Washington Books

As one who grew up just a block from No 26th & Proctor St's I highly recommend this wonderful historical review of this neighborhood shopping district during the 20th century. The pictures tell it like it was and they cover almost everything of any importance that went on there.

A great read for anyone who is interested in Tacoma. Lots of key photograps on the fire station, Washington school, bowling alley and many other landmarks including the building where the NW shop is now.

Seeing the historical buildings through the years in this small neighborhood is pretty amazing.

Thanks for writing this book Bill.

Beth and Allen Cheng live a quiet life with their three small children in the small town of Bellevue, Washington, close to the mountains of the west coast. Beth works as a wildlife biologist and her current project is tracking the goat population through the high elevations.

Though Beth enjoys her job, Allen hates that she must work to supplement their household income. They had agreed that she would work so he could take the pastor's position at a small local church.

The story describes their quiet, yet comfortably hectic family life as Beth leaves for the airport to board a small plane that will take her high above the mountainous terrain to count the goats. While she and her family go about their routine, Dennis Doyle experiences a far different existence.

Instead of family, he has chosen a life of solitude deep in the hills, as far from humanity as he can get. His Vietnam past haunts him even after thirty years if living alone.

Beth and Dennis eventually cross paths high in the mountains. Her Asian appearance brings back the nightmares of the jungles of Vietnam and he has moments where he can no longer distinguish between the past and the present. Beth, being strong in her faith, fears for her life, but she knows God has a purpose for putting her with this troubled man.

Bette Nordberg brings to life the horrors of war and how the experience can manifest itself in one's mind. She does a wonderful job of helping the reader get to know Dennis Doyle and Beth Cheng. And, though Dennis appears on the surface to be a selfish, crazy hermit, we come to find that he still has a warm heart no matter how hard he tries to stay detached.

And Beth, though she is thrown into a situation where she must face much suffering, she questions her faith, but she never falters. She continues to seek God's will and asks for guidance and strength through Him.

Bette Nordberg has produced another work of dazzling fiction. The suspense in Thin Air kept me glued to the pages even when other responsibilities called. I lived in the skin of Beth, feeling her pain when the plane crashed, her longing for kids and husband, her fear she would never see them again. I came to understand Viet Nam vets in a way I never could in the past--even though I am married to one. Bravo to Nordberg once again. I eagerly await her next novel.

I have absolutely zero natural sense of direction so this guide is perfect in its level of detail. It seems to cover every inch of Portland, including a full street index in the back that makes it easy to locate an address.

I have purchased the Thomas Guides for Portland for the last several years and have found them to be an absolutely indespensible navigational aid. Every street in the metro area and surrounding suburbs is detailed within this guide. Its comprehensive detail and ease of use make it a real help. If you have to drive in Portland even occassionally I cannot recommend strongly enough that you buy this guide.

I decided not to go fancy, and buy a GPS navigation system. However I wanted a reasonably compact map book that I could carry in my truck. I drive mostly in Pierce County. I gave this map book a five because it illustrates all the local roads, and points of interest, at a fine level of detail. I use this all the time to look for shortcuts or to route around traffic jams and construction. Even if I had GPS navigation, I would still keep this book as a backup.

If you're still using paper maps instead of GPS, this one is the one to have. Without a doubt, get the 3 county instead of the single King county map. It's big, but it's effective. Load the free cd in your computer too.

Julian Chapuis' superb Tilman Riemenschneider covers the master sculptor who worked during the late Middle Ages, creating fine pieces. He was one of the first to abandon polychromy: this documents about fifty of his works in an intriguing new title.

i highly, and happily, recommend this book!! there are beautiful images and it is an excellent study of his work. absolutely wonderful, all exhibition catalogues should be treated this well!

Reviewed by Beverly Pechin of Reader Views (2/06)

Tin Mines and Concubines is a book of short stories, linked together. At first glance you think, "Oh my, I am never going to keep these characters straight" but as you forget to try keeping them in your mind and who belongs to what family, etc., it suddenly falls into place. You easily bring all of the characters together and settle into a wonderful array of stories about Malaysian and Indian culture.

This book, while I'm certain not intended to be, became a wonderful source of cultural lessons. While you read about the lives and ways of various people, from Henry Tang to Cheng (the son of a rich family who is kidnapped for ransom) you begin to get a feel for the Malaysian culture and all of its mystery and heritage. Ms. Tham entwines lessons of Chinese, Indian and Malaysian words into the story along with many cultural beliefs and traditions. You read of love gone awry with "Picture Bride" as you feel the pain of today's youth having to deal with old time traditions of arranged marriages. You learn of the mysterious traditions and beliefs, and how today's generation must sometimes appease yesterdays wisdom in "Bending Traditions".

