NEW RELEASES (13.9.24)

The books you buy today will bloom in Spring.
Click through for your copies:

Titiro / Look by Gavin Bishop $25

A completely delightful ‘first words’ board book, with details of the appealing bold pictures labelled both in te reo Māori and English.

 

Edith Collier: Early New Zealand Modernist by Jill Trevelyan, Jennifer Taylor, and Greg Donson $70

A century on, her remarkable body of work remains fresh and contemporary. Featuring over 150 artworks, this book examines the continuing impact of Whanganui-born and British-trained Edith Collier and her artistic legacy. Collier was a dynamic Modernist, and the story of her years in Europe and then her return to New Zealand and the near abandonment of her practice are compelling as both art history and an affecting human story.

 

Leslie Adkin: farmer photographer by Athol McCredie $70

Leslie Adkin (1888-1964) was a Levin farmer, photographer, geologist, ethnologist and explorer, a gifted amateur and renaissance man, of sorts, who used photography to document his scholarly interests, farming activities and family life. His much loved and exceptionally beautiful photographs taken between 1900 and the 1930s are one of the highlights of Te Papa's historical photography collection. This book of over 150 images, selected by Athol McCredie, Curator Photography at Te Papa, establishes his reputation more clearly within the development of photography in New Zealand and showcases a remarkable body of work. McCredie's substantial text gives rich insights into the varied elements of Adkin's very busy life, including his love for his wife Maud, captured over the years in a range of intimate and engaging images which feel as fresh as when they were first taken.

 

Resetting the Co-ordinates: An anthology of performance art in Aotearoa New Zealand edited by Chris Braddock, Ioana Gordon-Smith, Layne Waerea, and Victoria Wynne-Jones $70

The first anthology/reader of performance art of Aotearoa New Zealand, Resetting the Coordinates offers a lively, 50-year critical survey of Aotearoa New Zealand's globally unique performance art scene. From the post-object and performance art of the late 1960s to the rich vein of Maori and Pacific performance art from the early 1990s, its 18 chapters by researchers and practitioners is a major reference for art and performance communities of New Zealand, Australia and further afield. It discusses the influential work of Jim Allen, Phil Dadson, Peter Roche and Linda Buis, performance art initiatives in post-earthquake Christchurch and queer performance art, among many other topics.

 

After a Dance: Selected stories by Bridget O’Connor $38

Bridget O'Connor was one of the great short story writers of her generation. She had a voice that was viscerally funny and an eye for both the glaring reality and the absurdity of the everyday. In After a Dance, we meet a selection of O'Connor's most memorable characters often living on the margin of their own lives: from the anonymous thief set on an unusual prize to the hungover best man clinging to what he's lost, to the unrepentant gold-digger who always comes out on top. From unravelling narcissists to melancholy romantics all human life is here — at its best and at its delightful worst.
”These are some of the wildest, arresting, just plain brilliant short stories I've read in a long time.” —Roddy Doyle
”Every O'Connor story is a performance, a live fight with time and decay, disgust and the human body. She wrote intensely from her time and place; to read her now is to be catapulted back to 1990s London. Yet the voice, the themes are more relevant than ever. No wonder she was so preoccupied with temporality: she was before her time.” —Martina Evans, The Irish Times

 

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang $25

Chiang deftly blends human emotion and scientific rationalism in eight remarkably varied stories. From a soaring Babylonian tower that connects a flat Earth to the firmament above, to a world where angelic visitations are a wondrous and terrifying part of everyday life; from a neural modification that eliminates the appeal of physical beauty, to an alien language that challenges our very perception of time and reality, Chiang's unique imagination invites us to question our understanding of the universe and our place in it.
“United by a humane intelligence that speaks very directly to the reader, and makes us experience each story with immediacy and Chiang's calm passion.” —China Miéville
”A science fiction genius. Ted Chiang is a superstar.” —The Guardian

 

We’ll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida (translated from Japanese by E. Madison Shimoda) $36

On the top floor of an old building at the end of a cobbled alley in Kyoto lies the Kokoro Clinic for the Soul. Only a select few — those who feel genuine emotional pain — can find it. The mysterious centre offers a unique treatment for its troubled patients: it prescribes cats as medication. Get ready to fall in love:-—Bee, an eight-year-old female, mixed breed helps a disheartened businessman as he finds unexpected joy in physical labour; —Margot, muscly like a lightweight boxer, helps a middle-aged callcentre worker stay relevant; —Koyuki, an exquisite white cat brings closure to a mother troubled by the memory of the rescue kitten she was forced to abandon; —Tank and Tangerine bring peace to a hardened fashion designer, as she learns to be kinder to herself; —Mimita, the Scottish Fold kitten helps a broken-hearted Geisha to stop blaming herself for the cat she once lost. As the clinic's patients seek inner peace, their feline friends lead them towards healing, self-discovery and newfound hope. [Hardback]

 

Dogs and Monsters by Mark Haddon $38

Haddon weaves ancient myths and fables into fresh and unexpected forms, and forges new legends to sit alongside them. The myth of the Minotaur in his labyrinth is turned into a wrenching parable of maternal love — and of the monstrosities of patriarchy. The lover of a goddess, Tithonus, is gifted eternal life but without eternal youth. Actaeon, changed into a stag after glimpsing the naked Diana and torn to pieces by his hunting dogs, becomes a visceral metaphor about how humans use and misuse animals. From genetic engineering to the eternal complications of family, Haddon showcases how we are subject to the same elemental forces that obsessed the Greeks. Whether describing Laika the Soviet space dog on her fateful orbit, or St Anthony wrestling with loneliness in the desert, his powers of observation are at their height when illuminating the thin line between human and animal.
”A marvel of a collection — suffused with curiosity, humanity and mystery, bold in its scope and virtuoso in its telling. Mark Haddon makes stories matter.” —Kaliane Bradley
”In sentences as precisely cut as paper sculptures, Mark Haddon fits ancient myth to the cruelties and wonders of the present.” —Francis Spufford

