Fine Shotguns: A Review

Subtitled The History, Science, and Art of the Finest Shotguns from Around the World, John Taylor’s big- format paperback from Skyhorse is both moreambitious and far more difficult a task than it might appear to be, andfor the most part he has succeeded splendidly. No, that’s not fair; heHAS succeeded; that is to say, I have …

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Malcolm

I ma hoping you are all reading Malcolm Brooks’s Painted Horses, at least as much for your pleasure as because he is a friend who deserves it– for why would I be saying such good things about a bad writer? (There is a Russ Chatham story about beautiful women who are not quite as bright …

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Book Review #2

I have been promising a review of Paula Young Lee’s Deer Hunting in Paris for what seems like forever, and I apologize for taking so long. Part of it was thinking my way through to what I thought exactly or critically. I loved it and found it intensely quotable; on the other hand I found …

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Book review # 1

Do you want to know what a real rancher thinks? There are some excellent novels by “ranchers and…”; that is, writers who come to ranching from something else. But if there is another first- rate writer who comes from three generations on the harsh plains of eastern Montana, I don’t know of him. John Moore …

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Belated…

Mini-reviews of new books by Friends- of- Q- Blog, with apologies for now- constant tardiness. Moro Rogers first published book is a graphic novel, City in the Desert . Moro may be trained as an animator, but she has a subtle mind and a deadly sense of humor, and, as one reviewer notes, there is …

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Gun Books for Boys, Parents, and Girls…

Silvio Calabi and his team released the amazing Gun Book for Boys a couple of weeks ago. I opened it with interest; Silvio has been a fine editor and writer (last year’s Hemingway’s Guns, reviewed here, is a favorite) and good correspondent for years, and he was the somewhat unlikely advisor who recommended I take …

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Good Books

I endorse and will soon cover in detail: Silvio Calabi’s The Gun Book for Boys, which may be the best beginner’s gun manual ever; David Quammen’s Spillover (these will be my first two reviews); Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies (was life at Henry VIII’s court any less fraught or terrifying than at Stalin’s?) and …

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Born to Hunt

John Barsness has just released his latest book, Born to Hunt, a collection of essays that ranges from his home in Montana to Africa and the Arctic, along with more obscure destinations like Norway and Ireland. If you read magazines you surely know that John is one of the most prolific “gun writers” alive, as …

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