I enjoyed that the book had 18 smaller stories that somehow interacted together and blended into one. It was a book you could easily put down to go about some daily chores and pick up again quickly from where you left off. The hardest part was realizing you didn't have to 'keep track' of the characters yourself, as they would soon blend together and you would realize their place easily.

Written in a format that can be enjoyed by both adult and older children, I would highly recommend the book for a touch of history and culture with your kids. It would be a wonderful beginning to learning the Malaysian and Asian ideals, including age old traditions. Being a homeschooling mother, I found that it opened many doors to my own children's thoughts and ideas on marriage and why it could be good or bad to have an arranged marriage. You might be surprised at how you feel about them after completing the book. I felt as though the book brought a true sense of the age old traditions and beliefs into today's society. It was amazing how easily the 'old' and the 'new' can somehow co-exist.

I highly recommend this book to anyone willing to learn more and become intrigued with another culture. It not only contains a series of wonderful, enlightening stories but it touches your heart and mind with a superb explanation of culture that you may never find unless you leave your own country! My applause to Hilary Tham for a job well done. Excellent.

Hilary Tham (1946-2005) was a moving force in the literary society of Washington, D.C. A tireless and peerless poet and editor, she offered invaluable advice, encouragement and earth-motherly kindness to countless aspiring poets and fiction writers in the Washington area. In her many books of poetry she revealed herself a master of the short narrative poem, her sharp insight into human nature accompanied by an unerring ability to find just the right detail, just the right turn of phrase. It was not surprising that eventually she would turn her hand to fiction; unfortunately, she lost a year-long battle to cancer just as "Tin Mines and Concubines," her first collection of short stories, went to press. To read "Tin Mines and Concubines" is to realize that Tham would have made many remarkable contributions to the art of fiction had she lived. The collection of interrelated short stories in "Tin Mines" covers a large and varied group of people--Chinese, Malay and Indian--living in Malaysia in the 1960s. The main characters are probably the various members, friends and servants of the large, wealthy and contentious Tang family--old Mr. Tang, his bitter wife, playboy son Henry, Henry's best friend Mani, the five gossipy grandaunts, the naive young concubine Leng and wily old gardener Gopal. Through these and other characters, Tham gives us a panoramic, minutely observed and fascinating portrait of a society in flux. Tham can break our hearts with stories such as "The Day of the Long Knives," the tragedy of a middle-class Chinese family caught in the anti-Chinese riots of 1969, or the poignant "Unborn Tomorrow," in which Henry Tang discovers the diary of his long-dead sister. But she also makes us roll in the aisles with the robust humor of "Encounter on Batu Road," detailing Henry and Mani's hilarious misadventures in their town's red-light district, and "The Best Butter," a funny-sad cautionary tale about a naive young fireman. Emotionally and stylistically she can turn on a dime: "Cheng's Wife," a story straight out of Chekhov, takes a sharp, nasty turn into Roald Dahl territory with its sequel, "Cheng's Story." The variety, humanity and insight of "Tin Mines and Concubines" makes it a remarkable fiction debut, and makes it all the more tragic that it will have no successors.

From time to time, I will provide a little review of books relating to Japan. I got the idea from the Asian Bookshelf in the Japan Times. One of my favorite gaijin authors, Donald Richie, writes a book review each week for J.T. Right now I have over 206 books on Japanese history, language, and culture, and one day I will get around to writing reviews for each one. Enough of my boring introduction, on with the review.
Tokyo Central: A Memoir by Edward Seidensticker
One day, when I was teaching Conversational English to a mixed-bag collection of students at the Nova school in Toyonaka, I happened to pass by the bookstore and went in. I bought a copy of Kansai Time Out and saw that Edward Seidensticker would be at Doshisha University in Kyoto. It would be on a day that I had to work. So, I pretended to be sick that Monday and actually did call in sick that Wednesday just to see him.
I arrived at the college and just walked into an empty auditorium because I had arrived several hours early. No one came until just before the start. Then suddenly I must have fallen asleep because just a moment ago the whole place was empty and now was full. I looked around and it was mostly women. I later learned that Doshisha is a womans' university. Anyway, Edward Seidensticker appeared on stage, with two extremely cute nurses, and talked about the difficulties in translating. He spoke the most about translating The Tale of Genji and spending almost an entire decade on it. I listened and afterwards got his autograph.
Now it has been a few years, since I met him at the autograph session, and I saw his book about his life as a translator and had to get it.
In Tokyo Central, Seidensticker talks about growing up in Colorado, studying at the Navy's Japanese Language School, where Donald Keene once studied, and finally his first year in Tokyo as a "Scholar-Diplomat" like Sir George Sansom.
He didn't really take to diplomat life so he started teaching and translating great works of Japanese literature. The book really shines in his thoughts on such great modern writers such as Tanazaki Junichiro and Kawabata Yasunari. I was amazed and envious to learn that he was taken out to expensives dinners by both men.
Seidensticker is never boring and his writing sucks you into that time in his life that you are reading. The 244 pages seem to go by quickly; yet despite the small pages, it is the weight of ideas and compression of 80-years of his life that causes you to think and reflect on what has happened to Tokyo before and what is going on now.
Here is a remarkable story of someone who didn't set out to be a translator and how ended up sharing the stage with Kawabata Yasunari recieving the Nobel Prize
A good quick read for the summer and highly recommended to anyone interested in Tokyo history and the life of a engaging academic who is never boring.

