Spring 2020 Books Part II!
It’s January 2020 and that means we have a bevy of new and exciting books coming your way! Delve into stories about British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest, from picture books to memoirs to field guides, poetry, essays and more. Keep reading to learn about some of our upcoming books.
First published in 2006, Chainsaws: A History is an award-winning book that will captivate all machine enthusiasts, even if they’ve never held a chainsaw in their hands. Hundreds of full-colour photographs and fascinating ephemera, combined with an authoritative text listing chainsaw models from the 1800s to the present, make this book a handsome gift and an indispensable reference for anyone with an interest in chainsaws or technology.
Featuring hilarious, horrible and heartwarming true stories, A Paramedic’s Tales is an uncensored look at the life of a first responder—and what really happens behind closed ambulance doors. Graeme Taylor, who worked as a paramedic for twenty-one years in Vancouver’s Lower Mainland, the BC Interior and Victoria, shares true stories that are both gritty and uncensored, yet the compassion and courage of co-workers, patients and strangers shine through the gore.
A new collection of poetry by celebrated poet Tom Wayman contemplates how to live in a fractious time. Watching a Man Break a Dog’s Back explores the question of how to live in a natural landscape that offers beauty even as it is being consumed by industry. The poet brings the perspective of age to our current troubled existence, and reminds us that as a society and as individuals we’ve faced perilous times before; our shared mortality links us more than circumstances and politics divide us.
From Nightwood Editions comes a myriad of wonderful new works. Body Count is a collection of poetry by acclaimed poet Kyla Jamieson that explores the poet’s concussion and post-concussion syndrome. Jamieson’s poems use plain language to journey through dreamscapes and pain states in search of a new understanding of self and worth. Body Count is about the toll illness takes, but it is also an insistence that the body, and somatic ways of knowing, count. Birding in the Glass Age of Isolation, poetry by Curtis LeBlanc, explores the experience and greater social implications of mental illness, specifically OCD and Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder. It asks: how does anxiety inform how we act and how we interpret those actions afterwards? Yusuf Saadi’s collection of poetry, Pluviophile, is a poetic rumination on where language originates and what value the sacred retains in a shifting postmodern landscape. Jean Marc Ah-Sen's In the Beggarly Style of Imitation, a collection of short form pieces—including essays, short stories, aphorisms and an epistolary chapter—explores the lengths and limits of imitation. Equal parts tribute to the historical genesis of the novel and the well-trodden subject of love, the exercises of imitation contained in this collection offer a brief survey through the illustrious forms and genres of literary expression.
Make sure to stay tuned to hear more about our upcoming spring books! Keep an eye on our events calendar to check out exciting events near you, and join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter!