Unity Books best-seller chart for the week ending October 27

The best-selling books at the two best bookstores on shore. WELLINGTON UNITY 1 Leaders Like You: New Zealand Leaders Share Stories of Courage by Nick Sceats & Andrea Thompson (Catapult Publishing, $40) Inspirational ra-ra PR. 2 La Belle Sauvage: The Book of Dust by Philip Pullman (David Fickling Books, $35) Pullman! The master returns with … Read more

Book of the Week: Christchurch, the magical city ‘where anything might happen’

Lara Strongman declares that Fiona Farrell’s novel about post-quake Christchurch is a work of art. When everything collapses, some people behave with dignity and kindness, while others steal the gates. Fiona Farrell has an elderly Italian woman say this, or at least think it to herself, one night in bed in a sleepout crammed with … Read more

An immigrant’s story: ‘The Naenae Nazi Party was limited to two people, and even they left me alone’

An essay about race, immigration, and KFC by Sri Lankan-born, Hutt Valley-raised novelist Brannavan Gnanalingam. On our way to New Zealand in 1986, we stopped at Singapore Airport. In this of all places, my dad bumped into his brother, whom he hadn’t seen for years. We were going to a new life in New Zealand. … Read more

Unity Books best-seller chart for Labour Weekend

The best-selling books at the best two bookstores beneath the Sun. AUCKLAND UNITY 1 Goodbye Māoriland: Songs & Sounds of NZ’s Great War by Chris Bourke (Auckland University Press, $60) Fabulous new social and cultural history by the author of Blue Smoke. “An impeccably researched account of the influence of music in World War One – … Read more

Book of the Week: Sour Heart by the ‘astounding’ Jenny Zhang

An essay by Sam Gaskin – with GIFs! – about his old friend and now superstar author Jenny Zhang. In the summer of 2016 Jenny Zhang and I went to Coney Island for a swim. It was overcast, too windy to even face the ocean, but we stripped down to our swimsuits anyway. She tried … Read more

Why did Trump win? Hillary Clinton appears to have no goddamned idea

Danyl McLauchlan reviews the new election memoir by baffled sore loser Hillary Clinton. What did Hillary Clinton do after losing the election to Donald Trump? Pretty much what you’d expect: she cried; she prayed; she read books and poems (inevitably by Maya Angelou); she watched movies with her husband; did yoga with her personal instructor; … Read more

Poor, tormented Charles Brasch and the Landfall poetry reading that went horribly wrong

Philip Temple reviews a mammoth volume of journals by Landfall founder Charles Brasch – and recalls a harrowing poetry reading which starred a blind man, a Scotsman, and a drunkard. Charles Brasch is principally remembered for founding Landfall in 1947 and, by editing it for nearly 20 years, his profound influence on the course of … Read more

The Man Booker Prize shortlist, reviewed: ‘Autumn’ and ‘Exit West’

The year’s biggest literary prize – the Man Booker award – is announced on Wednesday morning, October 18 (NZ time). All week this week we review the six shortlisted titles. Today: Louise O’Brien on Ali Smith’s Autumn, and Exit West by Mohsin Hamid. Unsurprisingly, at least two of the books which made it to the Booker … Read more

Unity Books best-seller chart for the week ending October 13

The best-selling books at the two best bookstores in Aotearoa. WELLINGTON UNITY 1 Driving to Treblinka: A Long Search for a Lost Father by Diana Wichtel (Awa Press, $45) Number one for the second consecutive week; this family memoir is the book to get right now. “Those familiar with Wichtel’s television reviews and features at … Read more

The Man Booker Prize shortlist, reviewed: ‘History of Wolves’ and ‘Elmet’

The year’s biggest literary prize, the Man Booker award, is announced on Wednesday morning, October 18 (NZ time). All week this week we review the six shortlisted titles. Today: Linda Burgess reviews Fiona Mozley’s Elmet, and History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund. At 29, Fiona Mozley is the youngest writer on the Man Booker Prize shortlist. … Read more

The Man Booker Prize shortlist, reviewed: ‘Lincoln in the Bardo’ and ‘4 3 2 1’

The year’s biggest literary prize – the Man Booker award – is announced on Wednesday morning, October 18 (NZ time). All week this week we review the six shortlisted titles. Today: Philip Matthews on Paul Auster’s 4 3 2 1, and the favourite to win, Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. What did Paul Auster … Read more

Unity Books best-seller chart for the week ending October 6

The best-selling books at the two best bookstores in the North Island. AUCKLAND UNITY 1 Driving to Treblinka: A Long Search for a Lost Father by Diana Wichtel (Awa Press, $45) “I’m privileged to have known Diana for over 15 years as a colleague and a friend. In the early days, she told me a bit … Read more

Book of the Week: a heartbreaking work of genius by Diana Wichtel

Margo White reviews Driving to Treblinka, a Holocaust memoir by the widely adored magazine writer Diana Wichtel. Diana Wichtel remembers being told by her Uncle Sy, some 50 years ago, “never forget you are a Wichtel”. Those familiar with Wichtel’s television reviews and features at the Listener will know her for the quality of her … Read more

