MetroCascade Victoria

boughtbooks

Rick Bass, The Book of Yaak
boughtbooks on Thu 02 Sep 2010 at 8:12 PM
I confessed some time ago on this blog to a now-mild but long-standing anti-Americanism in my reading practices: kind of like disliking the Maple Leafs, Disney, economists, all those things with enormo
Topics: books

Lawrence Hill, The Book of Negroes
boughtbooks on Mon 23 Aug 2010 at 11:20 AM
Lawrence Hill and his The Book of Negroes got me through today's Air Canada marathon (not the expected Sydney-Toronto-Victoria, oh no, but with the spontaneous addition of Vancouver, plus eleven miles
Topics: books

August - Cape Breton
boughtbooks on Sun 22 Aug 2010 at 4:16 AM
It's been a treat and a joy to spend a few days in Cape Breton with the good people of ALECC. We've been writing about the conference over at the ALECC blog, in between times, but also in between times
Topics: books

Jeff Foss, Beyond Environmentalism
boughtbooks on Fri 13 Aug 2010 at 2:33 PM
The opening lines of my eventually upcoming review in Ecozon@ of Beyond Environmentalism:When I finished reading Jeffrey E. Foss' Beyond Environmentalism: A Philosophy of Nature, one recent evening, I
Topics: books

Betty Lowman Carey, Bijaboji
boughtbooks on Fri 30 Jul 2010 at 10:49 PM
For the record, no, Betty Lowman Carey's memoir Bijaboji isn't connected in any way with the Robin Williams movie of the dissimilar name. For one thing, Williams' movie wouldn't have made any sense if
nonfiction, British Columbia, american, Review, Environment
Topics: books

July 30 - Munro's
boughtbooks on Fri 30 Jul 2010 at 10:48 PM
A couple of kids' books today at a trourist-crowded Munro's, plus also Lisa Moore's very cool-looking novel Alligator ($6.99 in hardcover) -- maybe I'll even read it before school starts again!
purchase
Topics: books

July 27 - Chapters & the village
boughtbooks on Wed 28 Jul 2010 at 10:54 AM
A quick visit today to perhaps the least bookish bookstore I ever go into, and it's pretty rare that I go: Chapters. If my daughter hadn't gotten a gift certificate for her birthday, well, I wouldn't h
Topics: books

July 22 - Choyces (Sointula)
boughtbooks on Fri 23 Jul 2010 at 10:33 PM
Still on the road, and yet apparently not without room in the backpack. After a very pleasant day on Malcolm Island, including a visit to the lighthouse at Pulteney Point, I picked up a couple of books
Topics: books

Barbara Hurd, Entering the Stone
boughtbooks on Tue 20 Jul 2010 at 10:05 PM
I'm tired, and I found lots of reasons to quibble with Barbara Hurd's nature-writing memoir Entering the Stone: On Caves and Feeling Through the Dark, but in the end, one test matters. I kept reading t
Topics: books

Thomas Wharton - Icefields
boughtbooks on Mon 19 Jul 2010 at 8:53 PM
Finally, finally I've read Thomas Wharton's Icefields, a novel recommended to me by friends and colleagues and, most importantly, those rare few who fall into both categories. I had some trepidation ab
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July 13 - Rathtrevor nature house
boughtbooks on Sun 18 Jul 2010 at 11:33 AM
The provincial parks system in British Columbia is yet another facet of public works getting bashed by assorted levels of government. Campgrounds, for example, are all run on contract by private compan
Topics: books

Morton & Proctor, Heart of the Raincoast
boughtbooks on Fri 09 Jul 2010 at 11:48 PM
Heart of the Raincoast: A Life Story, by Alexandra Morton and Billy Proctor (mostly Morton, really, with some passages from Billy Proctor and some verse from his mother Jae), is on the one hand, one of
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Stephanie Meyer, Twilight
boughtbooks on Fri 09 Jul 2010 at 11:31 PM
Why yes, yes, I actually have read Stephanie Meyer's blockbuster Twilight. What's your point, and what surprises you about this? I even enjoyed it -- does that surprise you?I'd been pondering whether t
Topics: books

July 9 - Munro's
boughtbooks on Fri 09 Jul 2010 at 10:33 PM
One of the happiest places on earth, Munro's Books, especially when visited between dinner at Spinnaker's and a post-dinner pint at the Irish Times. Bless/curse their sale tables, which today included:
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David Leach, Fatal Tide
boughtbooks on Thu 01 Jul 2010 at 11:20 PM
Dude can write, I tell you.It's been way too long since I convinced David Leach to cycle to my house and sell me a copy of Fatal Tide: When the Race of a Lifetime Goes Wrong. I'm suspecting that it lan
Topics: books

