>> Read Thomas's review.
>> An excellent series of enjoyable videos about existentialist and related philosophers.
>> A guide to Simone de Beauvoir.
>> A guide to Jean-Paul Sartre.
>> A crash course in existentialism.
>> Sartre and Beauvoir "screener".
>> Beauvoir interview.
>> Still being judged on her looks.
>> Camus vs. Sartre.
>> Jean-Paul's flower truck.
>> Existentialist apricot cocktail recipes.
>> The phenomenology of the cocktail.
>> Are you experienced?
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The Nakano Thrift Shop by Hiromi Kawakami {Reviewed by STELLA}
A few years ago, I read Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami. Like the amazing Japanese food described throughout that book, the love story that between Tsukiko and her former teacher is careful, precise and beautiful. Kawakami's most recent novel is The Nakano Thrift Shop. Here the setting is a second-hand shop, one filled with curios, odds and ends, and the occasional antique. Hitomi, a slightly awkward young woman, works as a cashier at the shop. She is fascinated by Takeo, her fellow employee, who drives and collects for Mr Nakano, the shop owner. Mr Nakano is an eccentric character with his past three wives, a mistress, and his joy in getting the best deal when he’s bartering for goods. The other player in this quartet is Nakano’s sister, Mayaso, an unconventional artist, who plays ‘advisor’ to the naïve cashier. Hitomi is obsessed with developing a relationship with Takeo, who initially isn’t interested in anything beyond companionship. While the characters are slightly quirky, this is a novel about the ordinary texture of love and the relationships people form. Kawakami’s gift comes in her ability to slow you down as a reader, to observe and appreciate the obvious, surprising you with subtle nuances that are almost unseen. |
The Nelson City Council's Works & Infrastructure Committee will be considering a plan to upgrade Church Street to make it more pedestrian-friendly. Have a look at the concept plan and consider making a submission before the meeting on Thursday 30th March. If you'd like to speak at the meeting let them know. | Bruno: Some of the more interesting days in my life so far by Catharina Valckx and Nicolas Hubesch {Reviewed by STELLA} I like Bruno. He’s a kind cat with a checkered cap. Bruno: Some of the More Interesting Days in my Life So Far is written by Catharina Valckx and illustrated by comic artist Nicolas Hubesch. It’s a funny and charming picture book for junior readers, and a great read-aloud for younger children, too! The drawings are delightful, with plenty to look at in the wonderful street scenes and subtle elements in the pictures that children will like to find. Mostly, it is the characters that will win you over. Bruno is thoughtful, curious and kind, and you’ll enjoy meeting his friends as he takes you through six days – that is six of the more interesting days in his life so far. The day that everything was topsy-turvy, the day it rained and the day the power went out to mention a few. Enjoyable stories about friendship and the small moments in life that can make you smile. Another charmer from Gecko Press. |
 | At the Existentialist Cafe: Freedom, Being and apricot cocktails by Sarah Bakewell {Reviewed by THOMAS} Not only a chatty and enjoyable introduction to mid-century Continental philosophy from phenomenalism to existentialism and beyond but also a source of anecdotal gossip about the personalities, relationships, foibles, diets, hairstyles and other eccentricities of the group of writers and philosophers clustered either physically or thematically around Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir’s Parisian café table (or should that read: Not only a source of anecdotal gossip about the personalities, relationships, foibles, diets, hairstyles and other eccentricities of the group of writers and philosophers clustered either physically or thematically around Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir’s Parisian café table but also a chatty and enjoyable introduction to mid-century Continental philosophy from phenomenalism to existentialism and beyond), At the Existentialist Café is pointy-headed enough to satisfy your curiosity about what these thinkers thought and pointy-nosed enough to satisfy your curiosity about how these thinkers lived. Indeed, either integral or coincidental to the existentialist project was the drawing closer of life-as-lived and life-as-thought-about, and Sarah Bakewell manages to pleasantly reassert the importance of whichever half of the equation you may have neglected (with respect to your knowledge of the existentialists, anyway) or to advance both halves for your general education and amusement. She seems to know when to linger in the company of one intellectual so as to grasp the fundamentals of her or his thinking and when to stand up and move on to the table of another, and she demonstrates the ongoing relevance of phenominalist and existentialist approaches to the ordinary lives of ordinary people (who may or may not have realised that they are adopting phenominalist or existentialist approaches). By the time you have read this book you will be on chatting terms with (or at least about) Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger (though you may not wish to sit at his table), Albert Camus, Raymond Aron, Emmanuel Levinas, Hannah Arendt, Karl Jaspers, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and others, and you will certainly have enhanced your rating as a conversationalist in whatever café you frequent. >> This is this week's Book of the Week. Click here for information, links and amusements. |
 | Solaris by Stanislaw Lem {Reviewed by THOMAS} A psychologist, Kelvin, is sent to a station on the ocean-covered planet Solaris to determine whether to terminate the mission because of lack of progress and a high rate of insanity. The station is beset by strange occurrences and appearances, including, eventually, the presence of Kelvin’s dead wife. As the scientists futilely attempt to observe the planet, the sentient planet is seemingly probing their psyches, giving form to their fears and desires. Ultimately, no communication is possible: all interaction with the Other is nothing but reflection, all observation reveals nothing but the observer. Containing passages of weird beauty and compelling philosophical speculation, this science fiction novel makes provocative points about the insularity of our (largely illusionary) realities and the impossibility of experiencing anything beyond ourselves. |
A SCROLLABLE SELECTION OF NEW RELEASES
These books are all on the shelf now at VOLUME.
Three classic Soviet-era children's books by leading avant-garde writers and illustrators, newly translated.
Starting as a coming-of-age story, developing as a love story and ending as a ghost story, Kunzru's novel is also the story of black lives and black music stolen by the a mainstream culture eager to absorb the identities of its components.
"Part thriller, part literary horror novel; completely impossible to put down." - NPR
What price beauty? The nineteenth century chemical processes enabled a leap in the range of intense pigments available for both dress and decor. Unfortunately, many of these pigments were highly toxic. Scheele's green and Schweinfurt green, pigments created using arsenic, were used to produce millions of rolls of vibrant wallpaper, which had a devastating effect on the inhabitants of the rooms they decorated, to say nothing of the factory workers. Hawksley's fascinating account is accompanied by the most stunning reproductions of ansenical wallpaper (not printed with arsenic (though that would be interesting)).
>> Was Jane Austen poisoned by arsenic?
This stupendously illustrated piece of speculative examines the suburban family home as an economic and environmental calamity and extrapolates a series of scenarios which highlight issues already at play, both in 'McMansions' and ordinary homes. The fictiontakes the form of a series of plans and interventions in iconic bucolic artworks.
>> See more here.
Thirteen poetic riddles as only Manhire could write them, with a CD of music by Griffin and photographs by Peryer.
>> An interview with Manhire.
"Blood Ties is a journey through a lifetime that is a parable of settlement, one man’s response to the challenge of living responsibly and with sensitivity to the question of where we are and what we must be. There are strong ancestors throughout, but, at the same time and very distinctively, the urgent sound of this river of poetry is all this fine poet’s own." - Patrick Evans
Events and addictions conspire to send Maya's life into a chaotic spiral.
"The problem with Jade Sharma's novel is that it ends. The narrator, Maya, is a hot mess with zero percent of her shit together, and yet as I got to know her through the Sharma's inventive narrative voice, I saw her as - or perhaps wanted her to be - my friend." - The Rumpus
Lured to Germany by her crush on two young men (one of whom, Franz Kafka, wasn't even German), Schuman learned a lot about the language and the people, but (possibly) even more about herself through her experiences both personal and literary.
The definitive book on this important brutalist architect and designer.
>> Preview the book here (or come into the shop).
>> Glance through his work here.
When Mahony returns to Mulderrig, a speck on Ireland's west coast, he brings only a photograph of his long-lost mother and a determination to do battle with the lies of his past. No one - living or dead - will tell Mahony what happened to the teenage mother who abandoned him as a baby, despite his certainty that more than one of the villagers knows the sinister truth.
"A sort of Under Milk Wood meets The Third Policeman meets Agatha Christie. Lushly imagined, delightfully original and very, very funny." - M.L. Stedman
>> Find out more.
Unimaginable loss is treated in prose of delicate poetic texture in this subtle novel.
"This journey across the boundaries of form and genre, to write about what is un-write-aboutable, is a smart maneuver - it permits the reader to experience what has been written about over and over in a way that is fresh and absorbing in its difference." - NPR
How does a lonely teenager in recession Ireland with a crazed alcoholic mother cope with reality? He escapes to the Swamp, a mysterious rising pool of water on the outskirts of town and befriends a girl as lost as himself but with even less regard for reality.
