On the publication of a new memoir, former prime minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer pays tribute to historian Jock Phillips. Branded a dangerous, trendy lefty by Muldoon, Phillips has for many decades kept his intellectual navigation shining brightly. Making History – A New Zealand Story is a book that contains significant insights into New Zealand’s intellectual … Read more
New Zealand writer Sherryl Jordan’s elated, transcendent novel for young adults, Winter of Fire, was first released in 1992. A quarter-century later, fans’ pestering has paid off and it’s back in bookstores. This makes Catherine Woulfe very happy. And below, two more Winter of Fire megafans share what the book means to them. It’s hard … Read more
Last week Trevor McKewen wrote of his epiphany about Real Men Wear Black, the bestseller he wrote in 1992. It didn’t sound like the book I read a long time ago as an impressionable young rugby fan, writes Jamie Wall. I mean, I get what Trevor was saying, that we need to address toxic masculinity … Read more
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1 Normal People by Sally Rooney (Faber & Faber, $23) Please someone write us an essay about the Roonster and why she … Read more
New poetry by Auckland writer Joanna Cho. 1:52 Tsukuru, I wish I could watch a kererū with you. The roots of hyacinths are soft like leeks in the frying pan, or feet in the bath , and it’s these that make a mess. The locations of pipes, … Read more
Twenty-seven years ago, Trevor McKewen’s book about New Zealand rugby heroes celebrated a stoic, machismo national character. Recently his daughter asked him: would you want your grandsons to read that? I had always wanted to write a book. For a lot of my early working life, I was a sports journo. So I wrote a … Read more
Marian Keyes is a stone-cold legend: terrifically funny and emotionally intelligent, and never afraid of the dark. She deserves all the prizes. In lieu of that, here’s a heartfelt piece by Scarlett Cayford, who grew up steeped in Keyes’ stories and sensibilities. My first encounter with Marian Keyes was in a bedroom in Devonport in … Read more
A new book about the depiction of religion in New Zealand editorial cartoons reveals some disturbing truths. Last week the NZ Cartoon Archive at Wellington’s Alexander Turnbull Library published Mike Grimshaw’s Bishops, Boozers, Brethren & Burkas, which looks at religion in New Zealand through the eyes of the country’s cartoonists from the 1860s to the … Read more
Lo, another beautiful book from Te Papa Press! In The New Photography, Athol McCredie traces the memories and modus operandi of eight New Zealand photographers who, in the 1960s and 70s, pushed our photography into the realm of art. We dithered for days over which to feature here: John Fields, and his images of East Cape … Read more
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1. The New Zealand Wars: Ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa by Vincent O’Malley (Bridget Williams Books, $40) Faith in humanity = a … Read more
New poetry by Lisbon-based writer Hana Pera Aoake. The bigger the burn the tougher you are I sit under the plum tree and eat Christmas plums. The afternoon sun hits my face and I think about Halle Berry in Die Another Day kicking a knife through a copy of The Art of War and … Read more
City of Girls is not a cautionary tale, but rather a celebration of what happens when women cease to be cautious, writes Scarlett Cayford. I’ve loved Liz Gilbert for a while now. It wasn’t Eat, Pray, Love that won me over, though I have read it a multitude of times as it was one of … Read more
Today, longtime Time photographer Callie Shell releases a book of intimate images taken over more than a decade she spent photographing the Obamas. Hope, Never Fear is not a love-fest, she insists: “it is, instead, my personal portrait of a journey that changed us all for the better.” Here is the book’s introduction, abridged. I … Read more
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1 Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi (Sandstone, $27) Looks like winning the Man Booker Prize CAN get your apparently amazing saga … Read more
A new poem by acclaimed poet and performer Tusiata Avia. Massacre Thursday 14 March When I arrive in Auckland and Hine learns that I have moved back to Christchurch she asks me if I know it is a bad place it is built on a swamp many bad things have been done … Read more
Tom Augustine on the mythic satire of William Melvin Kelley’s A Different Drummer, written nearly 60 years ago and still too relevant. The haunting and oblique A Different Drummer, a classic of the civil rights era by unsung satirical mastermind William Melvin Kelley, takes its prophetic title from, and begins with, a quote from Henry … Read more
A fledgling writer asks five of the best how they are striking a balance between work – as in, for proper money – and writing. We like writers to be poor, but in a sexy way – black clothes from the op-shop, a windowless flat, and an endless supply of wine and cigarettes, but no … Read more
Last year prolific – and profitable – author Steff Green quit her day job to write full-time. And she’s creaming it. Responding to a recent Spinoff essay by Stephanie Johnson, she says it’s time for the old school to drop the scorn and learn from those nailing self-publishing. This story was published in June 2019. … Read more
What’s the best way to get adults reading? Get them reading when they’re children – and there’s no better place to start than the Unity Children’s Bestseller Chart. These lists of the bestselling children’s books at Unity Wellington and Little Unity in Auckland cover the sales period May 10 – June 6 2019. AUCKLAND 1 … Read more
The essential best-selling book chart in New Zealand, recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1 The New Zealand Wars: Ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa by Vincent O’Malley (Bridget Williams Books, $40) O’Malley continues his reign at the top, and in case you haven’t already bought it, can … Read more
New poetry by Auckland writer Fardowsa Mohamed. Alien When I was born, Earth held me in her mouth then promptly spat me out. I saw my first map of the world six years later. I remember the cartographer’s straight lines through Africa and I wondered if he could be trusted. My grandmother’s name … Read more
“Successful parenting is about ignoring the bad stuff and focusing unrelentingly on the good,” writes Catherine Woulfe – so let us rejoice in the line-up for best picture book at the 2019 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults. There are so many shit books out there for little kids. Books where the … Read more
Mark Manson has followed up his mega-selling The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck with another sweary self-helper. Mark Broatch tries to get into his head. Hi there. You might remember me from my previous book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. In that book, which I wrote when I was 32, … Read more
Four decades after holding a mirror up to Kiwi masculinity with the sensational play Foreskin’s Lament, Greg McGee is back with Necessary Secrets, a new novel that asks the same question: whaddarya? At a time when we might feel we’ve reached peak old privileged white bloke, it’s a brave writer who devotes the first 61 … Read more
On the eve of the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, New Zealand Chinese writer Tze Ming Mok writes a beautiful, bitter letter to an old friend in Xinjiang, grappling with matters of conscience, community survival, and Anne-Marie Brady’s ‘Magic Weapons’ paper. Originally published in the new collection Life on Volcanoes: Contemporary Essays But where were we? You … Read more
New poetry by Wellington poet and artist Ana Iti. All the way to Te Rerenga Wairua Does the spirit intrinsically know what direction to travel to get to Hawaiki? Or Heaven? Is there some colonial idea of blood quantum that first has to be observed? Would the saliva of the intangible get processed by … Read more
The essential best-selling book chart in New Zealand, recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1 The New Zealand Wars: Ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa by Vincent O’Malley (Bridget Williams Books, $40) Please read this breathtaking extract from some of O’Malley’s finest work. 2 The Meaning of Trees … Read more
Entries for the National Schools Poetry Award close in just over a month. Here, 2019 judge Chris Tse revisits the “surprisingly inspiring” poetry of his teenage years. The story of how I fell into writing poetry is peak teenage life: I was angsty and my friends were doing it. I could’ve turned to stronger vices … Read more
After editing The Luminaries, UK writer Max Porter released his own astronomically good book, Grief Is the Thing With Feathers. His new novel Lanny is short and strange; every page squishes with imagery, a rich compost of words. It begins: Dead Papa Toothwort wakes from his standing nap an acre wide and scrapes off dream dregs … Read more