Blog Archives

What about the pets? Suzanne Innes-Kent

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

Margaret Atwood in New Zealand, Anne Else

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…
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Posted in Opinion

Purposeful nonsense? John O’Connor

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) –…
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Posted in Comment

NZ domestic, Lois Daish

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

Not a hot Friday, Denis Welch

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…
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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review, Short stories

Turning the pages, Keith Maslen

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…
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Posted in Essays, History, Literature, Non-fiction, Review

Poem – Owen Marshall

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…
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Posted in Poem

The two cultures, Ray Henwood

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…
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Posted in Imprints

All shook up, Charlotte MacDonald

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…
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Posted in History, Non-fiction, Review, Science

Extraordinary eyes, Vivienne Jepsen

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…
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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review
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