UVic United Way book sale - Dec 1/11

"Stupid book sales," he wrote half-heartedly.

Even though the address for this blog opens with "boughtbooks," I've stopped noting my purchases here, though I've been keeping track and might post monthly updates about those: no one ever comments on those posts anyway (I know, Theresa, except for you!), so they're starting to feel like interruptions between the reviews, without salience for readers. This particular book sale, though, is always full of good stuff, and anyone reading many of the reviews here would be interested themselves in a number of these books.

But they're mine. You can't have them, unless you ask nicely, in which case I'll mail almost any one of them to you. For two bucks each to the United Way, I picked up all of these:
  • William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Landscape of New England (SUCH an important book; SO surprising to find it on Day 3 of the sale!)
  • Pierre Dansereau, Inscape and Landscape: The Human Perception of Environment (based on his 1972 Massey lectures for the CBC)
  • ed. Donawerth & Kolmerten, Utopian and Science Fiction by Women: Worlds of Difference (an essay collection, not a literary anthology)
  • Alan R. Drengson, Beyond Environmental Crisis: From Technocrat to Planetary Person (a philosopher from/at UVic)
  • ed. Greg Gatenby, Whale Sound: An Anthology of Poems about Whales and Dolphins (including so many Canadian writers who were important, rising, or fading in 1977, when it seemed reasonable to publish a book of poems about marine ecology and whale survival)
  • ed. Gary Geddes, Skookum Wawa: Writings of the Canadian Northwest (my third copy: gradually collecting copies, not sure why...)
  • John Frederic Gibson, A Small and Charming World
  • Charles Lillard, Voice, My Shaman
  • Northwest Environment Watch, Cascadia Scorecard: Seven Key Trends Shaping the Northwest (or "Pacific southwest," for us smug Canadians)
  • Maryka Omatsu, Bittersweet Passage: Redress and the Japanese Canadian Experience
  • Anne Pearson, Sea-Lake: Recollections and History of Cordova Bay and Elk Lake (some very local history)
  • POLIS Project, Highlights of the BC Community Forestry Forum: Exploring Policy and Practice (a CD from the March 2002 session)
  • Frank Rasky, The Taming of the Canadian West (coffee-table special, with lots of art but fairly heavy on text: impressively dated in outlook, I suspect)
  • ed. Safranyik & Wilson, The Mountain Pine Beetle: A Synthesis of Biology, Management, and Impacts on Lodgepole Pine (published by Natural Resources Canada: and the clearest, most recently added marker of my nerdish obsession with BC landscapes)
  • Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild: Essays
So, is anybody jealous of me for finding even one of these? Or is my office just becoming a graveyard for these kinds of books? Every so often I can't help thinking - it's weird to be an academic. All I do is read, but it's rare to find people interested in reading the same things I am, and yet somehow the isolation just doesn't matter....

Comments

theresa said…
I have to confess I always read lists of what other people are reading (or buying). You did well! I actually remember the launch for the Gatenby whale book. It was held at Ivy's, in the mid-70s, and Ivy and her sister served wine in tea-cups. I think the Skookum Wawa launch was there too. And next to Shadow Weather, Voice, My Shaman might be my favourite Lillard collection. The Snyder too...
Anonymous said…
You have a good eye! Any good cover art?

Btw, I had the chance to read the queer ecologies anthology you recommended some time back. Great stuff, especially Sandiland's essay about melancholia, imho. Thanks again!

~Jasmine
Fraze said…
Nope, you can keep 'em.

Everybody's got their thing, and who knows why we like what we like? I so don't like what you read. It could only be less interesting to me if it was predicated on queer feminist studies. But I'm glad you do like it. And I'm glad the queer feminists like their books as well.

And I get quite unreasonably excited when I find books about my thing that I've never found before, whether new or old. So it makes me smile that you do, too.

So not my thing, though.
David L. said…
You can't have too many copies of *The Practice of the Wild*, whale poetry from the 1970s is an another must-grab, but a 2002 POLIS CD? Meh... I prefer their earlier recordings before they sold out and started playing stadiums.

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