 

The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff $26

A servant girl escapes from a settlement. She carries nothing with her but her wits, a few possessions, and the spark of god that burns hot within her. What she finds is beyond the limits of her imagination and will bend her belief of everything that her own civilisation has taught her. The Vaster Wilds is a work of raw and prophetic power that tells the story of America in miniature, through one girl at a hinge point in history, to ask how — and if — we can adapt quickly enough to save ourselves. [New paperback edition]
”I could not stop reading. A haunting, thrilling, gripping and rich. An unputdownable adventure, a mystery and a strange beautiful redemption.” —Naomi Alderman
”Groff is a mastermind, a masterpiece creator, an intoxicating magician. I wait with impatience for every book and I am always surprised and delighted. The Vaster Wilds feels like her bravest yet, hallucinatory, divine, beyond belief but also entirely human.” —Daisy Johnson

 

The Year of Sitting Dangerously by Simon Barnes $29

In the autumn of 2020, Simon Barnes should have been leading a safari in Zambia, but Covid restrictions meant his plans had to be put on hold. Instead, he embarked on the only voyage of discovery that was still open to him. He walked to a folding chair at the bottom of his garden, and sat down. His itinerary: to sit in that very same spot every day for a year and to see — and hear — what happened all around him. It would be a stationary garden safari; his year of sitting dangerously had begun. For the next twelve months, he would watch as the world around him changed day by day. Gradually, he began to see his surroundings in a new way; by restricting himself, he opened up new horizons, growing even closer to a world he thought he already knew so well. The Year of Sitting Dangerously inspires the reader to pay closer attention to the marvels that surround us all, and is packed with handy tips to help bring nature even closer to us. [Now in paperback]

 

Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout $38

It's autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer, Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her ex-husband, William. Together, Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. Together, they spend afternoons in Olive's apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known — "unrecorded lives," Olive calls them — reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.
”The shrewd-eyed observer of love, loss and the ties that bind - life, basically - is back. Strout weaves a gossamer light web of a community's hopes and setbacks.” —Observer

 

Nexus: A brief history of information networks from the Stone Age to A.I. by Noah Yuval Harari $45

For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite all our discoveries, inventions and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing headlong into the age of AI - a new information network that threatens to annihilate us. If we are so wise, why are we so self-destructive? Nexus considers how the flow of information has shaped us, and our world. Taking us from the Stone Age through the Bible, early modern witch-hunts, Stalinism, Nazism and the resurgence of populism today, Yuval Noah Harari asks us to consider the complex relationship between information and truth, bureaucracy and mythology, wisdom and power. He explores how different societies and political systems have wielded information to achieve their goals, for good and ill. And he addresses the urgent choices we face as non-human intelligence threatens our very existence. Information is not the raw material of truth; neither is it a mere weapon. Nexus explores the hopeful middle ground between these extremes, and of rediscovering our shared humanity.

 

The Name She Gave Me by Betty Culley $25

A thoughtful and moving YA novel in verse. Rynn was born with a hole in her heart — literally. Although it was fixed long ago, she still feels an emptiness there when she wonders about her birth family. As her relationship with her adoptive mother fractures, Rynn finally decides she needs to know more about the rest of her family. Her search starts with a name, the only thing she has from her birth mother, and she quickly learns that she has a younger sister living in foster care in a nearby town. But if Rynn reconnects with her biological sister, it may drive her adoptive family apart for good.

Cuddy by Benjamin Myers $25

An 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. [New paperback edition.]
Winner of the Goldsmiths Prize, 2023.
”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 these isles as it's rarely taught.” —Observer
”It's been a while since I've reacted as emotionally to a novel. An epic the north has long deserved: ambitious, dreamy, earthy, dark, welcoming and not. There are readers like me who will not just enjoy this book but feel deeply grateful for its existence.” —Financial Times

 
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VOLUME Books
Book of the Week: SCAFFOLDING by Lauren Elkin

Scaffolding is the story of two couples who live in the same apartment in north-east Paris almost fifty years apart. In 2019, Anna, a psychoanalyst, is processing a recent miscarriage. Her husband, David, takes a job in London, so she spends days obsessing over renovating the kitchen while befriending a younger woman called Clementine who has moved into the building and is part of a radical feminist collective called les colleuses. Meanwhile, in 1972, Florence and Henry are redoing their kitchen. Florence is finishing her degree in psychology while hoping to get pregnant. But Henry isn't sure he's ready for fatherhood. Both sets of couples face the challenges of marriage, fidelity, and pregnancy, against a backdrop of political disappointment and intellectual controversy. The characters and their ghosts bump into and weave around each other, not knowing that they once all inhabited the same space. A novel in the key of Eric Rohmer, Scaffolding is about the bonds we create with people, and the difficulty of ever fully severing them; about the ways that people we've known live on in us; and about the way that the homes we make hold communal memories of the people who've lived in them and the stories that have been told there.
”Scaffolding is a quietly incendiary disquisition on desire and containment, on the bonds that make and unmake us. It seized me wholly — a powerful testament to the idea that what we want might obliterate us, and fearlessly reckons with the equally high stakes of pretending otherwise.” —Daisy Lafarge
”Scaffolding is absolutely a novel of ideas. The prose is as well crafted as Elkin's nonfiction leads us to expect, and the characters are very finely developed. Not every good essayist should write a novel, but we should be glad Lauren Elkin did.” —Guardian

VOLUME BooksBook of the week
No. 91/92 — NOTES ON A PARISIAN COMMUTE by Lauren Elkin — reviewed by Thomas