June 30 - Value Village
boughtbooks on Thu 01 Jul 2010 at 11:05 PM
So I was at Value Village for some shorts, doing my bit to combat the fashion marketing machine, when into my shopping basket fell Stephanie Meyer's Twilight (can I say, because it counts as West Coast
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Eugene Meese, A Magpie's Smile
boughtbooks on Fri 25 Jun 2010 at 10:37 PM
A book club selection: but why can't I keep the name straight? Eugene Meese, I know the author's name cold, but sometimes I call it A Magpie Smiles, sometimes A Magpie Smile, even The Magpie's Smile, b
book club, fiction, Review, Canadian
Topics: books

Brian Brett, Trauma Farm
boughtbooks on Wed 23 Jun 2010 at 11:50 PM
June has been mostly occupied with helping others renovate a house bought specifically for resale (ugh) and with a non-progressing article on an eighteenth-century poem about trees, apples, orchards, a
Topics: books

Thomas Berry, The Great Work
boughtbooks on Mon 24 May 2010 at 11:51 PM
The story of the late nineteenth and the entire twentieth century has been largely the story of petroleum, its discovery and use by humans, and the social and cultural consequences in human society. Th
Topics: books

David Orr, Earth in Mind
boughtbooks on Mon 24 May 2010 at 10:53 PM
I've heard David Orr talked about a lot of times in recent years, and he's long been on my unbelievably extensive "gotta get there eventually" reading list. Last weekend's Times-Colonist book sale gave
Topics: books

Frank Miller, The Dark Knight Returns
boughtbooks on Mon 24 May 2010 at 3:30 PM
Am I the only person who hasn't yet seen Heath Ledger's performance as The Joker? Yes? Ah well.It was a hoot reading once again Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Going in, I wasn't sure I
american, book club, fiction, Review, purchase
Topics: books

Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island
boughtbooks on Mon 24 May 2010 at 3:04 PM
"I would absolutely love to do a book on Canada,” Bryson declares boldly. There's a pause as I struggle but fail to say something enthusiastic. "I find Canada fascinating, particularly its relationsh
nonfiction, american, international, Review, Environment
Topics: books

May 15, Times-Colonist book sale
boughtbooks on Sat 15 May 2010 at 11:39 PM
Yet another fine day at the Times-Colonist book sale, proving again how much can be accomplished in a limited amount of time, this year for a total of $84:ed. Ian G. Barto, Western Man and Environmenta
purchase
Topics: books

Melody Hessing, Up Chute Creek
boughtbooks on Wed 12 May 2010 at 12:31 PM
"How does anyone 'belong' to this place anymore? Is home just anywhere you hang your hat? Any place with a pay cheque? How are we attached to a place when we no longer derive our sustenance from it? Ho
Topics: books

J. Douglas Porteous, Environmental Aesthetics
boughtbooks on Wed 12 May 2010 at 11:40 AM
With summertime here, the academic shifts gears: no, not toward fluffy summer reading, but toward books complicated enough not to fit easily around office hours and marking binges. Next up for me, J. D
nonfiction, British Columbia, academic, Review, Environment ...all
Topics: books

Greg Garrard, Ecocriticism
boughtbooks on Thu 06 May 2010 at 10:46 AM
Greg Garrard's volume in the Routledge New Critical Idiom series, Ecocriticism, is a fascinating read for someone knowledgeable about the field, and -- if introduced carefully -- a useful introduction
Topics: books

May 4 - Value Village
boughtbooks on Thu 06 May 2010 at 9:39 AM
Back to the Village, for the coat I forgot to pick up yesterday, but since I had some time....Michael Cullen, The Theory of the Big Bang: A Northern SoapPeter Knudtson & David Suzuki, Wisdom of the Eld
Topics: books

May 3 - Value Village
boughtbooks on Mon 03 May 2010 at 11:46 PM
Kind of an odd book day today -- I was actually looking for some sweaters, one of which I'm wearing, and some shoes, which I'm not, but for a total of $15.94, into my basket leapt:Ralph Edwards, as tol
Topics: books

April 20 - gift
boughtbooks on Wed 21 Apr 2010 at 9:44 AM
Supervising students pays off karmically, I always say, but sometimes it pays off materially as well. After yesterday's successful defense, Tolkien Fan very kindly provided me with a wee treasure trove
Topics: books

April 18 - BC Ferries
boughtbooks on Tue 20 Apr 2010 at 8:35 AM
Now, I buy books pretty rarely on BC Ferries, ever since Jim Pattison pushed Duthie's Books off the gangplank and onto its long decline into its complete disappearance from BC's book scene (with an ass
Topics: books

March 29, 2010 - subTEXT
boughtbooks on Tue 30 Mar 2010 at 12:17 PM
Yeah, it really has been almost since a month since I bought some books or finished reading one I haven't already been through. It's that kind of semester, that kind of workload. Sadder for me than for
Topics: books

Martin Amis, The Information
boughtbooks on Tue 02 Mar 2010 at 10:39 AM
I've spent lots of hours outside my usual reading habits recently, working my way through Martin Amis' The Information more slowly than I expected. It deserves all the praise it's received, this novel,
Topics: books

