Contemporary

Martin Marten, Brian Doyle

Lake Oswego author Brian Doyle has been selected as the winner of the 2017 John Burroughs Medal for distinguished nature writing for his book “Martin Marten,” the University of Portland announced Thursday. …For “Martin Marten,” Doyle closely observed the ways and habitats of pine martens and their relatives in the […]

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Piano Tide, Kathleen Dean Moore

“For a long time I’ve been writing books and speeches and harangues about stopping climate change and extinctions, and it’s all been very abstract, and I’ve been saying really abstract things like ‘stand strong against the corporate plunder of the planet,’” Moore said. “And it seemed to me I really […]

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The Lost Scrapbook, Evan Dara

Thanks to a reader who submitted this book, saying, “It is a compelling, voice-driven narrative that follows a toxic disaster in a fictional small town in Missouri.  One of the great novels of the 20th century.” It may be the defining irony of our time: just as we are coming […]

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Freebird, Jon Raymond

The novel’s title, along with its bird-motif cover, calls to mind Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom—and like that novel, Freebird is driven by inner monologues and centers on the health of both the environment and the modern family. But Raymond—a writer of novels (The Half-Life), films (Meek’s Cutoff, Wendy and Lucy) and […]

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Flip the Bird, Kym Brunner

Gr 7 Up—Scoot over, Don Calame—Brunner is about to join you on your perch. This is not a book for the squeamish. It’s about falconry at its finest, but it is also about much more than that. On his way to capture his first hawk, Mercer Buddie meets the girl […]

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Hot Season, Susan DeFreitas

The three main characters in Hot Season, the debut novel by former Prescott resident, Susan DeFreitas, are idealistic students at a college known for its environmental programs. They struggle with their idealism, daily living, and how to make the country a better place. –DCourier In the high desert of Arizona, […]

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Nutshell, Ian McEwan

Some of the novel’s most eloquent passages capture the state of our peril: “A combination, poverty and war, with climate change held in reserve, driving millions from their homes, an ancient epic in new form, vast movements of people, like engorged rivers in spring, Danubes, Rhines and Rhones of angry […]

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The Way of Water, Nina Munteanu

Thanks to Nina Munteanu for the following information on two new books on water. The Way of Water is a near-future vision that explores the nuances of corporate and government corruption and deceit together with resource warfare. An ecologist and technologist, Nina Munteanu uses both fiction and non-fiction to examine […]

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The Risen, Ron Rash

During our conversation on the eve of Rash’s trip to France for an Eco-Literature convention, where the theme was “Enchantment,” he tells me that “One thing that’s important for me in my work is to remind people that there is a natural world. It’s very easy to think we are […]

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Summer Wings, April Tremblay

It’s the summer before Jessa’s senior year in high school, and she’s looking forward to spending time with her animals, best friend, and the boy she likes. When she has an unexpected encounter with the dark underside of her vegetarian society, she’s challenged to find the strength to speak for […]

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Please Don’t Paint Our Planet Pink!, Gregg Kleiner

What might happen if we could SEE carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? What if CO2 were, say, pink? In this engaging, funny, and highly timely book for children (and their adults!), a young boy whose parents named him Wilbur “in honor of that pig in Charlotte’s Web” discovers the power […]

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The Lamentations of Zeno, Ilija Trojanow

The Lamentations of Zeno is an extraordinary evocation of the fragile and majestic wonders to be found at a far corner of the globe, written by a novelist who is a renowned travel writer. Poignant and playful, the novel recalls the experimentation of high-modernist fiction without compromising a limpid sense […]

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My Last Continent, Midge Raymond

It is only at the end of the world—among the glacial mountains, cleaving icebergs, and frigid waters of Antarctica—where Deb Gardner and Keller Sullivan feel at home. For the few blissful weeks they spend each year studying the habits of emperor and Adélie penguins, Deb and Keller can escape the […]

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A Pale View of Hills, Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro’s first novel is one of my favorites: the tale of Etsuko, a Japanese woman living in the English countryside, unraveling the suicide of her eldest daughter. Woven throughout is another tale, set in a suburb of Nagasaki several years after the end of World War II: Etsuko, then […]

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The True Deceiver, Tove Jansson

The lies we tell ourselves and the lies we tell others—is the subject of this, Tove Jansson’s most unnerving and unpredictable novel. Here Jansson takes a darker look at the subjects that animate the best of her work, from her sensitive tale of island life, The Summer Book, to her […]

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