Well, he thought, I am not travelling on a bus in Paris, and, who knows, I may never travel on a bus in Paris, but, in the company of Lauren Elkin, even though I have not met Lauren Elkin, and, who knows, I will probably never meet Laren Elkin, I have no particular wish or need to meet Lauren Elkin, at least not in the conventional sense, and, almost certainly, Lauren Elkin will never meet me in any sense whatsoever, and she will be missing nothing thereby, nonetheless, in a sense, in her company I have been riding in my thoughts, or, rather, her thoughts, it is hard to tell which, as she has been travelling on the No.91 and No.92 buses in Paris over a few months in 2014/2015, when she was commuting to and from some teaching position she then held, evidently teaching literature, possibly writing, who knows, and wrote the notes which have become this book on her cellphone, as an attempt to use her phone to connect herself to the moments and in the locations in which she was holding it, rather than as a way of absenting herself from those locations and those moments, which is usually the way with cellphones, so she observes, they are a technology of absence, after all. Unlike in the bus, where who will sit and who will stand is constantly negotiated on the basis of a generally unspoken hierarchy of need, and the passengers are crammed together in each other’s odours and in each other’s breaths in a way that now seems horrific, there is plenty of fresh air in Elkin’s thoughts, there is room both for her fellow passengers, for all the details Elkin notices about them or speculates about them, for all her observations, so to call them, about what she notices and about what she notices about herself in the act of noticing, and for writers such as Georges Perec and Virginia Woolf, who, in their ways, are along for the ride, using Elkin and her cellphone to speak to us through Paris, though whether this makes Paris a medium or a subject is hard to say, using Elkin’s bus pass, too, and, I suppose, he thought, all these thoughts are waiting there, both outside and already aboard Elkin’s mind, constantly negotiating which will be next to take a seat in Elkin’s text on the basis of a generally unspoken hierarchy of need, if it is need. Elkin attempts in the practice of these notes a written appreciation of the ordinary, even the infraordinary, aspects of her journeys as a discipline of noticing, guided by Perec, a turning outward that clears her thoughts or clears her of her thoughts, he cannot decide if there is a difference, he thinks not, leaving the shape of the observer clearly outlined in their surroundings by their careful lack of intrusion upon them (in the way that Perec is always writing about something that he does not mention), but this exercise in finding worth in the ordinary, the sensate, the unsensational, against, he speculates, the general inclinations of our cellphones, is, in the two semesters in which Elkin made these notes, sometimes intruded upon by occurrences antagonistic to such appreciation, occurrences both within Elkin’s body: an ectopic pregnancy and the resulting operations; and in the collective body of the city: terror attacks that change the texture of communal life. “In an instant, the everyday can become an Event,” writes Elkin. Are Events inherently antagonistic to the worth of ordinary life, he wonders, or could rethinking the ordinary help us to resist the impact of such Events? Most Events are instants, he thinks, but some, such as pandemics or climate change or neoliberal capitalism, go on and on, exhausting our conceptual resistance as they strive to become the new ordinary, to normalise themselves. Conceptual resistance is useless, he almost shouts, conceptual resistance is worse than useless, we must adapt to survive, reality deniers display the worst sorts of mental weakness, pay attention, your nostalgia is an existential threat! He checks his mouth for froth, but there is none. But, he wonders, can we use an attention to and appreciation of the infraordinary to reconstruct the ordinary and thereby survive the extraordinary? Actually, the infraordinary is all we’ve got, he thinks, so we had better get to work and make of it what we can.  

VOLUME BooksReview by Thomas
NINE GIRLS by Stacy Gregg — reviewed by Stella

The Margaret Mahy Book of the Year is the most coveted award for children’s books in Aotearoa. Every year, from many excellent entries, one book is chosen that flies above the rest. This year the winner was a household name and a popular author with younger readers, often winning children’s choice awards, a bestselling author here and overseas, and a popular guest author at festivals and schools. Her love for horses propelled her to write 33 pony stories — some of which were pony club dramas (one became a hit TV series in the UK), while others were more nuanced tales of girls, horses, history and overcoming an issue. As a bookseller, I’ve read a few and they are immaculate in pitch and skill. Yet Nine Girls takes us somewhere new with Stacy Gregg. The author has skin in the game. It’s her childhood, and her journey in te ao Māori which resonates on every page giving this adventure story that extra bite. But it is the protaganist, Titch, who will stay with you. It’s the late 1970s and Dad has been made redundant. It’s time to pack up and move from Remuera to Ngāruawāhia — a culture shock for TItch and her sister, but also the stuff of holidays and relatives with tall tales. One tall tale takes hold: Gold! Buried gold buried somewhere on their ancestral  land. Gold with a tapu on it. Titch and her cousins think it might be time to find it. Their plans aren’t great and they are worried about being cursed, especially as more secrets come to light. What is it about the past and her family? As the past is unpicked, this is the Waikato, Titch comes to understand the complexities of relationships in this small town, piecing together information with the help of an unexpected creature (Gregg weaves in a talking eel) — a creature that is not exactly trustworthy, but definitely a source of fascination. The relationship between Titch and Paneiraira (Pan) reminded me of other fictional child/animal bond scenarios and it gives Nine Girls a wonderful and unexpected narrator to relay history and family secrets. While Pan may be a source of information, it is Tania who will become a firm friend and open a door into a new world for Titch, teaching her more about herself than she could ever have imagined. This is a coming-of-age story about family, culture and friendship; it takes on big issues like racism (the personal and the political — the protests of the Tour surface) and the emotional challenges of facing illness and death. In all these things, Titch discovers herself, and her own culture, coming home as has Stacy Gregg. And as ever, great story-telling. 

