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. Today’s charts cover the whole of 2020, up until the end of Sunday, December 20. A note on Auē – we’re pretty … Read more
An urgent message from our sponsors, Unity Books. ‘Twas two weeks til Christmas and all was amiss, a pandemic had struck and put book stocks at risk. Our books were all coming by cargo ship, because air freight from Aussie was given the snip. So those stockings you hang by the chimney with care, might … 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
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 The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel (Fourth Estate, $50) The author, to Vulture: “When I got towards the … 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
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
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
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
A little bookshop on High Street just scooped a massive prize. We caught up with Jo McColl to celebrate. A trove of wonderful books and wonderful book people, Unity Books Auckland was overnight recognised on the world stage, winning the 2020 Bookstore of the Year Award. The London Book Fair at which the prize was … Read more
Right now the country’s booksellers are gasping, frantic, knackered – and still dealing politely with the rest of us at our worst. We at the Spinoff thank them for their service and invite booksellers and book-buyers alike to please enjoy this nostalgic hug of an essay by Catherine Robertson. From late 1985 to early 1987, … Read more
A new poem by Oamaru-born poet Nick Ascroft. Superman Halfway up the ascent zigzagging from Royal Terrace to upper Stuart Street carrying four too-heavy grocery bags I begin to understand that I will not make it. My huffing personage – from the fingers, white with the strain, to a face the … 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 Three Women by Lisa Taddeo (Bloomsbury, $35) “I based my selection of these three women on the relatability of their … 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. These lists of the bestselling children’s books at Unity Wellington and Little Unity in Auckland cover the four weeks to August 2 2019. AUCKLAND 1 Lizard’s Tale … Read more
New poetry by Auckland writer Joanna Cho. 1:52 Tsukuru, I wish I could watch a kererū with you. The roots of hyacinths are soft like leeks in the frying pan, or feet in the bath , and it’s these that make a mess. The locations of pipes, … Read more
New poetry by Lisbon-based writer Hana Pera Aoake. The bigger the burn the tougher you are I sit under the plum tree and eat Christmas plums. The afternoon sun hits my face and I think about Halle Berry in Die Another Day kicking a knife through a copy of The Art of War and … Read more
We’ve heard a great deal about the Kiwi response to the Christchurch terror attack but less from inside the event. Historian Ann Beaglehole considers how we support victims to ensure the history is written from their perspectives. When outside forces attack, there is a risk of victims focusing inwards and becoming alienated. Following the Christchurch … 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 Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi (Sandstone, $27) Looks like winning the Man Booker Prize CAN get your apparently amazing saga … Read more
New poetry by Wellington poet and artist Ana Iti. All the way to Te Rerenga Wairua Does the spirit intrinsically know what direction to travel to get to Hawaiki? Or Heaven? Is there some colonial idea of blood quantum that first has to be observed? Would the saliva of the intangible get processed by … 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
New poetry by Piha poet Nikki-Lee Birdsey Objects 6 This time of year I try to think about what is better than beauty. Rose-pink clouds crowd the sky, crowd my page— I think of your face. I can’t fantasise like I did when I was a child, whole worlds snapping into place in an instant … Read more
Lily Woodhouse is a pseudonym for Stephanie Johnson, who has won the Montana Book Award, the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship and the Bruce Mason Playwriting Award; hell, she co-founded the Auckland Writers Festival. But could she get her latest novel published? Yeah, nah. So-called ‘women’s fiction’ is rife with stories of women who left, who … Read more
Brannavan Gnanalingam reviews the long-awaited – and outstanding – novel by Marlon James, who won the Man Booker prize four years ago with A Brief History of Seven Killings. It was some canny marketing to release a book self-described as the “African Game of Thrones” just before the final season on TV of the actual Game of … 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 Necessary Secrets by Greg McGee (Upstart Press, $38) Stand by for a Spinoff review. 2 Auckland Architecture: A Walking Guide by … Read more
New poetry by author Erik Kennedy. Out on the Pleasure Pier Out on the pleasure pier on that benign afternoon, the air heavy with the blossom of vinegar and old tyres, you asked what was the closest I had come to death. I thought of when I had applied the bolt-cutters to that … Read more
“The obliteration of self. The prioritising of others. The yearning for escape”: Holly Walker on a motherhood memoir that rings in the bones. Before the current bumper crop of radically honest books about motherhood, there was Marie Darrieussecq. Eighteen years ago in Paris, she sat at her desk, notebook open, her baby resting face down … Read more
Ashleigh Young reviews More of Us, a collection of poetry written by migrants and refugees. We greet with deep pleasure and confidence, eyes greeting all over the body, shaking the hand with a hug. That’s the first stanza of ‘Greeting’ by Samson Sahele, the first poem in More of Us, a collection of poems written … Read more
Kiwi author Garth Cartwright is on the shortlist for the UK’s prestigious Penderyn Prize – the Booker of music books – and the winner is announced any minute now*. His subject? A history of the British record shop. I’m often asked, “What inspires you to write books?” I wish I could answer, “Money.” I’d like … 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 Troll Hunting: Inside the World of Online Hate and its Human Fallout by Ginger Gorman (Hardie Grant Books, $33) The clue … Read more