NEW RELEASES (24.11.23)

A new book is a promise of good times ahead. Click through for your copies:

Our Strangers by Lydia Davis $45
Lydia Davis is a virtuoso at detecting the seemingly casual, inconsequential surprises of daily life and pinning them for inspection. In Our Strangers, conversations are overheard and misheard, a special delivery letter is mistaken for a rare white butterfly, toddlers learning to speak identify a ping-pong ball as an egg and mumbled remarks betray a marriage. In the glow of Davis's keen noticing, strangers can become like family and family like strangers. (Hardback)
”This is a writer as mighty as Kafka, as subtle as Flaubert and as epoch-making, in her own way, as Proust.” —Ali Smith
”Davis captures words as a hunter might and uses punctuation like a trap. Davis is a high priestess of the startling, telling detail, a most original and daring mind.” —Colm Toibin

 

A Shining by Jon Fosse (translated from Nynorsk by Damion Searles) $26
A man starts driving without knowing where he is going. He alternates between turning right and left, and finally he gets stuck at the end of a forest road. Soon it gets dark and starts to snow, but instead of going back to find help, he ventures, foolishly, into the dark forest. Inevitably, the man gets lost, and as he grows cold and tired, he encounters a glowing being amid the obscurity. (Paperback)
”A Shining can be read in many ways: as a realistic monologue; as a fable; as a Christian-inflected allegory; as a nightmare painstakingly recounted the next morning, the horror of the experience still pulsing under the words, though somewhat mitigated by the small daily miracle of daylight. I think the great splendour of Fosse’s fiction is that it so deeply rejects any singular interpretation; as one reads, the story does not sound a clear singular note, but rather becomes a chord with all the many possible interpretations ringing out at once. This refusal to succumb to the solitary, the stark, the simple, the binary – to insist that complicated things like death and God retain their immense mysteries and contradictions – seems, in this increasingly partisan world of ours, a quietly powerful moral stance.’” —Lauren Groff
”Fosse’s prose doesn’t speak so much as witnesses, unfolds, accumulates. It flows like consciousness itself. This is perhaps why A Shining feels so momentous, even at fewer than 50 pages. You never quite know where you’re going. But it doesn’t matter: you want to follow, to move in step with the rhythm of these words.” —Matthew Janney

 

Hangman by Maya Binyam $40
A man returns home to sub-Saharan Africa after twenty-six years living in exile in America. When he arrives, he finds that he doesn't recognise the country or anyone in it. Thankfully, someone at the airport knows him — a man who calls him brother. As they travel to this man's house, the purpose of his visit comes into focus: he is here to find his real brother, who is dying. In Hangman, Maya Binyam tells the story of this twisted odyssey, and of the phantoms and tricksters, aid workers and taxi drivers, the relatives, riddles and strangers that lead this man along a circuitous path towards the truth. Hangman is a strangely honest story of one man's stubborn search for refuge — in this world and the one that lies beyond it. (Hardback)
”Hangman beckons you into a zone that at first seems as clear, as blank, and as eerily sunny as the pane of a window. Then it traps you there, until you notice the blots, bubbles, and fissures in the glass — and then the frame itself, then the shatter. A clean, sharp, piercing — and deeply political — novel.” —Namwali Serpell

 

This Plague of Souls by Mike McCormack $40

The long-awaited next novel from the Goldsmiths Prize-winning author of Solar Bones. How do you rebuild the world? How do you put it back together? Nealon returns to his family home in Ireland for the first time in years, only to be greeted by a completely empty house. No heat or light, no furniture, no sign of his wife or child anywhere. It seems the world has forgotten that he even existed. The one exception is a persistent caller on the telephone, someone who seems to know everything about Nealon's life, his recent bother with the law and, more importantly, what has happened to his family. All Nealon needs to do is talk with him. But the more he talks the closer Nealon gets to the same trouble he was in years ago, tangled in the very crimes of which he claims to be innocent. Part roman noir, part metaphysical thriller, This Plague of Souls is a story for these fractured times, dealing with how we might mend the world and the story of a man who would let the world go to hell if he could keep his family together..(Hardback)
”This is the reason Mike McCormack is one of Ireland's best-loved novelists; he is the most modestly brilliant writer we have. His delicate abstractions are woven from the ordinary and domestic — both metaphysical and moving, McCormack's work asks the big questions about our small lives.” —Anne Enright

 

Forgotten Manuscript by Sergio Chejfec (translated from Spanish by Jeffrey Lawrence) $38
"Could anyone possibly believe that writing doesn't exist? It would be like denying the existence of rain." The perfect green notebook forms the basis for Sergio Chejfec's work, collecting writing, and allowing it to exist in a state of permanent possibility, or, as he says, "The written word is also capable of waiting for the next opportunity to appear and to continue to reveal itself by and for itself." This same notebook is also the jumping off point for this essay, which considers the dimensions of the act of writing (legibility, annotation, facsimile, inscription, typewriter versus word processor versus pen) as a way of thinking, as a record of relative degrees of permanence, and as a performance. From Kafka through Borges, Nabokov, Levrero, Walser, the implications of how we write take on meaning as well worth considering as what we write. This is a love letter to the act of writing as practice, bearing down on all the ways it happens (cleaning typewriter keys, the inevitable drying out of the bottle of wite-out, the difference between Word Perfect and Word) to open up all the ways in which "when we express our thought, it changes." (Paperback)
"It is hard to think of another contemporary writer who, marrying true intellect with simple description of a space, simultaneously covers so little and so much ground.” —Times Literary Supplement

 

Any Body: A comic compendium of important facts and feelings about our bodies by Katharina von der Gathen and Anke Kuhl $30
An honest, humorous and factual book for children and early teens who want to understand and feel at home with their own bodies. Sometimes we feel uncomfortable in our own skin, sometimes invincible. Katharina von der Gathen’s many years of experience working with children as a sex educator are the basis for this witty encyclopedia covering interesting facts about skin, hair and body functions alongside the questions that may affect us through puberty and beyond—gender identity, beauty, consent, self-confidence, how other people react and relate to us, and how they make us feel. With accessible and warm text, Any Body gently acknowledges common feelings of ambivalence about our bodies. Through showing body diversity and positivity, it encourages acceptance of self and others. The illustrations are relatably funny and include charts, cartoons and more—even a handy page of visual compliments. This compendium is an encouraging starting point for conversations with children navigating puberty and laying the foundations for body acceptance in a straightforward and highly entertaining way.

 

The Untamed Thread: Slow stitch to sooth the soul and ignite creativity by Fleur Woods $50
The Untamed Thread is the story of Fleur Woods’s journey from corporate world to creative life — woven with generous doses of the practical ways you can bring more creativity into your own life. Taking cues from the natural world we wander through Fleur’s contemporary fibre art practice to encourage and support you to find your own creative path. This inspiring creative guide invites you into Fleur’s art studio, near Upper Moutere. Her practice is as untamed as the New Zealand landscape that inspires her, free of rules, guided by intuition and joy in the process. Together we explore colour, texture, flora, textiles and stitch alongside the magic moments, happy accidents, perfect coincidences and ridiculous randomness of the creative process. Embracing the slow, contemplative nature of stitch we can reconnect our creative spirits to reimagine embroidery as a contemporary tool for mark making. This book wraps you in a warm blanket of nostalgia, grounds you in nature and inspires your senses to allow you to travel down your own creative path gathering all the precious little details meant for you along the way. (Flexibound)

 

Marigold and Rose: A fiction by Louise Glück $44
The twins, Marigold and Rose, in their first year, begin to piece together the world as they move between Mother’s stories of ‘Long, long ago’ and Father’s ‘Once upon a time’. Impressions, repeated, begin to make sense. The rituals of bathing and burping are experienced differently by each. The story is about beginnings, each of which is an ending of what has come before. There is comedy in the progression, the stages of recognition, and in the ironic anachronisms which keep the babies alert, surprised, prescient and resigned. Charming, resonant, written with Gluck’s characteristic poise and curiosity, Marigold and Rose unfolds as a new kind of creation myth. "Marigold was absorbed in her book; she had gotten as far as the V." So begins Marigold and Rose, Louise Gluck's astonishing chronicle of the first year in the life of twin girls. Imagine a fairy tale that is also a multigenerational saga; a piece for two hands that is also a symphony; a poem that is also, in the spirit of Kafka's ‘The Metamorphosis’, an incandescent act of autobiography.

 

To the Ice by Thomas Tidholm and Anna-Clara Tidholm $28
Ida, Max and Jack go to the creek one winter’s day. They play on an ice floe then find themselves floating away—all the way to the polar ice, with just a box, a branch and some sandwiches. “You probably don’t think it’s true, and we didn’t either, not even while it was happening.” They find an old hut, meet penguins, see extraordinary things and, after testing their resources in this dramatic land of ice and snow, come home safe at the end of the day. “What shall we say about where we’ve been?” asked Max. “Tell the truth,” I said. “We don’t know.” (Hardback)

 

Dialogue with a Somnambulist: Stories, essays, and a portrait gallery by Chloe Ardjis $36
Renowned internationally for her lyrically unsettling novels Book of Clouds, Asunder and Sea Monsters, the Mexican writer Chloe Aridjis crosses borders in her writing as much as in life. Now, collected here for the first time, her stories, essays and pen portraits reveal an author as imaginatively at home in the short form as in her longer fiction. Conversations with the presences who dwell on the threshold of waking and reverie, these pieces will stay with you long after the lamps have flickered out. At once fabular and formally innovative, acquainted with reverie and rigorous report, sensitive to the needs of a wider ecology yet familiar with the landscapes of the unconscious, her texts are both dream dispatches and wayward word plays infused with the pleasure and possibilities of language. In this collection of works, we meet a woman guided only by a plastic bag drifting through the streets of Berlin who discovers a nonsense-named bar that is home to papier-mâché monsters and one glass-encased somnambulist. Floating through space, cosmonauts are confronted not only with wonder and astonishment, but tedium and solitude. And in Mexico City, stray dogs animate public spaces, “infusing them with a noble life force.” In her pen portraits, Aridjis turns her eye to expats and outsiders, including artists and writers such as Leonora Carrington, Mavis Gallant, and Beatrice Hastings. (Paperback)

 

The Sewing Girl’s Tale: A story of crime and consequences in Revolutionary America by John Wood Sweet $40
An account of the first published rape trial in American history and its long, shattering aftermath, revealing how much has changed over two centuries — and how much has not. On a moonless night in the summer of 1793 a crime was committed in the back room of a New York brothel — the kind of crime that even victims usually kept secret. Instead, seventeen-year-old seamstress Lanah Sawyer did what virtually no one in US history had done before: she charged a gentleman with rape. Her accusation sparked a raw courtroom drama and a relentless struggle for vindication that threatened both Lanah's and her assailant's lives. The trial exposed a predatory sexual underworld, sparked riots in the streets, and ignited a vigorous debate about class privilege and sexual double standards. The ongoing conflict attracted the nation's top lawyers, including Alexander Hamilton, and shaped the development of American law. Eventually, Lanah Sawyer did succeed in holding her assailant accountable — but at a terrible cost to herself. (Paperback)

 

Artichoke to Zucchini: An alphabet of delicious things from around the world by Alice Oehr $30
A is for artichokes and long spears of asparagus. It's for bright, creamy avocados and salty little anchovies… From apple pie to zeppole, and everything in between, Artichoke to Zucchini introduces young readers to fruit, vegetables, and dishes from around the globe. Full of tasty favourites and delicious new discoveries, it's sure to lead to inspiration in the kitchen!

 
VOLUME BooksNew releases
Book of the Week: THE BEE STING by Paul Murray

Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting is a favourite with many bookies to win this year’s Booker Prize. (which will be announced in just a few days!). From the author of the excellent Skippy Dies comes a dazzlingly intricate and poignant tragicomedy about family, fortune, and the struggle to be a good man at the end of the world. Exceptionally well-reviewed since its publication, the story is told by the four distinct voices of the Barnes family. Meet Dickie whose car business is going under, but he's out in the woods preparing for the actual end of the world. Meanwhile, his wife Imelda is selling off her jewellery on eBay, their teenage daughter, Cass, is determined to drink her way through the whole thing, and PJ, aged 12, is disappearing into the video game portal and hatching a plan. There’s trouble ahead. Move over Skippy, The Bee is here. This should be on your reading pile this summer.

“Paul Murray’s saga, The Bee Sting, set in the Irish Midlands, brilliantly explores how our secrets and self-deceptions ultimately catch up with us. This family drama, told from multiple perspectives, is at once hilarious and heartbreaking, personal and epic. It’s an addictive read.” —The Booker Judges

VOLUME BooksBook of the week
GARGOYLES by Thomas Bernhard — reviewed by Thomas

GARGOYLES by Thomas Bernhard (translated from German by Richard and Clara Winston)

“The catastrophe begins with getting out of bed.” Gargoyles (first published in 1967 as Verstörung (“Disturbance”)) is the book in which Bernhard laid claim both thematically and stylistically to the particular literary territory developed in all his subsequent novels. In the first part of the book, set entirely within one day, the narrator, a somewhat vapid student accompanying his father, a country doctor, on his rounds, tells us of the sufferings of various patients due to their mental and physical isolation: the wealthy industrialist withdrawn to his dungeon-like hunting lodge to write a book he will never achieve (“’Even though I have destroyed everything I have written up to now,’ he said, ‘I have still made enormous progress.’”), and his sister-companion, the passive victim of his obsessions whom he is obviously and obliviously destroying; the workers systematically strangling the birds in an aviary following the death of their owner; the musical prodigy suffering from a degenerative condition and kept in a cage, tended by his long-suffering sister. The oppressive landscape mirrors the isolation and despair of its inhabitants: we feel isolated, we reach out, we fail to reach others in a meaningful way, our isolation is made more acute. “No human being could continue to exist in such total isolation without doing severe damage to his intellect and psyche.” Bernhard’s nihilistic survey of the inescapable harm suffered and inflicted by continuing to exist is, however, threaded onto the doctor’s round: although the doctor is incapable of ‘saving’ his patients, his compassion as a witness to their anguish mirrors that of the author (whose role is similar). In the second half of the novel, the doctor’s son narrates their arrival at Hochgobernitz, the castle of Prince Saurau, whose breathlessly neurotic rant blots out everything else, delays the doctor’s return home and fills the rest of the book. This desperate monologue is Bernhard suddenly discovering (and swept off his feet by) his full capacities: an obsessively looping railing against existence and all its particulars. At one stage, when the son reports the prince reporting his dream of discovering a manuscript in which his son expresses his intention to destroy the vast Hochgobernitz estate by neglect after his father’s death, the ventriloquism is many layers deep, paranoid and claustrophobic to the point of panic. The prince’s monologue, like so much of Bernhard’s best writing, is riven by ambivalence, undermined (or underscored) by projection and transference, and structured by crazed but irrefutable logic: “‘Among the special abilities I was early able to observe in myself,’ he said, ‘is the ruthlessness to lead anyone through his own brain until he is nauseated by this cerebral mechanism.’” Although the prince’s monologue is stated to be (and clearly is) the position of someone insane, this does not exactly invalidate it: “Inside every human head is the human catastrophe corresponding to this particular head, the prince said. It is not necessary to open up men’s heads in order to know that there is nothing inside them but a human catastrophe. ‘Without this human catastrophe, man does not exist at all.'”

