Independent Book Reviews for Independent Readers.
complement my First Quarter 2018 Best Reads: Fiction, I will now take a closer look at some non-fiction titles I’ve put on the growing 2018 longlist for the Miramichi Reader “The Very Best!” Book Award.
Woodstock, New Brunswick’s Chapel Street Editions must be one of this province’s best-kept publishing secrets. I found out about them quite by accident when another author mentioned one of their books they recently read (the novel Taapoategl & Pallet, which I plan to read soon).… Continue reading
year is 1917. Less than two decades into the new century and already the Great War is occurring in the muddy fields of France. Soon there will be the Spanish Influenza which will kill many more millions. An inauspicious start to a new millennium, to be sure.… Continue reading
Warning! Reading this book will leave you exhausted! I was only a few chapters in when I had to put down the book and wonder aloud: “How does a seventy-year-old manage to do all this in a day?” Let me back up and explain what Sandra Phinney’s Waking Up In My Own Backyard (2017, Pottersfield Press) is all about.… Continue reading
How does one describe such a well-researched and well-written book as Rachel Bryant’s The Homing Place: Indigenous and Settler Literary Legacies of the Atlantic (2017, WLU Press)? I find I must borrow words and phrases from a more scholarly source:
“This book shines new light on settler colonialism and Indigenous resurgence, historic and contemporary, through sharp analyses of some influential but lesser-discussed writers.” – Siobhan Senier, University of New Hampshire.… Continue reading
beauty of many old churches (particularly cathedrals, basilicas, etc.) is in their architecture as well as in their religious art, whether it is the many large frescoes or the exquisite stained glass windows that adorn them. The late (1885-1973) Italian-Canadian artist and stained glass master Guido Nincheri has enjoyed a recent resurgence of interest, thanks to his grandson Roger Bocchini Nincheri who has been tirelessly photographing and cataloging his grandfather’s hundreds of existing works.… Continue reading
don’t consider myself much of a sports fan these days. I grew up on hockey; there were only the original six NHL teams when I was a youngster. One either cheered for the Leafs or for the Canadiens. If you were lucky, you had a hockey sweater of your team; maybe a cap or toque.… Continue reading
Perhaps you have to be from rural New Brunswick (even the Miramichi) to fully understand Mr. Curtis’ past, his father’s and his grandfather’s lives lived on a farm where you logged some trees for money, grew some crops to feed yourselves and your old mare Jenny and lived in a house with no running water, no indoor plumbing, and little to no insulation.… Continue reading