A new poem by Lyttelton poet Rebecca Nash. Flocks The café has run out of muffin crumbs and the sparrows have come to our woodshed. They fossick for slaters and wood hoppers. Concrete lies under logs, seeds lie under concrete incubating in the trapped soil. Roots strain into pipes. There too … Read more
The team at Unity Books is busy scaling a marvellous mountain of orders – yesterday they gave us a short take on what you’re all buying, but no one has time to deal with actual data this week. So here we are with a sixth lockdown top 10. Hopefully our last. We hope that whatever … Read more
Like bookstores across the country, Unity Books opened for online orders on Tuesday morning not quite knowing what to expect. Everyone across both teams is so wildly busy doing God’s work – getting books to where they need to be – that we can’t bring you a bestseller chart based on actual data this week. … Read more
Breton Dukes’ latest short story collection is a thrilling, surgical examination into the everyday tragedies of domestic New Zealand. The New Zealand man is a topic that is well examined by pretty much every art form we’ve ever had. Hell, our most famous stereotype is “the man alone”. The loner (usually a straight, white loner) … Read more
Review copies of Tina Shaw’s pandemic novel Ephemera landed in letterboxes just as the country went into lockdown. Here, she reflects on this strange new reality. These new times have the uncanny feeling of fiction – of science fiction, or post-apocalyptic fiction. In other words, the unreal has become real. I keep thinking of Station … Read more
Libraries pay a lot for their ebooks, and each copy ‘expires’ after a certain number of loans. Here’s why that’s fair. There are times I feel as if some librarians don’t like authors much. Last week, for instance, when I read Rebecca Hastie’s Spinoff piece, which began as a guide to making the most of … Read more
Anzac weekend has always been a time for thinking about our country and during this one, in the quiet that has fallen during lockdown, we can contemplate a new kind of New Zealand. Read more from the lockdown letters here. Yesterday I put on a fire, the first one this autumn. Dragged a newspaper from the … Read more
A poem by Ockham finalist Anne Kennedy. from ‘Thirty-Three Transformations on a Theme of Philip’ 32 The present pulls the plug on the present moment by moment Hands fly to the black tiles like pigeons to a rooftop The objects in the room join a passing train The thoughts in the room … Read more
Week five, somehow, of these lockdown lists, compiled by the staff of Unities Auckland and Wellington. On the back of widespread reports that brains across the country have turned to custard, the theme this week is “books you can knock off in no time”. And speaking of no time: we are inexorably hurtling towards Tuesday … Read more
Letters to Hone Tūwhare and his Travelling Band of Constant Companions, continued. Read more from the lockdown letters here. Dear Archie Baxter, Well brother, I suppose it’s here again. Anzac Day and all that. I’m not sure what conscientious objectors make of it to be honest. I can’t really stomach all the chest-thumping any more. Not … Read more
With Bae Suah’s novels, two translators bend language to speak the unexplainable. When I was at primary school I was given a tiny doll in a match box. On the matchbox were printed the words Mon Ami. “It means ‘my friend’,” explained my next-door neighbour who was at high school and probably the coolest person … Read more
It’s the perfect time to write your own locked-room murder mystery – easy, right? Read more from the lockdown letters here. How do I feel? Sick of vacuuming that’s for sure. Sick of ignoring the voice that says, “you can’t see the dust anyway so why bother?” Since I went into self-isolation I’ve been teaching my … Read more
Morgan Godfery reveals some straightforward reflections while completing domestic chores, such as, well, socialism or barbarism? Read more from the lockdown letters here. I spent the last four weeks taking my darkest, densest books off the shelf, skirting around their edges, reading and re-reading their back covers. Should I open it from the front? Do I … Read more
Get a quick fix of your former wriggling, rhyming, library-going life in this extract from Susan Edmunds’ debut novel. Editor’s note: Mummy Needs a Break is perfect low-key lockdown fodder. From the blurb: “With a devilish toddler and baby number two on the way, Rachel’s big dream is to one day go to the toilet … Read more
