Law school in 1973, Criminal Procedure class, taught by Prof. Fred “Freddy the Cop” Inbau. Near the end of one day’s class, a student asked, “Prof. Inbau, is Agnew guilty?” Inbau: “You should know by now that ‘Guilty’ is a decision for the finder of fact. I will say that the evidence against Agnew is…
Common, very widely distributed and tolerant of humankind, the Downy Woodpecker is easily attracted to a suet feeder. Its range extends across North America, from the Seward Peninsula in Alaska to southern Florida, and from southern California to Labrador. A smaller version of the Hairy Woodpecker, it’s interesting because the male and female generally forage…
‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the houseNot a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there… Many of Americans’ ideas about Santa Claus and Christmas Eve trace to “A Visit from Santa Claus,” also known as “The…
The late Ernest Gruening, former Alaska territorial governor, former U.S. Senator and a prolific author, wrote one of the first histories of Alaska. He broke the volume into periods. Those periods included: “The Era of Total Neglect (1867-1884),” “The Era of Flagrant Neglect (1884-1898),” “The Era of Mild But Enlightened Interest (1898-1912)” and “The Era…
Since Mordor was opened to tourism in February 2020 – the arrival of COVID-19 was likely but not certainly a coincidence – it’s become a popular destination for those folks wanting to escape from the pandemic and yet be reasonably safe from infection by the virus. Mordor, of course, is all about social distancing. WC…
Steven Brust is one of WC’s very favorite authors. He might be the best fantasy writer in the genre today; certainly among the most durable. His first novel, Jhereg, came out in 1983. About a third of Brust’s work is written in the style of Alexander Dumas. And the plots of those novels loosely follow some…
The late Terry Pratchett wrote the Foreword to the 16th Edition of Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. He said, It was my introduction to mythology and ancient history and a lot more, too, because Brewer’s is a serendipitous (see page 1063) book. In other words, you might not find what you are looking for, but…
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, a/k/a Mark Twain, had a huge influence on WC as a young man. In particular his later works, stuff like The Mysterious Stranger, “The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg,” Letters from Earth and A Pen Warmed Up in Hell have an obvious impact on WC’s writing even today. Twain’s critical essay on James Fenimore Cooper, “Cooper’s Literary…
Idaho Governor Brad “Do” Little has put the State of Idaho into collective quarantine. We are to stay in our homes, for the most part, for the next 21 days. For those of WC’s friends who are similarly locked down, WC will be offering tips for coping. Here’s the first: If you enjoy reading books,…
It’s been aeons since WC did a genuine book review. After all, it says “Reviews” on the masthead. So WC will review four books here. WC’s writing teachers – you may be surprised that WC had had writing teachers – taught him not to use “that that” and “had had.” Even if Abrahahm Lincoln, in…
John McPhee is, by a wide margin, WC’s favorite non-fiction writer. McPhee’s last book, The Patch, and his recent essay in the New Yorker are both collections of fragments, work he started and never finished, ideas he played with and could never turn into a compete work, ideas that he never got around to. The fragments are fascinating…
In undergraduate school, WC was for a time fascinated – infatuated, really – with the works of Franz Kafka. It doesn’t take long to read all of Kafka’s works – five fairly short novels and a couple of short story collections – but they leave an impression, and appealed to WC’s sensibilities at the time.…
John MacPhee is WC’s favorite non-fiction writer, as WC has likely said too often in this blog. He’s 88 years old now, with some 36 books published (all of them still in print). WC owns all of them. They overfill a shelf. The Patch, his latest, is something of an experiment. The first third, titled…
If there is one single book you should read in the run-up to the 2020 elections, it’s probably Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains. Be prepared to be very, very angry, because MacLean, an historian and the William H. Chafe Professor of History and Public Policy at Duke University, documents the history, philosophy and details of the…
There’s a reason for two book reviews in one week. We’ll get to that later. But The Ugly American is a seminal and hugely influential work of fictionalized reporting that still deserves your attention fifty-one years after its publication. Co-written by by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer it tells the story, in a series of linked vignettes,…
