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Letters – Issue 78

Posted on June 1, 2007 by NZ Books

NZB’s new look Congratulations on the new look New Zealand Books with the iconic black cover. Well done also on the Creative New Zealand funding; it’s nice to see it going to something that also offers a critical eye on…

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Letters – Issue 77

Posted on March 1, 2007 by NZ Books

Striking back Your reviewer of Revolution: The 1913 Great Strike in New Zealand, edited by Melanie Nolan (NZB, December 2006), rightly stresses agency among workers, as I have frequently done. But this does not alter the fact that the state…

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Letters – Issue 76

Posted on December 1, 2006 by NZ Books

Hone Heke’s importance Rawiri Taonui in his review of my book Ngapua (NZB, October 2006) expresses reservations over my claim that Hone Heke Ngapua was one of the greatest Maori leaders of the last two centuries. Until recently, given Ngapua’s…

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Letters – Issue 75

Posted on September 1, 2006 by NZ Books

Worth a thousand words Your reviewer, Paul Thompson (NZB, August 2006) says of Laurence Aberhart’s Domestic Architecture (1974-2005): The function of this book is problematic – its natural meaning would seem to be as a catalogue to accompany an exhibition,…

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Letters – Issue 74

Posted on June 1, 2006 by NZ Books

Nuclear reactors We wish to dissent from the lengthy review accorded to Dr Andew McEwan’s book Nuclear New Zealand: Sorting Fact from Fiction (NZB, October 2005). This review contains errors. One is the claim that New Zealand is poor in…

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Letters – Issue 73

Posted on March 1, 2006 by NZ Books

Reviewer d’un certain age Dear John McCrystal, I don’t know you, and I have no idea of your age. Hence I have two questions. Just so I know in the event I get asked to review one of your books…

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Letters – Issue 72

Posted on December 1, 2005 by NZ Books

Cooking the books Tim Hazledine (NZB, December 2005) believes “cookbooks, textbooks, sporting books and so on” should be excluded from government funding of literature, on the basis that these genres are “unworthy of further public encouragement”. Wine books in recent years – competing against histories and biographies – have…

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Letters – Issue 71

Posted on September 1, 2005 by NZ Books

Going for the kill There are curious contradictions in Guy Somerset’s editorial, “Review and be damned” (NZB, October 2005). Literary life in New Zealand apparently amounts to “rarefied navel-gazing”, supermarket politeness and authorial complaint, all dire “small-country” traits. Yet these…

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Letters – Issue 68

Posted on June 1, 2005 by NZ Books

Sense and intention Thanks to Chris Else for the review of my latest novel Tu (NZB, December 2004). However a mistake has been made. In the third-to-last paragraph of the review there has been a misquotation from the book. The…

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Letters – Issue 67

Posted on September 1, 2004 by NZ Books

Better than boring  Andrew Mason’s sulphurous response (NZB, December 2004) to my article on academic reviewers – the article that level-headed Dame Fiona Kidman called level-headed – made through the fumes one point I could discern that I can help…

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