Blog Archives
The invisible hand, Margot Schwass
The Occupiers: New Zealand Veterans Remember Post-war Japan Alison Parr Penguin Books, $45.00, ISBN 9780143567240 In Love and War: Kiwi Soldiers’ Romantic Encounters in Wartime Italy Susan Jacobs Penguin Books, $40.00, ISBN 9780143567554 I detoured into these two books while…
Tagged with: Alison Parr, Issue 100, Margot Schwass, Penguin Books, Summer 2012, Susan Jacobs
Posted in History, Non-fiction, Review, War
Posted in History, Non-fiction, Review, War
Poem – Peter Bland
We call it winter We call it winter, this Northland chill with its one-bar heater, its woollen cap, its hint of frost on the roof. But you have to laugh when you think of Eskimos crowding round a whale-oil…
Poem – Harry Ricketts
At the Frankfurt Book Fair: a triolet We do our best to do our stuff, our quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle. A Lion in the Meadow meets Alan Duff: We do our best to do our stuff. The things…
Only the lonely, Timothy G Jones
The Lonely and the Alone: The Poetics of Isolation in New Zealand Fiction Doreen D’Cruz and John C Ross Rodopi, €85.00, ISBN 9789042034747 Loneliness holds a special place in New Zealand literature. If there is a single image that casts…
Tagged with: Doreen D’Cruz, Issue 100, John C Ross, Rodopi, Summer 2012, Timothy G Jones
Posted in Literature, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in Literature, Non-fiction, Review
Obsolescence is just the beginning, Peter Simpson
Director of The Holloway Press Peter Simpson celebrates the joy of letterpress. The Holloway Press is dedicated to letterpress printing, a technology rendered largely obsolete by the dawn of the digital age. Letterpress printing – that is, the direct impression…
Gentleman’s agreement, Tony Simpson
Other People’s Wars: New Zealand in Afghanistan, Iraq and the War on Terror Nicky Hager Craig Potton Publishing, $45.00, ISBN 9781877517693 About a year ago, shortly after this book was published, I heard Nicky Hager in an interview deploring the…
Tagged with: Craig Potton Publishing, Issue 100, Nicky Hager, Summer 2012, Tony Simpson
Posted in Non-fiction, War
Posted in Non-fiction, War
No need for bookshelves, Guy Somerset
New Zealand Listener books and culture editor Guy Somerset tries to be brave about e-books. It’s the bookmarks I’ll miss most. At least that’s what I used to think when I was a fervent advocate of the demise of the…
Medical check-up, Rae Varcoe
The Good Doctor: What Patients Want Ron Paterson Auckland University Press, $40.00, ISBN 9781869405922 Neither title nor subtitle accurately reflects the thrust of this book. It is less about how we might distinguish the good doctor (and define what we…
Tagged with: Auckland University Press, Issue 100, Rae Varcoe, Ron Paterson, Summer 2012
Posted in Health, Non-fiction, Review
Posted in Health, Non-fiction, Review
Letters – Issue 100
It’s a polemic Your reviewer Louise O’Brien (NZB, Spring 2012) criticises me for not offering solutions “to the many problems which [The Passionless People Revisited] lays out so emphatically”. Oh dear. It is a polemic, a legitimate form of disputation…
Cashing up, Jane Westaway
Posted in Comment