VOLUME BooksReview by Stella
NEW RELEASES (6.9.24)

New books for a new month and a new season.
Click through for your copies:

Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner $38

Sharp, brainy, and hugely enjoyable — Rachel Kusner’s new novel exceeds even our anticipatory dreams. A thirty-four-year-old American undercover agent of ruthless tactics, bold opinions and clean beauty is sent by her mysterious but powerful employers to a remote corner of France. Her mission to infiltrate a commune of radical eco-activists influenced by the beliefs of a mysterious elder, Bruno Lacombe, who has rejected civilisation tout court. Sadie casts her cynical eye over this region of ancient farms and sleepy villages, and at first finds Bruno's idealism laughable — he lives in a Neanderthal cave and believes the path to enlightenment is a return to primitivism. But just as Sadie is certain she's the seductress and puppet master of those she surveils, Bruno Lacombe is seducing her with his ingenious counter-histories, his artful laments, his own tragic story. Beneath this parodic spy novel about a woman caught in the crossfire between the past and the future lies a profound treatise on human history. Long-listed for the 2024 Booker Prize.
”Creation Lake reinvents the spy novel in one cool, erudite gesture. Only Rachel Kushner could weave environmental activism, paranoia, and nihilism into a gripping philosophical thriller. Enthralling and sleekly devious, this book is also a lyrical reflection on both the origin and the fate of our species. A novel this brilliant and profound shouldn't be this much fun.” —Hernan Diaz
”I honestly don't know how Rachel Kushner is able to know so much and convey all of this in such a completely entertaining and mesmerising way.” —George Saunders

 

COMFORT by Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh

Ottolenghi's first brand-new major cookbook since the era-defining SIMPLE and FLAVOUR. With over 100 irresistible recipes alongside stories of childhood and home, this is comfort food, Ottolenghi-style. Ottolenghi brings his inspiring, flavour-forward approach to comfort cooking, delivering new classics that taste of home. A bowl of pasta becomes Caramelised Onion Orecchiette with Hazelnuts & Crispy Sage, a warming soup is Cheesy Bread Soup with Savoy Cabbage & Cavolo Nero, and a plate of mash is transformed into Garlicky Aligot Potato with Leeks & Thyme. Weaving memories of childhood and travel with over 100 recipes, COMFORT is a celebration of food and home — of the connections we make as we cook, and pass on from generation to generation.

 

Mina’s Matchbox by Yōko Ogawa (translated from Japanese by Stephen Snyder) $38

After the death of her father, twelve-year-old Tomoko is sent to live for a year with her uncle in the coastal town of Ashiya. It is a year which will change her life. The 1970s are bringing changes to Japan and her uncle's magnificent colonial mansion opens up a new and unfamiliar world for Tomoko; its sprawling gardens are even home to a pygmy hippo the family keeps as a pet. Tomoko finds her relatives equally exotic and beguiling and her growing friendship with her cousin Mina draws her into an intoxicating world full of secret crushes and elaborate storytelling. As the two girls share confidences their eyes are opened to the complications of the adult world. Tomoko's understanding of her uncle's mysterious absences, her grandmother's wartime experiences and her aunt's unhappiness will all come into clearer focus as she and Mina build an enduring bond.
”Yoko Ogawa is a quiet wizard, casting her words like a spell, conjuring a world of curiosity and enchantment, secrets and loss. I read Mina's Matchbox like a besotted child, enraptured, never wanting it to end.” —Ruth Ozeki

 

Lost on Me by Veronica Raimo (translated from Italian by Leah Janeczko) $28

Vero has grown up in Rome with her eccentric family: an omnipresent mother who is devoted to her own anxiety, a father ruled by hygienic and architectural obsessions, and a precocious genius brother at the centre of their attention. As she becomes an adult, Vero's need to strike out on her own leads her into bizarre and comical situations: she tries (and fails) to run away to Paris at the age of fifteen; she moves into an unwitting older boyfriend's house after they have been together for less than a week; and she sets up a fraudulent (and wildly successful) street clothing stall to raise funds to go to Mexico. Most of all, she falls in love — repeatedly, dramatically, and often with the most unlikely and inappropriate of candidates. As she continues to plot escapades and her mother's relentless tracking methods and guilt-tripping mastery thwart her at every turn, it is no wonder that Vero becomes a writer — and a liar — inventing stories in a bid for her own sanity. Narrated in a voice as wryly ironic as it is warm and affectionate, Lost on Me seductively explores the slippery relationship between deceitfulness and creativity (beginning with Vero's first artistic achievement: a painting she steals from a school classmate and successfully claims as her own). New paperback edition.
”I fell head over heels in love with Lost on Me. What a thrillingly original voice! Raimo writes with a tender brutality that is simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking.” —Monica Ali
”A uproariously funny portrait of an unconventional family from a writer who knows the sliver of ice in the heart as well as she knows love. This deliciously enjoyable novel is a true original and one to savour.” —Katherine Heiny

 

The Empty Grandstand by Lloyd Jones $30

Lloyd Jones was seven years old the first time he climbed high into a grandstand to watch rugby with his father. The experience was baptismal. From his new elevated perspective Jones believed he could see everything that mattered — a field of play that rolled out, green with promise, from suburban New Zealand to the wider world. The grandstand is a guiding metaphor for these questing narrative poems that reach back into childhood and forward into the life of a writer constantly experimenting with form and voice. Jones writes of the wild secrets of boyhood — riding dogs, falling from trees, destroying the class ukuleles, learning to sail in small boats. He is alert to the airless small-town grievances that must inevitably be escaped. As an aspiring young writer Jones travelled widely, testing his identity against difference — places, people, politics and importantly, language. The more recent poems are a re-assembling of coordinates and a return to the local view. The grandstand has long been decommissioned — it's a housing estate now, but the poems are full of air and greenery, dream spaces where language is forever in play.

 

Dinner: 120 vegan and vegetarian dishes for the most important meal of the day by Meera Sodha

“The ability to put a good dinner on the table has become my superpower and I want it to be yours too.,” says Meera Sodha, who has previously brought us the loved cookbooks East and Fresh India. Dinner is a fresh and joyful celebration of the power of a good meal all created to answer the question: What's for dinner? in an exciting and delicious way. Discover 120 vibrant, easy-to-make vegetarian and vegan main dishes bursting with flavour, including baked butter paneer, kimchi and tomato spaghetti, and aubergines roasted in satay sauce. There are also mouthwatering desserts, such as coconut and cardamom dream cake and bubble tea ice cream, and exciting side dishes, such as salt and vinegar potato salad and asparagus and cashew thoran. From quick-cook recipes to one-pan wonders and delectable dishes you can just bung in the oven and leave to look after themselves, Dinner is an essential companion for the most important meal of the day.