For a few weeks we haven’t been able to escape each other or ourselves or our own terrible cooking. But at least the celery soup is a prison of my own making. Read more from the lockdown letters here. I’m not a good cook. “What’s for lunch?” my workmate Kirsten used to ask, as I emptied … Read more
The greatest leaders from history have made sacrifices in times of need. A look at who, now, is doing that for us. Read more from the lockdown letters here. I’ve been talking to my sister. We don’t ring or email often. She lives in Victoria, in the country with half a dozen superannuated horses, a … Read more
Letters to Hone Tūwhare and his Travelling Band of Constant Companions, continued. Read more from the lockdown letters here. Dear Adam Smith, Jesus, brother. You’re a long way from home. We don’t get many economists passing through here. But that’s no reason not to drop in of course. As it happens you might just be in … Read more
For all its petitions and protests, the left is too invested in its own privilege to upend ‘hypercapitalism’, Thomas Piketty argues in his latest book Capital and Ideology – so it’s time to conjure something new. It is a very long book. I started it some time in late December when the electoral defeat of … Read more
‘My patience, never a very strong part of my character, is being stretched a bit so thinking of something else is preferable to throwing all the cups on the floor.’ Read more from the lockdown letters here. A wild patience has taken me this far… Adrienne Rich I thought of that line this morning while I … Read more
A new poem by Palmerston North poet Tim Upperton. At the Fair All these people had come to an outdoor fair. They were walking from one stall to another, inspecting the goods for sale, picking up a jar of quince jelly and holding it to the light, tipping it sideways to test the … Read more
Somehow we’re up to week four of these lockdown lists. What is time. The theme this week is, essentially, “carbs in book form”. Ease. Enjoyment. The anti-ennui. Put together, as previously, by the wonderful teams at Unities Auckland and Wellington. But just quickly first, a couple of local recommendations from our resolutely lowbrow books ed … Read more
Lockdown requires a sacrifice of some form or another from everyone, but the sacrifices never fall proportionately. Read more from the lockdown letters here. Four years ago, and yes, this is a shameless plug, and yes, I’m about to turn it into a loud self-vindication, I wrote: “To participate in politics is, for many young people, … Read more
On writing and not writing about bread. Read more from the lockdown letters here. I’m afraid that soon I’m going to write about bread. I can’t hold it much longer. This is a lockdown diary, I’m running out of thoughts, and the bread is coming – I feel it. Each of the fragments below can … Read more
A librarian walks us through all the virtual offerings, and explains why we have to queue for ebooks. Hardly a surprise, but I love public libraries. They exemplify the best of social democracy by providing free resources, services and advice for all members of a community – we have no choice but to stan. Libraries … Read more
When fiction and reality collide, asking ‘What if?’ takes on a new meaning. Read more from the lockdown letters here. Sometimes I find myself thinking, “What if?” It’s the default setting if your job is writing fiction, this insistent “What if?” Back in 2018 I began work on a novel. It was about a cruise … Read more
‘The surf sounded like Eden Park on the end of a try. The gulls were diving. Laughing. Giving us the finger.’ Read more from the lockdown letters here. Dear Jesus It’s good to see you. I suppose it’s been a hell of a weekend for you. Must bring back some pretty shitty memories. I … Read more
‘Illegal bulletins by Rona and Chips Bailey and cartoons by Max Bollinger continued in spite of police raids and were delivered by people to other people, all of whom knew if they were caught with a copy they’d go to jail.’ Read more from the lockdown letters here. After the fifth listen I went for a … Read more
‘It feels like there is an inner circle of walking that I can no longer break into, some pleasure I have become too stupid to feel. Maybe it’s the internet’s fault.’ Read more from the lockdown letters here. There is a lot of talk about going out for a walk. If you are a writer, … Read more
Week three of our lockdown Top 10s – books about elsewhere, brought to you by the good humans of Unity Books. A reminder that these lists are completely unshackled from space and time and what’s happening in the world of books right now. Take no notice of the numbers, either – we just like the … Read more