http://www.newwest.net/index.php/city/main/C94/L94/ New West Network: The Voice of the Rocky Mountains en info@newwest.net Copyright 2009 Mon, 06 Jul 2009 12:43:18 MST Mon, 06 Jul 2009 12:43:18 MST This is an XML content feed. It is intended to be viewed in a newsreader or syndicated to another site. http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newwest/city/boulder/~3/uN-kxIIs_sA/ Mon, 06 Jul 2009 07:00:50 MST Border Songs By Jim Lynch Alfred A. Knopf, 291 pages, $25.95 Strange things are going on around the border between Washington state and British Columbia in Jim Lynch's rich, imaginative novel Border Songs. On the Canadian side, retired professor Wayne Rousseau enjoys flaunting his access to medical marijuana treatment for his MS and decrying the follies of the U.S. government, and his daughter Madeline falls in with some pot smugglers, leaving a job at a nursery to become the drug operation's head grower. Across the ditch on the U.S. side, Norm Vanderkool's dairy is in dire straights, his wife is losing her memory, and the cows are succumbing to mysterious ailments. At Norm's insistence, the Vanderkools' son Brandon has just joined the Border Patrol, and he's an odd duck: six-foot-eight and dyslexic, he has trouble stringing words together in the proper order and has never fit in with regular people--his crush, Madeline, describes him as "an innocent." But he's a champion noticer, bird watching and creating art out of nature's materials when he's out on patrol. His careful observations of the land and birds cause him to be attuned to anything that's amiss, and he begins to discover droves of people of all nationalities trying to illegally cross the border into the U.S., many of them smuggling pot, guns, or worse. After a string of serendipitous busts, Brandon earns a nickname on the B.P.: "shit magnet." http://www.newwest.net/city/article/patrolling_the_northern_border_jim_lynchs_border_songs/C94/L94/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newwest/city/boulder/~3/a-cWiozgn_8/ Sat, 04 Jul 2009 06:00:33 MST Forget Me Not by Jennifer Lowe-Anker Mountaineers Books, 256 pages, $24.95 In Forget Me Not, Jennifer Lowe-Anker chronicles life with her first husband Alex Lowe, who was thought by many to be the world's best mountain climber before he was lost in an avalanche in the Tibetan Himalayas in 1999. Her memoir, comprehensive and faithful, does his life of achievement great justice, and is surprisingly upbeat even as she attempts to answer some of the darker questions associated with his vocation. As she examines Alex's childhood as well as their courtship--when his profession as a mountain climber first took shape--she wonders how Alex became such an intense leader and climber, risking his life again and again, and, in his case, even with a family waiting at home. At the beginning of the book, Lowe-Anker writes of Alex's heart, that it was "frequently and most definitely in conflict with itself." And at the end of the book, Lowe-Anker states that the writing of this memoir has been cathartic. Though her main aim is to memorialize the grandness of Alex's success and scope, she also ends up describing the troubling fact that she was often left alone to raise three boys. She grapples with why she was attracted to such a life in the first place, and then why she was so understanding--so much so that Alex himself dubbed her "Saint Jennifer." http://www.newwest.net/city/article/memoir_of_a_climbing_widow_jennifer_lowe_ankers_forget_me_not/C94/L94/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newwest/city/boulder/~3/hUiWTLmwljA/ Thu, 02 Jul 2009 04:48:23 MST Anything wolf makes big headlines--and, it seems, is never old news. For fourteen years since conservationists and the federal government brought the wolf back to the northern Rockies (plus several years leading up to the reintroduction), anything and everything about the Big Dog has been, to say the least, controversial. But something hasn't happened yet that could make it much more contentious. http://www.newwest.net/city/article/what_could_make_the_wolf_even_more_controversial/C94/L94/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newwest/city/boulder/~3/w9V7GKwic8g/ Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:00:50 MST A few weeks ago I wrote about some creative ideas people are coming up with to support books in the midst of this changing media landscape. In keeping with that theme, the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association recently launched the Reading the West program, with the goal of helping bookstores promote books that are set in the West or those written by Western authors. The first featured books are New Mexico writer Rick Collignon's Madewell Brown and Austin-based Jaqueline Kelly's The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate. I spoke to MPIBA executive director Lisa Knudsen this week on the phone from her office in Fort Collins about the program. Knudsen said that the MPIBA started the Reading the West program because "in these troubled economic times, we were looking for projects and programs that are free to our member booksellers and are a potential win win win--for the publisher, bookseller, and author." "I shamelessly copied from my fellow regional bookseller associations," Knudsen said, noting that the Midwest and Great Lakes