"Fast and urgent and full of feeling and savage humour and all kinds of tenderness." - Kevin Barry
Manguel tags along with Dante and converses with Hume, Lewis Carroll, Rachel Carson and Socrates as he investigates the quality that drives the expansion of human knowledge but has also been the death of cats. Why have we evolved this faculty?
>> Manguel talks at our London branch.
I uproot one
of the ladies and use her to beat back a
path through the others, until they look
almost young again in the freshness
of their bruises. When I get back to the
pond most of the spinsters have frosted
in the ground. The children are there
wearing new fur coats. One is putting logs
on a fire, while the other pulls dinner
from the snow.
"This book will push you down a marble staircase, and then cheerfully bring you a couple of aspirin." — Hera Lindsay Bird
An innovative novelistic picture of New York through the creative minds of Walt Whitman, Robert Moses, Robert Mapplethorpe and Edmund White. Now in softcover.
"Beautiful, kaleidoscopic. Everyone should be watching Megan Bradbury from now on." - Eimear McBride
"Megan Bradbury's daring, urgent novel is a thrilling act of psychic and historical excavation, a profound examination of the relationship between urban spaces and the making of art. A moving portrait of lives linked across time, Everyone is Watching is an important addition to the literature of New York." - Garth Greenwell
>>> We have the lovely hardback edition still available.
Not only does this large-format picture book contain a large amount of information about bees (some useful; some curious), it is irresistibly illustrated.
When Kapka Kassabova was a child, the border zone between Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece was rumoured to be an easier crossing point into the West than the Berlin Wall, so it swarmed with soldiers, spies and fugitives. On holidays close to the border on the Black Sea coast, she remembers playing on the beach, only miles from where an electrified fence bristled, its barbs pointing inwards toward the enemy: the holiday-makers, the potential escapees. Today, this densely forested landscape is no longer heavily militarised, but it is scarred by its past. Kassabova sets out on a journey to meet the people of this triple border - Bulgarians, Turks, Greeks - and the latest wave of refugees fleeing conflict further afield.
Alone in space on a derailed mission to Venus from which he was never expected to return, a Czech cosmonaut comes to doubt his marriage, his memory, his heroism, his family history and his sanity.
>> Shades of Omon Ra?
An expose of the killing of civilians in Afghanistan by the New Zealand SAS, and of a cover-up that implicates the highest levels of government.
Multifaceted short short stories riffing in all sorts of ways on life in modern Bangkok.
"Evocative, erudite and often very funny." - Guardian
A wide survey of disruptive protest in the US in the last forty years, drawing parallels between the efforts of environmentalists, black and indigenous activist, feminists and radical queers. What effect has protest had on shaping society, and what are the potentials for protest now?
Moscow, 1953. Three secret policemen arrive in the middle of the night to arrest Solomon Shimonovich Levinson, an actor from the defunct State Jewish Theater. But Levinson, though an old man, is a veteran of past wars, and he proceeds to assemble a ragtag group to help him enact a mad-brilliant plot: the assassination of Stalin (no less). While the setting is Soviet Russia, the backdrop is Shakespeare: A mad king has a diabolical plan to exterminate and deport his country's remaining Jews.
"Darkly playful and generous with quick insights into the vast weirdness of its landscape." - The Washington Post
"A brilliant novel that is at once surreally comic, suspenseful if slightly cracked and punctuated with eruptions of violence, but with a poignant ending . An extraordinary, rich and surprising tale of intrigue Paul Goldberg has been aptly compared to a whole constellation of Jewish literary geniuses Sholem Aleichem, Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, E.L. Doctorow, Michael Chabon and even the Coen brothers. Goldberg possesses a voice and vision that are entirely and uniquely his own." - The Jewish Journal
Not only shows you how to ferment, pickle and dry all manner of ingredients but shows you how ingredients so preserved can be used in all manner of delicious dishes.
Is productive disobedience necessary to avoid academic straightjacketing and overassessment, and to enable positive outcomes for students?
>> The case for disobedience in schools.
The world's oldest clowning organisation, Clowns International, has long kept an archive of eggs upon which clowns have registered their identity and make-up. This unusual and fascinating book accompanies images of the egg register with the professional and life stories of the clowns to whom the eggs refer.
