Rebecca Tobo Olul-Hossen, a writer from Vanuatu, celebrates a book woven of stories her country has lived through. This is an edited version of a review that appeared in Vanuatu’s Life & Style Magazine. Sado, a Bislama word that translates to “shadow” in English, as a noun means reflection, humiliation and dishonor. This is a … Read more
An extract from The Nature Activity Book, which we strongly urge you to invest in for the school holidays. Books editor Catherine Woulfe writes: Written by teacher, scientist and head of the National Aquarium Rachel Haydon and gorgeously illustrated by Pippa Keel, our review copy of The Nature Activity Book landed just before Auckland’s latest … 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 Rage by Bob Woodward (Simon & Schuster, $55) “A better title for Rage, perhaps, would be Rabid … He remains … Read more
A new poem from novelist and poet James McNaughton. Shark and Leg Seventeen years already of making the bed together, husband and wife. They say you never step in the same river twice and that change is the only constant in life, and truly the linen has changed, … Read more
Determined to write New Zealand’s first Covid book, Paul Little chronicled the lives of more than 20 New Zealanders under lockdown as rural domesticity took over his own. It all started with a mysterious virus causing a global pandemic that threatened the lives of millions of people, my writer wife and I losing our long-standing … Read more
It’s been revealed that an upcoming novel by the Harry Potter author features a crossdressing serial killer. In the last several years Joanne “JK” Rowling has doubled, tripled, and as of last week, quadrupled down on her bigotry towards transgender people, both in her public statements and in her popular fiction. Anyone who’s not a … 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 Hope in Hell: A Decade to Confront the Climate Emergency by Jonathon Porritt (Simon & Schuster, $38) Consider it a … Read more
A new poem from Dunedin poet Emer Lyons. Elegy for God’s Own Country i too remember the sea of my insides waving at my face but why would anyone want to tame a magpie? it was during the gorse burn the intimacy of your hands as delicate as with new born lambs i’m afraid of … Read more
An extract from Across the Risen Sea, the new climate-fiction novel from junior fiction superstar Bren MacDibble. We’re off the coast of Australia. Survivors of a calamitous sea-level rise live in small island settlements, gardening and fishing and scavenging in wet-to-the-waist skyscrapers. There are sinkholes, storms and massive sharks, and lots of crocs. In this … Read more
Can the inspirational rise of Tonga’s rugby league team encourage a love of reading in Pacific kids? The authors of a new book hope so. What started as an effort to help reduce suicides among Tongan youth has led ‘Alisi Tatafu to write a book, aimed at younger readers, chronicling the miraculous rise of the … Read more
Jean Sergent reviews an exceptional new novel about mental illness, labels, and lovability. It is strange, to love and be loved, when you are unsure of your reality. An emotional uncanny valley opens up in front of you and you push on, staying alive, putting one foot in front of the other, hoping that the … Read more
A new poem by Wellington poet Emma Barnes. If Only If only if only. I could have used my mouth to transmit some meaning. I could have left or come home or done some sort of in between combo of any of these. I could have been the bulldozer, the demolition team, the engineer who … 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 Ottolenghi: Flavour by Yotam Ottolenghi and Ixta Belfrage (Ebury, $60) “Every time we publish a book, it feels like the … Read more
Every story in Bug Week clacks and hums with the anger of women. Here, the author explains why. Content warning: this article references sexual assault and family violence. It seems like a bit of a self-indulgent exercise writing about the genesis of a book. Books are texts, separable from their authors and the biographical circumstances … Read more
An essay about leaving New Zealand, and finding it again via Janet Frame. A quick note from our books editor, Catherine Woulfe: Meg Mason grew up in Foxton and Palmerston North. She’s a journalist – she lives in Sydney, and writes for places like The New Yorker, Vogue and GQ – and she’s just released … 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 Searching for Charlie: In Pursuit of the Real Charles Upham VC & Bar by Tom Scott (Upstart Press, $50) “There … Read more
A poem from essa may ranapiri’s chapbook Polemic. Hook & Cook as a kid I would confuse Captain Hook with Captain Cook their names so similar both pirates in fancy dress one scared of a crocodile with a clock in its mouth the other a man who sails on our 50 cent one a cartoon … Read more
One of our finest speculative fiction writers on how the Lord of the Rings fandom is damaging mana whenua. There are kākā on my porch. They are circling each other, fanning their beautiful green and red feathers. They’ve found the pāua shell my flatmate picked up on the beach last week. It is shiny, so … Read more
A recent column by the director of New Zealand’s Suicide Prevention Office argued that ‘normalising talking about suicide’ doesn’t help. Linda Collins, the author of a forthcoming book about losing a child to suicide, wonders how silence can ever be a solution. Just this week, a friend who helps maintain a suicide prevention website messaged … Read more
Deep in the wops, three children are caught in a pastoral New Zealand nightmare. The Tally Stick begins like a waking dream, a horrifying free fall where time stretches out before snapping sickeningly back into place. The car containing the four sleeping children left the earth … It’s April 1978. It’s dark, and the weather … Read more
The Silence of Snow has a rare and aching truth to it, writes books editor Catherine Woulfe. I could pick Eileen Merriman’s writing anywhere, especially the way she’s been writing lately. She has struck on a particular minor key that rings across each page, clear and sharp and quick. It makes you want to listen … Read more
Sally Blundell talks to Christchurch poet John Newton about the book he wrote for his friend, Llew Summers: Body and Soul. Hutzpah. If there was one word missing from his book on the life and work of sculptor Llew Summers, says John Newton, it would be “hutzpah”. “Llew and his early sculptures and the way … 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. AUCKLAND 1 Mophead by Selina Tusitala Marsh (Auckland University Press $25, 5+) Your newly-anointed Margaret Mahy Book of the Year; “perfect”, the judges said; freshly reviewed for us … Read more
A new poem by Kate Camp. How to Be Happy Though Human From the Circle there was a man we couldn’t see just his fingers held out for emphasis like the hands of a preacher or a primary school teacher. Before that we had been at the film where three people taxidermied a baby zebra … 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 Girl in the Mirror by Rose Carlyle (Allen & Unwin, $33) “We are left, breathless, at the last, game-changing sentence.” … Read more
Kids will love Jonathan King’s graphic novel The Inkberg Enigma, according to actual kids Max (eight) and Iggy (six). In a sleepy fishing town, there’s something strange going on behind the scenes. Luckily two plucky kids called Miro and Zia are here to investigate. It’s The Inkberg Enigma, a new graphic novel for young readers, … Read more
A trip to the bookshop ends in calamity – and an encounter with the calm, candid and kind medical staff of North Shore Hospital. As a great admirer of Hilary Mantel’s writing, I looked forward to reading the final novel in her trilogy set in Tudor England, The Mirror & the Light. I drove down … Read more
A new poem from Paula Harris. how to cook cheesecake on a bbq you’ll need to borrow a cheesecake pan from your former best friend who borrowed your cheesecake pan two years ago, he just needed it for a few days, there was a dinner party coming up, a dinner party you weren’t invited 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 First, a word from the team at Unity Auckland: This second week of Lockdown 2.0 has seen us readjust nicely into … Read more