VOLUME BooksReview by Thomas
THREAD RIPPER by Amalie Smith — reviewed by Thomas

Thread Ripper by Amalie Smith (translated from Danish by Jennifer Russell)   

Perhaps, he thought in a rare moment of self-reflection, or in a moment of rare self-reflection, he wasn’t sure which, I have become so accustomed to writing my so-called fictional reviews, to writing my so-called reviews in a fictional manner or even, more confusingly, in an autofictional manner so that they are not immediately recognised as the fictions they are, that I have proverbialised myself into a corner and am incapable of writing a straight review, if there is even such a thing, or a review just written as a review, there might be such a thing as that, he thought, without the novelistic trappings of my approach, my distancing and deflection tricks, my wriggling away from the task at hand and from the possibility that I am not up to the task at hand, he thought, perhaps all my trickeration, so to call it, is just a way of concealing my incapability, from myself at least for surely no-one else is fooled, he thought. None of this helped, he thought, this self-reflection, so to call it, makes me more incapable rather than less, makes anything that might pass for a review, or even for a meta-review, less possible, I have thought myself to a standstill, he thought, unless of course I create a fictional reviewer to write the reviews for me, a fictional reviewer who could write a straight review, a review written as a review, that elusive goal that for me is now unreachable, at least without some trickeration, I have got to the point at which only a fake reviewer can write a real review. Anyway, anyone but me. I wonder how my fictional reviewer will approach this book, Thread Ripper, he thought. Thread Ripper is written in two parallel sequences or threads on the facing pages of each opening, and each of those threads has its own approach to the matters that inform them both. My reviewer would probably find themselves obliged to begin or find it convenient to begin with a description of how the verso pages carry an account, if that is the right word, of the author’s researches and considerations of the history of weaving and computer programming, which turn out to be the same thing, at least in the author’s concurrent artistic practice, so to call it, here also described, and which turn out to be the same thing also as neurology and linguistics, or at least to have typological parallels to neurology and linguistics, if these even warrant separate terms, which the fictional reviewer may speculate on at some length, or not, these recto pages deal with matters outside the author’s head, matters of what could be termed fact, even though the term fact could be applied in this instance to some quite interesting philosophical speculations, speculations about things that may actually be the case, which, for the fictional reviewer, is as good a definition of the term as any. The recto pages are concerned with problems of knowing, the fictional reviewer may begin, or may conclude, whereas the verso pages are concerned with problems of feeling, so to call it, not that in either case should we assume the so-called problems to be necessarily problematic, although in many cases in both strands they are, the recto pages are concerned with what is going on inside the author’s head, with matters subject to temporal mutabilities, temporal mutabilities being an example, or being examples, of the sort of words a fictional reviewer might use when writing a review as a review but not making a very good job of it, though it is unclear whose fault that might be, does he have a responsibility for the performance of this fictional reviewer he has devised to do his job, he supposed he did have some such responsibility but he couldn’t help starting to wonder if successfully creating a character who fails to write well might be more of a success than a failure, though it would be, he supposed, a failure at his stated aim of achieving by the employment of a fictional reviewer the sort of straight review that he found himself these days incapable of writing, he wanted the fictional reviewer to write a real review, after all, a fictional review, which would not need to be actually written and which in this instance he could easily refer to as being wholly positive about this interesting book Thread Ripper, which he has read and enjoyed and which started in his mind, if it warrants to be so called, some quite interesting speculations and chains of thought of his own, and which he could suppose, to make his task easier, his fictional reviewer has also read and enjoyed, they are not so different after all, he thought, such a fictional review would not realise his intention or fulfil the purpose of the reviewer, he had intended the fictional reviewer to review the book in a straightforward way, even though he, even if this intention was by some chance realised, looked as if he would in any case treat the whole exercise, to his shame, as so often, as something of a sentence gymnasium. He would like to write in a straightforward way, he thought, to say, in this instance, I like this book and what is more I think you should buy it because I think you would like it too, but he could not help making the whole exercise into a sentence gymnasium, I never can resist a sentence gymnasium, he thought, these days less than ever, show me a sentence gymnasium or some relatively straightforward task that I could treat as a sentence gymnasium, pretty much anything can be so treated, he realised, and I am lost, he thought, whatever I attempt I fail, I am lost in the fractals of my sentence gymnasiums, or sentence gymnasia, rather, he corrected himself, my plight is worse than I thought, he thought. In Thread Ripper the author on the verso dreams, the fictional reviewer might point out, he thought, or he hoped the fictional reviewer would point out or remember to point out even if they didn’t get so far as to actually point out, according to the verso pages the author dreams and longs, and the author on the recto pages, if we are not at fault for calling either personage the author, programmes her computer with an algorithm to weave tapestries but also with an algorithm to write poetry, the results of which are included on these recto pages, if the author of those pages is to be believed, he didn’t see why not and he thought it unlikely that his fictional reviewer would have any reservations in regard to the authenticity of these poems, so to call them, or rather to the artificial authorship of the poems and of the so-called ‘artificial’ intelligence behind them, any productive system, any arrangement of parts that can produce something beyond those parts, is a sort of intelligence, he thought, though he evidently hadn’t thought this very hard. All thought is done by something very like a machine, even if this is not very like what we commonly term machines, he reasoned, reducing the meaning of his statement almost to nothing while doing so, it is a good thing I am not writing this review myself, it is a good thing I have a fictional reviewer to write the review, a fictional reviewer whom I can make ridiculous without making myself ridiculous, he thought, unconvincingly he had to admit though he didn’t admit this of course to anyone but himself, the universe is full of mess, a mess we are in a constant struggle to reduce. “The digital has become a source not of order, as we had hoped, but of mess, an accumulation of images and signs that just keeps on growing,” writes the author of Thread Ripper. “For humans it’s a mess; a machine can see right through.” Perhaps there is a difference between machine intelligence, which compounds, and human intelligence, which reduces, he thought briefly and then abandoned this thought, perhaps my fictional reviewer will have this thought and perhaps my fictional reviewer will be able to think it through and make something of it, fictional characters often think better than the authors who invent them, fictional characters are themselves a kind of machine for thinking with, artificial characters with artificial thoughts, if there can be such things, perhaps intelligence is the only thing that can never be artificial, he thought, though we might have to change the meanings of several words to make this statement make sense. “I hear on the radio that the human brain at birth is a soup of connections, that language helps us reduce them,” writes the author in Thread Ripper. “The more we learn, the fewer the connections.” Does grammar, then, work as a kind of algorithm, he wondered, or he wondered if his fictional reviewer might be induced to wonder, is it grammar that forms our thoughts by reducing them to the extent that we may affect on occasion to make some sense, whether of not we are right, which is, really, unimportant, the grammar is what matters not the content, is this what Ada Lovelace, who died before she could describe it, referred to as the calculus of the nervous system, could he actually end his sentence with a question mark, he wondered, the question mark that belonged to this Ada Lovelace question, or was he too tangled in his sentence to find its end?