>>> Bring in the eggs!
This week's Book of the Week is Ashleigh Young's phenomenally interesting personal essay collection, which has just won a 2017 Windham-Campbell prize for non-fiction and been short-listed for the 2017 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.
>> Can you tolerate Thomas's review?
>> Can you tolerate 'Bearded Ladies'?
>> Not all strange e-mails come from Nigeria.
>> You can easily tolerate Ashleigh Young's blog.
>> A very tolerable review by Holly Hunter on Radio NZ.
>> Some poems by Ashleigh Young.
>> Grab a copy of the book before the third print run sells out!
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Crongton Knights by Alex Wheatle is a gritty story about a group of kids surviving in the tough environment of a British housing estate. Their parents are struggling working class, single parents, immigrants, refugees, religious, hard-working and sometimes traumatised by gang violence, poverty and the struggle to enable their children to climb out of the cycle of class disadvantage. The focus of this story is a group of 14/15-year-olds who hang out together, trying to keep out of trouble - easy to say, very difficult to do. This is McKay’s story. His dad is gambling, the debt collectors are at the door, his older brother is out cruising for trouble and he’s left at home to cook and to keep the door closed. Author Alex Wheatle won the Guardian Prize for Children for this novel in 2016. And while it’s gritty and dealing with some hard issues, it’s also a testament to loyalty, watching out for your friends, and to growing up the best way you can. Wheatle doesn’t shy away from the hard world these kids live in, yet he brings humour and the rich canvas of their lives to the fore, creating a riveting as well as hopeful novel. This is the second in this series. The first is Liccle Bit, the story of McKay’s friend Lemar and his fascination with the beautiful Venetia (the third will focus on Lemar’s feisty sister, Elaine). In Crongton, McKay is swept into a quest to help a girl recover her mobile phone from another turf. To get there, the band of friends must pass through the unfriendly territories of North Crongton and head up to Notre Dame. All goes as well, apart from being robbed by a rogue gang, until they cross paths with an enemy of McKay’s brother. Then things get tricky and dangerous. You’ll be crossing your fingers for McKay and his friends who seem stuck in the cross-hairs of gang warfare and petty retributions.
{REVIEW BY STELLA} |
 | The Girl from Everywhere by Heidi Heilig opens in 1774. Nix Song, our sixteen-year-old heroine, is at a market in India bartering for a bird who apparently has mythical powers as a cure-all. Things aren’t going well until her friend Kashmir shows up - and then it all gets a bit more hectic. As Kashmir and Nix land back on board ship, the maps come out and Slate, the Captain, who happens to be Nix’s father, mans the wheel. Then one of the most intriguing elements of this book happens, the description of sailing off one map into another. If you like maps, time-travel aboard a boat called the Temptation, a captain obsessed with getting to 1868 to rescue his life’s love (Nix’s mother), a feisty young woman with ideas of her own, and a charming foil in the character of Kashmir, then this a captivating read. Author Heidi Heilig draws on her upbringing on the island of Hawai'i, and plenty of research into mythologies of the several cultures, seafarers' superstitions and the history of the places the ship visits to create a convincing backdrop to this adventurous story. This is very much the story of Nix, her battles with her opium-addicted and difficult father, her changing feelings for her friend Kashmir, and her desire to drive her own destiny - she’s a brilliant map-reader and can tell which are the best for navigation (navigation across time that is). When an opportunity arises for her to choose her own path, who should she trust: the serious, talented Blake who sees perfection in the island; Auntie Joss, the mysterious healer who oversees the opium den and seems to know Nix’s story better than herself; or her father? There’s plenty of interwoven plots here, complete with romance, gold, quests for power and mythical stories. I’m curious for the next instalment, The Ship Beyond Time, due out later in the year.
