Blog Archives

Two outstanding plant books, Kerry Carman

Flowering Plants of New Zealand Colin Webb, Peter Johnson and Bill Sykes DSIR Botany, Caxton Press, Christchurch, 1990, $39.95 Wildflowers of New Zealand Owen Bishop Hodder and Stoughton, Auckland, 1990, $39.95 ‘Wildflower air is the sweetest air’, wrote Richard Jeffries

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Posted in Natural History, Non-fiction, Review

Chronicler of our ‘provincial’ past, Lawrence Jones

Always the Islands of Memory Noel Virtue, Vintage Books, Random Century Group, Auckland, 1991, $24.95 Noel Virtue’s fourth novel appeared in England early this year and like his third one In the Country of Salvation received favourable attention, Christopher Hawtree in The Spectator going

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Reassuring handbooks, Marie Bell

What Makes a Good School?  G P Books, Wellington, 1990, $12.95 Your Toddler Mary Stevenson and David Geddis, G P Books, Wellington, 1990, $12.95 What Makes a Good School? is timely. It aims to help parents, particularly those on boards of

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Posted in Education, Non-fiction, Review

Hard-edged social realism, Vincent O’Sullivan

The Shining City Stevan Eldred-Grigg, Penguin, Auckland, 1991, $24.95 Once upon a time there was the working class. It lived in wretched houses, did boring jobs, spoke with a consistently vulgar vitality, and as a sort of class badge, said

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Fracture Country, Brian Turner

It’s Saturday 21 September, 3:45 p.m. I’m lying flat on my back in Ward 3B, Room 11, Dunedin Hospital. Four of us, flat on our backs, for this is fracture country. Ron, a farmer from Saddle Hill, broke his tibia

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Posted in Comment

A peculiarly contemporary figure, Erik Olssen

The Verse of Edward Tregear K R Howe (ed), Nagare Press, Palmerston North, 1991, $20 The Singer in a Songless Land, A Life of Edward Tregear 1846-1931 K R Howe, Auckland University Press, 1991, $39.95 Edward Tregear was one of

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Posted in Biography, History, Non-fiction, Review

Valuable studies of medicine and health, Bronwyn Dalley

A Healthy Country: Essays on the Social History of Medicine in New Zealand Linda Bryder (ed), Bridget Williams Books, Wellington, 1991, $29.95 A Question of Adoption Anne Else, Bridget Williams Books, Wellington, 1991, $29.95 Selfish Generations? The Ageing of New

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

Compact and elegant, Elric Hooper

Ngaio Marsh Margaret Lewis, Bridget Williams Books, Wellington, 1991, $29.95 This is more a meditation on a book than a detached and ruthless review. I must declare bias on two counts. First I was a pupil and latter-day friend of

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Posted in Biography, Non-fiction, Review

New beginning in ethnic history, Rory Sweetman

Half the World from Home: Perspectives on the Irish in New Zealand 1860-1950, Donald Harman Akenson, Victoria University Press, Wellington, 1990, $39.95 Since the pioneering efforts of Richard Davis in the late 1960s the New Zealand Irish have been largely

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Posted in History, Non-fiction, Review, Sociology

Two illuminating lives, Juliet Rowe

Aunts and Windmills Pauline O’Regan, Bridget William Books, Wellington, 1991, $24.95 May May Davis, Crewenna, Nelson, 1990, $19.90 Pauline O’Regan has expanded those tantalising glimpses of life in a small rural community described in her first book A Changing Order, into a

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Posted in Autobiography, Memoir, Non-fiction
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