Monday, August 29, 2016

Mailbox Monday



Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event. Mailbox Monday has now returned to its permanent home where you can link to your MM post.

I got two non-fiction books last week that are coming out in September and they both look fantastic:



Chasing Portraits: A Great-Granddaughter's Quest for Her Lost Art Legacy by Elizabeth Rynecki. The author's great-grandfather was an artist in Poland who created over 800 paintings and sculptures before he died in a WWII concentration camp. This memoir tells the story of how the author spent decades rebuilding his collected work after it was lost during the war and dispersed all over the world.

Elizabeth Rynecki is launching Chasing Portraits at Powell's City of Books in downtown Portland on Tuesday, September 6, 2016 at 7:30.



All Set for Black, Thanks: A New Look at Mourning by Miriam Weinstein. This is a touching and funny collection of essays -- part memoir, part advice -- about dealing with loss and mourning.

All Set for Black, Thanks is available for pre-order now and launches September 13. Miriam Weinstein has a series of readings and book events coming up this fall on the east coast.

Thursday, August 25, 2016

Book Beginning: The Innocents by Ace Atkins



THANKS FOR JOINING ME ON FRIDAYS FOR BOOK BEGINNING FUN!

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

EARLY BIRDS & SLOWPOKES: This weekly post goes up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. But feel free to add a link all week.

FACEBOOK: Rose City Reader has a Facebook page where I post about new and favorite books, book events, and other bookish tidbits, as well as link to blog posts. I'd love a "Like" on the page! You can go to the page here to Like it. I am happy to Like you back if you have a blog or professional Facebook page, so please leave a comment with a link and I will find you.

TWITTER, ETC: If you are on Twitter, Google+, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I try to follow all Book  Beginnings participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up.

TIE IN: The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING



MY BOOK BEGINNING



Lillie Virgil stood high on a north Mississippi hill at daybreak listening to old Ruthie Holder talk about the man who'd run off with her grandson's Kawasaki four-wheeler and her brand-new twelve-gauge Browning.

-- The Innocents by Ace Atkins. This is the latest in Atkins's new-to-me Quinn Colson series, set in the fictional Tibbehah County, Mississippi. Lillie Virgil is the acting sheriff and Colson's boss -- a nice twist.

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Review: Wrong Highway by Wendy Gordon



Wendy Gordon's debut novel, Wrong Highway, gives fresh energy to the story of a frazzled suburban mom trying to meet her family obligations and what happens when she takes that first wrong turn.

Erica and Debbie are sisters, both married and living seemingly calm family lives on Long Island. But when Debbie’s teenage son rebels against his straight-laced parents and turns to Erica for help, Erica is the one who ends up in trouble.

The book takes place in 1980s and has a strong ‘80s vibe, with music and cultural references that capture the brash, sometimes destructive energy of the decade. While many of the themes of the story are timeless, the pre-digital setting gives Gordon room to explore themes of family obligation, personal freedom, addiction, and secrecy without technical interruptions from today’s text messages and social media.

Whether or not you grew up in the ‘80s, if you enjoy family dramas with well-developed, original female characters, you will like Wrong Highway.

NOTES

Read my author interview with Wendy Gordon here.

OTHER REVIEWS

The Magic Around Us
Mama Vicky Says
Puddletown Reviews
No More Grumpy Bookseller
Patricia's Wisdom 

If you would like your review of Wrong Highway listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Teaser Tuesday: Froelich's Ladder by Jamie Duclos Yourdon



It was a June morning in 1871 when Froelich disappeared. Dawn had erased the stars from the sky, and a rosy shoal of clouds was swimming towards the coast.

Froelich's Ladder by Jamie Duclos-Yourdon, published by Forest Avenue Press. This fairytale like adventure story set in frontier Oregon territory is generating a lot of buzz. Read more about author Jamie Duclos-Yourdon and his debut novel:


  • My First Time on The Quivering Pen (Jamie Duclos-Yourdon describes his first book cover experience)




Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by MizB at Books and a Beat, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Saturday, August 20, 2016

Review: The Man Who Wasn't There by Judy Nedry



Judy Nedry returns to her vineyard roots in The Man Who Wasn’t There, the third book in her Emma Golden mystery series. Emma is a feisty, sometimes grumpy, free-lance writer who – as happens with amateur sleuths – stumbles across a dead body and gets pulled into solving the mystery. In this case, it is more like the dead body stumbles on Emma, and that is the charm of Nedry’s cozy-with-an-edge series – it doesn’t follow every expected pattern.