{REVIEW BY STELLA}
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 | Newspaper by Édouard Levé {Reviewed by THOMAS} Édouard Levé and I drew our first breaths almost simultaneously, and we have been similarly concerned with the problematics of authorial presence in (or absence from) texts, although Levé concluded his struggles in this regard by killing himself immediately after delivering the manuscript for his novel Suicide in 2007. In Newspaper (first published in French in 2004), Levé succeeds in removing himself from the text almost entirely. Though presented as a book, the work takes the form of a newspaper, divided into the standard various sections, complete with articles, advertisements and so forth, from which all specificity has been removed (names, places, currencies, dates, identities), leaving only the patterns of information and the linguistic structures which support them. Shorn of referents, a newspaper is shown to be not so much outward-looking as inward-looking, a portrait of the obsessions and underlying anxieties of the society of which it is an organ. Subjects are shown to be incidental to stories, created and consumed by them. I am pretty sure I remember some of the stories here so treated and I suspect Levé has been rigorous throughout in his experiment upon written media (he achieved something similar in his photographic practice (in Actualités and Quotidien (2001-2003)) by restaging press photographs using anonymised actors and a blank backdrop). It is only in the ‘Arts’ section that some slight residue of the personal can perhaps be detected, some indication that for Levé at that time the arts still slightly resisted the personally obliterative interchangeability that had engulfed the rest of existence. |
 | Can You Tolerate This? By Ashleigh Young {Reviewed by THOMAS} Like some sort of contrast medium, Ashleigh Young’s prose penetrates the fissures and fine vessels of her experiences so that when the reader turns their attention to her texts, subtleties and depths and dimensions hitherto unsuspected yet somehow deeply familiar are revealed and remain imprinted upon memory. The medium flows particularly into areas of ordinary damage (her personal sadness, discomfort, awkwardness, anxiety) and resolves here into twenty-one personal essays which lucidly yet with an almost tender subtlety picture the shared concerns (time, family, memory, the body, love, loss) with which we must constantly contend if we are to be aware of something we take to be ourselves. There is a certain lightness to Young’s touch, and often a concomitant humour, that allows her to describe and circumnavigate the heavy without snagging herself or us upon it, to treat delicately with subjects about which most writing is clumsy through its attempts to be profound. The essays that I remember most are those that acknowledge the dimensions of ambivalence that exist around their subject: the tangle of love and irritation around a childhood dog, her meditations on the hair on her lip, or her growing dislike for Katherine Mansfield in the midst of general adulation during her tenure at the Birthplace in Tinakori Road. The best pieces are those in which Young knows she does not need more than a few pages to be succinct, insightful and good company. This book has just been awarded a 2017 Windham-Campbell Prize for non-fiction and is a finalist in the 2017 Ockham Book Awards. |
REBEL GIRLS
A quick survey of our shelves revealed them to be loaded with books that have feisty, adventurous girl protagonists who take their destinies into their own hands*. Here's a small selection - recommended reading for children and young adults of all genders.
On Taris rules govern everything, from personal appearance to procreation. Although these rules were devised to survive environmental crisis, Juno must work out when to challenge authority, and when to resist peer pressure, in her attempt to find out the truth and her place in her society.
Followed by Fierce September and Heart of Danger.
Ada will not stop asking 'Why?' This enables her to find out all sorts of things, but does she recognise the parameters of her research?
It’s Germany, 1956, and Hitler has won the war. Yael, an eighteen-year-old woman, is part of the Resistance and she has a mission – a dangerous one – she is charged with assassinating Hitler. As a child, Yael was in a camp and experimented on – the experiment, which was successful, has given her a gift that can be used against her enemies. In 1956 a famous motorcycle race, for the creme de la creme of youths, crosses Hitler’s Europe. After years of training, Yael is ready to join this often-dangerous race, where allegiances are necessary to survive and to win is difficult. But win Yael must so she can get to the Victors’ Ball. This novel draws you in slowly and then grips you with its teeth and doesn’t let up until the end.
Followed by Blood for Blood.
Sixteen-year-old Seraphina, assistant to the court composer, is drawn into an intrigue indiciative of the disintegrating relationship between humans and dragons, aware that she must hide her secret: her father is human but mother was a dragon, and this not only gives her special gifts but also puts her in immense danger, both from around her and within.
Followed by Shadow Scale.
16-year-old Nix and her father travel not only around the world but through time in their pirate ship stuffed with treasure and mythological artefacts. Nix's father is obsessed with returning to a time before Nix was born, when her mother was still alive. Nix feels safe in the belief that he will never succeed, but one day her father gets his hands on a map, and Nix must make some hard choices.
A lively, beautifully illustrated survey.
"Rachel Ignotofsky provides young women with the courage and the confidence to follow the exciting paths these scientists have blazed before them." - Eileen Pollack
When 12-year-old Clara meets an unusually large black cat, her life changes for ever. No sooner than she discovers that she can communicate with animals and harness the powers of nature, she finds herself exposed to unexpected danger. She finds she must learn to fight as well as to flee.
