NEW RELEASES
Jenny Diski was a fearless writer, for whom no subject was too difficult, even her own cancer diagnosis. Her columns in the London Review of Books—selected here by her editor and friend Mary-Kay Wilmers, on subjects as various as death, motherhood, sexual politics and the joys of solitude—have been described as "virtuoso performances," and "small masterpieces." From Highgate Cemetery to the interior of a psychiatric hospital, from Tottenham Court Road to the icebergs of Antarctica, Why Didn't You Just Do What You Were Told? is a collective interrogation of the universal experience from a very particular psyche: original, opinionated—and mordantly funny.
Two Hundred and Fifty Ways to Start an Essay about Captain Cook by Alice Te Punga Somerville $15
The Book of Trespass: Crossing the lines that divide us by Nick Hayes $39
Theatre of War by Andrea Jeftanovic $34
"She expanded notions about what nonfiction, as an art form, could do and could be." —New Yorker
#29: With a Non-argument that’s Actually an Argument. Captain Cook? It’s all so very complex. I’m going to sit on the fence. (Whose fence? On whose land? Dividing what from what? You only have a fence when you fear something or when you’re trying to keep something in. Or, as a renovation show on TV informed me, when you want to upgrade your street appeal.) Alice Te Punga Somerville employs her deep research and dark humour to channel her response to Cook’s global colonial legacy.
The Book of Trespass takes us on a journey over the walls of England, into the thousands of square miles of rivers, woodland, lakes and meadows that are blocked from public access. By trespassing the land of the media magnates, Lords, politicians and private corporations that own England, and weaving together the stories of poachers, vagabonds, gypsies, witches, hippies, ravers, ramblers, migrants and protestors, Hayes argues that the root of social inequality is the uneven distribution of land.
"What a brilliant, passionate and political book this is, by a young writer-walker-activist who is also a dazzlingly gifted artist. It tells o through story, exploration, evocation o the history of trespass (and therefore of freedom) in Britain and beyond, while also making a powerful case for future change. It is bold and brave, as well as beautiful; Hayes's voice is warm, funny, smart and inspiring. The Book of Trespass will make you see landscapes differently." —Robert Macfarlane
Jeftanovic approaches the ruins of memory to source from them the love needed to build her identity as an adult. Theatre of War takes us on a desolate journey into the reconstruction of memory – a universal question that here turns into a reflection on how giant historical events can affect the seemingly insignificant lives of nameless individuals. Tamara, protagonist and narrator, faces the ghosts of a very tangible past that includes her father’s war (an immigrant from former Yugoslavia), a very conflictive family life, suicides, lost landscapes, inherited trauma, absent siblings and a mother who, due to an undefined illness, has suffered from partial memory loss and cannot recognise her own daughter.
When wildlife researcher Jonathan Slaght was a young Peace Corps volunteer in the Russian Far East, he caught a brief glimpse of a Blakiston's fish owl. It was the furthest south the species had been documented in over a hundred years, and a chance encounter that would change his life. In Owls of the Eastern Ice, Slaght tells the story of his decades-long quest to safeguard the world's largest owl from extinction in Primorye, a remote Russian province dominated by Ussuri taiga forest, the only place in the world where brown bears, tigers and leopards co-exist.
Music is filled with mathematical elements. The works of Bach are often said to possess a math-like logic, and Arnold Schoenberg, Iannis Xenakis, and Karlheinz Stockhausen wrote music explicitly based on mathematical principles. Yet Eli Maor argues that it is music that has had the greater influence on mathematics, not the other way around.
A collection of stories tracing the fine lines that bisect relationships and societies.
"A supremely intelligent collection." —Guardian
The Origins of You: How childhood shapes later life by Jay Belsky, Terrie E. Moffitt, Richie Poulton and Avshalom Caspi $95
100% Pure Future: New Zealand tourism renewed edited by Sarah Bennett $15
My Little Book of Big Questions by Britta Teckentrup $45
Children of Ash and Elm: A history of the Vikings by Neil Price $75
“A nuanced, provocative exploration of what it means to be human.” – Irish Times
“Krauss is less interested in describing life's grand explosions than she is in showing how people make sense of the rubble. Krauss still somehow seems to have invented a new form for each novel, each story—their characters so fully realized that Krauss's deft authorial hand is rarely evident.” – New York Times
Based on the findings of the world-leading Dunedin Study, which tracked thousands of people from birth to middle age, this book helps us to thnk about childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, about genes and parenting, and about vulnerability, resilience, and success. The evidence shows that human development is not subject to ironclad laws but instead is a matter of possibilities and probabilities—multiple forces that together determine the direction a life will take. A child's early years do predict who they will become later in life, but they do so imperfectly. For example, genes and troubled families both play a role in violent male behavior, and, though health and heredity sometimes go hand in hand, childhood adversity and severe bullying in adolescence can affect even physical well-being in midlife.
A fable for our times, Joni Murphy's Talking Animals takes place in an all-animal world where creatures rather like us are forced to deal with an all-too-familiar landscape of soul-crushing jobs, polluted oceans, and a creeping sense of doom.