Emma, for instance, is no spring chicken, but she’s no Miss Marple, pottering about and then solving the crime because the killer reminded her of the vicar’s dentist before the last war. Emma is right there in the middle of things, invited or not, often with a wisecrack, sometimes with a grumble. She complains about little annoyances, struggles as an alcoholic in recovery, and squabbles with her best friend and sidekick, B&B owner Melody Wyatt. It’s like watching someone you actually know crack the case.

Here, the case involves the violent death of a venerable Oregon winery owner at a wine festival Salmon Bake dinner. James Ryder dies shortly after his loud and public fistfight with Max Weatherman, a Nevada developer trying to build a water-hogging resort and spa uphill from Ryder’s vineyards. When Weatherman disappears, he’s the natural suspect in Ryder’s murder, but Emma and her posse think there’s more to the story.

Nedry, who wrote about Northwest wines for over 20 years and who co-founded what became Chehalem Winery, knows winemaking and Oregon wine country right down to the red dirt of the Dundee Hills. She laces the story with information about grape growing, winemaking, and the wine industry just enough to add local interest and individuality without being pedantic. And she brings a sense of place to the story, from the opening scenes at the International Pinot Noir Celebration, to winding back roads through a patchwork of vineyards, to panoramic views of Oregon’s Coast Range. The Man Who Wasn’t There is a mystery that shows it terroir to full advantage.

NOTES

Read my author interview of Judy Nedry here.

OTHER REVIEWS

Oregon Wine Press
Kings River Life Magazine
Great Northwest Wine
Home for Book Lovers

If you would like your review of any of Judy Nedry's Emma Golden books listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it.



Thursday, August 18, 2016

Book Beginning: Froelich's Ladder by Jamie Duclos Yourdon



THANKS FOR JOINING ME ON FRIDAYS FOR BOOK BEGINNING FUN!

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

EARLY BIRDS & SLOWPOKES: This weekly post goes up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. But feel free to add a link all week.

FACEBOOK: Rose City Reader has a Facebook page where I post about new and favorite books, book events, and other bookish tidbits, as well as link to blog posts. I'd love a "Like" on the page! You can go to the page here to Like it. I am happy to Like you back if you have a blog or professional Facebook page, so please leave a comment with a link and I will find you.

TWITTER, ETC: If you are on Twitter, Google+, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I try to follow all Book  Beginnings participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up.

TIE IN: The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING



MY BOOK BEGINNING



It was November 1851 when Harold and Froelich arrived in Oregon Country. Disembarking at Fort Astoria, they journeyed inland by foot, hiking over the Cascades in a gale that swept off the ocean like a push broom.

Froelich's Ladder by Jamie Duclos Yourdon, published by Forest Avenue Press. I included the first two sentences for a change because I love the push broom image of the gale driving the brothers inland.

Froelich's Ladder is a "nineteenth century madcap adventure novel" with a fairytale feel.

PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION:
Froelich nurses a decades-old family grudge from his permanent perch atop a giant ladder in this nineteenth century madcap adventure novel. When he disappears suddenly, his nephew embarks on a rain-soaked adventure across the Pacific Northwest landscape to find him, accompanied by an ornery girl with a most unfortunate name. In their encounters with Confederate assassins, European expatriates, and a general store magnate, this fairytale twist on the American dream explores the conflicts between loyalty and ambition and our need for human connection, even at the highest rungs.


Favorite Authors: Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö



Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö are Swedish authors who collaborated on a series of crime novels featuring homicide detective Martin Beck. They wrote the books in the 1960s and '70s, until Wahlöö's death in 1975.

So far, I haven't read any of the Martin Beck books. But it has lured me in because I'm working my way through the Edgar Award winners and The Laughing Policeman won the award in 1971; the books count for my European Reading Challenge; the Vintage Mystery Challenge has me hooked on "Silver Age" vintage mysteries; and all the Nordic Noir I'm watching on Netflix puts me in the mood for Swedish mysteries.