Stanley Evans, Seaweed on the Street
boughtbooks on Tue 02 Mar 2010 at 9:56 AM
With a title like Seaweed on the Street, you'd be excused if you thought maybe Stan Evans' 2005 book was a chapbook of stereotypical West Coast natural/urban hippie poetry (not that I've seen many exam
Topics: books

rob mclennan, red earth
boughtbooks on Mon 22 Feb 2010 at 10:27 AM
"Given the fact of lyric obscurity--perhaps the only fact a poem yields to its readers--one wonders what sort of bond, if any, a poem establishes with its readers, with the sensory realm evoked by its
Topics: books

Lilli Carré, Tales of Woodsman Pete
boughtbooks on Mon 22 Feb 2010 at 10:11 AM
Lilli Carré's wee book Tales of Woodsman Pete was among the haul brought back from last weekend's jaunt to Portland, and I can't come up with a better brief summary of this gem than is available on th
Topics: books

Feb 15 - Port Angeles
boughtbooks on Mon 15 Feb 2010 at 6:51 PM
I zipped into a couple of Port Angeles bookstores today while waiting for a ferry, because I couldn't stand just sitting and waiting. And really, what better thing is there to do other than pick up mor
Topics: books

Feb 14 - Powell's
boughtbooks on Mon 15 Feb 2010 at 6:47 PM
And because I was kicking myself for some of my leave-behinds at Powell's on Saturday, I had to go pick up a few things on the way out of the Pearl District:Rich Ives, ed., From Timberline to Tidepool:
Topics: books

Feb 13 - Reading Frenzy
boughtbooks on Mon 15 Feb 2010 at 6:42 PM
I found a way-cool little bookstore, mostly selling zines, just down the road from Powell's, and I picked up two fascinating little volumes from Reading Frenzy:Lilli Carre's comic/cartoon Tales of Wood
Topics: books

Feb 13 - Powell's
boughtbooks on Mon 15 Feb 2010 at 6:33 PM
This was my first visit to Powell's Books, and I was staggered. I made a point of visiting twice before buying anything, but honestly, I wound up wandering around with a full basket, putting one thing
Topics: books

Feb 13 - Oregon Historical Society
boughtbooks on Mon 15 Feb 2010 at 6:28 PM
The first of a few posts, because it was a bonanza weekend in Portland! It all started off with a visit to the Oregon Historical Museum, which is tightly focused on what amounts to the state's environm
Topics: books

Michael Chabon, Summerland
boughtbooks on Thu 11 Feb 2010 at 2:43 PM
So I picked up this book in the UVic bookstore: "Summerland?," thought I. "Someone's written a fat novel about the Okanagan town of Summerland? Wait, no, that can't be right -- what would Michael Chabo
Topics: books

David Sedaris, When You Are Engulfed in Flames
boughtbooks on Thu 11 Feb 2010 at 2:29 PM
Ah, David Sedaris: he almost made me forget just how SICK I'd been for much of the previous weeks before the book club met to talk about his newest book, When You Are Engulfed in Flames (a title borrow
Topics: books

After an absence
boughtbooks on Thu 11 Feb 2010 at 10:40 AM
No apologies, but I'm back: some mostly seasonal illness, then a lengthy (lengthy!) paper to write that required rebooting my brain's outmoded steam-driven and dust-covered academic engines. Sometimes
Topics: books

January 15 - Volume Two
boughtbooks on Sat 16 Jan 2010 at 3:26 AM
I'm not sure how they've done it, but Russell Books not only has remained viable enough to renovate and greatly expand its space on Fort Street, but a few years ago it also opened a second downtown loc
Topics: books

January 15 - Shepherd Books
boughtbooks on Sat 16 Jan 2010 at 2:23 AM
Shepherd Books on Fort Street (with one of the least helpful web sites I've found, to be honest, so I'm not even linking to it!) is one of my favourite bookstores, but it's small enough that I often fi
Topics: books

January 15 - UVic Bookstore
boughtbooks on Fri 15 Jan 2010 at 5:55 PM
A couple of things jumped off the shelves at me this morning: Madhur Anand and Adam Dickinson's co-edited collection Regreen: New Canadian Ecological Poetry ($18 very well spent, I think), and an essay
Topics: books

Robert Kaplan, The Nothing That Is
boughtbooks on Mon 11 Jan 2010 at 7:00 AM
It all seemed to make sense at the time, but now, just 24 hours after putting down Robert Kaplan's fascinating little book The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero, I'm having real trouble recapt
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David Gessner, Sick of Nature
boughtbooks on Wed 06 Jan 2010 at 8:31 PM
I've spent some time over the last few days pondering my response to David Gessner's essay collection Sick of Nature. It's got some copy-editing weaknesses, though nothing like those in Bell Hooks' Bel
Topics: books

Jensen & McMillan, As The World Burns
boughtbooks on Mon 04 Jan 2010 at 8:54 PM
I'm thinking that 2010 is going to be a slow reading year for me, but time will tell. This means that I was tempted to call this my first review of the year, to get a jump on things, but no -- it's rig
Topics: books

