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MAGIC TRAVELS

THE UNLIKELY ADVENTURES OF A GEOLOGIST

An entertaining account of a boy edging toward manhood through a meandering picaresque.

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A geologist looks back on magic tricks, Arctic ordeals, and many encounters with feisty animals in this rollicking memoir.

McLaren, a Canadian geologist and consultant, recalls unusual pursuits, occupations, and journeys undertaken in his childhood and young adulthood. Growing up in Ottawa, he weathered several untoward lessons while learning to be a magician; one botched trick sent a boa constrictor lunging at a group of terrified cheerleaders. As a teenager, he worked two summers as a cowboy in the Canadian Rockies and recollects intricate procedurals on shoeing and packing horses along with many mishaps, including an agonizing horseback ride to a hospital after he managed to cut himself with both an ax and a chainsaw. After high school, McLaren spent a summer wandering Europe, sleeping in hostels and performing magic shows, and was set upon by guard dogs while relieving himself by the barbed wire along the East German border. In college, he landed another summer job in the Rockies on a geological mapping project and drove off a menacing grizzly by nailing it in the forehead with a tossed rock. The book culminates in a summer spent in the Canadian Arctic on a geology expedition, where he experienced “eerie and otherworldly” whiteouts—“with everything white and no visible horizon, it is like being suspended in emptiness”—and a tense encounter with a polar bear. McLaren’s reminiscences are mostly shaggy dog stories with no particular theme or moral, but they add up to a coherent account of maturation. Through his oddball jobs, japes, and pratfalls, readers see him accumulating knowledge—his horse-packing skills, for example, translated to snowmobiles—along with resourcefulness and initiative. His prose is vivid, punchy, and often raucous—“He held himself in place with a mouthful of my jeans while lashing out with his taloned hind legs in a series of violent kicks….If you have never been attacked by a man-eating rabbit, don’t sneer”—and waxes lyrical in odes to majestic northern landscapes. (“The deep orange orb of the sun competed with the white orb of the moon to cast rich dark shades of blue across an infinite, cloudless sky. Below, the snow on the mountain ice caps sparkled.”) The result is an engaging coming-of-age story full of hangdog charm.

An entertaining account of a boy edging toward manhood through a meandering picaresque.

Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2022

ISBN: 9781039151017

Page Count: 219

Publisher: FriesenPress

Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2023

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  • New York Times Bestseller

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107 DAYS

A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.

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An insider’s chronicle of a pivotal presidential campaign.

Several months into the mounting political upheaval of Donald Trump’s second term and following a wave of bestselling political exposés, most notably Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s Original Sin on Joe Biden’s health and late decision to step down, former Vice President Harris offers her own account of the consequential months surrounding Biden’s withdrawal and her swift campaign for the presidency. Structured as brief chapters with countdown headers from 107 days to Election Day, the book recounts the campaign’s daily rigors: vetting a running mate, navigating back-to-back rallies, preparing for the convention and the debate with Trump, and deflecting obstacles in the form of both Trump’s camp and Biden’s faltering team. Harris aims to set the record straight on issues that have remained hotly debated. While acknowledging Biden’s advancing decline, she also highlights his foreign-policy steadiness: “His years of experience in foreign policy clearly showed….He was always focused, always commander in chief in that room.” More blame is placed on his inner circle, especially Jill Biden, whom Harris faults for pushing him beyond his limits—“the people who knew him best, should have realized that any campaign was a bridge too far.” Throughout, she highlights her own qualifications and dismisses suggestions that an open contest might have better served the party: “If they thought I was down with a mini primary or some other half-baked procedure, I was quick to disabuse them.” Facing Trump’s increasingly unhinged behavior, Harris never openly doubts her ability to confront him. Yet she doesn’t fully persuade the reader that she had the capacity to counter his dominance, suggesting instead that her defeat stemmed from a lack of time—a theme underscored by the urgency of the book’s title. If not entirely sanguine about the future, she maintains a clear-eyed view of the damage already done: “Perhaps so much damage that we will have to re-create our government…something leaner, swifter, and much more efficient.”

A determined if self-regarding portrait of a candidate striving to define herself and her campaign on her own terms.

Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025

ISBN: 9781668211656

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2025

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025

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POEMS & PRAYERS

It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.

A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”

McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.

It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.

Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025

ISBN: 9781984862105

Page Count: 208

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025

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