The Monday Excerpt: The coming of the sparrow

From a new anthology of bird writing in New Zealand, the great naturalist Herbert Guthrie-Smith describes the introduction of a bird known by all: the sparrow. This excerpt is from his classic 1921 book Tutira. In October of 1882, a month, that is, after our arrival at Tutira, a small flight of sparrows rested for a … Read more

Unity Books best-seller chart for the week ending September 29

The best-selling books at the two best book stores above ground. WELLINGTON UNITY 1 Out of the Woods: Journey Through Depression & Anxiety by Brent Williams, illustrated by Öztekin Korkut (Educational Resources, $40) A memoir of surviving family violence by the son of a Wellington philanthropist. 2 Cities In NZ: Preferences Patterns & Possibilities edited … Read more

Movie of the book of the week: Scarlett Cayford on the genius of Margaret Mahy

The hotly-anticipated film version of Margaret Mahy’s novel The Changeover opens in cinemas today. Scarlett Cayford examines the peculiar genius of Mahy, and compares the film with the book. I associate Margaret Mahy with colour; I suspect I’m not the only one. Part of the reason is the rainbow wig she wore to all her readings, … Read more

How to crowdfund your brilliant but sadly unpublished novel

Michael Botur shares his experience with running a Boosted campaign to publish his sci-fi novel. This is the story of how I went about trying to crowdfund my latest novel. If I get enough donations, I’ll shortly wrap up a crowdfunding campaign to self-publish a kickass young adult novel. Moneyland is a YA dystopian sci-fi … Read more

The Unity Books best-seller chart for the week ending September 1

The best-selling books at the two best bookstores known to science. WELLINGTON UNITY 1 Strange Beautiful Excitement: Katherine Mansfield’s Wellington 1888-1903 by Redmer Yska (Otago University Press, $40) “Wellington is revealed as grim, filthy, dangerous to health, and yet, in the course of this idiosyncratic mix of biography and memoir, Yska transforms the terrain into … Read more

Book of the week: Charlotte Grimshaw on a brilliant portrait of small, fat Katherine Mansfield

Charlotte Grimshaw reviews A Strange Beautiful Excitement, Redmer Yska’s superb telling of Katherine Mansfield’s childhood and teenage years in Wellington. Samuel Revans, who died in 1888, the year Katherine Mansfield was born, was an enthusiastic promoter for the New Zealand Company. His handbills were distributed in London and went in for a fantastic degree of license, … Read more

Revisiting the strange case of The Spin, the New Zealand political novel by Anonymous

Who wrote the novel about a vain, womanising, and corrupt New Zealand political party leader? Who wrote The Spin? In 1996, now-extinct publishers Hodder Moa Beckett copied the idea of Primary Colors, a steamy, silly, best-selling novel of American political life by Anonymous, and rushed out The Spin, a steamy, silly, okay-selling novel of New … Read more

Unity Books best-seller chart for the week ending August 25

The best-selling books at the two best bookstores in creation. AUCKLAND UNITY 1 The New Zealand Project by Max Harris (Bridget Williams Books, $40) Max! 2 The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (Vintage, $26) “Blessed be the fruit”: Atwood’s sci-fi vision of America as the deeply fucked-up republic of Gilead. 3 Swing Time by Zadie … Read more

Poetry week at the Spinoff: how an award-winning poet got started

All week this week the Spinoff Review of Books is devoted to poetry in the build-up to the Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day on Friday. Yesterday we ran an essay by Helen Hogan, editor of 1970s anthologies of poetry by New Zealand college students; today, an essay by distinguished poet Andrew Johnston, who Hogan published when he … Read more

The grandmother of New Zealand poetry: an essay by Helen Hogan, 94 this month

All week this week the Spinoff Review of Books devotes itself to poetry in the build-up to Phantom Billstickers National Poetry Day on Friday. Today: an essay by the remarkable Helen Hogan, who brought poetry to a generation of young New Zealanders. In 1971, I edited an anthology of New Zealand poetry for secondary school … Read more

Unity Books best-seller chart for the week ending August 18

The best-selling books at the two best bookstores known to God. WELLINGTON UNITY 1 Strange Beautiful Excitement: Katherine Mansfield’s Wellington 1888-1903 by Redmer Yska (Otago University Press, $40) Brilliant retracing of KM’s footsteps when she lived in Wellington. Charlotte Grimshaw’s review is due to run in The Spinoff Review of Books any day now. 2 A Moral … Read more

On the blind, mulish idiocy of reviewers and the genius of Pip Adam

An essay by Carl Shuker in response to the shoddy response of most reviewers to the new novel by Wellington writer Pip Adam. Why, he simmers, are so many New Zealand critics so lazy, so patronising, so cheerfully ignorant, and just plain wrong? The finest piece of writing in New Zealand fiction this century happened and you … Read more