I can't wait to start!

Roseanna (1965)
The Man Who Went Up in Smoke (1966)
The Man on the Balcony (1967)
The Laughing Policeman (1968) (Edgar Award, Best Novel, 1971)
The Fire Engine That Disappeared (1969)
Murder at the Savoy (1970)
The Abominable Man (1971)
The Locked Room (1972)
Cop Killer (1974)
The Terrorists (1975)




Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Author Interview: Kem Luther


Kem Luther is a naturalist, writer, and former professor who grew up in the Nebraska Sandhills and now lives on Vancouver Island. He is the author of Cottonwood Roots and The Next Generation Gap.

His new book, Boundary Layer: Exploring the Genius Between Worlds (OSU Press), is a highly readable collection of essays about the what grows close to the ground -- lichens, mosses, ferns, fungi, and other diminutive plant life -- and the scientists who study this boundary layer.



Kem recently answered questions for Rose City Reader:

How did you come to write Boundary Layer?

“How long did it take you to write this book?” is a question often put to writers. “All my life” is the clever retort. In this case, though, the boilerplate answer has a ring of truth. I’ve been drawn to natural settings since I was a boy. Boundary Layer is my just latest attempt to put on paper some of the stories from a lifelong engagement with the natural world.

West Coast ecosystems were a blank spot on my natural history map. When my wife and I moved to British Columbia twelve years ago, I liked what I saw and I soon entangled myself with several of the natural history groups on southern Vancouver Island. Boundary Layer emerged from this entanglement. The book looks at some components of the Pacific Northwest ecosystems— mosses, fungi, lichens—and the fascinating characters who have spent their lives studying these often overlooked subsystems.

What is your work background? How did it lead you to writing this book?

I spent my professional career in colleges and universities, both in the U.S. and Canada. I taught philosophy at first, later computer science. Toward the end of my career, I moved into educational administration in order to launch a cross-disciplinary program at the University of Toronto, a program that now enrolls about a thousand students. About ten years before I retired, I started writing trade books, books directed at wide audiences. Keeping up both a writing career and a full time job were too much, so I took an early retirement from teaching and administration in order to concentrate on my writing.

In the last chapters of Boundary Layer, I delve into material that was close to my heart when I was a student and teacher of philosophy. The narrative of the book is stitched together with what physicists and biologists have discovered about boundary layers, the narrow regions that lie between large, stable systems. In the first part of the book, I deal with several of the more tangible boundary layers, the ones that are found on seashores and forest floors in the Pacific Northwest. As the story progresses, the metaphor of a boundary layer become a way to talk about our wider human posture toward natural systems. Certain crucial issues in biology—the tension between species concepts and ecosystem thinking, the debate about what is wilderness what is artificial—can be approached as conflicts that generate conceptual boundary layers. These more abstract boundary layers, I find, resolve some of the differences between the bounding systems. At the end of the book, I take up (briefly) the largest conceptual boundary layer in Western society, the struggle between a cultural understanding based on humanities and one based on science.

You write about the stegnon, the layer closest to the ground, where things like lichen, moss, and fungi grow. How did you become interested in this layer between earth and air and the diminutive life forms that live there?

There’s a wonderful line in the 1939 film adaptation of Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz. When Dorothy and her crew finally get to meet the wizard, they are confronted with a fearsome image with a thunderous voice. Dorothy’s dog, Toto, runs over to the side of the interview hall and pulls back a curtain, exposing a normal, all-too-human person engineering the wizard’s image. Seeing himself exposed, the wizard makes the image say “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.” I think that I became interested in the nondescript stuff along the forest floor because I was getting a subtle message from some biologists and naturalists that the denizens of the bottom storey of West Coast forests were not as important as the trees and shrubs and mammals. The more I looked into the life cycles of the neglected mosses and lichens and mushrooms, the more it became clear to me that they were the ones who were really calling the shots. That made me want to pay attention to what was behind the curtain, to retell the story of these ecosystems in a way that included these smaller life forms.

Your book is an enlivening mix of botany, natural history, philosophy, and biographical sketches of the scientists who study the stegnon. Who is your intended audience?