VOLUME BooksReview by Thomas
WA and IRO — reviewed by Stella

Some books are a pleasure to look at, to handle, and to have close at hand for inspiration. The way a book is designed can alter your interaction with it. The choice of font, layout, paper stock, binding, and the content/space (the white of the page) ratio all affect your reading experience. Whether this is a novel or an art book, the design of a book should be pleasing, and yet unnoticeable. It should feel right. If you are interested in design, like Japanese aesthetics, and like a set, then these two books are awaiting your pleasure. I’ve owned a copy of Wa: The Essence of Japanese Design for a few years and I never tire of it. Wa is not only filled with gorgeous examples of wood, metal, and textile objects, it's a design object in itself. Beautifully bound with striking stitching, the pages are made from folded fine paper so from the moment you pick it up it feels special. Within the covers of the book, the pages carry the essence of Japanese aesthetic with typographic design and placement of images on the page which are pleasing and thoughtfully arranged. Split into different media (textile, wood, metal, etc), each chapter has an essay discussing the area and the contemporary approach to each. It’s altogether a stunning book. And its partner, Iro: the Essence of Colour in Japanese Design, is just as compelling.

VOLUME BooksReview by Stella
NEW RELEASES (17.11.23)

A new book is a promise of good times ahead. Click through for your copies:

Cuddy by Benjamin Myers $37
“Part poetry, part electricity, this story carries relics between the ephemeral and the eternal with all the disarming vitality of a truly illuminated text.” —Goldsmiths Prize judges' citation
Cuddy is a bold and experimental retelling of the story of the hermit St. Cuthbert, unofficial patron saint of the North of England. Incorporating poetry, prose, play, diary and real historical accounts to create a novel like no other, Cuddy straddles historical eras — from the first Christian-slaying Viking invaders of the holy island of Lindisfarne in the 8th century to a contemporary England defined by class and austerity. Along the way we meet brewers and masons, archers and academics, monks and labourers, their visionary voices and stories echoing through their ancestors and down the ages. And all the while at the centre sits Durham Cathedral and the lives of those who live and work around this place of pilgrimage their dreams, desires, connections and communities. Winner of the 2023 Goldsmiths Prize.
”A sensational piece of storytelling. The symbiosis of poetry and story, of knowledge and deep love, marks out Cuddy as a singular and significant achievement.” —Guardian
”A polyphonic hymn to a very specific landscape and its people. At the same time, it deepens his standing as an arresting chronicler of a broader, more mysterious seam of ancient folklore that unites the history of the British Isles as it's rarely taught.” —Observer

 

Flora: Celebrating our botanical world edited by Carlos Lehnebach, Claire Regnault, Rebecca Rice, Isaac Te Awa, and Rachel Yates $80
This splendid large-format book mines Te Papa's collections to explore and expand upon the way we think about our botanical world and its cultural imprint. It features over 400 selections by a cross-disciplinary curatorial team that range from botanical specimens and art to photography, furniture, jewellery, tivaevae, applied art, textiles, stamps and more. Flora's twelve essays provide a deeper contextual understanding of different topics, including the unique characteristics of New Zealand flora as well as how artists and cultures have used flora as a motif and a subject over time. Very desirable, very browsable, very givable.

 

I Have the Right: An affirmation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child illustrated by Reza Dalvand $30
Beautifully illustrated and unfortunately urgently relevant at the moment, this book introduces children and reminds adults of the basic rights of children that no adult or government should violate for any reason. I have the right to have a name and a nationality. I have the right to the best healthcare. I have the right to an education. I have the right to a home where I can thrive. Adopted in 1989 and ratified by these 190 countries, the UNCRoC promises to defend the rights of children and to keep them safe, respected, and valued. Dalvand's stunning illustrations speak to children all around the world, some of whose rights are often challenged and must be protected every day. Among its other articles guaranteeing children’s access to food, water, safety and wellbeing, the UNCRoC specifically “condemns the targeting of children in situations of armed conflict and direct attacks on objects protected under international law, including places that generally have a significant presence of children, such as schools and hospitals.”

 

Western Lane by Chetna Maroo $35
Short-listed for this year’s Booker Prize, Western Lane is a beautiful and moving debut novel about grief, sisterhood, and a teenage girl’s struggle to transcend herself. Gopi has been playing squash since she was old enough to hold a racket. When her mother dies, her father enlists her in an intense training regime, and the game becomes her world. Her life is reduced to the sport’s rhythms: the serve, the volley, the drive, the shot, and its echo.
What the Booker judges say: "Skilfully deploying the sport of squash as both context and metaphor, Western Lane is a deeply evocative debut about a family grappling with grief, conveyed through crystalline language which reverberates like the sound ‘of a ball hit clean and hard…with a close echo’.” Now available in paperback.

 

Corey Fah Does Social Mobility by Isabel Waidner $37
This is the story of Corey Fah, a writer on the cusp of a windfall, courtesy of the Social Evils prize committee, for whom the actual gong — and with it the prize money - remains tantalizingly out of reach. Neon beige, with UFO-like qualities, the elusive trophy leads Corey, with partner Drew and surprise eight-legged companion Bambi Pavok, on a spectacular detour through their childhood in the Forest 3 via an unlikely stint on reality TV. Navigating those twin horrors, through wormholes and time loops, Corey learns — the hard way — the difference between a prize and a gift. Both radiant and revolutionary, Isabel Waidner's fiction gleefully takes a hammer to false binaries, boundaries and borders, turning walls into bridges and words into wings. Fierce, fluid and funny, they free us to imagine another way of being. This is a novel about coming into one's own, the labour of love, the tendency of history to repeat itself and the pitfalls of social mobility. It's about watching TV with your lover. Waidner, whose Sterling Karat Gold was awarded he 2022 Goldsmiths Prize, has a unique, disorienting, and very enjoyable voice.
”A piece of winged originality.” —Ali Smith
”A provocative act of resistance to our morally slippery times. Reading Waidner is like plugging into an electric socket of language and ideas.” —Guardian
”The writer everyone is talking about — and deservedly so. Their explosive sensibility and style are as far removed from mediocre prose and middle-class manners as you can imagine.” —Bernardine Evaristo
”Buckle up! Corey Fah Does Social Mobility is a head-spinning, mind-bending roller coaster of fun, horror, and subversion. I love it.” —Kamila Shamsie

 

At the Bach by Joy Cowley, illustrated by Hilary Jean Tapper $30
Cowley’s simple rhythmic text is perfectly matched with Tapper’s warm and gentle illustrations to capture the common childhood experience of staying in a bach by the sea in summer. An instant favourite.

