Return Yesterday I went to your house Wondering, as it is empty now, If I would meet the ghost of the life I too lived there But what I met was bush where my garden used to be…
Light Fantastic: Dance Floor Courtship in New Zealand Georgina White HarperCollins, $49.99, ISBN 9781869506193 Holiday Seasons: Christmas, New Year and Easter in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand Alison Clarke Auckland University Press, $35.00, ISBN 9781869403829 Who doesn’t recall the excited flutter of…
Lucky Bastard Peter Wells Vintage, $27.99, ISBN 9781869419431 At a recent funeral for a friend’s father many of us were surprised – and surprisingly moved – when a uniformed soldier played The Last Post. It struck a sombre note during…
Crisis of Identity? The Mission and Management of Universities in New Zealand Wilf Malcolm and Nicholas Tarling Dunmore Press, $39.95, ISBN 9781877399275 Clark Kerr, a great president of the University of California at Berkeley, once defined the university as “a…
The Kindness of Strangers: Kitchen Memoirs Shonagh Koea (illustrations by Peter Wells) Vintage, $34.99, ISBN 9781869419189 It wasn’t in her own mother’s kitchen that the young Shonagh found out food could make her happy. Things at home were a bit…
Ripples on the Lake Dawn Rotorangi HarperCollins, $26.99, ISBN 13978869506391 Cutting Caleb Keys Glenn Bowden Penguin Books, $28.00, ISBN 9780143006008 Rocking Horse Road Carl Nixon Vintage, $27.99, ISBN 9781969419073 The Blue Mary McCallum Penguin Books, $28.00, ISBN 9780143007234 In the…
A Nest of Singing Birds:100 years of the New Zealand School Journal Gregory O’Brien Learning Media, $59.95, ISBN 9780790319636 It has almost no equivalent elsewhere. Margaret Mahy has called it a “national treasure”. For many, it has been the beginning…
Playing Friends Marilyn Duckworth Vintage, $27.99, ISBN 9781869418694 Trendy But Casual Paula Morris Penguin Books, $28.00, ISBN 9780143006398 It’s that time in later middle age when school reunions have become like a dawn (or twilight) parade of veterans and survivors.…
The Problem of Prisons: Correction Reform in New Zealand since 1840 Greg Newbold Dunmore Press, $49.95, ISBN 9790187399213 Mt Eden Prison in Auckland speaks of an era when punishment and incarceration were very visible. Its turreted buildings of black volcanic…