Home » Newpages Blog » The Bloomsbury Review – July/August 2008

The Bloomsbury Review – July/August 2008

Volume 28 Issue 4

July/August 2008

Bimonthly

Rachel King

The theme for this issue of The Bloomsbury Review is “Writing the Land,” and its book reviews primarily dwell on nature or regional writers across the United States. The lead review describes two Wallace Stegner biographies – Wallace Stegner and the American West and Wallace Stegner’s Salt Lake City as well as The Collected Letters of William Stegner. Reviewer Tom Wylie compares Stegner’s work to that of Twain, Faulkner, and Steinbeck, and calls him “one of our great American writers.” Wylie blends Stegner’s biography with the review of these new books, resulting in a survey of Stegner both as a man and as a writer.

The theme for this issue of The Bloomsbury Review is “Writing the Land,” and its book reviews primarily dwell on nature or regional writers across the United States. The lead review describes two Wallace Stegner biographies – Wallace Stegner and the American West and Wallace Stegner’s Salt Lake City as well as The Collected Letters of William Stegner. Reviewer Tom Wylie compares Stegner’s work to that of Twain, Faulkner, and Steinbeck, and calls him “one of our great American writers.” Wylie blends Stegner’s biography with the review of these new books, resulting in a survey of Stegner both as a man and as a writer.

Other notable book reviews include Kathleen Cain’s review of Capote in Kansas by Kim Powers, Virginia Allen’s review of Happy Trails to You by Julie Hecht, Ray Gonsalez’s review of What Love Comes To by Ruth Stone, and Bryan Stoke II’s review of Memory’s Keep by James Everett Kibler.

Stephen Trimble and Tom Rain Crowe are both interviewed in this issue. Trimble discusses his new book, Bargaining for Eden: The Fight for the Last Open Spaces in a America as well as his earlier books, The Geography of Childhood and Testimony. Crowe’s poetry and memoir spans many different regions, and even countries – a feat incomprehensible to many writers of the land.

Besides the interviews and excellent reviews of adult books, this issue contains a full page of children and young adult book reviews. Through clear, engaging prose, The Bloomsbury Review details new books, comments on their aesthetic value, and gives compelling reasons why a reader may or may not enjoy them.
[www.bloomsburyreview.com]

Spread the word!