Boulder News

NEW PROGRAM NEEDS MORE PRIORITY

Open Fields was a “major victory” for hunters and wildlife conservation, according to the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP) and many other green groups that lobbied for it. It passed back in December 2008, but almost a year later, this innovative hunter access program is still mired in the administrative rule making process.

Now, predictably, conservationists who struggled mightily for the program are asking Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack for a little more priority.

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Western Book Roundup

As I’ve mentioned on a couple of occasions over the years I’ve written the Roundup, when I’m not reading other people’s books, I’m trying to write my own, and after many, many years of effort, I have some good news: my first novel, The Ringer, will be published by The Permanent Press in 2011.  I am delighted about it.  Now I just need to edit the book and figure out how to convince people to read it.  (Beg?  Bribe?  Cajole?) Check out my new website for more information.

• The winners of the Utah and Oregon Book Awards were announced recently.  In Utah, the winners included David McGlynn in fiction for The End of the Straight and Narrow, Stephen Trimble in nonfiction for Bargaining for Eden: The Fight for the Last Open Spaces in America, and in the poetry category, Craig Arnold won the award posthumously for his collection Made Flesh.  Ben Fulton of the Salt Lake Tribune wrote in greater detail about all the winners.

Also in the Roundup: Oregon Book Award winners, events at the Center of the American West, and Annie Proulx donates her papers to the New York Public Library.

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New West Book Review

The Lacuna
By Barbara Kingsolver
HarperCollins, 464 pages, $26.99

Barbara Kingsolver worked her way up to becoming one of America’s Current Top Novelists the old-fashioned way, beginning by writing smaller, tightly-focused novels with some autobiographical elements, earning a loyal readership through word-of-mouth and independent bookseller raves in her former home base of the Southwest, then expanding her stories to globe-spanning epics such as her riveting The Poisonwood Bible.  Kingsolver has followed up her recent nonfiction bestseller Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, about her family’s quest to eat locally-grown foods for a year, with her first novel in nine years, The Lacuna, a sweeping tale that follows a young man destined to become a popular American novelist in the years before and after he befriends Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Leon Trotsky.  The Lacuna is another epic work, setting one man’s story against the grand events of early twentieth century history, and it’s also a bildungsroman and an epistolatory novel, for those AP English students keeping score at home. 

The Lacuna is one of a handful of titles which Amazon and Walmart, in their current book-price war, will sell for nine bucks, along with genre fiction juggernauts including the latest books by John Grisham and James Patterson.  Kingsolver’s novel is an ironic pick, because leftist politics are at its heart and its protagonist, Harrison Shepherd, is a reclusive, mostly-celibate gay man who writes about Aztec and Mayan history, elements which would not normally cause the books that house them to fly off the shelves.  But The Lacuna will please Kingsolver’s plentiful fans because it is full of the qualities that her books have always contained—striking, precise detail, human passion, vivid language, snappy dialogue, and a singularly fascinating character in Kingsolver’s imagining of Frida Kahlo.

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PRATICAL TIPS FOR MAKING A GOOD CHOICE

So, you’ve finally decided to take that fishing trip of a lifetime--to Alaska, Canada, Patagonia, the Caribbean or another exotic location. Now, be sure you choose the right lodge.

The cost is always key, of course, but hardly the only concern. Regardless of your passion--bonefish, tarpon, muskie, salmon, monster rainbows or pike, whatever--you don’t want your long-awaited (and deserved, right?) vacation to turn into a stressful and costly disappointment.

If you’re a do-it-yourself type of guy, this column isn’t for you, but if you decide to stay at a fishing lodge and have a guided adventure, finding the right outfitter and avoiding problems along the way can be challenging. I’m hardly an expert, but I’ve stayed at a dozen or more lodges through the years.  Along the way, I’ve picked up a few tips that might be helpful.

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Western Book Roundup

Helena-raised Kevin Connolly is on the road talking about his new memoir, Double Take.  He’ll visit Bozeman today (Country Bookshelf, 7 p.m.), and he’ll be in Helena on October 28 (Montana Book Company, 7 p.m.), and in Missoula on October 29 (Fact & Fiction, 7 p.m.). 

The 24-year-old Connolly was born without legs, but according to his bio on his publisher’s website, he “was otherwise a healthy baby and grew up like any other Montana kid; getting dirty, running in the woods, and getting dirty some more.”

Connolly began taking photographs four years ago, traveling around the world on a skateboard and “documenting the reactions” people had to him.  The photos in this series became ”The Rolling Exhibition,” which Connolly’s website describes as: 31 Cities, 32,000 photos, one stare.” Double Take is getting great reviews; Kirkus Reviews described it as “A courageous, immensely rewarding chronicle expressed in arresting words and pictures.” Visit Connolly’s website for an entertaining trailer about his experience reading an ebook on an over-sized PC.

Also in the Roundup: A Utah State senior wins the national Norman Mailer Award for nonfiction, two forthcoming regional novels, and David Sax finds some good Jewish delis in the Rockies.

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New West Book Review

Wisdom of the Last Farmer
by David Mas Masumoto
Simon & Schuster, 238 pages, $25

David Mas Masumoto‘s Wisdom of the Last Farmer will make you want to go out and pay a farmer more than the asking price for his produce at a market.  Masumoto grows organic peaches, nectarines, and grapes on his farm in California’s central valley, carrying on in the tradition of his family.  His grandparents emigrated from Japan over a hundred years ago with the dream of buying land.  Because they weren’t native born Americans, laws forbade them from purchasing land, so instead they worked in other people’s fields and suffered through internment in the Arizona desert during World War II.  But they persevered and eventually their sons established the 80-acre farm that Masumoto now runs with his wife and children. 

Masumoto is on a mission to preserve flavorful heirloom peaches that his family has grown for decades, varieties most farmers have abandoned because of supermarkets’ demands for harder, redder peaches with longer shelf life and transport durability.  Masumoto wants people to experience the “Sun Crest peach, a fat and juicy gem with a stunning, honeyed flavor.” If people could try it, he thinks, they probably wouldn’t settle for the fruit that’s sold as peaches today.

In Wisdom of the Last Farmer, Masumoto, a columnist for the Fresno Bee and the award-winning author of several previous books, discusses his father’s decline in the wake of a stroke, and how their hard work in pursuit of a perfect peach breaks their bodies and spirits down.  “Organic farming is not simple or easy,” Masumoto writes.  “It’s easy to want to be environmentally responsible, but it’s a damned hard thing to achieve.  I cannot replace tedious labor with faster technology or equipment when things go wrong.”

David Mas Masumoto will be in Utah to present his book in Salt Lake City at the King’s English Bookshop on Thursday, October 22 (5:30 p.m.).  On October 23 and 24, he will participate in the Moab Confluence “Eating the West” literary festival, and on October 25 he will visit Denver’s Tattered Cover (Colfax, 2 p.m.) as a part of the Rocky Mountain Land Library reading series.

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