 

Translation State by Ann Leckie $28

Qven was created to be a Presger Translator. The pride of their clade, they always had a clear path before them: Learn human ways and, eventually, make a match and serve as an intermediary between the dangerous alien Presger and the human worlds. But Qven rebels against that future, a choice that brings them into the orbit of two others: Enae, a reluctant diplomat attempting to hunt down a fugitive who has been missing for over two hundred years; and Reet, an adopted mechanic who is increasingly desperate to learn about his biological past — or anything that might explain why he operates so differently from those around him. As the conclave of the various species approaches and the long-standing treaty between the humans and the Presger is on the line, the decision of all three will have ripple effects across the stars. 
"A rich exploration of self-identification and personhood serve as a fantastic introduction to Leckie's world." —Polygon
"In this book that's part space opera, part coming-of-age tale, part body horror delight, Ann Leckie explores themes of power, gender identity, family, destiny and AI through charming characters, dramatic diplomacy and nail-biting action." —NPR Books
"Leckie's humane probe into power, identity, and communication is muscular and thought-provoking. This is an author at the height of her powers." —Publishers Weekly
"Puts the question of an individual's right to self-identification — both in terms of gender and species — at the heart of the narrative. Daring, thoughtful novels like Translation State perform vital cultural work to open up new spaces so that we can all remove our disguises and shine like the princexes we were always meant to be." —Los Angeles Review of Books

 

One Man in His Time by N.M. Borodin $55

From humble origins, the eminent Russian scientist Nicholas Borodin forged a career in microbiology in the era of Stalin. Pragmatic and dedicated to his work, he accepted the Soviet regime, even working on several occasions with the Secret Police. But in 1948, while on a state-sponsored trip to the UK to report on the bulk manufacture of antibiotics, he could no longer ignore his rising consciousness of the suppression of independent thought in his country. It was then that he committed high treason by writing to the Soviet ambassador to renounce his citizenship. One Man in his Time is the story of a man trying to live an ordinary life in extraordinary times. Rich in incident and astonishing details, it charts Borodin's childhood during the revolution and famine through to his scientific career amidst the suspicion and violence of the purges. Unsparing and frank in its depiction of the author's collaboration with Soviet authorities, it offers unparalleled insight into the daily reality of life under totalitarian rule. First published in 1955, and recently ‘rediscovered’. [Hardback]
”An astonishing testimony that has never seemed more timely or more pertinent.” —Nicholas Shakespeare

 

THAT GREEN OLIVE by Olivia Moore

Everyone has a food story — the recipes and ingredients they've grown up with and grown used to. In That Green Olive, recipe creator and Aotearoa foodie Olivia Moore shares her story, and shares how to find joy in the kitchen by mixing things up a little. Drawing inspiration from kiwi classics, restaurants and Olivia's lakeside hometown — with recipes for venison sausages and candied trout — That Green Olive gives you the choice to be a little bit fancy, whether it's beer and gruyere scones or a tasty nduja moussaka.
These are cosy snacks, dinners and desserts designed to inspire and devour, whether you are cooking for yourself, your family or friends.

 

Emperor of Rome: Ruling in the Ancient world by Mary Beard $30

What was it really like to rule and be ruled in the Ancient Roman world? In her international best-seller SPQR, Mary Beard told the thousand-year story of ancient Rome. Now, she shines her spotlight on the emperors who ruled the Roman empire, from Julius Caesar (assassinated 44 BCE) to Alexander Severus (assassinated 235 CE). Emperor of Rome is not your usual chronological account of Roman rulers, one after another: the mad Caligula, the monster Nero, the philosopher Marcus Aurelius. Beard asks bigger questions: What power did emperors actually have? Was the Roman palace really so bloodstained? Emperor of Rome goes directly to the heart of Roman (and our own) fantasies about what it was to be Roman, offering an account of Roman history as it has never been presented before. Now in paperback.
”Britain's most famous classicist at the peak of her powers. Even more interesting than the insight into the imperial elite is the light the book sheds on the modern world.” —Sathnam Sanghera
”A beautifully written product of a lifetime of deep scholarly learning.” —Martin Wolf
”Lavishly illustrated, erudite and entertaining. Beard is so appealing and approachable that even the recalcitrant reader who previously gave not a single thought to the Roman Empire will warm to her subject.” —Jennifer Szalai

 

All That We Own Know by Shilo Kino $38

Meet Māreikura Pohe: she's in love with her best friend Eru, who is leaving to go on a church mission, and she's an accidental activist — becoming an online sensation after her speech goes viral. But does she really want the spotlight? Navigating self-diagnosed ADHD, a new romantic relationship, forging friendships and reclaiming her language all at once is no easy feat. And as her platform grows, Māreikura is unwittingly placed on a pedestal as a voice for change against the historical wrongs of colonisation. The question remains: at what personal cost? Set against the vibrant backdrop of Tāmaki Makaurau, All That We Know is a modern take on family and friendship and how, even in a divided and often polarising world, the resilience of friendship, love, and connection can defy the most challenges of our times.
”Magnificent. A well-observed mirror of our current time.” —Pip Adam
”Shilo Kino is an extraordinary writer — a growing, potent voice in Aotearoa/NZ literature. All That We Own Know is a clever, knowing insight into language trauma and reclamation and how we each navigate our experiences of colonisation and healing through te ao Maori me te ao Pakeha.” —Miriama Kamo

 

The Echoes by Evie Wylde $38

Max didn't believe in an afterlife. Until he died. Now, as a reluctant ghost trying to work out why he remains, he watches his girlfriend Hannah lost in grief in the flat they shared and begins to realise how much of her life was invisible to him. In the weeks and months before Max's death, Hannah is haunted by the secrets she left Australia to escape. A relationship with Max seems to offer the potential of a different story, but the past refuses to stay hidden. It finds expression in the untold stories of the people she grew up with, the details of their lives she never knew and the events that broke her family apart and led her to Max. Both a celebration and autopsy of a relationship, spanning multiple generations and set between rural Australia and London, The Echoes is a novel about love and grief, stories and who has the right to tell them.

