlebury possesses brains, and has refined those brains in the academic study ...
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The Man Who Hated Emily Bronte
by Ray Smith

Porcupine's Quill $18.95 Paperback
ISBN: 0889842450
Book Review
A Review of: The Man Who Hated Emily Brontd
by Steven W. Beattie
Anyone who has ever experienced the near-orgasmic gustatory sensations on offer at Schwartz's delicatessen on Montreal's Boul. Saint-Laurent will instantly recognize the essential truth of a statement that author Ray Smith places in the mouth of one of his characters toward the end of his latest novel, The Man Who Hated Emily Bront: "Smoked meat has the mysterious quality that if it leaves the island of Montreal it ceases to be smoked meat." Likewise, the "tasteless doughy doughnut-shaped things" that masquerade as bagels outside the borders of Montreal-and which are often marketed by disingenuous Toronto shop ...
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The Collected Stories of Carol Shields
by Carol Shields

Random House Canada $39.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 0679313265
Book Review
A Review of: The Collected Stories
by Clara Thomas
Carol Shields's Collected Stories was published, with the cooperation of her family, one year after her death. "Segue", a chapter from the novel she was working on when she died, is included along with the complete collections, Various Miracles, The Orange Fish and Dressing up for the Carnival. Her daughters Anne and Sara were actively engaged in the book's preparation and made themselves available for interviews. The finished work is a handsome collection, her family's memorial to the writer whose remarkably diverse talents leave us a shining legacy. New readers as well as long-devoted readers will be ...
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Oblivion: Stories
by David Foster Wallace

Little Brown, USA $35.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 0316919810
Book Review
A Review of: Oblivion: Stories
by Lyall Bush
Modernism, the tradition David Foster Wallace belongs to with what used to be called a vengeance, was supposed to have been wiped away long ago by Postmodernism, with its shifting styles and its deadpan assurances that surface is depth and skin is just another way of saying soul. Samuel Beckett and Andy Warhol, and the last century's presiding genius, Marcel Duchamp, were the gray eminences of the new tradition. They shrugged away the Moderns' ghosthunter humanism, their hungry hearts, their wager that well-arranged words could revive cities (Ulysses), capture thought as it passed through the wobbly ...
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Birds Without Wings
by Louis De Bernieres

Knopf Canada $36.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 0676976948
Book Review
A Review of: Birds Without Wings
by Michael Harris
When the Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin sat down one wintry eve to enumerate the properties of novelistic prose, he named polyphony as a core element. The crush of a hundred voices, confounding each other, supporting each other, filling in gaps and carving out fresh mysteries-this is what we demand of a good, meaty novel. And Louis de Bernires' latest offering, Birds Without Wings, fits the bill handsomely. A hundred voices, at least. Christian Greeks, Muslim Turks, Armenians and Jews make up the chorus, happily coexisting under the Ottoman empire's millet system, wherein ...
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Sointula
by Bill Gaston

Raincoast Books $34.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 1551927195
Book Review
A Review of: Sointula
by Shannon Cowan
Bill Gaston is not afraid to take risks, and in his latest novel, Sointula, his exploration into the sacred and profane heart of coastal British Columbia is a quest of Quixotic proportions. With such accolades as the Timothy Findley Award, a Giller Prize nomination, and the Canadian Literary Award for Fiction under his belt, not to mention twelve other books of prose, poetry, and drama, Gaston deserves to have a wide readership by now. That he situates himself outside the literary centre of Canada-first in New Brunswick where he served as editor of The Fiddlehead, and now in pastoral ...
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The Nine Planets
by Edward Riche

