Blog Archives
Volume 16 | Number 1 | Issue 72 | March 2006 Margaret Mahy: Janet Frame (illustrations David Elliot), Mona Minim and the Smell of the Sun Stevan Eldred-Grigg: Bronwyn Dalley and Gavin McLean (eds), Frontier of Dreams: The Story…
Peter Munz, Professor Emeritus of History at Victoria University of Wellington, reads into two prestigious publications by New Zealanders. The simultaneous 2004 publication of two books on the way we understand and operate in the world was an unusual event…
Blindsight Maurice Gee Penguin, $34.95, ISBN 0143020234 Alice Ferry, narrator and co-protagonist of Maurice Gee’s new novel, is a mycologist – an expert on fungi. That is, her professional life is devoted to studying spongy, fragile, morbid life-forms that lurk…
Making Ends Meet: Essays and Talks 1992-2004 Ian Wedde Victoria University Press, $39.95, ISBN 086473503 In the title essay of this wonderful collection, originally given as a talk on issues of research and archiving at the National Library of New…
A Short History of Paradise Norman Bilbrough Penguin, $28.00, ISBN 0143020358 Kissing Shadows Renée Huia, $34.99, ISBN 1869692039 How often can one say of local fiction, and mean it, that it’s an absolute delight to read? Known as a writer…
Rex purveyor of tall tales & veteran of Gallipoli, the Western Front. carpenter & model maker, smoker of ‘roll-yr-owns’, thin as a rake, he grew only asparagus for an anaemic looking wife who loved the races & left him &…
How to Catch a Fish Kevin Ireland Awa Press, $24.99, ISBN 0958253862 How to Drink a Glass of Wine John Saker Awa Press, $24.99, ISBN 095823582X Discussing Aldous Huxley’s On the Margin in his 2002 biography of that now untrendy…
New Zealand Society of Authors president Chris Else examines the options for funding a home-grown literature. In offering his radical rethink of Creative New Zealand’s policy for funding literature (NZB, December 2005), Tim Hazledine suggests the only reasonable justification for…
A Box of Bees Emily Dobson Victoria University Press, $17.95, ISBN 0864735103 As It Was in the Beginning Stu Bagby Steele Roberts, $19.95, ISBN 1877338540 Raw Places John Horrocks Steele Roberts, $19.95, ISBN 1877338451 Who can deny the bliss of…
Last Words: Approaches to Death in New Zealand’s Cultures and Faiths ed Margot Schwass Bridget Williams Books, $29.99, ISBN 1877242349 The primary school my daughter attends has one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse populations in the New Zealand…
The quality question, Chris Else
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