 

Wilding: How to bring Nature back, An illustrated guide by Isabella Tree, illustrated by Angela Harding $50

The latest iteration of Isabella Tree’s remarkable record of how she rewilded an English estate is a beautiful large-format book featuring stunning lino-cuts by Angela Harding. It is intended of children, but will be loved by anyone. Knepp is now home to some of the rarest and most beautiful creatures in the UK, including nightingales, kingfishers, turtle doves and peregrine falcons, hazel dormice and harvest mice, scarce chaser dragonflies and purple emperor butterflies. The sheer abundance of life is staggering too. When you walk out into the scrubland on an early spring morning the sound of birdsong is so loud it feels like it's vibrating in your lungs. This is the story of Knepp, and a guide telling you how to bring wildlife back where you live. Includes timelines, an in-depth look at rewilding, spotlight features about native animals including species that have returned and thrive — butterflies, bats, owls and beetles. There are accessible in-garden activities to 're-wild' your own spaces and the book encourages you to slow down and observe the natural world around you, understand the connections between species and habitats, and the huge potential for life right on your doorstep.

 
VOLUME BooksNew releases
WHISK — The beginning of a season: new cookbooks at VOLUME this week

There are new cookbooks this week from some of your favourite cookbook people — the ones who are the best reassuring company in the kitchen and who lead you to new dishes and new flavours.

 

COMFORT by Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh

Ottolenghi's first brand-new major cookbook since the era-defining SIMPLE and FLAVOUR. With over 100 irresistible recipes alongside stories of childhood and home, this is comfort food, Ottolenghi-style.
Ottolenghi brings his inspiring, flavour-forward approach to comfort cooking, delivering new classics that taste of home. A bowl of pasta becomes Caramelised Onion Orecchiette with Hazelnuts & Crispy Sage, a warming soup is Cheesy Bread Soup with Savoy Cabbage & Cavolo Nero, and a plate of mash is transformed into Garlicky Aligot Potato with Leeks & Thyme.
Weaving memories of childhood and travel with over 100 recipes, COMFORT is a celebration of food and home - of the connections we make as we cook, and pass on from generation to generation.

 

DINNER: 120 vegan and vegetarian dishes for the most important meal of the day by Meera Sodha

“The ability to put a good dinner on the table has become my superpower and I want it to be yours too.,” says Meera Sodha, who has previously brought us the loved cookbooks East and Fresh India.
Dinner is a fresh and joyful celebration of the power of a good meal all created to answer the question: What's for dinner? in an exciting and delicious way. Discover 120 vibrant, easy-to-make vegetarian and vegan main dishes bursting with flavour, including baked butter paneer, kimchi and tomato spaghetti, and aubergines roasted in satay sauce. There are also mouthwatering desserts, such as coconut and cardamom dream cake and bubble tea ice cream, and exciting side dishes, such as salt and vinegar potato salad and asparagus and cashew thoran.
From quick-cook recipes to one-pan wonders and delectable dishes you can just bung in the oven and leave to look after themselves, Dinner is an essential companion for the most important meal of the day.

 

THAT GREEN OLIVE by Olivia Moore

Everyone has a food story — the recipes and ingredients they've grown up with and grown used to.
In That Green Olive, recipe creator and Aotearoa foodie Olivia Moore shares her story, and shares how to find joy in the kitchen by mixing things up a little.
Drawing inspiration from kiwi classics, restaurants and Olivia's lakeside hometown — with recipes for venison sausages and candied trout — That Green Olive gives you the choice to be a little bit fancy, whether it's beer and gruyere scones or a tasty nduja moussaka.
These are cosy snacks, dinners and desserts designed to inspire and devour, whether you are cooking for yourself, your family or friends.

 
VOLUME BooksWHISK
Book of the Week: NINE GIRLS by Stacy Gregg

The 2024 Winner of the Margaret Mahy Book of the Year is Stacy Gregg (Ngāti Mahuta, Ngāti Pūkeko, Ngāti Maru Hauraki) with her latest book, Nine Girls. Gregg is a household name in New Zealand, and in the UK, with over 30 pony books to her name, numerous awards, along with commercial success. Nine Girls is a departure from the pony stories. Gone is the pony, but in its place is a talking eel. Titch and her whanua have moved to Ngāruawāhia. Adjusting to a small town where she feels out of place is no easy feat, but with a best friend, Tania, the lure of hidden treasure and the unexpected encounter with her eel connecting Titch to her past, adventure is never far away.

In Nine Girls Stacy Gregg draws on her own childhood, and being an outsider; she explores issues of colonisation, racism and striving to find yourself and connect with your heritage. With Gregg’s expert story-telling this coming-of-age story balances humour, adventure, and emotion — the perfect ingredients for a standout book that embraces important themes and history for both Māori and Pākehā readers.

VOLUME BooksBook of the week, Children's books
THE VERY LAST INTERVIEW by David Shields — reviewed by Thomas

So, what makes you want to write a review of David Shields’s new book, The Very Last Interview? 

Then why are you writing one?

Every week? Whose idea was that?   

Surely at your age, you shouldn’t be so bound by obligation or by expectation, or whatever you call it?

Yes, but do you really care what these readers might think, and do you even believe that there are such people? Aren’t you being altogether a bit precious? 