Penguin $34 Hardcover
ISBN: 0670044563
Book Review
A Review of: The Nine Planets
by Chris LaVigne
The world is a sham and Marty Devereaux knows it. Vice principal and co-founder of a St. John's private school, Marty is an expert at keeping up appearances, carefully crafting reality to suit the tastes of his wealthy clientele. He is skilled at constructing pleasing facades. Needing to create some semblance of tradition, Marty sets up a phony trophy case filled with impossibly ancient awards for the school's opening day. Marty's school, The Red Pines, is only the most obviously fictional piece of a world Riche constructs by means of his characters' dishonesty, their bold, unflinching willingness to ...
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The Memory Artists
by Jeffrey Moore

Penguin $35 Hardcover
ISBN: 0670045209
Book Review
A Review of: The Memory Artists
by Paul Keen
Memory, both as a promise and a curse, is one of the great mysteries of our existence-a way of keeping faith with all we cherish, or where we forget, the worst betrayal. Or, more darkly, it haunts us in the endless return of unassimilable trauma. It is sometimes hard to know the difference. Je me souviens, license plates remind us. Lest we forget, we repeat like a mantra on Remembrance Day. Not just particular memories but the idea of memory itself offers us some of our most profound cultural coordinates. But memory can never be fully adequate either. In the nineteenth century, Charles Babbage fantasized ...
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Secret Smile
by Nicci French

Penguin Canada Hardcover $24 Paperback
ISBN: 0143014161
Book Review
A Review of: Secret Smile
by Desmond McNally
Having thoroughly enjoyed this Nicci French's last novel, Land of the Living, I expected more of the same high quality from Secret Smile. The beginning of the narrative quickly establishes an undercurrent of frenetic confusion tinged with dread, and yet the opening chapters also seem to lack some of the tight organization one is used to from French. The opening of Land of the Living explodes like a greyhound at the start of a race. Secret Smile, on the other hand, appears to meander initially, with several vignettes seemingly lacking much purpose and direction. This state of affairs is short lived, however; ...
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Book Review
A Review of: The Flourish: Murder in the Family
by Desmond McNally
Are you sitting comfortably? - Then I'll begin. . . ("Listen with Mother", BBC Radio, circa 1950's) The above would serve as good advice to those preparing to read the Flourish by Heather Spears. The author advises us in her introduction that the events in her narrative are true and that all of the characters lived, and are in addition, ancestors of Ms. Spears. This renders the story to come more tantalizing for the reader. The stage for this novel is Victorian Scotland, in particular, the village of Kirkfieldbank near Lanark, where our central character, ...
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Garden of Beasts : A Novel of Berlin 1936
by Jeffery Deaver

Pocket Star $11.99 Paperback
ISBN: 0743437829
Book Review
A Review of: Garden of Beasts: A Novel of Berlin 1936
by Desmond McNally
Jeffery Deaver has chosen a time and place for his latest novel that offers innumerable opportunities to immerse his readers in a setting that history confirms was rife with Anti-Semitism, cruelty, hatred, intrigue and the barbaric treatment of fellow human beings. This novel of Berlin in 1936, the time of Hitler's Olympics, provides the background for an unusual premise in Garden of Beasts, the literal translation of Tiergarten. Deaver, a prolific and successful author of many well-regarded novels, hits his stride quickly, introducing us to his protagonist, a German American called Paul Schumann. An unlikely ...
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Find Me Again: A Rebecca Temple Mystery
by Sylvia Maultash Warsh

University Of Toronto Press $11.99 Paperback
ISBN: 1550024744
Book Review
A Review of: Find me Again
by Desmond McNally
Despite Find Me Again's cover notes I was unprepared for the engrossing journey over two centuries on which I was to accompany the author. This is Warsh's second novel, a sequel to the well regarded To Die in Spring, and once again its central character is Dr. Rebecca Temple. Rebecca's husband has been dead eleven months, too short a time for her to reconcile herself to this tragedy and the opening chapters are suitably poignant and melancholy. Her relationship with Sarah, her Mother-in-Law, is somehow stilted and mostly at arms length ...
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Attraction
by James Manlow