Scott Russell Sanders, A Conservationist Manifesto
boughtbooks on Thu 31 Dec 2009 at 3:48 AM
You know, sometimes a book just doesn't work out the way it should for you. Your friends think there'll be some chemistry, it looks like your type, the wine's excellent -- but you stare at each other o
Topics: books

Douglas Coupland, Generation A
boughtbooks on Wed 30 Dec 2009 at 7:21 AM
I will always read new work by Douglas Coupland. To paraphrase a friend with whom I was once much closer, Coupland's writing the world I actually live in -- you just have to ignore the detail that it's
Topics: books

Jasper Fforde, First Among Sequels
boughtbooks on Wed 30 Dec 2009 at 7:03 AM
Serves me right, I guess. Jasper Fforde's First Among Sequels has been on my shelf for some time (though my book-focused obsessiveness, bizarrely, seems to have let me down for the first time as a blog
Topics: books

December 28 - Bolen Books
boughtbooks on Wed 30 Dec 2009 at 6:56 AM
Another visit to Bolen's, for two more volumes, one a book I'd ordered and one a book I'd had my eye on:David Gessner, Sick of Nature ($22.50), andMark Leiren-Young, The Green Chain: Nothing Is Ever Cl
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Shields & Campion, The Company of Others
boughtbooks on Tue 15 Dec 2009 at 2:32 AM
If you've read anything recently posted here, you'll think I'm lying: honestly, though, tears don't come easily to me when I'm reading. Not that I giggled at Bambi or chuckled at Tiny Tim or anything,
Topics: books

Theresa Kishkan, Age of Water Lilies
boughtbooks on Sun 06 Dec 2009 at 4:01 PM
I finished this novel back around Remembrance Day, fittingly enough, and while I wrote its author immediately to tell her how much I'd enjoyed the book, for a variety of complicated reasons I didn't ge
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December 2 - UVic Bookstore
boughtbooks on Thu 03 Dec 2009 at 6:35 PM
Two books on order, two others that leapt fortuitously to hand:Robert A. Heinlein & Spider Robinson, Variable Star ($4.99)Derrick Jensen & Stephanie McMillan, As the World Burns: 50 Simple Things You C
Topics: books

Gail Anderson-Dargatz, Turtle Valley
boughtbooks on Fri 27 Nov 2009 at 7:02 AM
Now, I did a fair bit of my growing up in Turtle Valley. I swam in Skimikin and Phillips Lakes, hiked Squilax Mountain, picked agates in the creeks, worked on neighbours' farms at haying time, that sor
Topics: books

Noveember 24 - UVic Bookstore
boughtbooks on Tue 24 Nov 2009 at 10:21 PM
A theoretical book on visual rhetoric -- not my standard reading, but since that's the likely core of an environmental literature course I'll be team-teaching next year, it seemed like a good time to p
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November 20 - UVic Bookstore
boughtbooks on Fri 20 Nov 2009 at 9:26 PM
The softcover version of a book I've been weighing for some time now, Timothy Morton's Ecology Without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics ($26.50), was on the shelf at the UVic bookstore today
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November 19 - Malahat Review booksale
boughtbooks on Thu 19 Nov 2009 at 7:15 PM
I'm always happy to hand over some money to the Malahat Review, and it's especially important to support small Canadian magazines and journals now that the federal government will be cutting their subs
Topics: books

November 17 - Russell Books
boughtbooks on Wed 18 Nov 2009 at 9:19 PM
They've done such a nice job with the renovation, Russell Books: they've gotten out of the way, and there's just a vast amount of room for books. After a great lunch at the Pink Bicycle yesterday (chan
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John Lent, Monet's Garden
boughtbooks on Tue 17 Nov 2009 at 7:22 PM
The Okanagan: I grew up (sort of, for part of it) in the Shuswap, which is just beyond the northernmost point in the North Okanagan drainage. This year I've got a student who's reading literature from/
Topics: books

November 8 - Haunted Bookshop
boughtbooks on Mon 09 Nov 2009 at 7:10 PM
Whenever I get out to Sidney BC, I make a point of zipping into the Haunted Bookshop. I say "zipping" because I usually have my seven-year-old in tow, and she's not all that patient when it's not her k
Topics: books

October 31 - Value Village
boughtbooks on Mon 02 Nov 2009 at 2:55 AM
Killing time, as usual, and for some reason Value Village continues to be a reliable source of older BC writing:Ken Cathers, Images on Water (ninety-nine cents, for a 1976 poetry collection from Lantzv
Topics: books

Don Gayton, Landscapes of the Interior
boughtbooks on Wed 28 Oct 2009 at 4:13 PM
As I've confessed once already on this blog, I didn't get what Don Gayton was all about when I first came across his writing, in the form of The Wheatgrass Mechanism: Science and Imagination in the Wes
Topics: books

Patrick Lane, Red Dog, Red Dog
boughtbooks on Wed 28 Oct 2009 at 4:22 AM
Biased? Moi?It's not that colleague, friend, and book club compadre David Leach was ripped off in the recent Victoria Book Prize bikini competition ("aagh! my eyes, my eyes!"), because when the formerl
Topics: books

