The Seaboard Review of Books September 29, 2025
Volume 2, Issue 40 of The Seaboard Review of Books, September 29, 2025
In this issue:
The Wax Child by Olga Ravn, Translated By Martin Aitken
The Hunt by Nick Wilkshire
21 Things You Need to Know About Indigenous Self-government by Bob Joseph
Travesties by Karl Jirgens
A Stubborn Elephant Seal and a Dreamer Pig
Fiction
Non-Fiction
Poetry
Children’s Books
A Stubborn Elephant Seal and a Dreamer Pig
Hot Takes: Brief Notes on Books Present & Past
(Note: clicking on the underlined link takes you to the book’s publisher page or Amazon.ca for more information or for purchasing purposes. Support your local bookseller or independent publisher if you can.)
Adventures in the Radio Trade: A Memoir by Joe Mahoney
During my childhood and teen years, CBC radio was usually playing in the background at our house during the day. This made Joe Mahoney’s memoir Adventures in the Radio Trade a compelling read, as it evoked memories of listening to shows like Morningside and As It Happens.
Mahoney worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for more than three decades. His memoir focusses on his close-to-20-year career working on the technical side of CBC’s radio operations before he moved into management roles. Mahoney shares vignettes about personalities he worked with, the technical challenges he faced on the job, and how the job and the equipment evolved over the years. He shares interactions with radio hosts like Peter Gzowski and Stuart McLean, and with famous interviewees like Margaret Atwood. He also provides a sense of the behind-the-scenes camaraderie among the radio techs as they did their best to bring quality radio programming to the air waves.
Among the chapters I enjoyed the most were those revolving around Mahoney’s experiences working in the CBC radio drama department. Readers looking for a smooth-reading, entertaining book that takes you behind the scenes at a Canadian institution should find Adventures in the Radio Trade of interest. (Contributed by Lisa Timpf)
Novellas are great: a longer short story and a shorter long story. ANIMALS is no exception, and if I attempt to even remotely describe it, I will not only fail, but will ruin the reader’s enjoyment of this gem. Suffice it to say that I was never a hunter of animals, and I am happy to be able to say that, especially after reading this book.(James)
TSR Team News
Melanie Marttila is pleased to announce that her poem “Vasilisa,” originally published by Graeme Cameron in Polar Borealis 30 is in the Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction, Volume 3, publishing October 14, 2025.
She is deeply honoured to be among such stellar company.
And….
She will be on two panels at this year’s Can-Con (October 17 to 19, 2025 at the Brookstreet Hotel, Kanata, Ontario)!
The first will be “The Art of Rest” at 8 pm on Friday, October 17, and the second is “The Taste of Sadness: Writing Emotional Dysregulation” at 2:30 pm on Sunday, October 19.
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Thanks for reading this issue of The Seaboard Review of Books!
James M. Fisher, editor-in-chief