Followed by Oblivion, Life Stealer and Bloodling.
Dani is probably the happiest person she knows. She's happy because she's going to start school. Dani has been waiting to go to school her whole life. Then things get even better-she meets Ella Frida by the swings. After that, Dani and Ella Frida do everything together. They stick together through wet and dry, sun and rain, thick and thin. But then something happens that Dani isn't prepared for...
You will love the other 'Dani' books too.
Jena lives in a closed and remote community where a tragic incident has altered the lifestyle of the villagers. Out of tragedy has come a reverent regard for the mountain, a sect of wise Mothers who are all authoritative and who train a group of chosen girls to obey and harvest mica, which the villagers as an energy source. When a single stone is moved, Jena begins to question her role and the behaviours of others. The truth she will uncover will change all their lives. This is a gripping, powerful and completely compelling book that makes you think and question the fates we all encounter.
A beautifully illustrated children’s book outlining Bourgeois' early connection with textiles via her family’s work as tapestry restorers for generations in France, her early connection with nature, and her path to becoming an artist. While studying mathematics in Paris, Louise’s mother dies and Louise abandons her studies and begins her work as a painter and sculptor - a homage to her mother.
The daughter of a priestess is cast out as a baby, and after raiders kill her adopted family, she is abandoned at the gates of the Great Hall, anonymous and mute. Called No-Name, the cursed child, she is raised a slave, and not until she is twelve does she learn her name is Aissa: the dragonfly. Every year the Bull King takes a tribute from the island: two thirteen-year-old children to brave the bloody bull dances in his royal court. None have ever returned - but for Aissa it is the only escape. Aissa is resilient, resourceful, and fast - but to survive the bull ring, she will have to learn the mystery of her true nature. A well written adventure set in Bronze Age Crete.
Lyra and her animal daemon travel to Svalbard to attempt to rescue children who have having their souls removed, receiving help from an ice bear and a witch clan. Vast in scope and delectable in detail.
Followed by The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass.
Deliciously Dickensian characters, a grimy setting, a plot that is both emotionally and intellectually engaging and keeps you guessing until the end (and beyond), plenty of good information about various kinds of misfortune prevalent in Victorian London, incandescent similes and other turns of phrase, the irrepressible verve both of Pullman’s writing and of 16-year-old Sally Lockhart, determined to find out the truth behind her father’s death. What more could you want?
Beautifully written, exciting and unusual. Feodora and her mother live in the snowbound woods of Russia, in a house full of food and fireplaces. Ten minutes away, in a ruined chapel, lives a pack of wolves. Feodora's mother is a wolf wilder, and Feo is a wolf wilder in training. A wolf wilder is the opposite of an animal tamer: it is a person who teaches tamed animals to fend for themselves, and to fight and to run, and to be wary of humans. When the Russian Army threatens her very existence, Feo is left with no option but to go on the run.
Imagine if Sherlock Holmes was an 11-year-old girl! Super-smart Friday Barnes solves everything, from missing homework to bank robberies.
You will enjoy all six Friday Barnes books.
Maresi came to the Red Abbey when she was thirteen. In a world where girls aren't allowed to learn or do as they please, an island inhabited solely by women sounded like a fantasy. One day Jai, her clothes stiff with dirt, scars on her back arrives on a ship. Jai has fled to the island to escape terrible danger and unimaginable cruelty, and the men who hurt her will stop at nothing to find her. Now the women and girls of the Red Abbey must use all their powers and ancient knowledge to combat the forces that wish to destroy them. Maresi, haunted by her own nightmares, must confront her very deepest, darkest fears.
"Dark, powerful and original. Really stands out in a very crowded YA marketplace. Thrilling, suspenseful and gloriously feminist." - The Bookseller
Naondel ('Red Abbey Chronicles' #2) coming soon!
>> Turtschaninoff introduces the series.
Set in China during the Han Dynasty, this is the story of a slave girl and her chance encounter with a dragon. Her journey with Danzi (the dragon) is one of danger and discovery. The girl, who had felt so worthless, finds an inner strength and courage to protect the dragon and becomes the dragonkeeper (a role reserved for very few). This book is beautifully written and rich in texture.
There are six books in the series!
100 one-page biographies of inspiring women from all times and all places, each with a wonderful full-page illustration by one of 60 artists (who just happen to all be women), including New Zealander Sarah Wilkins.