Oct. 22 - UVic Bookstore
boughtbooks on Thu 22 Oct 2009 at 8:19 PM
One of these books I needed (the expensive one), but the Hurt Penguins sale was on....Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism ($26)William Least Hea
Topics: books

Oct. 20 - Fort Street Cafe
boughtbooks on Wed 21 Oct 2009 at 8:24 PM
I went to a wonderful reading event last night, featuring Vanessa Winn (The Chief Factor's Daughter), Des Kennedy (Patrick's Mountain), Theresa Kishkan (The Age of Waterlilies) and Anik See (Postcard &
Topics: books

Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed
boughtbooks on Tue 25 Aug 2009 at 10:16 PM
Honestly, I could not believe how long was Wally Lamb's newest novel, The Hour I First Believed, the current book club selection. It's way too strong to say that I hated this book. But I didn't love it
Topics: books

JRR Tolkien, The Hobbit
boughtbooks on Tue 25 Aug 2009 at 10:07 PM
When I was in elementary school, I remember watching in Miss Lindsay's class an animated film of The Hobbit. I hadn't read the book yet, but I think I must have gone on to read it before much longer, b
Topics: books

Late August book buys
boughtbooks on Tue 25 Aug 2009 at 8:17 PM
A few days in Vancouver and Whistler, very pleasant for the most part, yielded a few things, and then I stumbled across a few today back home again:Albion Books, August 18Edward Hoagland, The Edward Ho
Topics: books

Christopher Milne, The Open Garden
boughtbooks on Fri 21 Aug 2009 at 9:57 PM
Of course I knew Christopher Milne -- who doesn't know the real Christopher Robin, after all? But I hadn't read his story "The Windfall," and I wasn't familiar with his essays, four of which were colle
Topics: books

Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild
boughtbooks on Fri 21 Aug 2009 at 9:42 PM
I wasn't entirely sure whether I'd read this book before, Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild. I'd given it away at least once, but that's not the same thing, and I'm pretty confident now that I hadn't read i
Topics: books

JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings
boughtbooks on Wed 12 Aug 2009 at 12:31 PM
Yep, one post for all three books: I've made it back through JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings cycle. (And then last night I saw on the Munro's Books sale table the new Children of Hurin that Christopher
Topics: books

Gilean Douglas, Seascape with Figures
boughtbooks on Wed 12 Aug 2009 at 12:10 PM
She's something of a cult figure on the West Coast, Gilean Douglas. Her regular pieces in the Victoria Times-Colonist in years long gone by were treasured by her readers, and they were genuinely unlike
Topics: books

Taras Grescoe, Bottomfeeder
boughtbooks on Wed 12 Aug 2009 at 11:54 AM
I finished Taras Grescoe's book Bottomfeeder while on holidays, and immediately gave it away. Those of you who know me personally (rather than virtually) will know what this means: that I think it's an
Topics: books

August 9 - HUGGS booksale on Hornby Island
boughtbooks on Tue 11 Aug 2009 at 12:59 PM
Alas, the reader who attends a charity booksale. It's tough to find time to choose carefully, because there's always an elderly woman using her elbows and counting on chivalry to excuse her ill-mannere
Topics: books

August 6-8, wandering
boughtbooks on Tue 11 Aug 2009 at 12:55 PM
A few books from points north, as we wandered this summer:Gilean Douglas, Seascape with Figures ($12.95, autographed, from a wee used bookstore in Campbell River)Bridget Stutchbury, Silence of the Song
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Spammers
boughtbooks on Mon 27 Jul 2009 at 9:47 PM
A wee note to explain why I've added word verification back in again: a very persistent spammer writing in Mandarin characters has been hitting me with an awful lot of comments. Comment verification wo
Topics: books

July 21-23, Vancouver
boughtbooks on Fri 24 Jul 2009 at 9:18 AM
A road trip getaway led to a few purchases this week, and a whole bunch of greatly needed relaxation. Much of that will be burnt away by this evening, I'm guessing, but it was the right idea anyway.Mac
Topics: books

Antonia Ridge, For Love of a Rose
boughtbooks on Mon 20 Jul 2009 at 8:44 AM
I was recently loaned Antonia Ridge's 1965 book For Love of a Rose by a family member, after a trip to Butchart Gardens. You read such loaned books because it's the thing to do, even if they don't line
Topics: books

July 17 - UVic Bookstore
boughtbooks on Fri 17 Jul 2009 at 7:20 PM
Two books today, basically for free courtesy of a gift certificate received from some researchers who wanted to look at the experience of ESL students in university composition classrooms:Lawrence Buel
Topics: books

Oliver Sacks, Island of the Colorblind
boughtbooks on Wed 15 Jul 2009 at 10:49 PM
I've had Oliver Sacks' The Island of the Colorblind on the shelf for a while, and for most of that time I've meant to get to it. To my eyes, Sacks' books are light reading about complex and important s
Topics: books

