BC Books Online was created for anyone interested in BC-published books, and with librarians especially in mind. We'd like to make it easy for library staff to learn about books from BC publishers - both new releases and backlist titles - so you can inform your patrons and keep your collections up to date.
Our site features print books and ebooks - both new releases and backlist titles - all of which are available to order through regular trade channels. Browse our subject categories to find books of interest or create and export lists by category to cross-reference with your library's current collection.
A quick tip: When reviewing the "Browse by Category" listings, please note that these are based on standardized BISAC Subject Codes supplied by the books' publishers. You will find additional selections, grouped by theme or region, in our "BC Reading Lists."
A seminal collection of Haida myths and legends; now in a gorgeous new package.
The linguist and ethnographer John Swanton took dictation from the last great Haida-speaking storytellers, poets and historians from the fall of 1900 through the summer of 1901. Together they created a great treasury of Haida oral literature in written form.
Having worked for many years with these century-old manuscripts, linguist and poet Robert Bringhurst brings both rigorous scholarship and a literary voice to the English translation of John Swanton's careful work. He sets the stories in a rich context that reaches out to dozens of native oral literatures and to myth-telling traditions around the globe.
Attractively redesigned, this collection of First Nations oral literature is an important cultural record for future generations of Haida, scholars and other interested readers. It won the Edward Sapir Prize, awarded by the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, and it was chosen as the Literary Editor's Book of the Year by the Times of London.
Bringhurst brings these works to life in the English language and sets them in a context just as rich as the stories themselves one that reaches out to dozens of Native American oral literatures, and to mythtelling traditions around the world.
"The brilliant analysis of myth and culture will find its place alongside such popular investigations as Radin's The Trickster... A Story as Sharp as a Knife will make academics tremble with jealousy and students of myth-telling shiver with excitement."
"Once in a while a book appears that changes the way we see things. This is such a book. Bringhurst reclaims an extraordinary body of literature and teaches us to hear its sinewy, haunting music. In the process, he rewrites North American literary history and lays a depth charge in the assumptions of cultural anthropology. Rigorous and enchanting, a Story as Sharp as a Knife is a superb adventure of the mind and imagination. I couldn't put it down."
"One of the most important books to grace Canadian literature in many years."
"Bringhurst's accomplishment is beyond praise... A Story as Sharp as a Knife merits a wide readership and a passionate response. It also deserves to win every literary award in sight."
"Bringhurst's achievement is gigantic, as well as heroic. It's one of those works that rearranges the inside of your head -- a profound meditation on the nature of oral poetry and myth, and on the habits of thought and feeling that inform them."