Auckland before the Harbour Bridge Graham Stewart Grantham House, $69.95, ISBN 1869340868. Almighty Auckland? ed Ian Carter, David Craig and Steve Matthewman Dunmore Press, $34.95, ISBN 0864694520 History is big these days but it wasn’t when I was young. My…
Eight Days a Week: The Beatles’ Tour of New Zealand 1964 Graham Hutchins Exisle Publishing, $34.95, ISBN 0908988559 Big Smoke: New Zealand City People in the ’60s and ’70s John Daley Random House, $39.95, ISBN 1869621085 Says Graham Hutchins, “Beatlemania…
Apes Road: Poems Since 1997 Rob Jackaman Hazard Press, $21.95, ISBN 1877270245 Working Voices John O’Connor & Eric Mould Hallard Press, $24.95, ISBN 0864770480 In his essay “The Narrow-Columned Middle Ground”, Australian Les Murray explores a myth: We tend nowadays…
The Penguin History of New Zealand Michael King Penguin, $29.95, ISBN 0143018671 A Short History of New Zealand Gordon McLauchlan Penguin, $29.95, ISBN 0143019082 One day at the start of the 21st century, happening to be staying in a hotel…
New Zealand and the Second World War Ian McGibbon Hodder Moa Beckett, $40.00, ISBN 1869589548 A Fair Sort of Battering: New Zealanders remember the Italian Campaign ed Megan Hutching HarperCollins, $40.00, ISBN 1869505050 The Desert Railway Brendan Judd Penguin, $29.95,…
Nice morning for it, Adam Vincent O’Sullivan Victoria University Press, $24.95, ISBN 0864734735 Vincent O’Sullivan’s poetry falls into three broad periods. The early books are not only forgotten, they are also impossible to find, though I once came across a…
Mansfield: A Novel C K Stead Vintage, $26.95, ISBN 1843431769 The short life of Katherine Mansfield has been well picked over. We have the biographies, the critical studies, her own journals and letters. Hardly a year goes by without the…
Muldoon Revisited ed Margaret Clark Dunmore Press, $39.95, ISBN 0864694652 What were you doing the day Robert Muldoon died? I was in Auckland, very recently returned to this country after 20 years overseas. I watched the coverage of the death…
My ideal reader, Elizabeth Knox
My ideal reader reads constantly, avidly, and personally. My ideal reader adds something to the domestic scene, looks as comfortable as a cat and as fine as a flower arrangement with a book in one hand and a cup of…
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