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 White Fragility: Why it’s so hard for white people to talk about racism by Robin DiAngelo (Penguin Random House, $28) … Read more
A new poem by Chris Tse. (Turquoise: Art & Magic) Rothko Chapel, January 2014 A room in which my hushed mind was a kaleidoscope waiting for light. I thought about the past year and the absences I allowed to fill me. I thought I’d never rid myself of the intimacy that pained my … Read more
An extract from the splendid new book Weed: A New Zealand Story, by James Borrowdale. Books editor Catherine Woulfe writes: Weed is a masterclass in longform feature writing, a clever hopscotch through history, statistics, law, chemistry and neuroscience. Plus it’s packed with people and their yarns. Not many writers could keep their footing for all … Read more
The scamp of New Zealand publishing is laid to rest, for now. In 2005 I wrote and released a book called On the conditions and possibilities of Helen Clark taking me as her Young Lover. I gave myself the name Richard Meros. My real name is Murdoch. Some people think that sounds like a pseudonym, … 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 Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo (Penguin Classics, $24) Joint winner of the 2019 Booker prize. That was in October … Read more
A new poem by Jordan Hamel. Mermaids When you lose grip and start to drift. The first thing you’re supposed to do is steer into it or steer away? Not all mermaids are royalty someone needs to audit the ocean provide cashflow projections some mermaids are actually middle-aged accountants named Stephen … Read more
An extract from The Quick and the Dead, the new memoir by Palmerston North pathologist Cynric Temple-Camp. Books editor Catherine Woulfe writes: Strong recommend for this medical memoir, the second by the most excellently-named Cynric Temple-Camp after his 2017 bestseller The Cause of Death. Ostensibly a collection of yarns and case studies, after a chapter … Read more
Sam Brooks reviews Auckland writer Lil O’Brien’s memoir Not That I’d Kiss A Girl, and finds it a valuable yet unclear story of the author’s struggle with her own acceptance. As queer people, we can be unnecessarily harsh on media that is about us, and by us. I think of the response to Looking, the … Read more
A new poem by Michaela Keeble. Only the ocean only the ocean turns me over like this only the ocean turns me on like this only the ocean gives warning: what will change and when so it doesn’t come across like violence white caps drift in on the … Read more
The world-famous 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, $34) This is the one that kicks off with the essay about the Tongan boys, which … Read more
Tomorrow, Auckland writer Lil O’Brien releases one hell of a memoir: Not That I’d Kiss A Girl, the story of her coming out. People tell me that I can make anything gay. Sometimes they’re talking about physical things, like when I put on a plain white T-shirt then roll the sleeves over twice. But I … Read more
Neatly sidestepping spoilers, Briar Lawry of Little Unity reviews Pip Adam’s new and widely lauded novel, Nothing to See. “How do you even review a Pip Adam book?” a colleague asked. “She’s too nice!” “She is,” I agreed, “but luckily her books are always brilliant.” In all honesty, I said this having barely started Nothing … Read more
If you’re looking for the politician of ‘crusher’ fame, you won’t find her here, writes Toby Manhire. In her new book Pull No Punches, Judith Collins pulls her punches. Just when you think she’s about to call out the politician who left secret documents on their desk for journalists, she stops short. She denounces two … Read more
Chloe Lane’s novel The Swimmers is about euthanasia. On the cover is Nicola Farquhar’s painting Peachthief, part of a West Auckland exhibition winding up this week. “Do you want to keep this?” I asked. “No,” P said. “But it’s your special denim jacket,” I said, holding it up. I could see P through a long … 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+) A finalist in this year’s New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults, 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. AUCKLAND 1 Know Your Place by Golriz Ghahraman (HarperCollins, $40) A memoir. Ghahraman wrote an essay for us when it released last week … Read more
A new poem by Christchurch poet Erik Kennedy. There Is a Man Dancing on the Rudder of an Enormous Cargo Ship having arrived as part of a protest flotilla of kayaks and inflatables and paddleboards, a semi-cohesive squadron of possibility and guerrilla tactics that are half surprise party, half interview with the parole … Read more
When Elizabeth Heritage forgot how to read, poetry brought her back. This is the story of my reading of Funkhaus, the new poetry collection by Hinemoana Baker (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Toa, Te Āti Awa) writing from Berlin. I sing of fear and confusion: mine not Baker’s. Let me start with my favourite poem … 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 Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo (Penguin Classics, $24) Winner of the 2019 Booker Prize. This week it became the … Read more
A new poem by Auckland-based writer and performer Hadassah Grace. Subject Permanence in quarantine mirrors reminded us we exist with eyes closed, skin is still cotton candy in a puddle bones, watercolour and damp paper arms and teeth are curtains on fire now every gleaming shop window is a gleaning mother did … Read more
The Auckland that Green Party MP Golriz Ghahraman found herself in as a nine-year-old was starkly Pākehā – to the point that she assumed Māori must be refugees, too. Ghahraman’s memoir, Know Your Place, is out this week and opens with a tense recounting of her family’s flight from Iran in 1990. Parts of this … Read more
Thank goodness for Wendyl Nissen and her chooks. After my second miscarriage, the counsellor at Fertility Associates told us to think about what our ideal lives would look like if we were unable to have a second child. The only thing I could think of was: chickens. I would like chickens, maybe five or six … Read more
While we stand in solidarity with Black and indigenous communities experiencing ongoing violence overseas, we have plenty of work to do here in Aotearoa too. These 10 seminal anti-racism texts by Māori authors are a great place to start. George Floyd’s death as the result of police violence has sparked protests around the world, including … Read more
New work by Wellington poet Jackson Nieuwland. I am a tree. I spend most of my time standing in the forest with my family. They love nothing more than to stand absolutely still like a plank of wood, only waving their arms every now and then to make sure there’s enough wind for the birds … 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 Auē by Becky Manawatu (Mākaro Press, $35) Winner of the 2020 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction. You can watch … Read more
Matariki Williams is Te Papa’s Mātauranga Māori curator. In an extract from Te Manu Huna A Tāne, she writes about how honouring the kiwi became a lesson in honouring her own heritage. This essay has been abridged by Williams and its original title is Into the Void. There is a photo on my sideboard. It … Read more
Pip Adam won the country’s biggest fiction prize for her novel The New Animals. Her latest, Nothing to See, releases tomorrow. Books editor Catherine Woulfe: We’ll have a full review of Nothing to See in the next week or so. For now, know that it’s wildly good – a levelling-up from The New Animals, even. … Read more
This powerful collection of photographs and essays catalogues three generations of Ngāti Torehina ki Matakā learning to pelt North Island kiwi. Nāu, nā te Pākehā te kurī me te ngeru nāna i huna ngā kai o te motu nei, te weka, te kiwi, te kākāpō, te piopio, me te tini o ngā manu o te … Read more
Edward Cullen became a vampire to survive the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. Now a new Twilight novel looms and Laura Surynt, a New Zealander living in the UK, wants to live forever too. As I lay in bed this morning watching Instagram stories, Tayi Tibble told my reluctant little Capricorn heart that Caps are … Read more