 

The Future Future by Adam Thirlwell $37
It's the eighteenth century, and Celine is in trouble. Her husband is mostly absent. Her parents are elsewhere. And meanwhile men are inventing stories about her — about her affairs, her sexuality, her orgies and addictions. All these stories are lies, but the public loves them — spreading them like a virus. Celine can only watch as her name becomes a symbol for everything rotten in society. This is a world of decadence and saturation, of lavish parties and private salons, of tulle and satin and sex and violence. It's also one ruled by men — high on colonial genocide, natural destruction, crimes against women and, above all, language. To survive, Celine and her friends must band together in search of justice, truth and beauty. A wild story of female friendship, language and power, from France to colonial America to the moon, from 1775 to this very moment — a historical novel like no other.
”Adam Thirlwell considers the celestial and the political on the same plane, creating wondrous new ways of seeing history, nature, friendship and time. He weaves together so many wisps of reality, and the result is a radically beautiful new novel that is funny, touching, memorable and bright.” —Sheila Heti
”Thirlwell's prose is hypnotic and coolly beautiful. The writing is full of dreamlike leaps, not just at the level of plot, but in its sentences, too. The Future Future has a beauty and a mysterious power that reflect its enigmatic protagonist.” —Guardian
”A book filled with imaginative leaps, brave decisions and tiny details that give delight.” —Colm Toibin

 

Take What You Need by Idra Novey $25
Take What You Need traces the parallel lives of Jean and her beloved but estranged stepdaughter, Leah, who's sought a clean break from her rural childhood. In Leah's urban life with her young family, she's revealed little about Jean, how much she misses her stepmother's hard-won insights and joyful lack of inhibition. But with Jean's death, Leah must return to sort through what's been left be-hind. What Leah discovers is staggering: Jean has filled her ramshackle house with giant sculptures she's welded from scraps of the area's industrial history. Set in the Allegheny Mountains of Appalachia, Take What You Need explores the continuing mystery of the people we love most, zeroing in on the joys and difficulties of family with great verve and humour.
”Novey fully renders the inarticulable parts of artmaking - the antagonism of an artist's material, the pleasure in that difficulty, the way it troubles tidy ideasof legacy.” —Raven Leilani

 

Determined: Life without free will by Robert Sapolsky $40
Robert Sapolsky's Behave, his now classic account of why humans do good and why they do bad, pointed toward an unsettling conclusion: We may not grasp the precise marriage of nature and nurture that creates the physics and chemistry at the base of human behavior, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Now, in Determined, Sapolsky takes his argument all the way, mounting a full-frontal assault on the pleasant fantasy that there is some separate self telling our biology what to do. Determined offers a synthesis of what we know about how consciousness works — the tight weave between reason and emotion and between stimulus and response in the moment and over a life. One by one, Sapolsky tackles all the major arguments for free will and takes them out, cutting a path through the thickets of chaos and complexity science and quantum physics, as well as touching ground on some of the wilder shores of philosophy. He shows us that the history of medicine is in no small part the history of learning that fewer and fewer things are somebody's "fault". Yet, as he acknowledges, it's very hard, and at times impossible, to uncouple from our zeal to judge others and to judge ourselves. Sapolsky applies the new understanding of life beyond free will to some of our most essential questions around punishment, morality, and living well together. Sapolsky argues that while living our daily lives recognising that we have no free will is going to be monumentally difficult, doing so is not going to result in anarchy, pointlessness, and existential malaise. Instead, it will make for a much more humane world.

 

Eve: How the female body drove 200 million years of human evolution by Cat Bohannon $42
Eve is not only a sweeping revision of human history, it's an urgent and necessary corrective for a world that has focused primarily on the male body for far too long. Bohannon's findings, including everything from the way C-sections in the industrialized world are rearranging women's pelvic shape to the surprising similarities between pus and breast milk, will completely change what you think you know about evolution and why Homo sapiens have become such a successful and dominant species, from tool use to city building to the development of language.
”Utterly fascinating. This book should revolutionise our understanding of human life. It is set to become a classic.” —George Monbiot
”Eve was immeasurably useful to me in my life-long quest to understand my own body. I highly recommend it to anyone who is on the same journey.” —Hope Jahren

 

Artists in Antarctica edited by Patrick Shepherd $80
What transformation happens when writers, musicians and artists stand in the vast, cold spaces of Antarctica? This book brings together paintings, photographs, texts and musical scores by Aotearoa New Zealand artists who have been to the ice. It explores the impact of this experience on their art and art process, as well as the physical challenges of working in a harsh and unfamiliar environment. Antarctic science, nature and human history are explored through the creative lens of some of New Zealand's most acclaimed artists, composers and writers, including Lloyd Jones, Laurence Aberhart, Nigel Brown, Gareth Farr, Dick Frizzell, Anne Noble, Virginia King, Owen Marshall, Grahame Sydney, Ronnie van Hout, Phil Dadson, and Sean Garwood.

 

A Passion for Whisky: How the tiny island of Islay creates malts that captivate the world by Ian Wisniewski $60
”Ian Wisniewski is one of our foremost drinks writers. At once affectionate, knowledgeable and entertaining, this engaging book is essential reading for any fans of Islay whisky.” —Charles MacLean
Individual profiles of Islay's 13 distilleries include tasting notes for selected malts that illustrate the incredible range of peated styles produced, together with a section on tasting techniques, making this an indispensable guide for Scotch whisky lovers.

 
VOLUME BooksNew releases
Book of the Week: WESTERN LANE by Chetna Maroo

Short-listed for this year’s Booker Prize, Western Lane is a beautiful and moving debut novel about grief, sisterhood, and a teenage girl’s struggle to transcend herself. Gopi has been playing squash since she was old enough to hold a racket. When her mother dies, her father enlists her in an intense training regime, and the game becomes her world. Her life is reduced to the sport’s rhythms: the serve, the volley, the drive, the shot, and its echo.
What the Booker judges say: "Skilfully deploying the sport of squash as both context and metaphor, Western Lane is a deeply evocative debut about a family grappling with grief, conveyed through crystalline language which reverberates like the sound ‘of a ball hit clean and hard…with a close echo’.”