I tried to write Boundary Layer so that a person with a high school background in biology could follow the stories in it. I didn’t always succeed. As I edited the book in the months before handing it over to Oregon State University Press to publish, for example, I removed a least two dozen technical terms from the text. I find it distressing how quickly I can drop into the jargon of the professionals who study what I am writing about, often without even realizing that I’m doing it.

What did you learn from writing Boundary Layer – either about the subject of the book or the writing process – that most surprised you?

My encounter with the composite nature of lichens helped me rethink the integrity of biological species. I began to investigate more closely the way that almost all organisms are composite entities. Some of this investigation ended up in the text of Boundary Layer, but not all of it. I have since developed a slide talk that carries my thoughts on this topic a bit further (“Lichens, Chimeras, and Superorganisms: Life On the Borderlands between Species and Ecosystems.” You can view a web list the book-based talks I’ll be doing over the next few months under the Events tab on the book’s web site,)

What writers inspire your own work and why?

Some of our best nature interpreters were also great writers. I’ve been influenced by the superb styles of Aldo Leopold, Annie Dillard, Loren Eiseley, Henry David Thoreau, and John McPhee, among others. But I don’t just read books on natural history. I’m attracted to magnificent prose on any subject, whether nonfiction (George Orwell) or fiction (Anne Tyler). When I find a great writer, I tend to binge read everything the person has written.

Do you have any favorite books of nature writing you would recommend to readers new to the genre?

Those who are interested in what I wrote in Boundary Layer about the concept of nature will find sympathetic treatments of the subject in two recent books, Emma Marris’s Rambunctious Garden and J.B. MacKinnon’s Once and Future World. These books came out after I wrote the section in Boundary Layer on the concept of nature, but before my book was published. When I read these books, I was surprised to see how our thoughts had been moving along similar grooves at the same time.

What kind of books do you like to read? What are you reading now?

At any time, I have about a dozen books on the go. Three books on the stack at the moment are The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee, Garry Wills's Head and Heart, Robert Macfarlane’s Landmarks. I’ve always found it curious that I can only work on one book at a time, but I can’t read just one book at a time.

What’s next? What are you working on now?

I’ve always had a fascination with language and words. Just last week I completed the first draft of a book on eggcorns, language slips that involve both sound and sense.


THANKS, KEM!

BOUNDARY LAYER IS AVAILABLE FROM OSU PRESS, OTHER ON-LINE SELLERS, OR ASK YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE TO ORDER IT!



Monday, August 15, 2016

Mailbox Monday


Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event. Mailbox Monday has now returned to its permanent home where you can link to your MM post.

Two books came into my house last week and both have captured my imagination!



Froelich's Ladder by Jamie Duclos Yourdon, published by Forest Avenue Press. I love this description: "a fabulist adventure novel with YA crossover appeal, set in a reimagined nineteenth-century Pacific Northwest."



Walking with Plato by Gary Hayden, published by Oneworld Publications. Philosophical and other musings inspired by the author's thousand-mile walk from John o’Groats, the northern tip of Scotland, to Land’s End, the southernmost tip of England.

Thursday, August 11, 2016

Book Beginning: From the Heart: The Photographs of Brian Lanker



THANKS FOR JOINING ME ON FRIDAYS FOR BOOK BEGINNING FUN!

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

EARLY BIRDS & SLOWPOKES: This weekly post goes up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. But feel free to add a link all week.

FACEBOOK: Rose City Reader has a Facebook page where I post about new and favorite books, book events, and other bookish tidbits, as well as link to blog posts. I'd love a "Like" on the page! You can go to the page here to Like it. I am happy to Like you back if you have a blog or professional Facebook page, so please leave a comment with a link and I will find you.

TWITTER, ETC: If you are on Twitter, Google+, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I try to follow all Book  Beginnings participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up.

TIE IN: The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING

Sorry for the crazy mixed up Linky! For those of you unable to add your link because it said you already had, or for any reason, or if you just want to add your link here instead of below, here is a new Linky:







MY BOOK BEGINNING



Brian Lanker, the photographer, was easy to appreciate, to admire, and to comprehend because his photographer's eye was the human eye and every viewer could easily translate what Lanker saw into what the viewer knew.

