Home » Columns » Archive for category "The Contextual Life"

Archive for the ‘The Contextual Life’ Category:


7.16.11: A look at ZAZEN

Although the city in ZAZEN is never named as an actual location in the U.S., it’s hard not to image it taking place in Portland, Oregon—the home of debut author Vanessa Veselka.

6.1.11: Fashionable Grammar

To write is to communicate with the outside world. It’s how we explain ourselves and understand each other. In whatever form it takes, whether it be print, email, text, or tweet, writing is a representation of the self.

Tags: ,

5.1.2011: Why Read the Classics?

  Why Read the Classics? When I think back to high school English class, what comes to mind are all the books I pretended to read: John Knowles’ A Separate Peace, Steinbeck’s The Pearl, even Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer. Early on I found that if you listened to the teacher and regurgitated his or her

(Read More…)

Tags: ,

3.17.11: A Conversation with Gina Ochsner

Oregon author Gina Ochsner’s debut novel, The Russian Dreambook of Colour & Flight, just released in paperback, is an irresistible contemporary folktale that feels something akin to MTV’s Real World—Russian-style. Instead of hip, sexy 20 to 30-somethings living in a plush, urban apartment or an airy, waterfront condo, the inhabitants of this story are a

(Read More…)

2.19.11: Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer

Wesley will be on tour in Portland at Powell’ Books March 6th and on Live Wire! Radio at the Alberta Rose Theater on March 4th. by Wesley Stace Picador Paperback Original, $15.00, 572 pages “Kensington Triple Tragedy / Composer Kills his Wife, Another, Commits Suicide / Opera Will Not Open”. So begins Wesley Stace’s third

(Read More…)

Tags: ,

2.9.11: The Contextual Life

If it’s like Socrates said, that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” then we owe a whole lot to books for its meaning. I can’t imagine a day without them; in fact, I’d be unemployed. My career in books started when I graduated from college and didn’t want to dress up for work. Barnes

(Read More…)

Tags: ,
 
© 2011 Portland Book Review