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Lost in Austin: The Evolution of an American City by Alex Hannaford
UK journalist passed through Austin and was charmed to the degree that he soon moved there. The city delivered on multiple fronts: a vibrant arts scene, great cheap food, low cost of living and a real sense of community. That Austin has since vanished, swallowed up by rapid urbanization and the effects of gentrification. As a transplanted Brit and a journo at that, who marries and begins to raise a family there, Hannaford has a great outsider’s perspective and the ability to research and express it. You may have never been to Austin nor have any intention on going, so why care? Because what’s happened in Austin has and is happening all over Canada as well; there are lessons to learn here.
Also, I’ve been reading books about urban planning, urbanization, and cities for years: this is the first one with a chapter dedicated to climate change, both in the present, recent past and near future. What was heaven ten years ago is often closer to “the other place” now. (Just think of the fires, floods and heatwaves in BC in the last five years, or the flooding from Hurricane Helene that turned Asheville into an island last week and wiped out much of the idyllic mountain towns of Western North Carolina.)
While this book focuses on Austin, there’s a strong likelihood most readers will strongly relate to this book thanks to what’s currently happening in their own communities. An entertaining read, despite the issues it confronts.
Adult Non-Fiction Hardcover pr7474642
This book is a poetic, haunting keening for the loss of the author’s son, who died from an unexpected seizure in his early 20s. Most of Fuller’s career has dealt with her family, in wildly entertaining memoirs about growing up in South Africa (Don’t Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight). If ever there was a memoir she didn’t want to write…
Inconsolable, Fuller doesn’t know what to do with herself after the loss, and travels up and down the Rocky Mountains making stops at a silent meditation retreat in Alberta, a grief sanctuary in New Mexico, and lives in a shepherd’s wagon in Wyoming, trying to process what’s happened. While the subject and emotions expressed here can be very painful to read, Fuller’s beautiful writing enfolds one and carries you along. It hurts, but feels necessary somehow, like a conversation or the journal of a close friend. Beautiful and profound.
Adult Non-Fiction Hardcover pr7451942
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The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook by Hampton Sides
The PW review of the latest from the author of On Desperate Ground struck me as hyperbolic: “propulsive account,” “exquisitely crafted and novelistic portrait of the mercurial captain enthralls” at first glance. Having since read the book, I’d venture it falls short of the praise it deserves.
A lot of credit goes towards tackling a subject that means confronting the consequences of imperialism, without kowtowing to cancel culture reflexes (the forward itself is a master class of acknowledging current sentiments regarding Cook, and explaining the author’s approach to him). This is novelistic history writing at its finest, about a monumental, if divisive, figure.
Adult Non-Fiction Hardcover pr7379261
Lazarus Man: A Novel by Richard Price
Set in 2008 Harlem, this novel by the author of Clockers and Lush Life revolves around the collapse of a tenement, and the lives of a group of characters impacted by the disaster.
While usually thought of as a crime writer (also as a screenwriter for shows including The Wire, The Deuce and The Night Of) Price it might be more accurate to say that Price uses the genre to cloak explorations of serious social issues. An ability to write pitch perfect natural dialogue tends to lull the reader into the story as though it’s unfolding around one. I’ve been a fan since 1974 when Price published his first book, The Wanderers, which blew my mind as I hadn’t realized until then that there were books written in the way people actually speak, confronting real life everyday concerns. He’s only gotten better.
Adult Fiction Hardcover pr7683068
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CBC Radio host Gregor Craigie reviews Canada’s cross country, ongoing housing crisis, devoting chapters to not only major cities but smaller communities as well.
Interviews with homeowners, renters and the homeless present varied perspectives, which are then contrasted with the experiences of people in other parts of the world with similar profiles. Helsinki, Singapore, Paris and Berlin are just some of the jurisdictions that have found ways to house their citizens faster and better, in ways that could be implemented here.
Part of the charm of this very readable book is Craigie’s style of writing, and what he is not: he’s not writing from a political party’s perspective, he’s not an academic, and he doesn’t fall victim to the fallacy of single approach solutions. Fixing the housing crisis in Canada will require political, business, and social solutions from a broad cross-section of private and political sectors. But it can be (and elsewhere, has been ) done.
Adult Non-Fiction Paperback pr7396629