Editorial Staff
Denise Dutton
Cat Eldridge
Cat Rambo
Jennifer Stevenson
Robert Tilendis
Gary WhitehouseSearch
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Recent Posts
- What’s New for the 21st of October: An Aaron Copland cornucopia, Justice League Dark, Yolen’s favourite Tolkien, contemporary urban fantasy from Tanya Huff, Leonard Cohen live, Halloween candy, Rock from Down Under, and other hopefully tasty matters
- A Kinrowan Estate Story: All Hallows‘ Eve
- What’s New for the 14th of October: Rolling Stones do Aaron Copland’s ‘A Fanfare for The Common Man’, chilies and chocolate, H.P. Lovecraft, Québécois Style pork pies, Ray Bradbury and Other Matters
- A Kinrowan Estate Story: A Punjabi Meal
- What’s New for the 7th of October: A short story from de Lint, a rare Russian ale, Buffy’s first season, Danish jazz and other cool matters
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Why Contradances?
- What’s New for the 30th of September: the Two Fat Ladies DVD set, Clifford D. Simak’s City, two de Lint novels, Chinese jades, and other Autumnal matters
- A Kinrowan Estate Story: On Tolkien
- What’s New for the 23rd of September: Earle Stanley Gardner, Concert swag, a China That Never Was, Old Hag tunes, Benjamin Britten, Kedgeree, an Elizabeth Hand novella and other neat stuff
- A Kinrowan Estate Story: Chasing Fireflies
- What’s New for the 16th of September: Tull live, a really big chocolate treat, a favourite reading space in Kinrowan Hall, Irish music books, good milk chocolate, live music from De Dannan, an excerpt from de Lint’s Forests Of The Heart and other matters as well
- An Kinrowan Estate Story: Mushroom hunters
- What’s New for the 9th of September: Summer hambos, A Tombstone fiction, Charlie Daniels’ ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia’, Junior Superheroes, and other matters of an Autumn nature
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Oh That Biography
- What’s New for the 2nd of September: Steeleye Span’s ‘Robbery With Violins’, New Zealand candy, Colombian music called vallenato, a Benjamin Britten bio, First chapter of James Stoddard’s The High House and Autumn is Coming
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Biscuits
- What’s New for the 26th of August: John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Imagine film, Mint juleps, First chapter of an Emma Bull novel, Leonard Bernstein, Aretha Franklin, Peter Beagle on chocolate and other end of summer matters
- A Kinrowan Estate story: The Wood, Part II
- What’s New for the 19th of August: an exhibition hall of all things Chinese, Irish music live and reviewed, fantasy reading, a fantasy film, salmon bites and other tasty things
- A Kinrowan Estate story: The Wood
- What’s New for the 12th of August: On Folkloric Matters
- What’s New for the 29th of July: Ravens musical and otherwise, Totem Poles, some novels by Charles de Lint, new music and old music, and Other Matters
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Cranachan
- What’s New for the 22nd of July: The Art of Mouse Guard, Medieval Japan, Jefferson Airplane’s ‘White Rabbit’ and some other possibly odd things
- A Kinrowan Estate story: The Green Lady
- What’s New for the 15th of July: Robert Hunter’s ‘Brown-Eyed Women’, Music that Defies Classification, Indians from Day One, Patricia A. McKillip’s World-building, Gummi Butterflies, and Other Matters
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Palimpsests (A Letter to Justina)
- What’s New for the 8th of July: Kage on Time Bandits, Olivier Greif’s Sonate de Requiem and Trio avec piano, The Haiku of Basho, Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Covered Ginger gets panned, Charles de Lint in conversation, A History of Ice Cream and other matters…
- A Kinrowan Estate story: Summer afternoon (A Letter to Anna)
- What’s New for the 1st of July: Cash’s ‘Tennessee Flat Top Box’, A Raccoon in a Garbage Can puppet, Mouse Guard short stories and other Summery things
Tag Archives: history
Emma Bull’s Territory: A Unique Retelling of An American Legend
The gunfight at the O.K. Corral is one of those seminal historical events that every American knows about — or at least thinks they know. In the materials accompanying the ARC for Territory Emma Bull comments that there are many … Continue reading
William E. Deal’s Handbook to Life in Medieval and Early Modern Japan
If the title sounds daunting, don’t be worried. William E. Diehl’s Handbook to Life in Medieval and Early Modern Japan is a well-organized and eminently usable reference to the history, arts, and customs of Japan from 1185, the beginning of … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged history, nonfiction
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Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History: The Ancient Americas
When I offered to take my cousin to the Field Museum, showing off my new membership, and suggested that we see the permanent exhibition “The Ancient Americas,” she said, “What’s that?” “Indians,” I said, “from Day One.” She said later … Continue reading
Posted in What Nots
Tagged exhibitions, history, Indians, prehistory
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Justin Hall, ed., No Straight Lines