The Face in the Frost, John Bellairs ISBN 158754105X (2000) Magic Mirrors, John Bellairs (Edited by Ann Broomhead and Timothy Szczesuil) NESFA Press, iSBN 978-1-886778-67-2 (12009) This is fantasy reduced to its purest form. From a laugh out loud first few pages you are plunged into nightmare and horror through to a purely satisfying ending. In…
Theodore Sturgeon is nearly forgotten. A part of science fiction’s Golden Age, he was a prolific, very highly regarded author. He wrote a dozen or so novels, but mostly he wrote short stories, more than 200 of them. Today is the 60th anniversary of WC’s favorite Sturgeon short story, “Like Young.” It’s an unmatched parable…
In a better world, Schaeffer Cox’s mental illness would have been diagnosed sooner and the events of Blood of Patriots wouldn’t have happened. His paranoia and delusions magnified his narcissism and shaky grasp on reality. The explosive combination of a pathological liar and remarkably high charisma were exactly the wrong traits for his personality. It still…
Terry Pratchett died back in 2015, but that hasn’t stopped WC from posting his annual tribute to his favorite author. Pratchett’s brilliant body of work, fifty or so novels and dozens of short stories, are a legacy that will outlast us all. Among Pratchett’s many wonderful attributes was his modesty. For a man who sold more…
“Well, some worlds are built on a fault line of pain, held up by nightmares. Don’t lament when those worlds fall. Rage that they were built doomed in the first place.” N. K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth trilogy is simply the best fantasy series WC has read in the last 25 years. It’s better than the…
Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier‘s and Bellamy‘s and Morris‘s utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torture, what except a…
WC was home alone, a few weeks shy of his 14th birthday, when the Good Friday Earthquake struck Alaska. The WC family home, built of logs, with vaulted ceilings, shrieked and groaned continuously. Ripples ran through the big picture window on the east wall, making the view outside appear to move nearer and further away.…
Back in 1973, as Watergate was just starting to break, Garry Trudeau, in his three-year old comic strip Doonesbury, weighed in: In those early times, the strip was pretty controversial, and a number of newspapers, including the Washington Post, refused to run the comic.1 Never mind that Trudeau was mocking the left for pre-judging Mitchell.2 Mitchell was…
Reynard is to Northern European folktales as Raven is to Alaska. Trickster, joker and deceiver. The stories reached English in watered-down form, like the Grimm Brothers Fox stories. Here’s a Reyanrd the Fox1 story from WC’s ancestral stomping grounds, Holland, that gives you a flavor of Reynard as the stories were told about him in…
Long time readers of this blog know that WC is an unabashed fan of the late Sir Terry Pratchett. Sir Terry, who died March 12, 2015, was WC’s favorite author, a wonderful person as well as a terrific writer. Sir Terry did not write linearly. He would typically have as many as three books under…
One of WC’s neighbors has this signpost in his front yard. Yes, he is a librarian. What a terrific summer reading list. Identification of the various destinations is left as an exercise to the reader. All of the books referenced – well, maybe not the Rick Riordan novels – are worth your time.
WC has reviewed and praised David James Duncan’s writing, and especially his first book, The River Why, several times. If Duncan wrote more, he’d be on WC’s list of very favorite authors. So when Duncan came to Boise for a reading, you can bet WC was in attendance. Duncan did not disappoint. Duncan treated the 200-plus…
The weather sucks, WC is struggling with a head cold and it’s the same old same old among the yard birds. So WC has been doing a lot of reading. Much of it has turned out to be pretty good. Here’s a quick overview of recent, decent stuff. Michael Lewis famously write Moneyball, which somehow got…
One of WC’s favorite authors, Ursula K. Le Guin, recently wrote a letter to the Oregonian objecting to the characterization of President Trumpster’s “alternatie facts” as science fiction. In her own inimitable style, she describes the difference. WC sets out her letter in full. A recent letter in The Oregonian compares a politician’s claim to tell “alternative facts”…
Before we all take ourselves too seriously, let’s make a brief digression into Jasper Fforde’s Well of Lost Plots, where we find this gem. “Good. Item seven. The had had and that that problem. Lady Cavendish, weren’t you working on this?’ Lady Cavendish stood up and gathered her thoughts. ‘Indeed. The uses of had had and that that have to be strictly controlled; they…