VOLUME BooksBook of the week
MOTHERHOOD by Sheila Heti — reviewed by Thomas

Motherhood by Sheila Heti

Is flipping coins to determine answers to questions posed by the flipper of the coins a good way to guide your life?
no
Is flipping coins to determine answers to questions posed by the flipper of the coins a good way to write a book?
no
But isn’t this book, Motherhood, which has been written by flipping coins to determine the answers to questions posed by the flipper of the coins, in this case Sheila Heti, the author of the book, a good book?
yes
Is Motherhood a good book, then, because it was written by Sheila Heti rather than because it was written by flipping coins?
yes
When Sheila—the Sheila who is a character in the book, which the reader is permitted to assume is the same person (whatever that means) as Sheila Heti the author of the book— says, “I don’t think I have a heart—a heart I can consult. Instead, I have these coins,” is that a good way for either the character in the book or the author of the book to proceed?
no
Is flipping coins to determine the answers to questions posed by the flipper of the coins a good way to write a review of a book that has been written by flipping coins to determine the answers to questions posed by the author?
no
If I wrote a review in such a way, would I be able to do it without cheating, in other words, without only pretending that I had flipped coins when I had not actually flipped coins at all, or flipping the coins but then overriding the outcomes of those coins if they did not suit me?
no
Would it be better if I didn’t waste time looking for coins to flip, then?
yes
And Sheila Heti, can I be sure that she didn’t cheat when writing a book by flipping coins to determine the answers to questions she posed?
no
Does this matter?
no
In fact, might this not be a good way to compose a novel or somesuch, or find a way out of writer’s block, whatever that is, or determine a way out of any predicament, at least any fictional predicament, given that predicaments usually arise from the presence of binaries—either A or not-A, for example—and so seem to clamour for a resolution that can be expressed in a binary way?
yes
Just as writing conversation can be a good way to find a way out of writer’s block, whatever that is, even writer’s block visited upon the writing of a book review?
yes
Even if one side of the conversation says only either yes or no?
yes
Are the results I might achieve this way satisfactory?
no
Would the results be satisfactory with a different approach?
no
Is any of this useful in so-called real life?
no
But doesn’t Sheila Heti apply this approach to the real-life question—if we accept that the Sheila of the book corresponds to the real-life Sheila, the book’s author—of whether or not she wants to or should have a child, or become a mother, which may or may not imply having a child, depending on how subtly the concept of motherhood is understood or defined?
yes
So this approach is not useful?
no
You mean it is useful?
yes
Can you explain that?
no
Can Sheila Heti explain that?
yes
Does she do so in this passage, when she consults her coins?
   “Is any of the above true?
   no
   Is there any use in any of this, if none of it is true?
   no
   Even if you said yes, it wouldn’t matter. You don’t mean anything to me. You don’t know the future, and you don’t know anything about my life, or what I should be doing. You are complete randomness, without meaning. [However] you have shown me some good things, but that is just me picking up the good in all the nothing you have shown me.”
yes
As Sheila approaches forty she suffers from ambivalence about whether or not to have a child before it is ‘too late’. She can’t seem to disentangle what might be the expectations of her by others because she is a woman from what might be her biological inclinations as a woman, not that this concept necessarily has any validity, and from her own personal expectations and inclinations. Is it even possible to disentangle these things?
no
Would it be true to say that the more you think about things in these terms the less sense these terms make?
yes
Is there any point in thinking about things in these terms?
no
Unless, perhaps, it is useful to get to the point at which these terms make no sense?
yes
Does Sheila obsess over the question of whether or not to have a child as a way of relieving herself of the question of whether or not to have a child?
yes
A way of avoiding having a child, even?
yes
Saying yes to having a child would remove the uncertainty of whether or not to have a child and the uncertainty could not be regained, at least not in that form, but saying no merely provides the opportunity for the uncertainty to resurge at the next possible moment for it to be considered. Prevarication is, therefore, such a tiring prophylactic. Is the book to some extent somehow about the deep problems of decision-making, in whatever sphere of life, about whether we can disentangle the force of what we might call ‘will’ from the force of what we might, for want of a better word, call ‘fate’ (‘determinism’ is probably a better word)?
yes
When Sheila says, “Sometimes I am convinced that a child will add depth to all things—just bring a background of depth and meaning to whatever it is I do. I also think I might have brain cancer. There’s something I can feel in my brain, like a finger pressing down,” is her problem really about depth and meaning rather than about having a child?
yes
Sheila says, “This will be a book to prevent future tears.” Is this book, Motherhood, perhaps more about depression—Sheila’s, her mother’s, perhaps the reader’s—than it is about motherhood per se?
no
Sheila says, “I am a blight on my own life.” She says, “Nothing harms the earth more than another person—and nothing harms a person more than being born.” She says, thinking of her decision to be a writer and all the time she has consequently spent arranging commas, “When I was younger, writing felt like more than enough, but now I feel like a drug addict, like I’m missing out on life.” Is there a sense in which writing and ‘living’ are incompatible modes of existence?
yes
When Sheila states that resisting urges has previously led her to more interesting places, is it useful for her to think about resisting the urge to have a child—wherever that urge originates—as a way of bringing depth and meaning to her life?
yes
Does she in fact find more depth and meaning by resisting the urge to have a child?
yes
Does this depth and meaning, or at least the finding of more depth and meaning if not the depth and meaning themselves, have some sort of tangible expression?
yes
This book?
yes
Early in the book, Heti identifies her struggles with the mythic struggles of Jacob wrestling with and withstanding the unknown being “until the breaking of the day,” and she concludes the book an altered quote from the Torah: “Then I named this wrestling-place Motherhood, for here is where I saw God face-to-face, and yet my life was spared.” Is that a satisfactory way to end the book?
yes
Is that a satisfactory way to end my review?
no
Should I go on?
no

VOLUME BooksReview by Thomas
Bookseller recommendations for children's gifts — from Stella

The time is approaching when you want to gift books and you may have a list of recipients that need matching with great choices. A bookseller is your friend in this task! Every year we receive lists from our customers wanting recommendations for children and teens; for adults who have specific interests and reading genres; and for suggestions to expand one’s horizons. Instead of a review this week, I am going to give an example of a ‘list’ and the choices we would offer the customer, who is looking for gifts for children. 

“Hello, I’d love some suggestions for these children and teens. My nephew George is, I think, 6 and loves being read to, my niece is also 6 but I don’t know her very well and I’m not sure what her reading level is. Aroha has read everything! She’s 12. Vincent is turning 15 and used to like adventure stories but doesn’t read much these days. Helena is 9 and likes stories about people, and her big sister will be 16 soon and is keen on historical romances. Two little ones. Kenji is 4 and likes to laugh, while Jess, 3, is keen on animals and plants. And we have an 11-year-old budding writer. Thanks for your help, RJ.”

And our reply would be something like this:

Hi RJ, 
Here are some recommendations. 

George,6: The First Case (chapter book with pictures), Frog and Toad (we have a collection, as well as individual books each with a number of different stories), Skunk and Badger (chapter book with pictures about two very different characters)

Niece, 6: Tales from Moominvalley (short stories - for reading to), My Happy Life (junior chapter book), or a sophisticated picture book A Perfect Wonderful Day with Friends, Dulcinea in the Forbidden Forest

Aroha, 12: Heap House (interesting and strange), The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne (daring adventure, but also a climate message), A Face Like Glass

Vincent 15: A fast-paced sci-fi The Loop or fantasy Spellslinger a graphic novel Tsunami

Helena, 9:  The Letterbox Tree (friendship, climate change), The Wolf Wilder, The Secrets of Cricket Karlsson

Helena’s big sister, 16: Enchantee (France, revolution, a dangerous dress, and romance), Anatomy: A Love Story (historical, gothic mystery), Mortal Fire (YA from NZ author Elizabeth Knox — intriguing)

Kenji, 4: Funnybones (a classic), A Bird Day (witty)  Dazzlehands (lively and funny)

Jess 3 : Animals at Home (a matching game), The Big Book of Beasts, Look! Said the Little Girl (local author, picture book)

The Writer, 11: Writing Radar,  Skinny Dip (collection of Aotearoa poetry), The Writing Deck (writing prompts and ideas)

Let us know if you would like further suggestions or more information about any of the titles.
Happy choosing,
VOLUME.

