Letters from the Pandemic 13: A window with a view by Adam Karolewski * Unless your income reaches the top 1 percent per mil, so you can afford a penthouse with a helicopter pad, living in downtown Vancouver doesn’t necessary come with a spectacular view. Often the view is of the side of the next…
Read more 1001 Letters from the Pandemic 13: A window with a view
Dear Readers of History, and all that Jazz by Mariken van Nimwegen * What does the Oxford historian Peter Frankopan’s hefty 2015 book The Silk Roads have in common with “Vancouver man about town,” Andreas Nothiger’s skinny 1984 synchronoptical World History Chart? I think I have a case, and a story. Frankopan gives us an…
Read more #994 Letters from the Pandemic 8: Dear readers of history
Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s Hidden History by Eve Lazarus Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020 $32.95 / 9781551528298 Reviewed by Jessica Poon * As a lifelong Vancouverite, arguably the Canadian equivalent of a native New Yorker, I’m habituated to the abundant charms of Vancouver, which doubtless prevents me from noticing a veritable panoply of…
Read more #985 Open scenery, hidden history
The Larder of the Wise: The Story of Vancouver’s James Inglis Reid Limited by M. Anne Wyness, with a foreword by Michael Kluckner Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing, 2019 $32.99 / 9781773271187 Reviewed by Mary Leah de Zwart * In The Larder of the Wise: The Story of James Inglis Reid Limited, M. Anne Wyness promises…
Read more #949 Haggis and Scotch pies
Notice by Dustin Cole Gibsons: Nightwood Editions, 2020 $21.95 / 9780889713840 Reviewed by Brett Josef Grubisic * Early in Dustin Cole’s audacious and emphatically atmospheric debut novel, Levett, Cole’s furious flaneur of an anti-hero, catches a glimpse of himself: he takes in his pouched eyes and frazzled hair. Minor indignities, they’re practically the least of…
Read more #948 Down and out at Main & 6th
House Shumiatcher by Leslie Van Duzer, photography by Michael Perlmutter Novato, California: ORO Editions, and Vancouver: UBC School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture [SALA] / West Coast Modern House Series, 2014 $24.94 (U.S.) / 9781941806616 * Friedman House by Richard Cavell, photography by Michael Perlmutter Novato, California: ORO Editions, and Vancouver: UBC School of Architecture…
Read more #942 West Coast Organic
Legacy of Trees: Purposeful Wandering in Vancouver’s Stanley Park by Nina Shoroplova Victoria: Heritage House, 2020 $29.95 / 9781772033038 Reviewed by David Tracey * Consider the following thought experiment: the first alien space crew has just landed on Earth (mark your 2020 bingo card). They must quickly discover what our planet is all about. So…
Read more #933 Affinity for Stanley Park trees
Farm the City: A Toolkit for Setting up a Successful Urban Farm by Michael Ableman Gabriola: New Society, 2020 $19.95 / 9780865719392 Reviewed by Rose Morrison * While Michael Ableman’s Farm the City: A Toolkit for Setting up a Successful Urban Farm is written as a primer for those wishing to start an in-town farm,…
Read more #932 Ableman’s urban agriculture
The Last High by Daniel Kalla Toronto: Simon & Schuster Canada, 2020 $22.00 / 9781501196980 Reviewed by Benjamin Matthews * Daniel Kalla’s The Last High begins with a murder, or rather a bunch of murders. We get a firsthand view of the murders through the eyes of Alexa, a 16-year-old girl who watches in bliss…
Read more #926 Crisis on the front line
McIntyre House by Sherry McKay, with a preface by Douglas Coupland and photography by Michael Perlmutter Novato, California: ORO Editions, 2020, and Vancouver: UBC School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture [SALA] / West Coast Modern House Series $24.95 (US) / 9781943532940 Reviewed by Martin Segger * As Leslie Van Duzer — series editor of UBC…
Read more #917 McIntyre’s West Coast Modern
The Abortion Caravan by Karin Wells Toronto: Second Story Press, 2020 $24.95 / 9781772601251 Reviewed by Donalda Reid * Karin Wells has written an engaging book, The Abortion Caravan, about the 1970 national women’s march on Parliament aimed at forcing changes to Canada’s abortion laws. Her book takes us back fifty years into a period…
Read more #915 Shutting down parliament, 1970
Vancouver After Dark: The Wild History of a City’s Nightlife by Aaron Chapman Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2019 $32.95 / 9781551527833 Reviewed by Grahame Ware * On March 12, 2020, Aaron Chapman’s Vancouver After Dark was one of five books shortlisted for the 2020 Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award of the BC and Yukon Book…
Read more #909 Twilight of the club scene
Hand Drawn Vancouver: Sketches of the City’s Neighbourhoods, Buildings, and People by Emma Fitzgerald Toronto: Penguin Random House, 2020 $24.95 / 9780147531209 Reviewed by Jennifer Chutter * Emma Fitzgerald’s Hand Drawn Vancouver weaves together her autobiographical accounts of growing up in Vancouver with visual depictions of personally meaningful places around the city. After spending many…
Read more #905 Fresh and whimsical Vancouver
Primary Obsessions by Charles Demers Maderia Park: Douglas and McIntyre, 2020 $18.95 / 9781771622561 Reviewed by Paul Headrick * For authors working in the private detective genre, one of the challenges is to contrive a reason for the protagonist not to go to the police — not when important evidence turns up, not even when…
Read more #902 Demers’ therapeutic thriller
Journeys of Hope: Challenging Discrimination & Building on Vancouver Chinatown’s Legacies, by Henry Yu; edited by Sarah Ling, Szu Shen, and Baldwin Wong; translated into Chinese by Szu Shen Vancouver: UBC Initiative for Student Teaching and Research in Chinese Canadian Studies, 2018. Distributed by the Chinese Canadian Historical Society of British Columbia $50.00 / 9780993659317…
Read more #899 Vancouver apologizes