Category Archives: Books

Rowan Jacobsen’s American Terroir

Where does your food come from? What elements of the landscape made their way into the flavour of your favourite maple syrup, or your apples? If you haven’t been asking yourself questions along these lines already, Rowan Jacobsen’s American Terroir … Continue reading

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Charles de Lint’s Medicine Road

So one day there’s this desert dog, chasing a jackalope. The dog’s hungry. The jackalope doesn’t want to be dinner. Will the jackalope get away, or fill the dog’s belly? We’ll never know what would have happened, because they run … Continue reading

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Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling’s The Beastly Bride: Tales of the Animal People

Here we have an anthology with so broad a range of subject matter that it really seems to call for more than one review. The volume can be seen as, variously: a) a patchwork quilt of fur, feathers, scales and … Continue reading

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Charles de Lint’s The Very Best of Charles de Lint

In his introduction, Charles de Lint informs us that he approached this project with some trepidation. And with a publisher dead-set on a title like The Very Best of Charles de Lint, it’s not hard to see that any author might … Continue reading

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Peter Faulkner and Peter Preston eds.: William Morris: Centenary Essays

Don’t ask me how to discuss a book of essays on the life and work of a figure who was surely among the last Renaissance men. William Morris was a poet and polemicist, artist and designer, politician and businessman, and … Continue reading

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Neil Gaiman’s Stardust

Debbie Skolnik wrote this review. It has been a l-o-n-g time since a book has so thoroughly transported me back to the world I used to live in as a child. That world, at its best, contained lots of fairy … Continue reading

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Allison Thompson’s The Blind Harper Dances: Modern English Country Dances set to airs by Turlough O’Carolan

John O’Regan penned this review. This book is at once fascinating and difficult to review. The fascination lies in the idea of combining the music of Turlough O’Carolan with modern English country dances. The difficulty lies in my own lack … Continue reading

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George Berger’s Dance Before the Storm: The Official Story of the Levellers 

Chris Woods penned this review. What a pleasant surprise, a musical biography which I actively enjoyed reading! I’m afraid I’m old enough, and difficult enough nowadays, to find that many biographies of bands and artists contain more irritation content than … Continue reading

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Patricia A. McKillip’s Kingfisher

I’ve been reading Patricia A. McKillip’s fiction for more years than I care to admit at this point. It was always different, in one way or another, from her wry and sometimes slapstick humor to her very contemporary sensibility, no … Continue reading

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Terry Jones and Alan Ereira’s Terry Jones’ Medieval Lives

Have you ever wondered what it was like to live in a different time and place? Of course you have. And most of us, when we seek to imagine this, choose to read some fictional work which allows us the … Continue reading

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