Blog Archives

Salt and vinegar, Penelope Todd

Humming  Rachel McAlpine Hazard Press, $29.99, ISBN 1877270970   The Black Madonna  Tina Shaw Penguin, $28.00, ISBN 0143019880 Two books by New Zealand women: one is a full-immersion Kiwi experience, the other set in Germany and America, and bears no

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Despatches from the rugby jungle, Paul Thomas

Inside Anton Oliver with Brian Turner Hodder Moa, $49.99, ISBN 1869589912 The Winter Game: Rediscovering the Passion of Rugby Todd R Nicholls Mainstream Publishing, $49.95, ISBN 1840189150 The New Zealand book trade has long had a vested interest in demythologising

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Posted in Non-fiction, Review, Sport

Poem – Stephanie de Montalk

Consultation   You say the mind will leave its shallow convolutions and fissures and enter the skin, bone and irascible fluid of the tympanic organ of balance to produce vertiginous dreams and scenes of high drama on stairways and small

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Posted in Poem

Ambitious manoeuvres, John McCrystal

Let Me Sing You Gentle Songs Linda Olsson Penguin, $28.00, ISBN 0143020285 Café Wars Barbara Strathdee Tara Publishing, $29.95, ISBN 0476016061 About Turns Maggie Rainey-Smith Black Swan, $27.99, ISBN 1869416791 Look around at any session of any literary festival, and

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Heroes, villains, fatal flaws, Jenny Robin Jones

Catching the Current Jenny Pattrick Black Swan, $27.95, ISBN 1869417259 Union Belle Deborah Challinor HarperCollins, $31.99, ISBN 186950559X The Love Apple Coral Atkinson Black Swan, $27.95, ISBN 1869417208 New Zealanders, we are told, are avid for their history. To help

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Posted in Fiction, Literature, Review

Under cover, Jenny Nicholls

Fronting up: Classic New Zealand Magazine Covers Richard Wolfe David Ling Publishing in association with Auckland War Memorial Museum, $49.99, ISBN 1877378062 There are too many magazines. But I would say that. For a number of years (outside the timespan

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Posted in Media, Non-fiction, Review, Sociology

Just looking, thanks, Julia Millen

Going Up, Going Down: The Rise and Fall of the Department Store Helen B Laurenson Auckland University Press, $34.99, ISBN 186940341X Before TV and 24-hour on-tap entertainment, department stores provided escapism on a grand scale. Looking back to my childhood,

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Posted in History, Non-fiction, Review, Sociology

Frontiers of marketing, Stevan Eldred-Grigg

Frontier of Dreams: The Story of New Zealand ed Bronwyn Dalley and Gavin McLean TVNZ/Hodder Moa, $79.95, ISBN 1869710061 “Another damned, thick, square, book!” We’ve all heard the story about those words spoken by a doltish Duke of Gloucester upon

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Posted in Health, Non-fiction, Review

Christmas list

  New Zealand Books reviewers choose which book they’d most like to see in their Christmas stocking and why. Owen Marshall: The Journals of John Cheever, unfortunately out of print; a wonderfully candid and elegant insight into the life of

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Posted in Imprints, Opinion
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