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Reviews:
All Meat Looks Like South America by Bruce McCall
Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
The Black Island by Georges Remi Hergé
The Blues of Flats Brown by Walter Dean Myers
The Bungalow Mystery (Nancy Drew #3) by Carolyn Keene
The Cave by Steve McGill
Chicka Chicka 123 by Bill Martin Jr. and Lois Ehlert
A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold
Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron
Duck in a Truck by Jez Alborough
Enemies and Allies by Kevin J. Anderson
Frozen Tears by Mary Ann MacAfee
Haven Stones: The Last Unicorn by Richard Carbajal
Humanism for Parents — Parenting without Religion by Sean Curley
Hurricane by Arnaldo Ricciulli
I Spy Christmas by Jean Marzollo
If I Ran the Zoo by Dr. Seuss
Immortality Inc. by Robert Sheckley
Mars: The Red Planet by Isaac Asimov
Monsters! Draw Your Own Mutants, Freaks & Creeps by Jay Stephens
North from Calcutta by Duane Evans
Perseverance: True Voices of Cancer Survivors by Carolyn Rubenstein
Read Me edited by Gaby Morgan
Resonance by A. J. Scudiere
Right to Remain Silent by Penny Warner
Sahwira: An African Friendship by Carolyn Marsden
The Shining by Stephen King
Son of the Great River by Elijah Meeks
The Sun by Ralph Winrich
Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
That's Not My Dinosaur by Fionna Watt
Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll
What the Hell is a Groom and What's He Supposed to Do? by John Mitchell
Wolf Willow by Wallace Stegner
You Suck by Christopher Moore
Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin
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Wolf Willow: 11/04/09

I wish I could remember the name of every author and every book I've ever read. I can't. My memory is reliable for about a year's worth of reading. After that only the most remarkable books (good and bad) stick. To aid my memory I have a list of everything I've read going back to 1987. Despite my list keeping I'm still surprised sometimes when I "rediscover" an author. I've mentioned this happening with Neil Gaiman and now it's happened with Wallace Stegner.

Wallace Stegner was a Canadian author who wrote fiction and non-fiction. Back in 2005 I thoroughly enjoyed Angle of Repose. Now for the Canada Reads 3 challenge, I've read one of his non-fiction books, 0141185015?p_isbn">Wolf Willow

Wolf Willow is formally a memoir but it's a memoir in the same way that Tales from Margaritaville by Jimmy Buffett is. It's part memoir, part history and part fiction

Perhaps I don't know enough about the history of the border area between Saskatchewan, Montana and North Dakota but the book didn't hold my attention as Angle of Repose did

There were a few moments though that I will remember beyond the point where I forget the title, the author and when I read it. The first of those is Stegner's description of the culture shock between winter and summer. During the winter he traveled north into town to go to school. There he was clearly in Canada. Then during the summer he'd be on the farm plowing the fields that butted up against the 49th parallel. He could through rocks into the United States. He watched life go by on America prairies. As a kid growing on a border town I related to Stegner's sentiments

My second favorite scene was a description of a particular Mountie who was a local legend for his ability to get his man no matter the circumstances. With the rural location and the (I'm guessing exaggerated) description of his feats, I couldn't help but think of Benton Fraiser from Due South.

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