MacAdam/Cage Publishing $30.2 Hardcover
ISBN: 1931561834
Book Review
A Review of: Attraction
by Desmond McNally
As a student at school, my weakest subject was, and still is, Mathematics. I did not take Advanced Physics and know next to nothing about Quantum Mechanics. Imagine my discomfort when I discovered a number of passages in Attraction dealing with these very subjects. I hasten to add, however, that these mini-lectures did not diminish my enjoyment of the novel. This is James Manlow's first foray into the world of fiction, and a very creditable one it is. Undergraduate Prentis ("Jack") Stone's bachelorhood is ambushed by an attractive Anglo/French student named Anne-Marie who is attending the ...
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After Surfing Ocean Beach: A Novel
by Mary Soderstrom

University Of Toronto Press $21.99 Paperback
ISBN: 1550025090
Book Review
A Review of: After Surfing Ocean Beach
by Desmond McNally
Although a murder is of central importance in this offering by Mary Soderstrom, After Surfing Ocean Beach is by no means a "mystery" or a "whodunit". The author has a sharp, efficient style, though not sparing in her descriptive narrative. Nor does she diminish the import of what we the readers are to discover. In fact by the end of the first chapter, we are already presented with a body lying in a pool of blood and made witnesses as Rick, acting defensively, stabs a man who comes to offer him assistance. ...
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Hydra and the Bananas of Leonard Cohen: A Search for Serenity in the Sun
by Roger Green

HarperCollins Canada / Basic Books $39 Hardcover
ISBN: 0465027598
Book Review
A Review of: Hydra and the Bananas of Leonard Cohen: A search for serenity in the sun
by Todd Swift
Recently, the Guardian's Friday Review featured "Cohen at 70" on its cover. His handsome face, peering out from under severely-cropped greying hair, was at it again: appearing haunted and bemused simultaneously. These periodic Cohen sightings so dear to the international press (timed these days to coincide with album releases-such as the new one Dear Heather) now have a tipping point: the absurd moment when Rufus Wainwright is trotted out, to proclaim: "I really believe he is the greatest living poet on earth." Wainwright is a very talented musician, but he is not a very good ...
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Chronicles : Volume One
by Bob Dylan

Simon & Schuster $35 Hardcover
ISBN: 0743228154
Book Review
A Review of: Chronicles: Volume One
by Lyall Bush
I live in Seattle, and on November 3, I was reeling from an election result that didn't surprise me yet managed to leave me stunned. In the evening I finally put on some Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited, his still strange and unsettling record from 1965 that is also one of the towering pop artifacts of the 20th Century. Every time I listen to the music I understand American life better. In every song the assured 24-year-old was reinventing popular music and also making a new world out of trance-inducing quadruple rhymes and sliding, fragmentary story shapes in which Gypsy Davey, Noah's great rainbow, Miss Lonely, chrome ...
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War: the New Edition
by Gwynne Dyer

Random House Canada $39.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 0679313117
Book Review
A Review of: War
by Matt Sturrock
What's left to say about war? The phenomenon has been amply addressed by hexameter-spouting pre-literates, Confucian generals, shell-shocked poets, writers' workshop jarheads, and untold numbers of eminently qualified commentators in between. Amid all that rhapsodizing, lamenting, codifying, strategizing, speculating, and eulogizing is the uncomfortable truth that nobody has yet figured out how to put an end to it. But, hey, didn't the threat of war reach its apogee in the late twentieth century, when the cocked and loaded ICBMs of two competing superpowers threatened to scorch or choke all human life from the ...
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A Terrible Love of War
by James Hillman

The Penguin Press $35 Hardcover
ISBN: 1594200114
Book Review
A Review of: A Terrible Love of War
by Gwen Nowak
A Terrible Love of War is James Hillman's last testament. In four charged chapters Hillman guides his reader on an excursion into the dark underworld of the soul to shed light on what he claims has never been seen before-the bunkers of the dark god of war, the dark god who rules the world, the warring world, the everyday world where war is now, has always been and, unless this ubiquitous force is decommissioned, will always be. Hence the title of chapter one: "War is Normal". But admittedly war is not an acceptable normal given its horror, the pathologies of ...
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Spice: the History of a Temptation
by Jack Turner

