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 When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut (Pushkin Press, $37) Maths, cyanide, suicide, gardening; ye gods. The … Read more
Danyl McLauchlan reviews Stuart Ritchie’s Science Fictions, which outlines the staggering systemic flaws in the funding and publication of scientific papers. Back in August of 2006 a number of New Zealand scientists were caught up in a media controversy about whether Māori had a genetic predisposition towards violent crime. It kicked off when an epidemiologist … Read more
Lucy Revill’s The Residents is a blog about daily life in Wellington that has morphed into a stylish, low-key coffee-table book featuring interviews and photographic portraits of 38 Wellingtonians. In this extract, Revill profiles Eboni Waitere, owner and executive director of Huia Publishers. The Residents features names like Monique Fiso and Jacinda Ardern, a bunch … Read more
The first Friday Poem for 2021 is by Wellington poet Rebecca Hawkes. While you were partying I studied the blade I your ever-loving edgelord God-emperor of the bot army & bitcoin mine subsisting on an IV drip of gamer girl bathwater finally my loneliness is your responsibility………. you see I need a girlfriend assigned to … 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 Troy: The Siege of Troy Retold by Stephen Fry (Michael Joseph, $37) If you’re in any way unsure about Stephen Fry … Read more
How did America get to this point? A Time to Build, by leading conservative intellectual Yuval Levin, goes a long way to explaining what has happened there, and in New Zealand, too, writes a former leader of the NZ National Party. Yuval Levin used to be one of the most influential political theorists in the … Read more
Summer reissue: Alie Benge on the book that built a shimmering private world for her and her sisters. First published 10 February 2020. Independent journalism depends on you. Help us stay curious in 2021. The Spinoff’s journalism is funded by its members – click here to learn more about how you can support us from … Read more
Summer reissue: poet essa may ranapiri says this review is one of the hardest things they’ve written. First published 10 February 2020. Independent journalism depends on you. Help us stay curious in 2021. The Spinoff’s journalism is funded by its members – click here to learn more about how you can support us from as … Read more
Summer reissue: The Overstory, the winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, is an engulfing, worldview-shifting novel about climate catastrophe and hope, writes Susan Wardell. (Photographs are from a photo essay on kauri dieback by Michelle Hyslop; captions by Andrea Ewing). First published 9 April 2020. The year before last, I spent the month … Read more
Summer reissue: a prayer for a woman with dementia, this fictional piece by Cambridge writer Tracey Slaughter features in the new edition of Landfall. First published 7 November 2020. Independent journalism depends on you. Help us stay curious in 2021. The Spinoff’s journalism is funded by its members – click here to learn more about … Read more
Summer reissue: a review of Rat King Landlord, the new novel by activist and satirist Murdoch Stephens, by Josie Adams, who lives with a rat. First published 16 August 2020. Independent journalism depends on you. Help us stay curious in 2021. The Spinoff’s journalism is funded by its members – click here to learn more … Read more
On fire and hope and this time last year. Extracted from Living With the Climate Crisis: Voices from Aotearoa, a BWB Text anthology edited by Tom Doig. The city below us looked nothing like Melbourne. Wreathed in thick brown smoke, it resembled some post-apocalyptic ghost town, an End Times vision from a science fiction film. … Read more
At this ecological crossroads, Central Otago writer Jillian Sullivan seeks a kinder path forward. The Ida Burn is running shallow, the interstitial spaces between pebbles and stones dense with silt, and in the glides a yellow sheen of flowering broom. The wind that whooshed in the trees all morning has quietened to the sound of … Read more
Summer reissue: Madison Hamill writes with rare precision and bravery. Also she’s hilarious. This piece is extracted from her debut, Specimen, a collection of essays in which she dissects sexuality, childhood, voluntourism, and her own brain. First published 8 March 2020. Independent journalism depends on you. Help us stay curious in 2021. The Spinoff’s journalism … Read more
Summer reissue: Hunger Games prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes was released internationally in May. Books editor Catherine Woulfe went all in. First published 19 May 2020. Independent journalism depends on you. Help us stay curious in 2021. The Spinoff’s journalism is funded by its members – click here to learn more about how … Read more
Learning to read is taught at school, but learning to sit properly isn’t. Here’s how to keep an oily spine. If you’re reading this, you probably know how to read. But do you know how to sit? Summer is coming, which means one of our family members is about to gift us a book and … 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. Today’s charts cover the whole of 2020, up until the end of Sunday, December 20. A note on Auē – we’re pretty … Read more
Craig Sisterson pays tribute to a legend. On December 12, one of the world’s greatest spy masters slipped from this world. Not from an assassin’s bullet in a darkened alley, poisoning from a nerve agent, or a wretched betrayal by someone wrongly trusted; but pneumonia. After a lifetime entwined with spycraft, David John Moore Cornwell, … Read more
Celebrating a new series of the beloved Reo Pēpi bilingual board books, we have essays from Kitty Brown (Ngāi Tahu) who creates the books with her cousin Kirsten Parkinson, and Helen Steemson, a Pākehā mum determined to share te reo with her Māori son. Kitty Brown Recently, my two-year-old spoke her first words in te … 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 Troy: The Siege of Troy Retold by Stephen Fry (Michael Joseph, $37) Would read absolutely anything retold by Stephen Fry. 2 Shuggie … Read more
The last Friday Poem for 2020 is by Dunedin poet Michael Hall. End Poem Not everything falls or fails; rocket ships still roar into the next world like a boy after feeding the dog one cool evening twelve years old scaling the sun fading face of an unwalled barn clutching for terse straw, fingers seeking … Read more
Books editor Catherine Woulfe runs through her favourites. This is a joyfully subjective list, in no particular order, and with no real thought for how many are novels or non-fiction or non-fiction with illustrations, or whatever. They’re just books I flat-out love. Some we’ve covered during the year but others, equally deserving, completely whooshed past … Read more
Our mystery writer returns to explain what the festive season means for the real angels among us – retailers. The Spinoff published the original behind-the-scenes essay by this bookseller a few months ago. We still can’t tell you who she is. We can tell you she really does work in a New Zealand bookstore, and … Read more
Upper Hutt’s library recently became the fifth in New Zealand to abolish late fees. Should others follow suit? In February 2018, American librarian Dawn Wacek delivered a Ted Talk arguing that library late fees should be done away with completely. Her contention: overdue fees do nothing to incentivise people to return their books, but instead … Read more
Ruby Brunton’s late parents Alan Brunton and Sally Rodwell founded New Zealand’s least ordinary theatre company, Red Mole. Now based in Mexico City, she reviews Martin Edmond’s memoir about his time with the group. It’s easy to romanticise the past, especially when the past you’re remembering is light-years from the current moment. As I read … Read more
A poem by Melbourne-based New Zealand poet Jennifer Compton. Under the Flight Path I raise my glass of wine to the silence of the midnight curfew. I am minding house in the inner west for my son and his girlfriend as they jet off to Helsinki. I have been driven out of the house into … 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 Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman (Bloomsbury, $35) Counterpoint: go spend 20 minutes in Westfield St Lukes. Actually any … Read more
In New Zealand classical music, the writers of words are routinely hidden from view. If they care so little, why not settle for humming the melody, asks NZ’s inaugural poet laureate, Bill Manhire. I watched the Whānau London Voices concert the other day, and admired the initiative and spirit of the venture, as well as … Read more
What did we check out during the hellfire year of 2020, and what does it say about us? Tara Ward asks nine libraries around the country. Covid-19 marked a new chapter for New Zealand libraries. As the physical buildings closed during the first lockdown, libraries around the country saw a dramatic increase in online memberships … Read more