>> Watch this!
We have already pre-sold all our first delivery of this book, but more stock is on its way. Put your name down now for the next available copy!
* We found to our delight that the gender-bias assessment undertaken in this video did not apply to the books on our shelves (if anything, the reverse!). We would also contend that it is not only girls who need books with girl protagonists - boys can enjoy them too.
>> Read Stella's review.
>> Read an extract!!
>> Read the review in The New York Times.
>> And the review in The Guardian.
>> The sadly shortened life of Willie Lincoln.
>> George Sanders the novelist talks with Dana Spiotta the novelist
{STELLA}
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In the week of International Women’s Day (8th March) it’s timely to revisit some feminist writings. Rebecca Solnit's essays in Men Explain Things to Me are hard-hitting and remind us that we still have a long way to go towards gender equality, respect and fairness. While we still encounter gender prejudices and stereotypical behaviour in what many of us consider a sophisticated culture, we need to keep questioning the political, social and psychological structures that frame our worlds, both personal and political. In a year where Trump rose to power, where the far right becomes ever more popular, and gender politics become the playground of the powerful elite, knitting a pussy hat and joining the protest movement looks like a good idea. Solnit writes with clarity, anger and spirit. While many of the brutal facts and figures of domestic violence will make you cringe, these figures are required reading that remind us that while there are good men, the rate of violence against women is too high. Intelligent and thoughtful, Solnit talks about gender politics with a clear eye on other factors of oppression (economic inequality, migrant politics, family dynamics, etc), making these short essays a good starting point for further investigation into her writing.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's essay (a TED talk - so you can listen as well) is an excellent and hopeful argument for why we should all, men and women, campaign women's rights and equality. Adichie delivered this talk at TEDx in 2012, with millions of views, numerous articles and reviews, and the production of a small 52-page book, We Should All be Feminists, is an accessible essay that should be read by men, women and teens alike.
If you’re like Jessa Crispin, who thinks feminism has become too mainstream, too much of an apologist movement, you’ll be keen to read her treatise, Why I am Not a Feminist: A feminist manifesto. She gets under the skin of feminism to the structural problems of our socio-political structure, arguing for a radicalisation of feminism.
And if you’ve never read Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, this beautiful hardback edition is now available. "The Bloody Chamber is such an important book to me. Angela Carter, for me, is still the one who said: 'You see these fairy stories, these things that are sitting at the back of the nursery shelves? Actually, each one of them is a loaded gun. Each of them is a bomb. Watch: if you turn it right it will blow up.' And we all went: 'Oh my gosh, she's right - you can blow things up with these!'" - Neil Gaiman
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 | Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders {Reviewed by STELLA} This is the most original and enjoyable novel to cross my path in recent times. George Saunders is an astounding writer whose gift for story-telling makes Lincoln in the Bardo a pleasure to read and thoroughly absorbing. Using first-hand accounts and a cacophony of voices (from the spirit world) this is predominately a dialogue-driven novel. The year is 1862, an eleven-year-old boy - Willie Lincoln - has a fever and the Civil War rages in America. The book opens with a stately dinner during which the President and his wife venture upstairs at intervals to check on their cherished son. The fever doesn't break and young Willie dies. Lincoln is inconsolable and this is the story of his grief and his visits to the young boy's grave. The historical details from recorded histories, letters, reports and observances create a wonderfully accurate picture of the time and a truthful account of what happened - Saunders cleverly arranges this information to become a readable script ,building visual scenes in the reader's mind. Interspersed are the sections in the Bardo - the Bardo (from Tibetan Buddhist tradition) is a place of transition, a place between death and life, where those stuck in this world are tormented by demons and biding time until the next world. The array of characters Saunders creates are both grotesque and humorous. Unwilling to depart this world, they live in hope for a way back to their loved ones and out of their 'sick-boxes'. Willie is in the Bardo and it is here that his father comes, stricken with grief, to cradle his son one more time. In this place, the cacophony of voices telling this story and their fascination with the living one who enters their world, are intriguing. Not only do these voices give an insight into the times, but their stories of woe are both tragic and entertaining. Saunders gets the pitch just right. A story of grief and familial love against a backdrop of tragedy and crisis, Lincoln in the Bardo is a gem for its stylistic endeavours and the interplay between lightness and dark. |