About BC Books Online
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."
Description
“By June, Philip’s view of English Bay, what’s left of it, will be utterly gone. It was always going to happen. For years now, it’s been getting harder and harder to see what’s out there. For years now, it’s been getting harder and harder to know what to do.”
Eight linked stories, all set around Christmastime in Vancouver’s West End neighbourhood, explore the seasonal tug-of-war between expectation and disappointment. These tales give shelter to characters from various walks of life whose experience of transcendence leaves them more alienated than consoled.
I Saw Three Ships captures a West End community vanishing under pressure from development and skyrocketing real-estate prices. As arch as they are elegiac, as funny as they are melancholy, these stories honour a cherished period in the history of the West End. Sometimes twisted, sometimes tender, I Saw Three Ships will speak to all who have ever been stuck spinning their wheels at the corner of Heathen and Holy.
Contributor Notes
Bill Richardson, winner of the Stephen Leacock medal for humour and former CBC Radio personality, is the author of numerous books for both adults and children, including plays, poetry, and fiction.
Awards
- , The BC and Yukon Book Prizes’ Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award
- Long-listed, Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour
Editorial Reviews
Richardson’s prose is dense for a dense neighbourhood. He stuffs jokes and memories into each paragraph, just as his characters stuff treasured stuff into their apartments ... It’s an elegiac holiday read as characters ache and reminisce while the beloved landmarks of the West End are claimed in the background by “cranes, backhoes, diggers.”
—The Tyee
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"Richardson won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour in 1994 for Bachelor Brothers’ Bed and Breakfast, the first book in his Bachelor Brothers trilogy. With I Saw Three Ships, Richardson might have another award winner on his hands."
—Winnipeg Free Press
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"A compassionate book ... with the added bonus of being quirky."
—The Ormsby Review
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“Richardson has crafted a gift for all seasons here.”
—Tom Sandborn, Vancouver Sun
“An elegiac holiday read as characters ache and reminisce while the beloved landmarks of the West End are claimed in the background by 'cranes, backhoes, diggers.'"
—The Tyee
"A compassionate book ... with the added bonus of being quirky"
—The Ormsby Review
“Richardson is in fine form in these stories, many of which appeared first in the Georgia Straight, Reader’s Digest or on CBC Radio. Expanded and polished for publication in this volume, they represent a triumph of whimsy and compassion, humility, humour and lapidary prose.”
—Tom Sandborn, Vancouver Sun
