Would just like to recommend 'The Black Grizzly of Whiskey Creek' by Sid Marty.
One of the most descriptive books I have ever read.
It is about the grizzly bear attacks in Banff in 1980 and some of the prose is written from the bear's side of the fence, very well done too.
Sid Marty used to be a Banff park ranger and he gives good background information as to why the attacks may of occured, and the thinking in the Parks dept of the day.
A good read indeed.

If books about the western wilderness appeal then Edward Abbey is your man. I especially liked Desert Solitude though The Monkey Wrench Gang is better known. The latter is even mildly topical as it's a kind of manifesto for the people who shoot the blades of windmills.

Thanks for that, I'll track it down and give it a go.
I do a lot of reading but prefer more factual stuff than just stories.
I used to read a lot of the books of John Pilger, but the atrocities and wrongdoing of various governments that he'd uncover would wind me up no end. Noam Chomsky is in the same vein.
Information that people should know, but very difficult to know what to do about it.

John Pilger is just too worthy for me. Jon Krakauer is more my speed.

Try reading Romeo Dallaire. I'm a hundred pages into Shake Hands with the Devil and there is as yet no whiff of shagging.

I ploughed through that. I assume it was written in French and mechanically translated. I thought it a remarkable achievement to produce a dull and self serving piece of bureaucratic prose about a genocide, he could have been documenting the arrangement of parked cars in Ottawa. iirc correctly the two points of interest in the book were his admission that his career was based on being the token franco and his seeming abandonment of his children. I thought he portrayed himself as an odious character. At about the same time I read "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families", which I thought to be an infinitely better book about the same conflict.

Thanks. You've saved me the bother of wading through the other 400 pages.

It's not often I can't be arsed to finish a book I've started. This will be one such occasion.

Good title though.

Hi
I know what you mean about Pilger and Chomsky. I've read lots of articles/books by them, but I always feel helpless and frustrated at the end.

Like the sound of the grizzlies book. Will search it out.

Sas

I love to read, I will read anything and sometimes more than once. But I am at the stage of my life where I like to read something more thought provoking than the paperbooks I so often pick up at garage sales, so I will bookmark this thread and seek some titles out at the library - thanks guys

Fourteen letters. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Greatest Canadian writer in 'istory. Next to Charles Dickens, that is.

Absolutely agree. Gourevitch nails it, Dallaire's book is an attempt to salve his conscience after the PTS he suffered.