HATE Some people are meant to be forgiven and others are meant to be hated forever….. ………………………………………………………. ………………………………………………………. I don’t think it’s right to hate people It’s just that I don’t care To wake each day in a snakeskin negligee and light myself on fire with such ethical behaviours Once………………I tried to give … Read more
John Fogerty wasn’t the only member of Creedence Clearwater Revival – he wasn’t even the only Fogerty – but the meticulous perfectionist was the band’s guiding light and driving force. CCR fan and New Zealand author John Summers writes on Fogerty’s memoir Fortunate Son. The room looked out to a grass quad, a sunny spot among … Read more
David Bowie gave Lou Reed a new lease of life when he helped to create the classic Transformer album – and was repaid with jealousy and loathing, according to Howard Sounes, author of Notes from the Velvet Underground: The Life of Lou Reed. I do like a biography that doesn’t spare the awful truth about its … Read more
Wellington author Linda Burgess gaily set out to write a book about churches with her husband, former All Black Bob Burgess. Would their marriage survive? ‘Oh how lovely,’ people said. Even people who knew us. ‘How lovely, to do a book together.’ We’ve done it twice now. In 2007 Random House published my book on … Read more
An essay by Patrick Evans to mark his new novel The Back of His Head, which imagines that “a complete and utter prick” has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. ‘No entry to all vehicles, writer at work’ – the sign in the Jerusalem street the writer known to the West as SY Agnon lived … Read more
The Spinoff’s editor, Duncan Greive, co-authored Dan Carter: My Story with the All Blacks’ first five. Here he shares his memories of the tumultuous year the pair spent working on the book. The lowest I ever heard him was late in February. We spoke via Skype, as we often did through that portion of the year, … Read more
The death of blockbuster novelist Jackie Collins reminds Steve Braunias of the awkward time he visited her at her home in Beverly Hills. Jackie Collins was one of the worst writers of the 20th century, every sentence a cliché, every book a dull thud, but she sold somewhere around 140 million copies of her godawful … Read more
Duncan Greive interviews Steve Braunias on the occasion of his new book, The Scene of the Crime. Steve Braunias is my favourite New Zealand writer. Maybe that makes me an imbecile, I don’t know. I haven’t read hardly any of our fiction, because I barely read fiction. There might be better people out there in other … Read more
One World One world, Thinking with one mind, Thinking with no mind, Other than what they are told. Preach to me, Sell me new and old; Indoctrinate me, That I will do what I am told. Trace my every dollar, Trace my every step; Trace my every sentence, No privacy is left. … Read more
Many readers have imaginary relationships with their favourite authors, but few manage to turn fantasy into reality. Madeleine Chapman – who starts as a Spinoff intern in February – tells how she tried to bridge the gap between fandom and friendship with The Luminaries author Eleanor Catton. This post first appeared on Madeleine Chapman’s blog … Read more
Has Paul McCartney ever said anything interesting? Sometimes? Now and then? A couple of times? Once? No. Rock’s most distinguished bore has always chuntered on, yapping and jawing, blathering and babbling, the words pouring out of him like water through a seive. Nothing ever holds. It’s a kind of disease, a neurological disorder. He needs … Read more
On Writing by Charles Bukowski On Writing is not an instruction manual. Nobody who knows anything about Bukowski’s boozy, belligerent shambles of a life would expect one. As he was fond of confessing, Bukowski did not like people. Even as a baby in the cradle, he reports in his largely autobiographical 1982 novel Ham on … Read more
Charlotte Grimshaw examines anonymous literary sensation Elena Ferrante, and the place of the ‘self’ in written work. I,I,I… Some time after the Christchurch earthquake, I visited the city. I hadn’t been there since before the disaster, and I was shocked by the devastation in the centre, and in particular by the number of multi-storey buildings that … Read more
Steve Braunias’s 2015: Lundy, The Block, a bluff at Hammer Hardware, Simon Collins and Jared Savage, ‘the trick is to survive’, his new book The Scene of the Crime, Kafka and Updike, ‘the moist March air’. I started the year writing daily despatches from the Mark Lundy double-murder trial in Wellington, and ended the year writing daily reviews of … Read more
Bill Manhire’s 2015: a sandwich in Norwich, Utopia, ‘festivals of ideas’, poems in an eggbox, no sleep till Gore, The Stories of Bill Manhire, ‘a fine, chubby baby’. I spent the early months of the year as the UNESCO Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia , sandwiched between Margaret Atwood and Ian Rankin. The … Read more
