Issue #266

• The Booker shortlist films! >>What the judges think.

• Desire and possession. >>Zombie Proust.

• Unhiding. >>Hiding Places.

• Motherhood vs. creativity. >>Hiding Places.

• To Chris, with love. >>Not Given Lightly.

• Breaking rules. >>Finding out more.

• Europe’s perilous reality. >>A dark thread.

• I don’t need anything from here.

• Different tchipangă. >>Ten Nosey Weka.

• A huge shift. >>Edges of Empire.

• The mystery of Medea. >>No Friend to this House.

• Literature is a form of resistance. >>Indignity. >>The Are Rivers in the Sky.

• All food is fusion. >>FUSÃO.

• She disappeared for twenty years. >>Sonia & Sunny.

• How to keep a diary. >>Diary of an Ending.

• What could be lost? >>Sight Lines.

• What do the best-designed books look like? >>Sight Lines.

• Similarities. >>Matapēhi.

• The pinch of pages. >>Slowing the Sun.

• Land, people, pen.

• Nuanced. >>Pastoral Care.

• Two tankas. >>Books by Richard von Sturmer.

• Prototypes. >>A choice of prototype.

• The germ and the text. >>Perfection.

• Democracy descends. >>38 Londres Street.

• They didn’t even read the book.

• Not reading ahead.

• The smallest units of language. >>Books by Lydia Davis.

• The anatomy of a hair. >>Bezoar.

• Four easy steps. >>Start with a Teapot.

• To save a library.

• Who can write a novel today?

• Dread as excitement.

• Speed reading is bullshit.

• Our film recommendation this week: Universal Language.

• Collective nouns for librarians.

Issue #265

• Devotion to the cut. >>Gertrude Stein: An afterlife.

• Not everyone got the joke. >>Gertrude Stein: An afterlife.

• Brilliantly human. >>Read them all!

• Both dangerous and dreamy. >>Kings of this World.

• Not necessarily romantic. >>The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny.

• More than a minute. >>>>The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny.

• Memory and oblivion. >>I Gave You Eyes and You Looked toward Darkness.

• ”The tide carries my books from my head.” >>I Gave You Eyes and You Looked toward Darkness.

• Radical hope. >>No Straight Road Takes You There.

• What to make of the mother who made you. >>Mother Mary Comes to Me.

• A fugitive childhood. >>Mother Mary Comes to Me.

• The darkened house. >>The Threshold and the Ledger.

• I has become we. >>The Threshold and the Ledger.

• Story sovereignty. >>Books of Mana.

• The effect of words. >>Misinterpretation.

• Singing on the page. >>Seascraper.

• Not lost in a moment. >>How to Save Democracy in Aotearoa New Zealand.

• A roadmap for renewal. >>How to Save Democracy in Aotearoa New Zealand.

• Evolving scholarship. >>The Welcome of Strangers.

• A good man. >>Pastoral Care.

• Dominant terms. >>Mad World.

• Treated as such. >>Is a River Alive?

• Language conceals reality.

• The diva mode of translation.

• A different life. >>Cello: A journey through silence to sound.

• Computers that want things.

• Trampling.

• You mustn’t pretend you didn’t know.

• Our film recommendation this week: I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing.

• The Thirty Most Disappointing Under Thirty.

Issue #264

• A river underneath her life. >>Alphabetical Diaries.

• Every scene and itch. >>The City Changes Its Face.

• Wanting to act. >>The City Changes Its Face.

• What she wanted she got. >>Creation Lake.

• Tearing up the rule book. >>Grief Is the Thing with Feathers.

• Becoming strangers. >>One Day, Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This.

• Infinite wibble. >>What Art Does.

• Not messages but stories. >>To the Moon.

• There in Telemark. >>The Ice Palace. >>The Birds.

• The long and the short of Israel and Palestine. >>Books by Ilan Pappe. >>Books by Avi Shlaim.

• How to read like a Booker Prize judge.

• The paradoxes at the limits of language.

• Calvino and the machines. >>Books by Italo Calvino.

• The threat of arrest. >>Books by Sally Rooney.

• Seeing the world. >>Where to?

• Anxious letters. >>Letters to Felice.

• The Unconscious is like a Large Language Model.

• A mobile library and a mobile librarian.

• Our film recommendation this week: Bill Direen, A Memory of Others. >>Stream Light.

• An incredible journey.

Issue #263

• Ake! Ake! Ake!

• Always somewhere else. >>Terrier, Worrier.

• Echoes in the dome. >>Wildcat Dome.

• Democracy under pressure. >>How to Save Democracy.

• Tea, scones, and justice. >>Hope and Hardship.

• Brave new words. >>Gliff.

• Hei whakanui. >>Poto.

• What we choose to remember. >>Forgotten.

• “My child has gone into the next moment.” >>Paper Crown.

• Radioactive toothpaste. >>Children of Radium.

• Boxing as research. >>Rough Trade.

• A warning. >>I Who Have Never Known Men.

• Your stories are your own. >>Books by James Kelman.