Do you really think that this helps to pay the mortgage, I mean that this makes a direct and measurable contribution towards paying your mortgage? Or even an indirect and unmeasurable but still valuable contribution towards paying your mortgage? 

Well, what else would you be doing?

Surely you’re joking? 

Okay, we’ve got a bit off the track there. I will reframe my first question. What makes you think that you are able to write a review of David Shields’s new book? 

Don’t you think your humility is a bit mannered?

The Very Last Interview is a book consisting entirely of questions that interviewers have asked David Shields over the years, omitting his answers, assuming he will have answered probably at least most of the questions, and your review, if we can call it that, of this book also consists of a series of questions ostensibly directed at you but without your answers, if indeed there were answers, which is less certain in your case than in the case of David Shields. Is this, on your part, a deliberate choice of approach, and, if so, is it justifiable? 

Do you really believe that a review written in imitation of, or in the style of, the work under review inherently reveals something about that work, even if the review is badly written, or should your approach rather be attributed to laziness, stylistic insecurity, or creative bankruptcy? 

Has it ever occurred to you that the supposedly more enjoyable qualities of your writing are actually nothing more than literary tics or affectations, and, furthermore, that it might be these very literary tics and affectations that prevent you from writing anything of real literary worth? 

Do you think that, by removing his input into the original interviews but retaining the questions, David Shields is attempting to remove himself from his own existence, or merely to show that our identities are always imposed from outside us rather than from inside, or that we exist as persons only to the extent that we are seen by others? Is this, in fact, all the same thing? 

What do you mean by that statement, ‘We are defined by the limits we present to the observations of others’?

What do you mean by that statement ‘There is no such thing as writing, only editing,’ and how does that relate to Shields’s work? 

Do you think that David Shields, in this book as in the much-discussed 2010 Reality Hunger, sees the individual as an illusion, a miserable fragment of what is actually a ‘hive mind’ or collective consciousness, and that ‘creativity’, so to call it, is another illusion predicated on this illusion of individuality?

You don’t? What, then?

What do you think David Shields would have answered, when asked, as he was, seemingly in this book, “But what is the role of the imagination in this ‘post-literature literature’ that you envision?” and how might this differ from the answer you might give if asked the same question? 

Shields was asked if he had written anything that couldn’t be interpreted as ‘crypto-autobiography’, but don’t you think the salient question is whether it is even possible to write anything that couldn’t be interpreted as crypto-autobiography? 

Is a perfectly delineated absence, such as David Shields approximates in The Very Last Interview, in fact the most perfect portrait of a person, even the best possible definition of a person, as far as this is possible at all? 

But do you actually have a personal opinion on this? 

Do you think then that you, like Shields, like us all perhaps, are, in essence, a ghost?

VOLUME BooksReview by Thomas
NEW RELEASES (30.8.24)

The books you buy today will bloom in Spring.
Click through for your copies:

Nine Girls by Stacy Gregg $22

They dug a hole and they put the box filled with gold inside it. To keep it safe until they could return, one of them placed a tapu on it. A tapu so that anyone who tried to touch the gold would die. Titch is determined to find the gold buried somewhere on her family's land. It might be cursed but that won't put her off. Then an unexpected encounter with a creature from the river reveals secrets lying beneath its surface. As Titch uncovers the truth about the hidden treasure, she learns about her own heritage — and what it's like to feel like an outsider in your own world. A story about growing up in a time of social unrest in early 1980s New Zealand, Nine Girls is a page-turning adventure.
Winner of the  2024 Margaret Mahy Book of the Year Award, and winner of the Wright Family Foundation Esther Glen Junior Fiction Award — NZ Book Awards for Children & Young Adults 2024.
”In Nine Girls Stacy Gregg masterfully weaves comedy, fantasy and history together in a profound exploration of the complexity of identity in Aotearoa New Zealand through the experiences of a young Māori girl finding her place in the world. Historical events are woven into the fabric of the story, grounding her personal journey in a broader socio-political context. Vivid characters animate a fast-paced, eventful narrative with plot twists and emotional highs and lows. This book celebrates Māori identity, pays tribute to Aotearoa’s rich history, and testifies to the power of storytelling. Nine Girls is a taonga for readers of all ages, resonating long after the final page is turned.” — NZBACYA judges’ citation 

 

The Invasion of Waikato — Te Riri ki Tainui by Vincent O’Malley $40

The 1863 crossing of the Mangatāwhiri River by colonial forces was a pivotal moment, igniting a war between the Crown and the Waikato tribes that profoundly influenced New Zealand’s future. In The Invasion of Waikato: Te Riri ki Tainui, Vincent O’Malley introduces this critical period, presenting a conflict driven by opposing visions: European dominance versus Māori autonomy (as promised by the Treaty of Waitangi). The ensuing war was devastating, resulting in the loss of many lives, the displacement of communities and extensive land confiscations. Building on the detailed examination found in The Great War for New Zealand: Waikato 1800–2000 (2016), this concise new volume broadens the reach of the Waikato War narrative. Enriched with new research, maps and images, O’Malley’s latest work invites readers to contemplate the profound effects of this era on the nation’s identity and its enduring legacy.

