The top ten best-sellers of 2018 at the Unity store in High St, Auckland. 1 The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck by Mark Manson (MacMillan, $35) Self-help in the Age of Trump. Manson’s book really hit a nerve, and kept pressing it all throughout the year; there was barely a week when The … Read more
All week this week we present the 20 best books of the year. Today: the 20 best books of non-fiction. Previously: The 20 best kids books of 2018 The 20 best poetry books of 2018 Māori Made Easy: For everyday learners of the Māori language by Scotty Morrison (Penguin, $38) Oh just give this guy a … Read more
All week this week The Spinoff Review of Books presents the best books of the year. Today: the best 20 books for kids. Julian is a Mermaid by Jessica Love (Walker, $28) Picture book 3+. On the train one day, Julian is mesmerised by three mermaids in beautiful colors, long hair, and flowing gowns. Julian imagines himself … Read more
An essay by Sarah Forster from Booksellers New Zealand about the threat that the Amazon-owned Book Depository poses to bookstores – and, ultimately, readers. Every time I tell somebody that Amazon owns Book Depository, they’re surprised, astonished, aghast. So let’s put that on the record. Amazon purchased Book Depository in 2011. And they’re here to … Read more
The Monday Extract: “Stevie”, who works in the sex industry as a self-described “trans boy”, talks to social historian Caren Wilton. Photographs by Madeleine Slavick. I was born in a housebus in the early 1980s. On Dad’s side I’m Ngāpuhi, and on Mum’s side Ngāti Maniapoto, in the King Country. We travelled around lots when I was … Read more
The Monday Extract: Wellington writer John-Paul Powley pulls together Parihaka, imperialism, capitalism, and catered lunches at education conferences in a searching essay on Māori achievement. “This bird [the ruru] with a hundred eyes was venerated in Taranaki, where Te Whiti had chosen this symbol and the stalking Pakeha cat for an action song depicting events that … Read more
Auckland writer Kirsten Warner on the continuing horror of the Holocaust for second generation survivors. A Facebook friend recently made contact to say he’d heard me talking on National Radio about my newly published novel The Sound of Breaking Glass. His wife was, like me, the child of a survivor of the Holocaust. He said he’d … Read more
Author Bruce Ansley follows in the footsteps of Te Puoho, who set off on an epic, 1500-kilometre march with his war party in 1836, intent on destroying an entire people – Ngāi Tahu. I once read a piece by archaeologist Atholl Anderson (Ngāi Tahu), who was then just a budding academic. It was like discovering … Read more
Some people simply love to compete. Madeleine Chapman writes in defence of competitiveness. “Oh my god you’re so competitive.” Said by my friend in primary school after a particularly intense game of lunchtime rugby. Said by multiple girls at different college athletics days after I actually tried hard to throw the javelin properly. Said by … Read more
The Monday Extract: A harrowing personal essay by Christchurch poet Jeffrey Paparoa Holman from his new memoir. Even before I took LSD with a poet friend I was becoming unhinged. It was as if I just didn’t care; with a few cans of beer on board to dull the rational sites in the brain, dropping a … Read more
Spinoff Review of Books literary editor Steve Braunias does his best to remember a drunken weekend in Wellington at 2018 LitCrawl. Crazy to feel the need to rush to a literary event – there’s always plenty of room, it doesn’t matter if you’re a tad late – so I leisurely ironed my shirt in my … Read more
The Monday Extract: Christchurch coroner Marcus Elliott writes a personal essay about death, grief, and mercy in a new book about dying in New Zealand. Across New Zealand on a Saturday morning, people are playing netball or cricket, mowing the lawn, buying fruit, reading the paper, checking Facebook, living life. I am at my desk at … Read more
A semi-fictional memoir by Jackson C Payne, son of the late Bill Payne, an ex-con busted for drugs, winner of the 1993 Sargeson Literary Fellowship, author of a classic book about New Zealand gangs, and writer in residence at the Alhambra in Three Lamps. The year after he died they sprinkled his ashes at the house of … Read more
The Monday Extract: Peter Malcouronne’s superb new book on Great Barrier Island features an extraordinary interview with Jade Webster – labourer, surfer, survivor. This book extract contains discussion of abuse that may be distressing to some readers. Usually you’ll find her on the digger. Inside the cab, left joystick working the swing, right the bucket … Read more
The always hilarious and brilliant Leah McFall, who releases her new book of selected columns this week, pays her respects to five of the most hilarious and brilliant women writers of all time – Jane Austen, Nancy Mitford, Sue Townsend, Erma Bombeck, and Nora Ephron. If humour writing is a craft, then I’m apprenticed to five dead women. … Read more