• Deceptively small things. >>Do Dogs Have Chins?

• The Smoker. >>Books by Ottessa Moshfegh.

• The refusal to look away. >>The Trees.

• Joy, full and fearless. >>Some favourites by Joy Cowley.

• Burning age of rage. >>Dread, Beat an’ Blood. >>Books by Linton Kwesi Johnson.

• On the conservatism of contemporary literary fiction.

• Māori wards work. >>Decide together.

• Hurrah for Spoor Books! >>Independent, curious and radical publishing.

• The language of silence.

• Know what you’re looking at.

• See monsters.

• The cult of the wild.

• The mystery of the cat mystery.

• Everything is intertwined. >>Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead.

• Our watching recommendation this week: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. >>Read the book!

• The cat’s Maew.

Issue #262

• Writing in the here and now.>>Atavists.

• A question of neutrality in language. >>Universality.

• Keeping faith in the project. >>Audition.

• On the bench. >>Seascraper.

• Instant empathy. >>Empathy.

• Headshots. >>Endling.

• Wildly informative and generous. >>Slowing the Sun.

• Self-termination is most likely. >>Goliath’s Curse.

• The debt to David Graeber. >>Books by David Graeber.

• Bread. >>This Compulsion in Us.

• Unpacking science. >>The Covid Response. >>Read an extract.

• Biography. >>Rowing her own waka.

• Raisins. >>Good Days.

• One little corner for the children.

• Chronic illness and creative recuperation.

• Our film recommendation this week: Cottontail.

• Nighthawks at the library.

Issue #261

• More ways of understanding. >>Diary of an Ending.

• The punk rock translator. >>Fair.

• Playing fair. >>Fair.

• Where words dissolve. >>Exophony.

• Chaos seeps into order. >>Endling.

• A psychological umbilical cord. >>Selfish Girls.

• The last dreams. >>I Found Myself…

• Salt statues. >>A Sunny Place for Shady People.

• Poetry after Gaza.

• The sun is slowly disappearing. >>Sunbirth.

• Nature is not going to cure you. >>The Salt Path.

• Cormac McCarthy’s personal library.

• Metamodernism, anyone?

• The struggle for narrative.

• Big tech in the classroom.

• Representation is democracy.

• Our film recommendation this week: The Other Side of Hope.

• Some Aotearoa fiction writers and their bands.

Issue #260

• Dust words, dust worlds. >>Dust.

• The origin of language. >>Parade.

• Where they write. >>The 2025 Booker long list.

• Not always calm on the inside. >>When the Museum Is Closed.

• All good novels make you think about what a novel can do. >>One Boat.

• Representation. >>Your copies.

• The more you do, the more difficult it gets. >>Minor Detail.

• The swamp disgorges its secrets. >>Kataraina.

• A friction between the line and the sentence. >>I Do Know Some Things.

• Dropped onto an alien planet. >>Flashlight.

• How women listen. >>Hark.

• Stacks. >>Wrong Norma.

• The joys of Moominscrolling. >>Visit the Moomins.

• Ellen Jones recommends. >>Outrage.

• Forever changed. >>Two Serious Ladies.

• A sublimely inaccurate portrait.

• Getting literature out there.

• Bach annotated by Gould. >>1981.

• Backtracking on a promise. >>Submit!

• Our film recommendation this week: It Must Be Heaven.

• A Dickensian alphabet.

Issue #259

• Rehearsal /41. >>Diary of an Ending.

• Radical ways. >>Precarious Lease.

• Early contact. >>The Welcome of Strangers.

• A legacy to match. >>William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love.

• The experience of Palestine in narration. >>Minor Detail.

• Do it badly if you must. >>The Safekeep.

• Killing animals. >>Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.

• Family farm. >>Wifedom.

• Why do we make art? >>What Art Does.

• Exploring who we are. >>Salutation Road.

• Part of me will remain. >>Sympathy Tower Tokyo.

• Death at the zoo. >>Animal Stories.

• Always inadequate. >>Books by Vivian Gornick.

• What Becky is reading. >>Books by Becky Manawatu.

• A good poet. >>Books by Alice Oswald.

• A poetry map of Skye.

• The widening gyre.

• How dreams change under authoritarianism.

• Erasure notebooks.

• An updated Kiwi Christmas classic.

• A digital marae.

• The smear of non-being.

• Take away our language and we will forget who we are. >>Decolonising Language, And other revolutionary ideas.

• Adam Shatz’s Berlin diary. >>The Rebel’s Clinic.

• Is it wrong to anthropomorphise animals? >>Books by Megan Dunn.

• Shyness.

• The game of kings.

• Operation Frog (1984).

• The last date in Gaza.

• If only we had known before trying this in ‘real’ life!

• Our film recommendation this week: Killer of Sheep.

• A new educational chart.

Issue #258

• Shaken through by the wind. >>Girlbeast.

• Memory trying to touch the bottom of the deep lake. >>Clay Eaters. >>The Anatomy of Sand. >>In the Cracks of Light.

