Margaret’s Roses Christmas Day and Uncle Frank is glued to the Queen’s Speech. Her pigeon voice glides over oceans and out of the fraying mouth of a wireless. She wishes us well stuck at far-flung corners of the Commonwealth…
Love This Life: Lyrics 1978-2001 Neil Finn Allen & Unwin, $35.00, ISBN 1865085081 Lyrics without melody Mahinarangi Tocker Street Women Press, $19.95, ISBN 0473074427 I have always been a passionate pop fan, but never a great lover of the printed…
Little Moon Emma Neale Vintage, $24.95, ISBN 1869414756 Little Moon, Emma Neale’s second novel, following the success of Night Swimming in 1998, is an account of the troubled childhood and adolescence of a young woman growing up in New Zealand.…
World Famous in New Zealand: How New Zealand’s Leading Firms Became World-Class Competitors Colin Campbell-Hunt et al Auckland University Press, $39.95, ISBN 1869402499 The reforms initiated by Sir Roger Douglas in 1984 gave New Zealand businesspeople a wonderful opportunity to take…
Life (and death) in a Small City Garden Philippa Swan Godwit, $24.95, ISBN 1869620798 In the vast and varied field of literature, gardens and writing are a classic pairing. Well-told stories of personal experience are few and far between, grist to…
The Merchant of the Zeehaen: Isaac Gilsemans and the voyages of Abel Tasman Grahame Anderson Te Papa Press, published in association with the Royal Netherlands Embassy and the New Zealand-Netherlands Foundation (Inc), $49.95, ISBN 0909010757 The origins of this fascinating book…
Lady Travellers: The Tourists of Early New Zealand Bee Dawson Penguin Books, $39.95, ISBN 0141004150 Lady Travellers is a successor to Bee Dawson’s Lady Painters, which appeared in 1999, and makes me wonder if there’s a series planned – Lady…