Auckland writer Stacy Gregg’s 2015: St Petersburg, Moscow, being Eloise, research, ‘beets and pickles and perfect dark yellow quails eggs’, horse breeds, that sonofabitch Sergei. Everyone says St Petersburg is wonderful but I took an instant dislike to the place. It was like all the people and the colour had been vacuumed out and only … Read more
Wellington writer Anna Smaill’s 2015: Edinburgh, Hong Kong, good luck, tea and Hobnobs, ‘a steadying ale’, Amazon ratings, ‘the psychological hangover of writing my first novel’, book number two. 2015 has been a lucky year. I published my first novel, and had the good fortune to travel to London to meet the people who were instrumental … Read more
Queenstown writer Jane Bloomfield’s 2015: her junior fiction novel Lily Max, swimming in Lake Wakatipu, watching Mad Max in Broome, doubt, anxiety, visiting her dad in his resthome, skiing, a reprint, the sage advice of publisher Steve Braunias. The summer of 2015 lay before me. We’re a family of five, but three members departed for American … Read more
Max Porter’s 2015: a new baby, political angst, ‘tips on not being an asshole’, his novel Grief Is The Thing With Feathers, ninjas, Paris, ‘the smell of books’. I’m so tired right now that I hardly know my arse from my elbow, but here are some things I remember happening this year, in no particular order, … Read more
Spinoff legend Alex Casey’s 2015 as a first-time author: Jamie Curry, Jamie’s World, Napier, Sydney, ‘proper famous’, bacon and eggs and revenge. The first time I encountered Jamie Curry she was in a short Facebook clip, you know the kind that start out kind of normal and then you suddenly see a dog walking past … Read more
Brian Turner’s 2015: life and bicycles in Oturehua, ‘lucky still to be alive’, his new book Boundaries: People and Places of Central Otago, a visit to London, Anton Oliver’s birthday party, ‘the neo-liberal pandemic’, Richie McCaw. A couple of days ago I met a bloke at the café by the Hayes Engineering Works about a kilometre … Read more
Auckland writer Charlotte Grimshaw’s 2015: Tokyo, Tel Aviv, her novel Starlight Peninsula, ‘solemn and conscientious reviews’ for the Listener, ‘internal chaos’. In a narrow street of tiny houses, in a district near the Yanaka Cemetery where the last Shogun is buried, a row of shoes was laid out along the pavement. Policemen stationed beside their bikes wielded … Read more
Guardian journalist Nick Davies’s 2015: a massacre in a platinum mine in South Africa, questions in a mud hut, ‘strange experiences’, identity theft kind of thing, ‘so help me God’, six continents, tears, human goodness. There was one single day in March which pulled together the big theme of my whole year. I was in … Read more
Sarah Forster chooses the year’s best books for kids. PICTURE BOOKS Yak and Gnu by Juliette MacIver and Sarah Davis Juliette MacIver and her flawless rhyming verse have become one of the perennials of the NZ book world. Her latest picture book is her twelfth in five years, and is illustrated by the equally flawless … Read more
An appreciation of Tessa Duder’s 1987 classic novel Alex by former Green MP Holly Walker, first published on her abandoned blog the she-book reader, in May this year. I had seen it on the shelf in the Waterloo School library many times. I was drawn to the cover, which shows a striking, androgynous swimmer emerging … Read more
An interview with the amazing Fleur Beale, whose latest YA novel Being Magdalene continues her series of books set in the Children of the Faith religious cult. I read Fleur Beale’s most recent YA book, Being Magdalene, while caught up in the swirl of the Ted Dawe book-banning controversy. I helped to write Booksellers NZ’s … Read more
Sarah Forster reads a newspaper set in the kids book by Bob Kerr, Changing Times. Bob Kerr’s Changing Times: The Story of a New Zealand Town and its Newspaper is easily one of the cleverest books I have seen all year. He’s a wonderful artist, and his book is the result of working on it for … Read more
From an essay first published at the website of Luncheon Sausage Books, Queenstown author Jane Bloomfield explains how attending writing courses held by Kate di Goldi, Fiona Kidman, Steve Braunias and others helped her to write her first book for kids aged 8-12, Lily Max. All illustrations by Guy Fisher from the book. I’ve met so many amazing … Read more
Sarah Forster interviews award-winning illustrator Paul Beavis, author of two charming books about monsters. Paul Beavis won this year’s Russell Clark Award as best children’s illustrator in New Zealand for his 2014 book Mrs Mo’s Monster. He happily ventured back into the world of monsterdom this year with the release of Hello World! – a … Read more