Oliver Rackham, Trees & Woodlands in the British Landscape
boughtbooks on Tue 14 Jul 2009 at 11:09 PM
If this is the first time you've stopped by, yes, I am indeed way nerdy. I wish I was able to call myself a "Riot Nrrd," the sobriquet claimed by some of the characters in Douglas Coupland's fine/fun n
Topics: books

Gabor Mate, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts
boughtbooks on Fri 10 Jul 2009 at 11:12 PM
My name is Richard, and I'm an -- no, wait, that's not how to start this. First impressions and all that. Besides, I'm no alcoholic, since I sometimes go for weeks between drinks, rarely get more than
Topics: books

Jasper Fforde, Something Rotten
boughtbooks on Thu 02 Jul 2009 at 9:53 AM
It only makes sense, I suppose, that Jasper Fforde's time-travelling, alternative history novels should be shelved in the science fiction section -- but really, how often do you associate Jane Eyre, Sh
Topics: books

Patricia Klindienst, The Earth Knows My Name
boughtbooks on Sat 27 Jun 2009 at 11:26 PM
The title to this book doesn't work for me, not at all, but the subtitle sold me on it in the ASLE publisher's exhibit, from the table run by Beacon Press -- Patricia Klindienst's The Earth Knows My Na
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Kim Stanley Robinson, The Wild Coast
boughtbooks on Sat 27 Jun 2009 at 11:13 PM
It turns out that Kim Stanley Robinson has a schtick, an MO, a standard procedure: his novels end at a convenient mid-point, rather than at the end of the action or the thinking. I felt that with Icehe
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Kim Stanley Robinson, Icehenge
boughtbooks on Mon 22 Jun 2009 at 10:01 PM
Slumming? Some might say that, sure, but not me: I proudly read Kim Stanley Robinson's science fiction classic Icehenge over the last few days. If you want a detailed review, here's a positive and thor
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Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger
boughtbooks on Sun 21 Jun 2009 at 10:04 PM
Meh.No, actually it was pretty good, Aravind Adiga's Booker-winning novel The White Tiger. I was gripped, excited, thrilled, etc. Except when I put it down, because I wasn't all that excited to pick it
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Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger
boughtbooks on Sun 21 Jun 2009 at 10:04 PM
Meh.No, actually it was pretty good, Aravind Adiga's Booker-winning novel The White Tiger. I was gripped, excited, thrilled, etc. Except when I put it down, because I wasn't all that excited to pick it
Topics: books

Jacques Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am
boughtbooks on Tue 16 Jun 2009 at 10:38 PM
Jacques Derrida has always made my head hurt, as he has the heads of so many others, but to me it's always been a good kind of hurt. (No, John Mellencamp, I don't need to hear from you at this point...
Topics: books

Leach wins! Leach wins!
boughtbooks on Fri 12 Jun 2009 at 7:34 AM
Canada's publishing industry features a handful of standout magazines publishing excellent long-form journalism. I'm delighted to see that David Leach -- colleague, friend, and fellow member of the Moo
Topics: books

ASLE bloggers, so far
boughtbooks on Tue 09 Jun 2009 at 9:49 PM
A few blogs out there about ASLE in Victoria -- happy browsing!Simmons Buntin, the indefatigable editor for/of online magazine Terrain.org, blogged daily about his experiences (some excellent reading,
Topics: books

ASLE books
boughtbooks on Tue 09 Jun 2009 at 3:12 PM
World enough and time, world enough and time -- last week what felt like the entire world came to the University of Victoria (hi, world!) to attend the ASLE conference. I only managed a quick browse of
Topics: books

Sid Marty, Black Grizzly etc
boughtbooks on Sat 30 May 2009 at 11:04 PM
A short note, for a few reasons. First, I'm badly sleep-deprived due to conference organization duties, and second, I don't have the nice things that I would to say about Sid Marty's Governor-General's
Topics: books

Harold Rhenisch, Winging Home
boughtbooks on Fri 29 May 2009 at 5:09 PM
I really like Harold Rhenisch's writing, I do - but after Tom Thomson's Shack, Winging Home is the second of his books from which I've come away seriously baffled.The project is a wonderful one. He set
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Des Kennedy, An Ecology of Enchantment
boughtbooks on Wed 27 May 2009 at 10:07 AM
Just the ticket, is what this book was for me a couple of weeks ago, when I needed some calming.Des Kennedy is an author I've had a hard time getting into. His west coast novel, The Garden Club and the
Topics: books

May 25 - Value Village
boughtbooks on Tue 26 May 2009 at 9:53 AM
I'm a couple of reviews behind, what with the giant conference bearing down train-like on me, but I did get downtown for a wee shopping trip yesterday. I was surprised to discover Value Village having
Topics: books

Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac
boughtbooks on Tue 12 May 2009 at 11:46 AM
It's a classic, Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac, and it's been a talisman for a few generations of environmental types now. Ah, sweet, sweet was the day I recall as my first encounter with this book
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Thoreau, Walden
boughtbooks on Tue 28 Apr 2009 at 11:54 AM
It has been SUCH a long time since I last went through Henry David Thoreau's Walden, probably not since the end of high school or the first couple of years of university. I wandered into a loosely anti
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Spammers
boughtbooks on Wed 22 Apr 2009 at 9:02 AM
After my first spam comments in quite some time, I've gone to comment moderation - and dropped the word verification step, since it didn't prevent this particular spammer. Grr.And the worst part is tha
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April - some purchases
boughtbooks on Mon 20 Apr 2009 at 10:03 PM
I've been to a few good stores and picked up a few good books in the last little while, but I've been far too busy to do anything with them so far:Matthew Dickerson Jonathan Evans, Ents, Elves and Eri
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Peter Lovenheim, Portrait of a Burger as a Young Calf
boughtbooks on Tue 07 Apr 2009 at 1:25 PM
Inspired by the book club selection of Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma, I got out of sequence and raced through Peter Lovenheim's Portrait of a Burger as a Young Calf: The Story of One Man, Two Cow
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Eric Higgs - Nature by Design
boughtbooks on Fri 03 Apr 2009 at 10:00 PM
It's been kind of like grad school, the last little while. One of the things that I loved about PhD work at the U of Alberta at the time - as well as when I look back at it now - was that I could almos
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Malahat Review 165 (Winter 2008)
boughtbooks on Sun 22 Mar 2009 at 11:23 PM
The current number of The Malahat Review, which if you don't know the journal is among Canada's strongest and most storied literary periodicals, is on a subject near to my heart: "The Green Imagination
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Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma
boughtbooks on Sun 22 Mar 2009 at 11:02 PM
He's a very good writer, Michael Pollan - it's not that I didn't expect it, since he's got the credentials to suggest he knows which end of a pen to use, but that's what stood out for me in The Omnivor
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March 14 - two stops
boughtbooks on Sun 15 Mar 2009 at 10:48 PM
Goldstream Nature House is an odd place for a book, perhaps, but there was a sale, and I'm a sucker: Robert Finch's Death of a Hornet, and Other Cape Cod Essays ($4.19, inexplicably), which looks terri
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March 12 - UVic bookstore
boughtbooks on Thu 12 Mar 2009 at 1:34 PM
A special order finally came in that I'd been waiting for, Dan Philippon's really interesting Conserving Words: How American Nature Writers Shaped the Environmental Movement ($34.95). Basically he's ar
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March 5 - Books on View
boughtbooks on Thu 05 Mar 2009 at 11:12 PM
Today was my first visit to Books on View, which is basically the overflow space for the very large Russell Books a block over on Fort Street. I didn't know what it was going to be like (all calendars?
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Anik See, Saudade
boughtbooks on Mon 02 Mar 2009 at 9:06 PM
Anik See’s Saudade: The Possibilities of Place jumped off the shelf at Watermark, the bookstore in the Toronto airport. Mind you, the clerk wound up taking every copy off the shelf in an attempt to g
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Douglas Coupland, The Gum Thief
boughtbooks on Mon 02 Mar 2009 at 9:59 AM
Chris Ayres, you have a lot to answer for. When I bought the most recent Douglas Coupland novel, The Gum Thief, in the Frankfurt airport, I did in part because of your blurb: a line from your review in
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Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History
boughtbooks on Sun 01 Mar 2009 at 8:29 PM
Not long ago, Penguin decided to release a "Great Ideas" series, with sharply done and iconic-seeming covers, that offered selected pieces from volumes on its backlist of important books. When I heard
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ed. Eidse et al, Vancouver Matters
boughtbooks on Sun 01 Mar 2009 at 8:15 PM
I had such very high hopes for Vancouver Matters. This little volume was co-edited by five people connected to the UBC School of Architecture + Landscape Architecture (James Eidse, Mari Fujita, Joey G
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March 1 - Value Village
boughtbooks on Sun 01 Mar 2009 at 3:44 PM
I didn't mean to - but honestly, they were ALREADY sitting in a stack in the books area, on a table. How could I leave them there? It's as if I'd been there ahead of myself to save myself some browsing
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Bohumil Hrabal, Too Loud a Solitude
boughtbooks on Sat 28 Feb 2009 at 11:11 PM
It first came out in 1976, Bohumil Hrabal's novella Too Loud a Solitude, and while it's most poignant if regarded as a product of the Czechoslovakia of that time, it also stands as a potent, haunting b
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February books
boughtbooks on Sat 28 Feb 2009 at 11:01 PM
A long and complicated month, frankly, one in which the book purchases can barely be tracked, let alone itemized:Feb 1, Bolen's: Vancouver Matters, ed. James Eidse et al. ($21.95)Feb. 11, some chain bo
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Jan. 29 - UVic Bookstore