Bookseller associations sponsor similar programs. The Reading the West program makes advance copies of the featured books available to booksellers, as well as materials to use in their display and promotion. The authors are also available for readings at regional stores. The MPIBA board hopes publishers will begin to send them information about relevant forthcoming books to be considered for the program, but for the first selections, the members discussed among themselves what good books of regional interest they knew were coming out. "Rick Collignon is very popular in our region," Knudsen said, "and the committee was enthusiastic about his latest book. We also wanted to do what we could to promote independent publishers." Madewell Brown is published by Unbridled Books, an independent publisher based in Colorado. http://www.newwest.net/city/article/reading_the_west_gets_the_word_out_about_regional_books/C94/L94/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newwest/city/boulder/~3/6oXk1xzF6EU/ Tue, 30 Jun 2009 07:25:39 MST Beetle hysteria has raised its head again, and I am not talking about the Fab four. A prominent article in the New York Times titled "Tiny Beetle Adds New Dynamic to Forest Fire Control Efforts" quotes many foresters and others who suggest that beetle-kill trees across the West will create larger wildfires and by implications are "destroying" our forests. For instance, Montana's State Forester Bob Harrington said as much at conference recently, as in the article. While it may seem "intuitively obvious" that dead trees will lead to more fires, there is little scientific evidence to support the contention that beetle-killed trees substantially increases risk of large blazes. In fact, there is evidence to suggest otherwise. At the heart of this and many other media reports are flawed assumptions about fires, what constitutes a healthy forest, and the options available to humans in face of natural processes that are inconvenient and get in the way of our designs. http://www.newwest.net/city/article/beetle_hysteria_again/C94/L94/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newwest/city/boulder/~3/dM4gkSqAXzQ/ Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:01:26 MST Children of the Waters by Carleen Brice One World/Ballantine, 304 pages, $14 Denver novelist Carleen Brice's second novel is a quick-paced family drama that turns on a secret adoption, told in alternating chapters from the perspectives of two sisters who are unknown to each other, living in the same city but in very different worlds. Trish Taylor is a blond, overweight veterinary technician who came back to her hometown of Aurora, Colo. after her marriage failed, bringing her biracial teenage son Will with her. Trish was told her mother and infant sister died in a car accident when she was a preschooler, and her stern grandparents raised her. Billie Cousins is the cherished daughter of a successful Denver African-American family. Her mother is a Reynelda Muse-like local television anchor, and her father is the dean of the business school at the University of Colorado. Through a newly discovered letter and a visit to an old neighbor, Trish learns that Billie is the sister she thought died in infancy, and tracks her down, disrupting both their lives. Carleen Brice will discuss her new book at the Tattered Cover (LoDo) on July 16 at 7:30 p.m. http://www.newwest.net/city/article/mix_and_match_carleen_brices_children_of_the_waters/C94/L94/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newwest/city/boulder/~3/bvxq0s2WHvo/ Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:22:22 MST If you've read any of my past columns, you know I'm a strong proponent of designating more Wilderness, but when considering whether to support including our national parks under the National Wilderness Preservation System, I have to wonder if this is a good idea. Here's why. http://www.newwest.net/city/article/is_national_park_wilderness_a_good_idea/C94/L94/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newwest/city/boulder/~3/KEhM_b8fWMI/ Wed, 24 Jun 2009 06:00:30 MST Jean Matthews and Russ Lawrence bought Chapter One Bookstore in Hamilton 23 years ago, and a few weeks ago they sold the store to longtime business partner Shawn Wathen so they could pursue their lifelong dream of serving in the Peace Corps, according to Bess Brownlee of the Ravalli Republic. She writes, "Their work in Peru will focus on small business development and promotion." Lawrence, author of Montana's Bitterroot Valley, told Brownlee that they might write a book about their experiences in Peru. The couple, married for 31 years, will serve in Peru until August of 2011. Matthews and Lawrence are already keeping track of their experiences on a blog (via Shelf Awareness), and have some nice photos of their recent encounters with Peruvians and llamas. If you've ever wondered what the Peace Corps is like, this blog will give you a good idea. The first entries feature the couple's adventures in packing for the two-year stint ("The Edges Fray, the Duffel Cannot Hold"), their attempts to improve their Spanish, and the orientation classes they began to take once they arrived in Peru. They write: "The most popular class yesterday was presented by our Medical Officer, Dr. Jorge, on diarrhea. The official estimate of the percentage of Peru's [Peace Corps Volunteers] who have, umm, 'soiled their pants' is 95%, but he bets it's closer to 100%." As of this weekend, they've already hit a rough patch: Russ ended up in a hospital in Panama with "a torn retina of idiopathic origin," but they expect him to make a full recovery. Back in Hamilton, Chapter One will host a reading by Rick Bass on Monday, July 13 at 7:30 p.m. Watch for my review of his new book, The Wild Marsh: Four Seasons at Home in Montana in a few weeks. Meanwhile, in Colorado, the Rocky Mountain Land Library recently established a Kids Nature Library at the Kassler Center in Littleton. (The photo is of a few youngsters enjoying the library during the first hour after it opened.) http://www.newwest.net/city/article/montana_bookstore_owners_head_to_peace_corps_assignment_in_peru/C94/L94/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newwest/city/boulder/~3/JMrmY7u8j2M/ Sun, 21 Jun 2009 20:00:58 MST Vanishing by Candida Lawrence 275 pages, $23.95 Candida Lawrence's new Vanishing is a collection of incisive, chronologically arranged personal essays that plunge the reader into vivid moments of her past, beginning in 1942 when Candida is in college at Berkeley and is a reporter for the Daily Cal, and extending into recent times, when she is coping with aging and adjusting to a changed world. Like Mary Gordon, Lawrence writes with great candor, wit, and intelligence about her family. Lawrence lives in Mill Valley, California, and is the author of three previous memoirs. As she reveals in one of the most arresting pieces in the book, "Vanishing: 1965," Lawrence spent years hiding out under an assumed identity after she took off with her children in the wake of a messy divorce which had left her with very limited visitation rights. This is perhaps why, as revelatory as these essays are, they still bear an air of mystery. Lawrence writes bracing prose, mainly in present tense, replete with precise detail; the effect of this approach is that the reader feels as though sitting right beside her in 1965 when she flies to San Diego with $500 for an abortion in Mexico. "We rent a 1965 Ford Sedan, blue with a white interior, AM-FM radio, and a clock that works," she writes. "I sit primly on the dazzling vinyl and feel small." In Tijuana, they wait in a parking lot for a station wagon that comes to take women to a clinic. Lawrence's descriptions of the people with her on that ride provide a cross section of women in the same situation: "To my right is Black Woman, calm, dignified. Next to Black Woman is a young girl...dressed in faded jeans...Her eyes are red from recent weeping and seem about to spill over again. Facing Young Girl on the bench opposite, is an older woman in a light-blue pants suit...I would have guessed her to be too old for this trip, but perhaps she has similar thoughts about me." http://www.newwest.net/city/article/disappearing_act_candida_lawrences_vanishing/C94/L94/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/newwest/city/boulder/~3/Uvp1RaiY_8E/ Wed, 17 Jun 2009 06:00:39 MST In my interview last week with Ron Carlson, he touched upon his thoughts about the future of books and printed material, which looks grim at the moment. "It will be very interesting to see what happens with newspapers and all forms of media," he said, "because I don't think it's just going to go one way. I think it will settle down and there will be a little bit of reaction, and we'll end up with hard copy and electronic copy." Although I have no skill with a crystal ball, I think he's probably right--printed material will continue to exist, but those who want to produce it are going to have to get creative. The items I'd gathered for this week's Roundup looked pretty random at first, but then I realized that they all involve writers, readers, and book organizations trying to do something different. The first of these is Colorado native Todd Shimoda, who will present his new novel Oh! A mystery of mono no aware (Chin Music Press, 310 pages, $22.50) Thursday, June 18 at The Readers Cove in Ft. Collins (6:30 p.m.). Shimoda currently lives in Hawaii, and his previous novel, The Fourth Treasure was a Kiriyama Prize notable book for 2002. Oh! was recently featured in NPR's "Independent Booksellers Pick Summer's Best Reads." Lucia Silva, the book buyer at Portrait of a Bookstore in Studio City, California, described the book in this way: "On a lark, 20-something Zack Hara leaves his tepid life in L.A. for Japan. Following tiny shifts of fate, he quickly becomes fascinated by the ancient Japanese notion of mono no aware -- an elusive concept that loosely means 'the beauty of sad things,' a sudden, intense moment of awareness that makes us cry 'oh!' In search of his own moment of mono no aware, and intent on awakening his own emotional life, he becomes captivated by the suicide clubs that meet in the Aokigahara forest. In seamless counterpoint to the philosophical current, Shimoda shapes a delicate mystery that grows darker as the novel progresses. The book itself is a fine work of art, with a gorgeous, embossed cover, rice-paper-thin pages, and textured paper inserts with illustrations that offer clues to Zack's fate -- a triumphant kick in the pants for anyone who doubts the future of paper-and-ink books." http://www.newwest.net/city/article/next_roundup_needs_title/C94/L94/