"Joni Murphy's inventive and beautiful allegory depicts a city enmeshed in climate collapse, blinded to the signs of its imminent destruction by petty hatreds and monstrous greed: that is, the world we are living in now. Talking Animals is an Orwellian tale of totalitarianism in action, but the animals on this farm are much cuter, and they make better puns." —Chris Kraus
Covid-19 has had a devastating effect on New Zealand tourism, but the industry was already troubled by unchecked growth and questionable governance that has put pressure on the environment, infrastructure and communities. In this urgent collection of essays, nine authors outline their vision for sustainable tourism, the barriers to achieving it and how they can be overcome.
Teckentrup’s wonderful collection of questions, one per spread, takes readers on a dreamlike wander through the boundaries of possibility and reality. Beginning with “How will I see the world when I am grown up?” the queries address themes of change, identity and relationships, and hopes and fears. In her signature graphic style, Teckentrup illustrates grainy figures on white backgrounds—the likenesses gaze out of windows, appear in groups and alone, and populate sweeping vistas. In one spread—“Is the world inside or outside of me?—a blue sky and white clouds comprise a person’s torso. Though many of the inclusions feel weighty, all that curiosity can’t help but come with a wink, and the book ends with an amusing ask: “Do all people ask the same questions?”
A brother and sister are orphaned in an isolated cove on Newfoundland's northern coastline. Their home is a stretch of rocky shore governed by the feral ocean, by a relentless pendulum of abundance and murderous scarcity. Still children with only the barest notion of the outside world, they have nothing but the family's boat and the little knowledge passed on haphazardly by their mother and father to keep them. As they fight for their own survival through years of meagre catches and storms and ravaging illness, it is their fierce loyalty to each other that motivates and sustains them. But as seasons pass and they wade deeper into the mystery of their own natures, even that loyalty will be tested. The long-awaited new novel from the author of the wonderful Sweetland.
The 'Viking Age' is traditionally held to begin in June 793 when Scandinavian raiders attacked the monastery of Lindisfarne in Northumbria, and to end in September 1066, when King Harald Hardrada of Norway died leading the charge against the English line at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. This book takes a refreshingly different view. It shows that the Viking expansion began generations before the Lindisfarne raid, but more than that, it traces Scandinavian history back centuries further to see how these people came to be who they were. It presents them, as far as possible, on their own terms, rather than through the eyes of those on the receiving end of their violence. The narrative ranges across the whole of the Viking diaspora, from Vinland on the eastern American seaboard to Constantinople and Uzbekistan, with contacts as far away as China.
26 poets, writers and essayists, including Anne Carson, Chris Kraus, Chigozie Obioma, Yoko Tawada, Jacques Roubaud, Richard Ford, Roxane Gay, Tóibín, Eileen Myles, Gunnhild Øyehaug, Anne Waldman and Claudia Rankine engage in dialogue with artworks from the collection of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art by artists as different as Louise Bourgeois, Francis Bacon, Alberto Giacometti, Alicja Kwade, Andy Warhol, Julie Mehretu, Joseph Beuys, Tacita Dean, Yayoi Kusama and Francesca Woodman.
“Amid impending disasters too vast even to be perceived, what can we do—cognitively, morally, and practically? Gabbert, a tenacious researcher and a ruthless self-examiner, probes this ultimate abstraction in her essays, goes past wordless dread and comes up with enough reasoned consideration to lead us through. Do you feel—and how can you not—as if your emotional endurance is exhausted by horrors already well underway? Then you should read this book.” —Sarah Manguso
“Gabbert draws masterly portraits of the precise, uncanny affects that govern our psychological relationship to calamity — from survivor’s guilt to survivor’s elation, to the awe and disbelief evoked by spectacles of destruction, to the way we manage anxiety over impending dangers. Even more impressive is her skill at bending crisp, clear language into shapes that illustrate the shifting logic of the disastrous, keeping the reader oriented amid continual upheaval.” —Alexandra Kleeman in the New York Times
A Business Revolut ion: The first two decades of National Business Review, 1970—1991 by Hugh Rennie $35
From its small but courageous beginnings, NBR quickly grew to become essential business reading, setting new standards in journalism, and providing a lens through which to assess the New Zealand economy and politics.
Displacement by Kiku Hughes $38
The Human Cosmos: A secret history of the stars by Jo Marchant $33
From its small but courageous beginnings, NBR quickly grew to become essential business reading, setting new standards in journalism, and providing a lens through which to assess the New Zealand economy and politics.
A teenager is pulled back in time to witness her grandmother's experiences in World War II-era Japanese internment camps in California in this graphic novel.
For most of human history, celestial cycles drove every aspect of our daily lives. Our innate relationship with the stars shaped who we are—our religious beliefs, power structures, scientific advances, and even our biology. But over the last few centuries we have separated ourselves from the universe that surrounds us—and that disconnection comes at a cost. Marchant guides us through history and around the globe and reveals the richness of humanity's relationship with the heavens.
The Best of Me by David Sedaris $38
For more than a quarter of a century, David Sedaris has been carving out a unique literary space, virtually creating his own genre. A Sedaris story may seem confessional, but is also highly attuned to the world outside. It reveals what is both absurd and moving about our daily existence—and it usually leads to laughter of some sort. This selection from his entire career is chosen by the author.
Who would have thought such a range of puzzles, riddles and questions could be found within the pages of the classic anatomical reference Gray's Anatomy? Fun.