Dead People I Have Known, a memoir, just won the General Non-Fiction category at the New Zealand Book Awards. The judges were Hocken librarian and documentary and cultural heritage collections advisor Sharon Dell, bookseller and reviewer Stella Chrysostomou and journalist Guyon Espiner. Their comments, per the press release: “From the first page, Shayne Carter … Read more
Before Rachael King was an author and a puller-together of literary festivals, she was a bass player in a heap of bands. At the start, she was a schoolgirl rocking in the Battling Strings, opening for the Chills and other 1980s Flying Nun bands, including Straitjacket Fits. Reading Shayne Carter’s memoir Dead People I Have … Read more
The essential best-selling book chart in New Zealand, recorded every week at Unity Books’ stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1 The New Zealand Wars: Ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa by Vincent O’Malley (Bridget Williams Books, $40) Please read this breathtaking extract from some of O’Malley’s finest work. 2 The Meaning of Trees … Read more
The only published and available best-selling 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 Dead People I Have Known by Shayne Carter (Victoria University Press, $40) Welcome to the charts, Shayne. You’ll stay a while, yeah? … Read more
Music editor and former member of Die! Die! Die! Henry Oliver talks to his ex-bandmates about making music together for nearly 20 years. I met Andrew Wilson and Michael (we called him Mikey) Prain in the summer of 2003-04. I’d seen their old band Rawer open for Trans Am, if my memory serves, and they … Read more
As music director for this year’s Silver Scroll Awards, Shayne Carter’s job is to design song reinterpretations of the five finalists for the best New Zealand songwriting. He spoke to Calum Henderson about the skill of covering a song, writing his book, and not really liking awards shows. The midday temperature in Dunedin is 3 … Read more
The long journey that turned Shayne Carter, one of New Zealand’s great guitar heroes, into a classical piano music fan. Like most people under 70, I’d always found classical music a bit of a bore, a wing of the museum I hadn’t found the key for, the property of blue rinses bussed in from the … Read more