From here the customer can ask more questions, choose which appeals the most, and we can gift wrap, and have them ready for collection or posting to the customer (or we are always happy to courier to the recipients directly with a message). 
Booksellers make recommendations every day for gift-giving and for your own reading pleasures. We are always keen to match books and readers. Send in your lists sooner, rather than later, if you would like the books in time for the gifting season!

VOLUME BooksReview by Stella
Book of the Week: BIRD LIFE by Anna Smaill

Set in Japan, Bird Life, Anna Smaill's second novel, brings two women together, seemingly with little in common, each dealing with grief and uncertainty. Dinah, a young woman in a foreign land, is absorbed by grief; while Yasuko, enigmatic and polished, is striving towards an elusive power. It's a novel of beautiful control, yet uneasy vibrations. In Bird Life we sense the pulse of worlds layered together and the stories that define these worlds. The magical realism hints at Murakami and Allende, while the quotidian observations keep the novel grounded, creating a satisfying fracture to examine the tentative membrane that exists between genius and madness.

VOLUME BooksBook of the week
NEW RELEASES (10.11.23)

A new book is a promise of good times ahead. Click through for your copies:

Bird Life by Anna Smaill $38
In Ueno Park, Toyko, as workers and tourists gather for lunch, the pollen blows, a fountain erupts, pigeons scatter, and two women meet, changing the course of one another’s lives. Dinah has come to Japan from New Zealand to teach English and grieve the death of her brother, Michael, a troubled genius who was able to channel his problems into music as a classical pianist — until he wasn’t. In the seemingly empty, eerie apartment block where Dinah has been housed, she sees Michael everywhere, even as she feels his absence sharply.Yasuko is polished, precise, and keenly observant — of her students and colleagues at the language school, and of the natural world. When she was thirteen, animals began to speak to her, to tell her things she did not always want to hear. She has suppressed these powers for many years, but sometimes she allows them to resurface, to the dismay of her adult son, Jun. One day, she returns home, and Jun has gone. Even her special gifts cannot bring him back. As these two women deal with their individual traumas, they form an unlikely friendship in which each will help the other to see a different possible world, as Smaill teases out the tension between our internal and external lives and asks what we lose by having to choose between them.
”Bird Life is an astonishing book about grief, beauty and survival. The writing enters your bloodstream like a strange and wonderful drug.” —Emily Perkins
”Bird Life examines the forces that allow us to slip from one world to another, the relationship between the internal and external, and the tentative membrane that exists between genius and madness. As with Anna Smaill’s acclaimed previous novel, The Chimes, the writing is taut and evocative with subtle symbolism and a rhythmic beauty.” —Stella

 

Knowledge is a Blessing on Your Mind: Selected writings, 1980—2020 by Anne Salmond $65
For fifty years, Anne Salmond has navigated 'te ao hurihuri' — travelling to hui in her little blue VW Beetle with Eruera and Amiria Stirling in the 1970s, working for a university marae alongside Merimeri Penfold, Patu Hohepa and Wharetoroa Kerr in the 1980s, giving evidence to the Waitangi Tribunal on the meaning of Te Tiriti in the 2000s. From Hui to The Trial of the Cannibal Dog to today's debates about the future of Aotearoa, Anne Salmond has explored who we are to each other. This book traces Anne Salmond's journey as an anthropologist, as a writer and activist, as a Pakeha New Zealander, as a friend, wife and mother. The book brings together her key writing on the Maori world, cultural contact, Te Tiriti and the wider Pacific — much of it appearing in book form for the first time — and embeds these writings in her life and relationships, her travels and friends. This is the story of Aotearoa and the story of one woman's pathway through our changing society.

 

Ki Mua, Ki Muri edited by Cassandra Barnett and Kura Te Waru-Rewiri $70
Packed with superb art works, this richly illustrated publication examines the last 25 years of the influential Toioho ki Āpiti programme at Massey University, its global indigenous pedagogical reach, and its ongoing impacts on national and international contemporary art and cultural sectors. Toioho ki Āpiti 's transformative and kaupapa Maori-led programme and its pedagogical model is structured around Maori notions of Mana Whakapapa (inheritance rights), Mana Tiriti (treaty rights), Mana Whenua (land rights) and Mana Tangata (human rights) and is unique in Aotearoa. Its staff and graduates, who include Bob Jahnke, Shane Cotton, Brett Graham, Rachael Rakena, Kura Te Waru-Rewiri, Israel Birch and Ngatai Taepa, are some of the most exciting, powerful and influential figures in contemporary art in Aotearoa New Zealand. Through a series of intimate conversations, Ki Mua, Ki Muri describes the unique environment that has helped form them.

 

Swanfolk by Kristín Ómarsdóttir (translated from Icelandic by Vala Thorodds) $26
In the not-too-distant future, a young spy named Elísabet Eva is about to discover something that will upend her life. Elísabet likes to take long solitary walks near the lake. One day, she sees two creatures emerging from the water, half-human, half-swan. She follows them through tangles of thickets into a strange new reality. Pulled into the monomaniacal, and often violent, quest of the swanfolk, Elísabet finds her own mind increasingly untrustworthy. Soon, she is forced to reckon with the consequences of her involvement with these unusual beings, and a past life she has been trying to evade. Now in paperback.
”Magical and disturbing.” —Adam Thirlwell

 

The Iliad by Homer (translated from Ancient Greek by Emily Wilson) $76
"Wilson's translation runs as swift as a bloody river, teems with the clattering sounds of war, bursts with the warriors' hunger for battle." —Charlotte Higgins, The Guardian
"Wilson's Iliad is clear and brisk, its iambic pentameter a zone of enchantment.” —Ange Mlinko, London Review of Books
"Seduces with its crystalline clarity, elegance, sensuality, sometimes breathless pace and above all emotional clout." —Edith Hall, The Guardian
"A triumphant new translation of the Iliad. It's a poem you read with your heart in your throat. " —A. E. Stallings, The Spectator
"Wilson has forged a poetic style in English that captures the essence of Homeric Greek. Readable, relevant and from the heart, this is the Iliad we have all been waiting for, whether we knew it or not." —Naoise Mac Sweeny, The Washington Post

 

Checkerboard Hill by Jade Kake $35
When a family member dies in Australia, Ria flies from New Zealand and returns to the family and home in Australia she suddenly left decades before as a teenager. Waiting for her return are her husband and son in New Zealand. Neither family has met the other, and Ria has always kept her Maori, Australian, New Zealand identities and lives separate. But the family tensions, unfinished arguments, connections to places and meeting of former friends, lead Ria to revisit her memories and reflect on the social and cultural tensions and racism she experienced, and the decisions she made. The novel confronts the complexities of families, secrets and trauma and the way these play out across generations. It also explores the ways in which Maori cultural traditions and tikanga are transmuted and transformed across the Tasman, across time and space.

