Blog Archives

Well packaged history, Anna Mackenzie

Amundsen’s Way: The Race To The South Pole
Joanna Grochowicz
Allen and Unwin, $19.00,
ISBN 9781760637668

The Telegram
Philippa Werry
Pipi Press, $23.00,
ISBN 9780473462826

Amundsen’s Way delivers exactly what it promises on the cover: the story of Norwegian Roald Amundsen’s expedition to the South Pole, and the manner in which it was shaped by his single-minded determination to lead the first polar exploration team to reach it.

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Posted in Children, History, Non-fiction

On not relying on truthiness, Brian Easton 

A Conversation With My Country
Alan Duff
Penguin Random House, $39.00,
ISBN 9780143773269

In 1990, a comet brightened the New Zealand literary scene and society with the publication of Alan Duff’s Once Were Warriors, for it involved both an extraordinary literary style and a powerful story.

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Posted in Māori, Non-fiction, Review, Sociology

Doors and mirrors, Alex Mitcalfe Wilson 

The Chosen One
Joy H Davidson
DHD Publishing, $27.00,
ISBN 9780473448301

Harsu and the Werestoat
Barbara Else
Gecko Press, $35.00,
ISBN 9781776572199

The World of Greek Mythology
Ben Spies
Spies Publishing, $20.00,
ISBN 9780473455866

Fantasy has always mattered to me. I first sensed this around the same time I realised I was completely ill-adapted to my 1990s New Zealand childhood. I was a fat kid, a nervous perfectionist who was frightened of rugby and wanted to wear dresses. Most days, it felt like the sky was going to fall on my head. Luckily, I knew a few adults who were sensitive enough to notice my constant unease, and thoughtful enough to feed me stories. Those books were a magic door at the back of my wardrobe, the escape-hatch every lonely kid needs.

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Posted in Children, Fiction, History, Literature, Non-fiction, Review

Making conversation, Michele A’Court

Past Caring? Women, Work And Emotion
Barbara Brookes, Jane McCabe and Angela Wanhalla
Otago University Press, $40.00,
ISBN 9781988531342

Still Counting: Wellbeing, Women’s Work And Policy-making
Marilyn Waring
BWB Texts, $15.00,
ISBN 9781988545530

A few days ago at a book launch (I had written the foreword) a young man who also works in the comedy industry asked what I had been up to so far this year. Not wanting to ruin his party buzz with the real answer, I shrugged a bit and said, “Oh, you know, just the usual bits and pieces.” He smiled sympathetically, muttered something about how nice it must be to take a break – code in our business for, “Shit, sorry you can’t find work” – and wandered off to find someone more full of news to talk to. I slipped off to the bathroom to have a cry before presenting myself once again at the open bar.

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Posted in Essays, Gender, Non-fiction, Review, Sociology

Speaking frankly, Margaret Sparrow

My Body, My Business: New Zealand Sex Workers In An Era Of Change
Caren Wilton (Madeleine Slavick photographer)
Otago University Press, $45.00,
ISBN 9781988531328

As I write this review, I hear a news item that Dame Catherine Healy DNZM and Julie Bates AO, a leading Australian sex worker, are presenting a submission on the decriminalisation of prostitution to Members of the South Australian parliament. It demonstrates how far New Zealand has progressed on this issue. Sixteen years ago, in 2003, when the law changed, this scenario would never have been envisaged. In June 2018, both women received Queen’s Birthday Awards from their respective governments. In Healy’s case, she was made a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit. Bates became an Officer of the Order of Australia. Both awards were richly deserved for many years dedicated to improving the health and safety of sex workers.

