Reading the North

By Charles D. Hayes (Autodidactic Press, $16.95)

The blurb: Wasilla resident and self-taught philospopher Hayes explores the value of thinking for oneself, taking responsibility as a citizen in a democracy and overcoming bias to pursue the better argument in this collection of essays, ranging in topics from memories, movies gullibility and self-help culture to honor, war, capitalism and justice.

Excerpt: "Do you think of yourself primarily as a citizen or a consumer? A generation ago this would have been a silly question. Not so today. More and more, our country is becoming a democracy in aspiration only. The phenomenal success of special-interest lobbies and mass marketing have had the cumulative linguistic effect of overwriting us metaphorically as persons of political rights and responsibilities and turning us into people with nothing much going for us other than our purchasing preferences."

Opening Days: A Fly Fisherman Writes

By Richard Chiappone (Barclay Creek Press, $24.95)

The blurb: Chiappone, a resident of Anchor Point, describes the life of a fisherman in a series of personal essays, short stories and poems, all while focusing little on the actual task of fishing.

Excerpt: "Maybe it's my Catholic upbringing, but I have this horrible feeling that eventually we will all get exactly what we deserve. That's why I think I must be living someone else's life right now, because today I caught an eight-pound bonefish and met the loveliest female bartender in all of the Bahamas. It is either my third day on Abaco Island, or I have actually died and entered heaven with somebody else's ID."

Coastal Fishes of the Pacific Northwest

By Andy Lamb and Phil Edgell (Harbour Publishing, $29.95)

The blurb: This is the revised and updated second edition of the bestselling field guide to marine fishes of Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and Northern California.

Excerpt: "The classification, or scientific ordering, of plants and animals constantly changes. Since the first edition of this guide, taxonimists have decided that salmon, trout and char deserve a subfamily category rather than a family status. Within the still-existing family Salmonidae, all the species are now sorted into three distinct subfamilies: the whitefishes, Coregoninae; the graylings, Thymallinae; and the Salmoninae, containing salmon, trout and chars. Therefore, while salmon, trout and char can still be referred to as salmonids, they are more precisely salmonins."

-- Compiled by Matt Sullivan, Anchorage Daily News