-- from an introductions, "A Few Words" by Maya Angelou, to From the Heart: The Photographs of Brian Lanker, by Brian Lanker, with a prologue by Maya Angelou, published by OSU Press.

Lanker won the Pulitzer Prize for feature photography when he was only 24. This is a gorgeous book of his amazing photographs, with captions researched and written by his friend, Mike Tharp, a war correspondent and award-winning journalist, and essays by Lanker’s colleagues and friends.

Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Teaser Tuesday: The Remnants by Robert Hill



She turned somersaults to return the favor. Every Tuesday, from first melt to first freeze, as a member of the Ladies Tumbling Club.

-- The Remnants by Robert Hill. This is a crazily imaginative book about a small, aging town with only a few inbred citizens left to celebrate a few dwindling rituals. It's a book for readers who love language, especially wordplay and rhythm and freewheeling sentences.

Here is the Powell's Books "Staff Pick" recommendation:
Wow, what a book! Robert Hill's The Remnants takes an intense look at the small and dying town of New Eden, Somewhere, USA. Its residents are aging — and so very, very interrelated — and New Eden is assuredly creeping towards its last days.

Hill's characters are so precisely written, they feel as real as you and me, despite the generations of inbreeding, which have left them somewhere off the "normal" scale. Yet, these folks love and hope and yearn like the rest of us, and their stories are magical.

Hill has the silver tongue of a master wordsmith. His gorgeous prose rambles from hilarious to sly to clever, and then doubles back so it can dive right off into beautiful, heartsick, and poignant. A standout story with unbelievably effective prose, The Remnants is one of my favorite 2016 titles.


Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by MizB at Books and a Beat, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.



Thursday, August 4, 2016

Book Beginnings: The Remnants by Robert Hill



THANKS FOR JOINING ME ON FRIDAYS FOR BOOK BEGINNING FUN!

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

EARLY BIRDS & SLOWPOKES: This weekly post goes up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. But feel free to add a link all week.

FACEBOOK: Rose City Reader has a Facebook page where I post about new and favorite books, book events, and other bookish tidbits, as well as link to blog posts. I'd love a "Like" on the page! You can go to the page here to Like it. I am happy to Like you back if you have a blog or professional Facebook page, so please leave a comment with a link and I will find you.

TWITTER, ETC: If you are on Twitter, Google+, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I try to follow all Book  Beginnings participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up.

TIE IN: The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING



MY BOOK BEGINNING



As True Bliss lay in her bed on the morning of her the eve of her one hundredth birthday, the thought that circled her mind, in the applesauce eddy of her mind, the fist chunk in the applesauce eddy that her mind could sink its teeth into was please don't let this day be my last day on earth.

-- The Remnants by Robert Hill. That's quite a metaphor! Or a mixed metaphor. Her mind is an applesauce eddy with teeth. Eating itself. But I guess if you are a day shy of 100 and just waking up, your thoughts might run to muddled metaphor. We'll see where it goes from here.

The Remnants is the story of a town "peopled with hereditary oddities" preparing to celebrate the the 100th  and 99th birthdays of two of its last citizens. Reviewers praise the writing and originality of the story. It was a Powell's Books staff pick.

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

Teaser Tuesday: A Week in Yellowstone's Thorofare



In the 1970s, the idea that grizzly bears would be occupying such  far-flung corners of the Yellowstone ecosystem just thirty years hence would have been greeted with amazement and possibly even derision. Bear numbers were so critically low, and their rate of reproduction so slow . . . that extinction from the area seemed more likely.

-- A Week in Yellowstone's Thorofare: A Journey Through the Remotest Place by Michael J. Yochim.

Yochim's book grew out of a week-long canoe expedition in 2014 with two buddies of the Thorofare region in Yellowstone National Park. Also using first-person accounts, archive materials, and his experiences as a National Park Service planner, Yochim argues for the need to preserve "wildness" in the wilderness.

A Week in Yellowstone's Thorofare is a great book for celebrating 100 years of our National Parks, learning more about Yellowstone in particular, or thinking more deeply about the importance of wilderness and wildness in nature.





Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by MizB at Books and a Beat, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.


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