Slam poetry! It’s raw, it’s rough, and it’s also a wildly popular live entertainment, writes Ben Fagan, who is masterminding slam events across the country this month. One of my favourite poetry moments happened a few years ago. I was at a slam in Wellington. It was packed. Someone had just finished performing and there was a … Read more
Three writers pocketed $60,000 last night at the Prime Minister’s Awards for Literary Achievement. Spinoff Review of Books literary editor Steve Braunias was there, apparently. O 60 large! O three prizes of 60 large, handed out last night to the three esteemed winners of the 2018 Prime Minister’s Awards for Literary Achievement, at the prime … Read more
Maurice Gee – recently named the author of the best New Zealand book of the past 50 years – writes a memoir of the boy who had a dark, terrifying idea for a game: “You be a girl, eh, and I’ll be a man climbing in the window.” Content warning: This excerpt contains a threat of sexual violence. I doubt that … Read more
We could have chosen some text from the new biography of the phenomenal Mika but yeah nah let the pictures do the talking. Jermaine Leef, Mika and Parai Parai in ‘Ahi Wai’ Kapai Kabaret photo shoot by Arjan Hoeflak, 1995. Mika in front of the sign at GayBiGayBi, SXSW, Austin, 2015, having just arrived on … Read more
Poet Laureate Selina Tusitala Marsh tells of the time she went swimming in deep, deep water with novelist Lloyd Jones at Byron Bay. The first time I meet Lloyd Jones is nearly my last. He’d promised me breakfast and a dip near Captain Cook’s Lookout – I should’ve suspected something then. Indigenous encounters and all. We … Read more
Why is so much writing too afraid to ever dare be offensive? A new literary journal produced in the Orkney Islands attempts to introduce some bad manners – with assistance from New Zealand authors. In February of this year, Craig Marriner published an essay with all the stoor of Hunter S Thompson at full throttle. … Read more
Former journalist Emma Gilkison writes about a routine scan at Starship, where a paediatric cardiologist said to her, “There are two issues with your baby’s heart.” Content note: this book extract may be distressing for some readers. Regina Spektor’s song ‘Fidelity’ filled the cabin as our plane took off for Auckland. I loved this song. … Read more
Content note: this essay may be distressing for some readers. Years later I read that fighting with your partner while pregnant can cause the foetus life-threatening stress. I remember Fiji, where Robert doesn’t notice that he’s used a $US100 note to buy something. American notes all look the same and he thinks it’s a single … Read more
Alan Perrott reports on the pressures of running a secondhand bookstore in 2018. Maud Cahill has owned secondhand bookstore Jason Books in downtown Auckland since 2002. “My parents didn’t read very much,” she says. “But I can’t remember not having books. I’d go to the library every week, search every shelf with children’s books, then go … Read more
Whangarei writer Michael Botur continues our occasional series which examines whether literature exists in any shape or form in the regions. He reports from Northland, home to Sam Hunt, Kelly Ana Morey, and a romance writer who sells more books than you’ve had hot dinners or whatever. Tiny Rawene hosted the Hokianga Book Festival earlier this month, … Read more
Spinoff Review of Books literary editor Steve Braunias reports from the weekend’s Going West literary festival in Titirangi. With bonus podcast! Dear old Going West! It’s the neighbourly writers festival. It’s the one in the gentle wops of Titirangi, in a memorial hall, rows of hard seats just like at school assembly, miles from anywhere – well, a … Read more
A new book from Te Papa features essays inspired by exhibits held in the national museum. Sue Bradford writes about a Medal for Valour awarded to suffragette Frances Parker – a heroine who blazed with “an exquisite madness”. EXHIBIT: Women’s Social and Political Union Medal for Valour, awarded to Frances Parker PRODUCTION: Toye & Co., 1912 … Read more
Charlotte Grimshaw reports on the latest weird and turbulent week in Donald Trump’s presidency: “The most powerful country in the world is at the mercy of someone so unfit for office that he shouldn’t be running a gas station.” It was the end of summer on the east coast of America, and it was only getting … Read more
The dear old Book Council has released its annual survey of New Zealand reading habits, and claims that on average we read 35 books a year. Thirty-five! Danyl Mclauchlan asks what the devil is going on. What do other people read? I wonder about this all the time. If I see someone reading a book on … Read more