Blog Archives
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
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Art,
Biography,
History,
Non-fiction,
Pacific,
Review
Salote, Queen of Paradise Margaret Hixon Otago University Press, $49.95, ISBN 1877133787 The image of Queen Salote, in London for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth in June 1953 – defiantly riding in an open coach in the pouring rain, and…
Building the Constitution ed Colin James Institute of Policy Studies, $45, ISBN 090893548X Some time in 1997, with the prolonged aftermath of the first MMP election still agitating the establishment and mightily diverting the rest of us, the idea gained…
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…
Purposeful nonsense? John O’Connor
Posted in Comment