HarperCollins Canada / UK Non-Fict Hc $59.95 Hardcover
ISBN: 000257067X
Book Review
A Review of: The Spice Trade
by Christopher Ondaatje
Columbus found America; Magellan circumnavigated the globe, and Vasco da Gama sailed around Africa to India. These three adventurers were indeed the standard bearers of the age of discovery, driven, in fact, not so much by the will to discover as by the all-consuming hunger for spice. It is difficult to imagine that anything more could be written about spices than in this exemplary book, The Spice Trade, by Jack Turner. It is a tour de force and gives a very full account of the early spice race, including the exploits of the 15th and 16th century explorers. ...
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Lumiere Light: Recipes from the Tasting Bar
by Feenie & Coldham

Douglas & McIntyre $35 Paperback
ISBN: 1550549731
Book Review
A Review of: Lumiere Light: Recipes from the Tasting Bar
by Brian Fawcett
This book originates in my old stamping ground of Vancouver. From Food Network star Rob Feenie and his sous chef Marnie Coldham, the recipes in the book are based on the fare from their Lumiere Light tasting bar in Vancouver. The virtues of this one are that the recipes are excellent, the cuisine light, high/serious and culturally fused. These are the same virtues to be found, generally, in Feenie's television cuisine and the two Vancouver restaurants. Unfortunately, the book suffers from the same faults I've found in his television cuisine: most of his recipes require a professional kitchen and pantry with a ...
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Visions of Canada: The Alan B. Plaunt Memorial Lectures, 1958-1992
McGill-Queen's University Press $41.46 Paperback
ISBN: 0773526625
Book Review
A Review of: Great ChefÆs Cook at Barbara-JoÆs
by Brian Fawcett
Great Chef's Cook at Barbara-Jo's issues from Barbara-Jo McIntosh's Vancouver cookbook store, which features a fully equipped kitchen in which, I gather, a horde of celebrity chefs line up to cook a meal and socialize with Vancouver's foodies. The book is heavy on cross-testimonials: Vickie Gabereau introduces the book, McIntosh praises each celebrity with a private anecdote, and many of the celebrities themselves provide testimonials to McIntosh. Along with the celebrity caricatures by the talented Bernie Lyon, there's barely room for the recipes, which thankfully are pretty clear and quite ...
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Salut!: The story of beer in Quebec : a history and micro-beer cookbook
by Raymond Beauchemin

Vehicule $18.95 Paperback
ISBN: 1550651552
Book Review
A Review of: Salut! The Quebec Microbrewery Beer Cookbook
by Brian Fawcett
Raymond Beauchemin's Salut! The Quebec Microbrewery Beer Cookbook is a much less elegant but rather more informative cross-promotional volume. The recipes require you to know more about Quebec's microbreweries than most of us outside of Quebec will, but for someone like me who thought that cooking with beer either meant chili or getting drunk around the barbecue, it was a pleasant surprise to discover how many culinary uses beer can have. The book also provides a thumbnail sketch of Quebec's brewing history and offers a cross-reference section that allows you to substitute non-Quebec ...
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The Smoothies Bible
by Pat Crocker

Robert Rose $24.95 Paperback
ISBN: 0778800636
Book Review
A Review of: The Smoothies Bible
by Brian Fawcett
The Smoothies Bible by culinary herbalist and home economist Pat Crocker is a wonderful book for those who want to be trendy and are obsessed with their digestive tracts. Most of the fruit smoothies-and there are literally hundreds of recipes for them- seemed drinkable enough, but I just can't talk myself into making , say, a broccoli smoothie, or some of the more radical herbal concoctions for my breakfast even if they promise to make my colon glow in the dark. But if you're into blenders and food processors, or have lost your dental equipment, this may be your kind of book. Those who think that food is ...
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