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Posted in Essays, History, Non-fiction, Review, Sociology

Seeing how they run, Geoff Watson

When Running Made History
Roger Robinson
Canterbury University Press, $25.00,
ISBN 9780815611004

New Zealanders have a longstanding connection with running. Long-distance running was one of the early activities of Māori and, from at least as early as the 1880s, New Zealand athletes were taking part in international competitions. Running has been both an everyday activity and a sport in which New Zealanders have triumphed on the global stage: the achievements of Jack Lovelock, Peter Snell, Murray Halberg, John Walker, Allison Roe, Anne Audain, Lorraine Moller and Lisa Tamati, among others, have been enshrined in national memory. When Running Made History utilises Roger Robinson’s personal memories as a lens to explain how a formerly largely individualistic pursuit became a global phenomenon.

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Posted in Non-fiction, Review, Sociology, Sport

Believing you are a star, Nick Bollinger

Dead People I Have Known
Shayne Carter
Victoria University Press, $40.00,
ISBN 9781776562213

Rock odysseys can start in obscure places. Shayne Carter’s began in Brockville, a state-housing suburb of Dunedin, a city at the southern end of a country that to most of the world is little known, even more so in the 1970s when Carter was starting out. But whereas rock heroes normally wind up somewhere very different from where they began, Carter returned to Dunedin to write this memoir and, throughout the book, Dunedin never feels all that far away, even after its protagonist has been swept up into the mythical world of rock stardom. There is a late passage in which he finds himself again “stranded in Dunedin, where I signed up to the dole only weeks after being driven in a limousine to the Conan O’Brien show in Manhattan.”

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Posted in Autobiography, Music, Non-fiction, Review

Articulating an alternative, Julienne Molineaux

Government for the Public Good: The Surprising Science of Large-scale Collective Action 
Max Rashbrooke
Bridget Williams Books, $50.00,
ISBN 9781988545080

This is an optimistic book that aims to re-set the narrative on collective action and, in particular, how we discuss the role of government in our economic and social life. Author Max Rashbrooke’s previous books were on inequality (an edited collection) and on wealth in New Zealand (a BWB short text). Government for the Public Good: The Surprising Science of Large-Scale Collective Action continues Rashbrooke’s concern with how New Zealand can be a more egalitarian, fairer country. As with his previous books, Rashbrooke mixes his critique of the status quo with suggestions for policy improvements, but the main goal here is to present solutions. His confidence that there is an alternative infuses the book; his critique of what is essentially neoliberalism (a term he rarely uses) is countered in every case study chapter with examples of alternative, successful approaches to problem-solving, many sourced from overseas.

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Posted in Economics, Non-fiction, Politics & Law, Review

And on the strangest sea, Paul Moon

New Zealand and the Sea: Historical Perspectives 
Frances Steel (ed)
Bridget Williams Books, $60.00,
ISBN 9780947518707

Ocean: Tales of Voyaging and Encounter that Defined New Zealand
Sarah Ell
Penguin Random House, $70.00,
ISBN 9780143772675

Most histories of nations tend to be terrestrial-bound in their focus, and those of New Zealand are no exception. The land, after all, is where people live, where their social, cultural, and political institutions exist and evolve, and into which the roots of their sense of belonging are sunk. Yes, the sea gets a mention at times, usually as having served in an earlier era as some vast aquatic highway bringing migrants to the shore. Yet, even in this context, the sea tends to be portrayed more often as something that separates New Zealand from other countries – a generally bland oceanic backdrop to where all the “real” history takes place. Two books have now appeared which, in different ways, address aspects of the country’s relationship with the sea, and which both serve as antidotes to those many works which depict New Zealand as a place of forests and farms, cities and towns.

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Posted in History, Non-fiction, Review

Finding the way back, Nicholas Reid

Now When it Rains – A Writer’s Memoir 
Jeffrey Paparoa Holman
Steele Roberts, $35.00,
ISBN 9780947493776

A boy needs a father, but things can go badly wrong if the father is not good at fathering. This seems to be one of the main ideas implicit in Jeffrey Paparoa Holman’s “writer’s memoir”.

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Posted in Media, Non-fiction, Review
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