Somehow I wound up reading the memoirs of Genji's translator before tackling Genji itself. Perhaps that alone is testament to the clear and interestling writing style of Seidensticker himself, one of the great observers of Japanese culture.

The story is much more than just about Tokyo, though. It starts in Colorado, weaves through his introduction to Japanese language through the US military in WW2, and only then hits his life in post-WW2 Japan during the reconstruction. It covers his introduction to Japanese fiction, as well as his translation. Finally, the book wraps up with his return to US, and introduction to academia.

The book reads rather well for the first biographical (autobiographical at that) work of a translator. Although Seidensticker made his name in translations, we also learn of his attempts at fiction and other writing.

Perhaps one complaint is repetitive word usage. For instance, the word "eminent" is very overused for such an "eminent" translator. I'd expect better. But that is not nearly enough to stop anyone from reading these memoirs.

This is a really neat book about a boy's family's Indian heritage (Tsimshian). He traces back his ancestors from Alaska and their ways of life; the pictures show him exploring the artifacts saved by his ancestors, working with his father, wearing semi-traditional clothes, helping build the totem pole, and celebrating with his fellow tribes people on the reservation. The narrative aspect is calm and touching, though never sentimental; I really enjoyed reading this and think it has some lovely lessons that are worth discussing in a classroom. There's also a little glossary in the back, so there's some vocabulary worth teaching here--great book!!

Text is written as narration by a boy who appears to be about 10 or 11 years old, and is telling us about his dad, who is a native Pacific Northwest Coast Artist and Carver.

This short book is a snapshot of a short period in time when his dad carves a totem pole, and it is raised at the entrance to an indian reseervation.

The text sounds to me like it was written by an adult trying to sound like a kid, and it doesn't sound quite right when I read it. Although this will catch the ear of an adult, I haven't noticed that kids are bothered or notice.

More importantly, it is a nice little book written from the persepective of a boy who is proud of his dad and his heritage, and is eagerly adopting his heritage and helping his dad, and wants to be like his dad, who is an excellent, positive role model.

The photos are excellent and very nicely enhance and illustrate the text. The quality of the book is very high.

I'd strongly recommend it for someone who wants a child's book to read to kids 5-12 years old, or to be read by kids ages 7 or 8 to 12 to read themselves.

Not only does the book do a nice job of telling a story and teaching a little about totem poles and Pacific Northwest Coast Indian culture, perhaps even more importantly the boy in the story provides a very positive role model for the kids who read this book.

Although the content of this novel is aimed at Washingtonians the masterful writing of Mr. Carkonen can be appreciated everywhere. Mr Carkonen's skillful prose and mastery of the english language leave the reader wanting more. I must agree with the Vashon Island reviewer that most appropriately stated, "Sweet tasty tasty!"

all i can say after reading this book is, "Sweet tasty tasty!!"

In my admiration for this fun, fascinating, fact-filled book, I yield to no authority but the eminent KIRKUS REVIEWS:

"George Saunders participated in many great cattle drives from 1871 to 1886; later, he spent years collecting and setting down his aging comrades' reminiscences. His career makes a thrilling tale, full of danger and hardship, stampedes, hostile Native Americans, rough country, and bad weather. Lightfoot also depicts Saunders's life between drives as a rancher and businessman, a solid citizen who rode with a vigilante group but also stepped forward to prevent a local massacre of Mexicans, at a time when racial tensions ran high. ...readers will get a clear idea of a cowhand's work, and of Saunders's important role in preserving the lore of a vanished era. Bibliography. (Biography. 10-12)"
-KIRKUS REVIEWS

Trail Fever brings to life the true adventures of a Texas hero, George Washington Saunders. George was a gallant cowboy who braved stampedes, storms, droughts, and outlaws. D.J. Lightfoot tells this nonfiction story with thrilling description and a narrative full of adventure and danger. This is an exceptional easy-to-read biography with plenty of rich, authentic detail--perfect for schools, libraries, and homes. I especially loved the part where 20-year-old Saunders stopped a vigilante group of nearly 80 men from mistakenly taking revenge on some Mexican people. Lightfoot makes the reading easy, but most important she makes the reading fun and exciting. This is a perfect book for youngsters or anyone who'd like to get a genuine experience of a courageous man and an interesting era!