 

Native Shells of Aotearoa by Bruce Marshall and Kerry Walton $27

Native Insects of Aotearoa by Julia Kasper and Phil Sirvid $27

Packed with good information and appealing line drawings, these two volumes combine a retro 1950s aesthetic with the latest research.

Companion volumes: Native Plants of Aotearoa by Carlos Lehnebach and Heidi Meudt $27

Native Birds of Aotearoa by Michael Szabo $27

 

Days of Darkness: Taranaki, 1878—1884 by Hazel Riseborough $50
The narrative of the Parihaka community sheds light on a critical period in Aotearoa’s colonial past. As the government seized their land, Māori communities across the region engaged in non-violent resistance, with Parihaka emerging as a powerful symbol of defiance under the leadership of Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kakahi. Rather than a history of Parihaka itself, Hazel Riseborough’s compelling account delves into the government’s systematic efforts to dismantle Māori rights and self-determination. First published in 1989, Days of Darkness is published now in a new edition which includes opening words contributed by the Parihaka community.
‘Hazel Riseborough’s account is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand critical aspects of New Zealand’s past. Riseborough has presented a study in quintessential colonialism, or the assertion of European supremacy. It is a part of New Zealand’s history which has to be recognized and not buried.” —Judith Binney

 

An Indigenous Ocean: Pacific essays by Damon Salesa $50
From the far-reaching indigenous civilisations that flourished in Oceania, to the colonial encounters that shaped Samoa's history, and the complex relationship between New Zealand and the Pacific, Salesa's work offers a nuanced and insightful perspective on the vast region's past, present and future. Spanning a wide range of topics, from race and inequality to Pacific studies and empire, these essays demonstrate Salesa's scholarship and his ability to bridge the gaps between academic disciplines and cultural traditions. With a deep appreciation for the complexities of Te Moana-nuia-Kiwa, and a commitment to uncovering the hidden histories that shape our understanding of the region, An Indigenous Ocean is an essential contribution to the field of Pacific studies and a fascinating read for anyone interested in the history and culture of Oceania.

 

Big Fat Brown Bitch by Tusiata Avia $30
Admire my big fat brown body, bitches! Admire it! The Big Fat Brown Bitch runs, sleeps, cries, laughs, splits open. She is sitting in a garage in South Auckland with her two brothers and discussing the majestic architecture of atoms. She is playing an audio book of The Power of Positive Thinking at herself. She is jumping over the lazy dog. She is lying face down in the mud and doing an apology on behalf of us all. She is receiving an election-year visit and a death threat. She is strapped to the cross. She is turning into a werewolf. The Big Fat Brown Bitch is coming for you.
Tusiata Avia, author of Wild Dogs Under My Skirt and The Savage Coloniser Book, returns with another eviscerating work. These are poems of defiance, confrontation, consolation, satire, sorrow and fury. No white people were harmed in the making of this book.
>>How not to read poetry.

 

In the Shadow of the Wolf Queen by Kiran Millwood Hargrave $20
In the lakes, the wolf queen sharpens her spear. In the mountains, an ancient girl opens an eye. In the forest, an orphan is summoned by the trees. Our story has begun. Ysolda has lived her life in the shadow of the wolf queen's tyrannical rule but, safe in her forest haven, she has never truly felt its threat. Until one day when a mysterious earthquake shakes the land and her older sister Hari vanishes in its wake. Accompanied by her loyal sea hawk, Nara, Ysolda embarks on a desperate rescue mission. But when she is forced to strike a bargain with the wolf queen herself, she soon finds herself embroiled in a quest for a magic more powerful — and more dangerous — than she could ever have imagined.
”The kind of fantasy adventure I have always loved: evocative and imaginative and destined to be a classic.” —Garth Nix
”The Wolf Queen herself is majestically ambiguous, sometimes magnetic and inspiring, sometimes chilling. And every adventure is better with giant sea wolves.” —Frances Hardinge

 

Wot Knot You Got: Mophead’s guide to life by Selina Tusitala Marsh $30
‘What do you do if nothing is right – not at home, at school, anywhere?’
‘What if people don’t like me?’
‘What if your own ideas stink?’
‘How do I hug my dad?’ 
One morning, Selina wakes up with a twisting, tangling, knotty problem. It takes over everyone and everything – work, kids, life, the lot. How can she get out of a knot this tight? Then she remembers: kids write to her all the time – they ask some of life’s toughest questions. Can she help them through their knots? And through helping them, can she find a way out of her own? In this self-help give-it-a-go moppy-mayhem-filled workbook-that’s-all-about-play, join Selina as she scribbles and draws and writes her way out of the darkness – and invites you to take out a pen.

 
VOLUME BooksNew releases
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Give the gift of reading! (or keep it for yourself). Why not let us choose you (or the person of your choice) a book a month on our Volume Reading Subscription scheme? Each month we will personally select a book we think you (or they) will love and send it anywhere — to you or to that person of your choice.

Contact us to discuss what sort of books you/they would like. Let us know what you/they have enjoyed reading lately. All subscriptions are fully customised to the individual recipient’s reading enthusiams.

What some subscription recipients have said: 

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“Have a hard-to-buy-for relative? I highly recommend gifting someone (or yourself) Volume’s book subscription. Stella and Thomas never fail to surprise and delight me with their selections. I thought I kept up with all the latest but their knowledge is next level. They must be able to look inside my head because each selection is just what I didn’t know I wanted!!!” —Helen

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VOLUME Books
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VOLUME Books
THE PUPPETS OF SPELHORST by Kate DiCamillo and Julie Morstad — reviewed by Stella

The Puppets of Spelhorst by Kate DiCamillo (illustrated by Julie Morstad)

Forgotten in a trunk. Left in the dark. Unwanted. Once they had been on display, crafted with care. They belonged together and they had a story. Would they be together again, and would there be a new story? Kate DiCamillo works her magic with The Puppets of Spelhorst. With the texture of a folk tale, she reveals the story of a girl, a boy, a king, an owl, and a wolf. An old man sees a puppet in the window of a toy shop and the memory of a love is rekindled. He wants to take her home and look into her eyes so like those of his sweetheart long gone, but, bothersome: he has to have all the puppets. And so, it comes to be. In the night the girl sitting atop a dresser sees the moon and describes its beauty to her companions. The old man sleeps and does not awaken. And then an adventure begins. A journey that will take them through the hands of the rag-and-bone man, to an uncle with two inquisitive nieces, where a new story will be made — one which involves all of them; even though they will have their fierce teeth tampered with (the wolf), be mistaken for a feather duster (the owl), left abandoned outside and kidnapped by a giant bird (the boy), be snaffled into a pocket (the girl), and left alone with no one to rule (the king). Yet this is not the only story. Emma is writing, and Martha is making mischief. A story is ready to be told. An extra hand and a good singing voice are needed. In steps the maid, Jane Twiddum — someone who will have a profound impact on the fate of the five friends. The Puppets of Spelhorst is an absolute delight with its clever story. A spellbound tale. "Now it all happens," whispered the boy. "Now the story begins." Perfect for reading and gifting.

VOLUME BooksReview by Stella, Children's books