Blog Archives
Recycled People: Forming New Relationships in Mid-life Coral Atkinson & Paula Wagemaker Shoal Bay Press, $24.95, ISBN 1877251046 Recycled People is a timely and welcome book. When one examines the generation of any timely idea, one discovers that it arises…
Beginnings and Endings Mostly I want to read what writers write, not look at r listen to them. But in the mid-1980s, I went to hear Margaret Atwood. Murder in the Dark had recently appeared, and she read “Happy…
Comment Lenin once said, “When I see a dung heap, I do not rummage in it to see if it is a dung heap.” Polemics, of course – entertaining, but not enlightening. Freed, Morepork, Parallax, And, Splash (all discontinued) –…
At Home in New Zealand: Houses History People ed Barbara Brookes Bridget Williams Books, $49.95, ISBN 1877242047 Dave the dishwasher, who had recently moved to Wellington from a small town, was drying cutlery behind the counter of a café I…
Morrieson’s Motel ed Gordon McLauchlan Tandem Press, $24.95, ISBN 1877178721 Well, it probably seemed like a good idea at the time. In fact, we know that it did, because Gordon McLauchlan tells us so. In the introduction to Morrieson’s Motel…
A Book in the Hand: Essays on the History of the Book in New Zealand ed Penny Griffith, Peter Hughes and Alan Loney Auckland University Press, $39.95, ISBN 1869402316 These fifteen essays, based on papers given at the first New…
Tagged with:
Alan Loney,
Auckland University Press,
Issue 48,
June 2001,
Keith Maslen,
Penny Griffith,
Peter Hughes
Posted in
Essays,
History,
Literature,
Non-fiction,
Review
Mechanical grief And I see you, fortuitously, in the cheapest chicken lot in town, tucked hard against a corrugated fence, with your bald front tyres sponging in a wind flogged puddle. Sullen rain has washed the many days of…
As a science undergraduate in the mid-1950s I was aware of C P Snow’s attempts to awaken people to the problem of the two cultures. Perhaps my growing interest and work in theatre had given me an edge over my…
Magnitude Eight Plus: New Zealand’s Biggest Earthquake Rodney Grapes Victoria University Press, $29.95, ISBN 0864733400 Poor Baron Von Alzdorf, owner of Wellington’s largest brick building, a hotel, was the township’s only casualty in the earthquake which struck at 9.17 pm…
Love in the Land of Midas Kapka Kassabova Penguin, $29.95, ISBN 0140298797 I have to say, at the outset, that I enjoyed reading Kapka Kassabova’s second novel. It’s a good story, told in such a way as to keep the…
Purposeful nonsense? John O’Connor
Posted in Comment