It’s tempting to say that comics underwent a radical transformation in the 1960s and ’70s. They didn’t. What did happen was that comics as a medium, with the rise of underground comics through the agency of R. Crumb and his … Continue reading
Posted in Graphic Literature
Tagged comics, critical studies, gay and lesbian lit, history
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Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History: Evolving Planet
The Field Museum of Natural History was founded in 1893 as the Columbian Museum of Chicago; the building was part of the 1893 Columbian Exposition (read “World’s Fair”). It is devoted to just about everything that has to do with … Continue reading
Joseph Campbell’s The Flight of the Wild Gander: Explorations in the Mythological Dimension
The Flight of the Wild Gander is a series of essays produced betwen 1944 and 1968 in which Campbell was, he says, “circling, and from many quarters striving to interpret, the mystery of mythology.” The “mystery,” as comes clear as … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged history, myth, mythography
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Garth Dahl’s Masks from Around the World: A Personal Collection
Masks occur in every human culture I’ve ever run across, and their purpose is always the same: disguise. In the theater of ancient Greece, the disguise served to submerge the actor in the persona of the god or hero he … Continue reading
Avram Davidson’s Adventures in Unhistory: Conjectures on the Factual Foundations of Several Ancient Legends
I have had the distinct pleasure through the years of being in line for a number of reissues and new editions of works by some of the great writers of the Golden Age of science fiction and fantasy. Maybe it’s … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged folklore, history, nonfiction
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Toby Faber’s Stradivari’s Genius: Five Violins, One Cello, and Three Centuries of Enduring Perfection
One of the most shamefully puzzling phenomena in the history of our continual technological “progress” is the simple fact that a violin maker of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries manufactured instruments that no one has since been able … Continue reading
Colin Symes’ Setting the Record Straight: A Material History of Classical Recording
One of the fundamental concepts of contemporary critical theory, whether it be post-modern, feminist, post-colonial, queer theory, or whatever subset one has chosen, is “discourse.” Discourse in this sense is not to be taken as mere converse employing words as … Continue reading
Robert Sandall’s The Penguin Café Orchestra: A History
The Penguin Café Orchestra: A History is just that (although arguably it is as much a history of Simon Jeffes, but Jeffes and the Orchestra are so inextricably intertwined that I’m not prepared to argue the matter). The meat of … Continue reading
Posted in Music
Tagged contemporary music, history
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Piers Vitebsky’s The Reindeer People: Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia
Siberia, that vast tract that covers the Russian North from the Urals to the Pacific, is one of the most inhospitable places that humanity has found to live, equaled only by its American counterpart (although Siberia does hold the record … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged history, nonfiction
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Richard A. Straw and H. Tyler Blethen, eds., High Mountains Rising: Appalachia in Time and Place
“Perhaps all the stereotypes of Appalachian folklife ought to be discarded. The culture of Appalachia is neither unqiue nor monolithic.” Thus Michael Ann Williams summarizes her chapter on Appalachian folklore in High Mountains Rising, a broad, even panoramic study of … Continue reading
Jean-Marie Déguignet’s Memoirs of a Breton Peasant [ed. Bernez Rouz; English trans. Linda Asher]
It is not often that one gets to read the memoirs of a peasant, because it’s not often that a peasant writes a memoir. This particular peasant was Breton, which is, for those fascinated by a part of the world … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged autobiography, biography, history
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Suraiya Faroqhi: Subjects of the Sultan: Culture and Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire
We tend to think of the Ottoman Empire as monolithic: a unitary state ruled from Istanbul and subject to a uniform system of laws. A moment’s reflection will lead to the inescapable conclusion that this couldn’t possibly be true: at … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged history, nonfiction
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Suraiya Faroqhi: The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It; Handan Nezir Akmeşe: The Birth of Modern Turkey: The Ottoman Military and the March to World War I
The Ottoman Empire and its successor, modern Turkey, have time and again played an important role in European politics, and yet there are vanishingly few sources in English to bring us the viewpoint of the Turks themselves, or, indeed, to … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged history, nonfiction
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