Blog Archives
The Beetle in the Box: a love story Chris Else Vintage, $24.95, ISBN 1869414527 Anyone who has sat on the selection panel for a writer’s fellowship knows that the worst thing applicants can do is include a bald précis of…
Gone Surfing: The Golden Years of Surfing in New Zealand, 1950-1970 Luke Williamson Penguin, $34.95, ISBN 0140298908 Over the past few years I’ve spent a considerable amount of surfing time sitting on various beaches, board beside me, wondering why I’d…
Talking Pictures: Selected Poems Riemke Ensing HeadworX, $26.95, ISBN 0473068044 The cover of Riemke Ensing’s latest collection sends mixed typographic signals. You read Selected Poems first, at the top; but it’s in italic, and grey, so it defers to the…
Trade and politics I have a number of comments on Terence O’Brien’s review, in your March issue, of New Zealand in World Affairs, Volume III, 1972-1990, which I edited. The first is about New Zealand’s long and successful rearguard action…
Tagged with:
Issue 48,
June 2001
Posted in
Letters
Spring, 1940 (Christchurch) This morning Mary Ursula Bethell saw “Suddenly a weeping willow green, Beside the mechanic street.” Meantime Frank Thomas, Gear-changing effortlessly his fine machine, Motored over the “grey, stone-heavy bridge” To his garage – his garage –…
Volume 11 | Number 2 | Issue 48 | June 2001 Mary Varnham: Gavin McLean, Wellington – The First Years of European Settlement 1840-1850; Winsome Shepherd, Wellington’s Heritage – plants, gardens, and landscape; Julia Millen, Kirkcaldie & Stains –…
Tagged with:
Issue 48,
June 2001
Posted in
Contents
Southern Capital Christchurch: Towards a City Biography 1850-2000 ed John Cookson & Graeme Dunstall Canterbury University Press, $39.95, ISBN 0908812876 Christchurch Changing Geoffrey Rice Canterbury University Press, $29.95, ISBN 0908812531 Christchurch is my home city. My heart and my brain…
City of Reeds Tina Shaw Penguin Books, $24.95, ISBN 014029791X City of Reeds, Tina Shaw’s third novel, is a large and accomplished work. It’s an example of a relatively new departure in New Zealand fiction: the story-telling novel. This sort…
Shapes on the Wind David Lewis HarperCollins, $29.95, ISBN 073226801X In 1934, when I was seventeen, I celebrated my last days at boarding school by building a canoe/kayak and informing the headmaster that I was going home in it…
Captain Cook’s World: Maps of the Life and Voyages of James Cook RN John Robson Random House, $59.95, ISBN 1869414098 The publisher’s blurb states that the book under review “is an atlas, chronology and biography of the life and voyages”…
Tagged with:
Captain Cook,
Issue 48,
James Cook,
John Robson,
June 2001,
Phil Barton,
Random House
Posted in
Art,
Biography,
History,
Non-fiction,
Pacific,
Review