boughtbooks on Thu 29 Jan 2009 at 10:46 PM
I picked up a new classic, compiled from a few different sources including one ten-hour (!!) lecture, out of the UVic Bookstore's wonderful philosophy section - Jacques Derrida's The Animal That Theref
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Jasper Fforde, Lost in a Good Book
boughtbooks on Mon 26 Jan 2009 at 9:55 PM
I finally got around to the middle volume in the thus-far Thursday Next trilogy written by Jasper Fforde, Lost in a Good Book, after having read both The Eyre Affair and The Well of Lost Plots some tim
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Jan. 17 - author's sale & Grafton Books
boughtbooks on Sun 18 Jan 2009 at 9:35 PM
An eventful book day yesterday.In the morning, I managed briefly to nip into Grafton Books to pick up Charles Lillard's phenomenal and irreplaceable A Voice Great Within Us ($11, credited as "with Terr
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Ken Belford, Pathways into the Mountains
boughtbooks on Fri 16 Jan 2009 at 10:09 PM
Pathways into the Mountains is my third Ken Belford book in the last few months, after he surprised me with an email to ask if I might be interested in reading his newest book, the wonderful and very i
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Jan. 15 - Value Village
boughtbooks on Thu 15 Jan 2009 at 1:49 PM
I wasn't intending to buy any books, honest, just updating (!?) my wardrobe a little, but I couldn't help myself:Jamaica Kincaid, My Garden (Book): ($2.99 - punctuation in original)Des Kennedy, An Ecol
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Don Gayton, Interwoven Wild
boughtbooks on Thu 08 Jan 2009 at 4:26 PM
I don't have a clear recollection of Don Gayton's 1990 The Wheatgrass Mechanism, which I came across and read while living in Edmonton, writing a dissertation about environmentalism and eighteenth-cent
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Philip Kevin Paul, Little Hunger
boughtbooks on Thu 08 Jan 2009 at 3:39 PM
I've delayed getting to this review, because I've been busy enough and unsettled enough that I haven't been able to focus on how I've felt and thought about Philip Kevin Paul's delayed but eventually r
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January 3, 2009 - Salvation Army
boughtbooks on Sat 03 Jan 2009 at 7:10 PM
The first purchase of the new year, from the Salvation Army store at the corner of Shelbourne and Cedar Hill Cross: John Gould's Kilter: 55 Fictions, for the bargain price of $2.99. And so it begins...
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Best of 2008
boughtbooks on Tue 30 Dec 2008 at 8:28 PM
This was a good year for reading - I enjoyed an awful lot of the 60 books I read carefully enough to get around to take notes on. This has something to do with that the fact that I've deliberately narr
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December 30 - Grafton Books
boughtbooks on Tue 30 Dec 2008 at 5:18 PM
A cool one from Grafton Books today - Major Douglas H. Tobler's Desecration of “An Enchanted Kingdom” ($15). I'd heard of this 1979 self-published objection to clearcut logging in the Bridge River
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December 30 - Wells Books
boughtbooks on Tue 30 Dec 2008 at 5:12 PM
A nice haul at Wells Books today, heavy on BC content:Ken Belford, ecologue ($6.99)Ken Belford, Pathways Into the Mountains ($6.99)ed. Thomas R. Dunlap, DDT, Silent Spring, and the Rise of Environmenta
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December 29 - Bolen's
boughtbooks on Tue 30 Dec 2008 at 9:50 AM
Two good choices yesterday at Bolen's, kind of like Christmas gifts to myself:Don Gayton's Interwoven Wild: An Ecologist Loose in the Garden ($15.95 from Thistledown Press), andPhilip Kevin Paul's Litt
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Ken Follett, World Without End
boughtbooks on Sun 28 Dec 2008 at 10:25 PM
Stupid book club - what am I doing reading a thousand-page blockbuster romance that's NOT by Neal Stephenson? Yep, Ken Follett's World Without End, the sequel to his 1989 classic doorstop Pillars of th
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Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, Flight of the Hummingbird
boughtbooks on Sun 28 Dec 2008 at 9:44 PM
I got only the one book for Christmas this year, since we had to buy a new/used car and are going to Europe in February: Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas' Flight of the Hummingbird. I imagine there's a more
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James Glave, Almost Green
boughtbooks on Sun 21 Dec 2008 at 8:52 PM
I'm not sure how many times I've picked up James Glave's book Almost Green and put it back on the shelf - though in my defense, I did buy one as a gift. (Unaccountably I didn't read it before I gave it
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December 16 - UVic Bookstore
boughtbooks on Tue 16 Dec 2008 at 7:06 PM
A couple of gems from the sale tables at the University of Victoria Bookstore:Kristjana Gunnars, Silence of the Country ($5.18)Ronald W. Hawker, Tales of Ghosts: First Nations Art in British Columbia,
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John Howard Griffin, Black Like Me
boughtbooks on Wed 10 Dec 2008 at 8:39 AM
John Howard Griffin's book Black Like Me has been on my radar for a long time, an embarrassingly long time, really, and I'd almost been guilted into seeking it out late this semester by a student in my
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Rodney Rothman, Early Bird
boughtbooks on Fri 05 Dec 2008 at 2:44 PM
For some time I'd been picking up and putting down at Munro's Books a yellow paperback with a robin in ostrich pose, namely Rodney Rothman's Early Bird: A Memoir of Premature Retirement. In the end I f
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