“In many cultures, solitude is recognized as an opportunity to journey inward; in our culture, spending time alone is often considered to be unhealthy because we tend to believe that meaning in life is found only through relationship with other people … one of the challenges of solitude is that you have to face yourself.” Robert Kull is an extraordinary man. In 2001, he put together sufficient supplies to last one year, then he traveled […]
Poet Peter Culley’s To the Dogs (Arsenal Pulp Press) is both stunning and fatally flawed. Which of those things weighs the most heavily will most likely depend on where you stand. Culley explores the canine/human connection with an artist’s eye. That is to say that while books that collect historic and contemporary photographs and tie them together — even lightly — with editorial are generally spurred by some passion for the future well-being of all […]
According to author Mac Montandon, the desire for flight without the aid of a fuselage is probably as old as mankind itself. “Adam and Eve, after all, didn’t bicycle from grace or swim from grace, they fell, and had they had jet engines strapped to their backs everything might have been different.” It’s this sort of tongue-in-cheek but inarguable logic that makes Jetpack Dreams (Da Capo) such a delight and which sustains us through 261 […]
Though City Wolves (Blue Butterfly Books) has a lot going on, at its core, Dorris Heffron’s latest novel is about the secret lives of wolves and how they relate to humans. Fascinating stuff. There’s more to this historical novel, of course. Quite a bit. It’s the entirely fictional story of Meg Wilkinson, Canada’s first woman veterinarian. And though the life she has chosen provides inspiration at every turn, she opts to take the best of […]
Oz Clarke is one of the top wine writers in the world and his annual Pocket Wine Guide (Harcourt) has come to be a must-have for certain segments of the wine-drinking community. Though at least certain aspects of the coming year might be lean, wine lovers can easily rationalize the purchase of Clarke’s reasonably priced little book as he goes out of his way to find not only the best wines, but also the best […]
There’s a very good reason that books keeping topping all the lists of things that people actually purchase on the Internet: they’re easy to ship. More, the book you see on the shelf in Chicago is going to be exactly the same as the one you see if you’re visiting Portland. If you happen to pop into a bookstore in Mississauga, Ontario, or Norwich in England, that same book might have a slightly different look […]
Laurell K. Hamilton is relentless. Since 1993, she has been dishing up her special blend of paranormal eroticism. Clearly, not everyone’s cup of hot beverage, but millions upon millions of fans line up, mostly, for new books in one of two series: the ever popular Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter books — the most recent of which was Blood Noir (Berkley) — and her lesser known and more recently launched Merry Gentry series, of which Swallowing […]
A Snapshot of… William ConescuMost recent book: Being Written (Harper Perennial)Born in New York CityGrew up in New Orleans, LouisianaNow live in Chapel Hill, North CarolinaWeb site: williamconescu.com What food do you love?Wolferman’s English muffins. What food have you vowed never to touch again?I don’t like foods that slither down your throat, like mushrooms or eggplant. It’s unfortunate because I’m a vegetarian, and according to the rules, we’re supposed to love both. What are you […]
Bod — short for Nobody — has been orphaned early, by a murderer known only as “the man Jack” who had killed his entire family and is still on the hunt for him. Not until late in the book does he learn why.In the meantime he is rescued by a community of ghosts in the graveyard on the hill of a small but ancient town. There, he is cared for by the kindly ghosts of […]
I had a surreal experience recently meeting up with Mark Sanderson, who writes the “Literary Life” column for The Telegraph and who has written a novel called Snow Hill that will be published by HarperCollins in 2009. The surreal angle is that, when we met at the HarperCollins crime dinner recently, we discovered in a surreal twist of fate that Sanderson and I both attended the same primary school in a village in Cheshire in […]
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