Blog Archives

Careful selection, definite intent, Angela Sears

Palmers Garden Show Guide to Gardening in New Zealand Random House, $39.95 Garden Style in New Zealand Rod Barnett, Random House, $49.95 Perennial Gardening in New Zealand Christine Dann and Tony Wyber, Bridget Williams Books, $49.95 Plants and gardens are

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Posted in Non-fiction, Review

Prescription or poison, Brian Easton

New Zealand Can be Different and Better Wolfgang Rosenberg, New Zealand Monthly Review Society Those who wish to challenge Wolfgang Rosenberg’s policy prescriptions must confront the outstanding performance of the New Zealand economy in the first part of the postwar

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Who buys? Nigel Cox

Mountains of the South John Gordon and John Rundle, Random Century, $49.95 There was a time when big “glossies” were of real significance to the book trade. Large-format pictorials with high production values which showed beautiful New Zealand at its

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Posted in Art, Non-fiction, Review

Finishing us off, Margaret Clark

Unfinished Business Roger Douglas, Random House, $29.95 The Tragedy of the Market Mike O’Brien and Chris Wilkes, Dunmore Publishing, $27.95 I remember the first time I set eyes on David Lange. The then recently elected member for Mangere had long,

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A variety of voices, Mark Williams

100 New Zealand Poems Bill Manhire (ed), Godwit, $29.95 Some years ago I edited a small anthology of New Zealand poetry. It was a truly hellish experience. Some poets wanted to know how much space had been given to rivals,

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Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review

An aberrant strain, Denis Welch

Top of the Greasy Pole Neale McMillan, McIndoe, $29.95 The record of political leadership in New Zealand is not inspiring. Out of 37 Premiers and Prime Ministers since 1854 only two could be called outstanding, rather than merely memorable. There

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Wrenched from the alphabet, Mark Williams

Iain Sharp and I were contemporaries in the English department at Auckland University in the early 1970s. In the first year of our masters programme we collaborated on a series of parodies of the poems that had appeared in Arthur

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Posted in Comment, Literature, Poetry

Embers of hope, W H Oliver

Sir Joseph Ward: A Political Biography Michael Bassett, Auckland University Press, 1993, $39.95 There is a paradox in the 6 November election. Voters objecting to the trend of the past 10 years toward less and weaker government have, in their

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

New confidence and authority, Jane Stafford

Seven Days on Mykonos Anne French, Auckland University Press, $19.95 To know who you are, you have to have a place to come from, says Seamus Heaney. But if you are a New Zealander, you also have to have a

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Posted in Literature, Poetry, Review

Editorial – Issue 11

Towards a new era, Colin James The Rank group now controls half of the bookselling trade, with Whitcoulls, Bennetts, London, Philip King and a part share in University Bookshops. More important, according to informal trade estimates, it controls 60% or

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