• Like no recipe book you’ve ever read. >>The Evin Prison Bakers’ Club.

• Made with resourcefulness, memory, and love. >>Boustany.

• Bread. >>This Compulsion In Us.

• A T-shirt in K-mart. >>Slowing the Sun.

• Cultural exchange. >>Proto.

• Fiction helps us get closer to the truth. >>Small Boat.

• 100 years don’t weight me down. >>Lexicon of Affinities.

• Who are your rivers? >>Is a River Alive?

• Baseline Communism. >>The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World.

• What does a translator do?

• Don’t we all want to be happy? >>Erik Satie Three Piece Suite.

• Another form of imperialism. >>Perfection.

• Ngā whetū.

• Lost in tragedy.

• Transformation, anyone? >>Selected Stories.

• Sharpen your pencils.

• Unforbidden.

• Why generative A.I. won’t disrupt books.

• On resistance.

• Hoping for a(nother) miracle.

• Who is behind the new curricula?

• Represented and reconnected. >>The Whale Rider (deluxe edition).

• “Safety”.

• Assaulting democracy.

• A line that cuts to the heart. >>This House of Grief.

• Immediate and complete.

• Consequences.

• Our film recommendation this week: Mouthpiece.

• One for Shane Jones.

Issue #257

• Intelligence is beautiful. >>Invisible Intelligence.

• On the magic of translation. >>Fair.

• Our food, our heritage, our culture. >>Boustany.

• Unexplored depths. >>Ultramarine

• Unspoiled. >>Human/Nature.

• A dark legacy. >>Children of Radium.

• Misogyny in the Metaverse. >> The New Age of Sexism.

• Demanding pleasures.

• Fake nature. >>Hum.

• A new place and a new politics. >>Audition.

• Blown away. >>Collected Works.

• The human condition. >>Annie Bot.

• Difficult mothers. >>Selfish Girls.

• 1037 babies. >>The Origins of You.

• Oppression, Capitalism and control. >>The Unworthy.

• PANZ Book Design Awards 2025 finalists.

• Rat universes.

• Sprayed edges.

• The Living Ancestor.

• The Ballpoint Pens. [We hope the link works this time!]

• On the ark.

• What’s happening to reading?

• Speaking reassurance to power. >>Books by Pankaj Mishra.

• A book stall in the rubble.

• Writers write with urgency.

• “I am not a melodramatic person.”

• Where life is seized.

• Language alienates us from the self.

• Our film recommendation this week: I’m Still Here.

• If Charlie Brown were a Socialist. >>Mafalda.

Issue #256

• Morbid symptoms. >>Theory & Practice.

• Opaque sap. >>Ultramarine.

• The living, the dead, and sailors. >>Ultramarine

• Inside a character. >>Delirious.

• Write less; write stronger. >>Call Me Ishmaelle.

• Verbs explode a constricted throat. >>The Anatomy of Sand.

• A second heart. >>Slender Volumes.

• Oppression, capitalism, control. >>The Unworthy.

• No protection. >>Books by Raja Shehadeh.

• Selective Luddism. >>Powsels and Thrums.

• An efficient man. >>38 Londres Street.

• The other girl. >>Granta 172. >>Books by Annie Ernaux.

• Out of time. >>Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming.

• Three giants. >>Audition.

• The definitive ranking of reading technologies.

• An east wind behind it.

• On writing a novel without knowing or planning anything. >>Absence.

• Fabulism, paranoia and allegory. >>Books by Dino Buzzati.

• The grammar of a god-ocean.

• Dyed-in-the-wool Modernism.

• In from the margins.

• Left turns.

• The black paintings.

• The Ballpoint Pens.

• This bothers you more than it should.

• Natsume Sōseki’s study.

• Pareo ergo sum.

• Our film recommendation this week: Small Things Like These. >>Read the book!

• The perfect job.

Issue #255

• Simultaneously becoming and unbecoming. >>To Rest Our Minds and Bodies.

• A peculiar organ. >>To Rest Our Minds and Bodies.

• Endless repeats. >>On the Calculation of Volume.

• Not like other mothers. >>Elaine.

• Danger and dialogue. >>Mountainish.

• The many rooms within. >>The Book of Records.

• Deficit language. >>Slowing the Sun.

• What comes next. >>The Covid Response.

• The redemptive power of art. >>The Seers.

• An immersive take. >>The Seers.

• Pearls and whale poo. >>The Chthonic Cycle.

• Survived.

• Building momentum. >>Books from Prototype.

• Peering into the eyes of the past. >>Mythica.

• Schopenhauer vs. Nietzsche. >>On the Suffering of the World. >>The Gay Science.

• Details vs. message. >>The Salt Path.

• Accuracy vs nuance.

• Why your name matters. >>The Names.

• Crackling. >>The Names.

• Derrida’s debts.

• Doctors Under Attack.

• The shaking web.

• Joy and inspiration.

• Cowthink.

• Free of human logic. >>A Book of Surrealist Games.

• Our film recommendation this week: The Haka Party Incident.

• This is the life!