 

Modern Women: Flight of Time edited by Julia Waite $65

Profiling 44 innovative artists, this book places women in the front and centre of New Zealand Modernism and explores their varied responses to the transformational changes occurring across five decades of the 20th Century. While presenting key works by such iconic figures as Rita Angus, Frances Hodgkins, and A Lois White, the book also aims to celebrate the significant contributions of lesser-known artists, including June Black, Flora Scales and Pauline Yearbury, one of the first Māori graduates of the Elam School of Fine Arts. Through their works, the book uncovers how these women navigated and transformed the cultural and political landscape of their time, offering new insights into themes of storytelling, identity and belonging. The artists featured in the book are: Rita Angus, Mina Arndt, Tanya Ashken, June Black, Jenny Campbell, Alison Duff, Elizabeth Ellis, Jacqueline Fahey, Ivy Fife, Anne Hamblett, Rhona Haszard, Barbara Hepworth, Avis Higgs, Frances Hodgkins, Julia Holderness (Florence Weir), Laura Knight, Mere Harrison Lodge, Doris Lusk, Molly Macalister, Ngaio Marsh, Kāterina Mataira, Eileen Mayo, Juliet Peter, Margot Philips, Ilse von Randow, Anne Estelle Rice, Kittie Roberts, Flora Scales, Maud Sherwood, May Smith, Olivia Spencer Bower, Helen Stewart, Teuane Tibbo, A Lois White, Pauline Yearbury, Adele Younghusband, and Beth Zanders.Nicely presented, with over 120 illustrations. [Hardback]

 

Our Island Stories: Country walks through colonial Britain by Corinne Fowler $65

As well as affecting the lands appropriated and people subsumed into Empire around the world, the British colonial enterprise had an indelible effect even on the countryside and rural life within Britain’s own shores. In Our Island Stories, historian Corinne Fowler brings rural life and colonial rule together with transformative results. Through ten country walks with varied companions, Fowler combines local and global history, connecting the Cotswolds to Calcutta, Dolgellau to Virginia, and Grasmere to Canton. Empire transformed rural lives, whether in Welsh sheep farms or Cornish copper mines — it offered both opportunity and exploitation. Fowler shows how the booming profits of overseas colonial activities directly contributed to enclosure, land clearances and dispossession. These histories, usually considered separately, continue to link the lives of their descendants around the world now. [Hardback]
”This is real, difficult, essential history delivered in the most eloquent and accessible way. Her case, that rural Britain has been shaped by imperialism, is unanswerable, and she makes her arguments beautifully. An important book.” —Sathnam Sanghera
”A detailed and thoughtful exploration of historical connections that for too long have been obscured. A powerful book that brings the history of the Empire home — literally.” —David Olusoga
”This is an essential and fascinating book because it brings to light, through conversations and nature walks, some of the buried connections between Britain's landscape and historic buildings and its complicated hidden histories.” —Bernardine Evaristo

 

The Voyage Home by Pat Barker $38

After ten blood-filled years, the war is over. Troy lies in smoking ruins as the victorious Greeks fill their ships with the spoils of battle. Alongside the treasures looted are the many Trojan women captured by the Greeks - among them the legendary prophetess Cassandra, and her watchful maid, Ritsa. Enslaved as concubine — war-wife — to King Agamemnon, Cassandra is plagued by visions of his death — and her own — while Ritsa is forced to bear witness to both Cassandra's frenzies and the horrors to come. Meanwhile, awaiting the fleet's return is Queen Clytemnestra, vengeful wife of Agamemnon. Heart-shattered by her husband's choice to sacrifice their eldest daughter to the gods in exchange for a fair wind to Troy, she has spent this long decade plotting retribution, in a palace haunted by child-ghosts. As one wife journeys toward the other, united by the vision of Agamemnon's death, one thing is certain — this long-awaited homecoming will change everyone's fates forever.
”Brilliant, masterful, strikingly accomplished. Few come close to matching the sharp perspicacity and profound humanity of Pat Barker. This bloody tale has reverberated down the ages. With her characteristic blend of brusque wisdom and piercing compassion, Barker remakes it for our times.” —Guardian
”The Voyage Home brings forgotten female characters into sharp psychological focus. It is astonishingly fresh and modern, bristling with anger, and breezily quick to read. Pat Barker is one of the finest novelists working today.” —Alice Winn

 

The History of Ideas: Equality, justice, and freedom by David Runciman $40

What can Samuel Butler's ideas teach us about the oddity of how we choose to organise our societies? How did Frederick Douglass not only expose the horrors of slavery, but champion a new approach to abolishing it? Why should we tolerate snobbery, betrayal and hypocrisy, as Judith Shklar suggested? And what does Friedrich Nietzsche predict for our future? From Rousseau to Rawls, fascism to feminism and pleasure to anarchy, this is a mind-bending tour through the history of ideas which will forever change your view of politics today.

 

Forms of Freedom: Marxist essays in New Zealand and Australian literature by Dougal McNeill $45

McNeill explores how the creative literary imagination can influence progressive social change in the real world. In engaging prose and with impressive intellectual range, McNeill applies insights from Marxist critical theory to the works of selected Aotearoa New Zealand and Australian writers. From Harry Holland, Henry Lawson and Mary Gilmore responding to the legacy of Robert Burns in the nineteenth century, to twenty-first-century novelists applying their literary imaginations to intersectional spaces and Indigenous, settler, gendered and international freedom traditions, McNeill reveals literature’s capacity to find potent forms with which to articulate concepts of, and beliefs about, freedom. McNeill’s argument for literature as an essential ‘form of freedom’ is a resonant call for our times. Authors whose work is discussed in Forms of Freedom include: Pip Adam; Emily Perkins; Alice Tawhai; Hone Tuwhare; Patricia Grace; Elsie Locke; Albert Wendt; Mary Gilmore; Dorothy Hewett; Harry Holland; Eve Langley; Ellen van Neerven; Henry Lawson; Amanda Lohrey.

 

Granta 167: Extraction edited by Thomas Meaney $33

From mining to Bitcoin, energy politics to psychoanalysis, the spring edition examines a practice as old as human history: Extraction. In this issue James Pogue is detained in the Central African Republic, where mines and mercenaries are at the centre of governmental conflict, Nuar Alsadir analyses boredom, Bathsheba Demuth travels the Yukon River and Laleh Khalili unravels the history of energy in Israel. Elsewhere, Anjan Sundaram reports from Mexico, Thea Riofrancos discusses the green transition and William Atkins visits the Forest of Dean, with photography by Tereza Červeňová. And in fiction, we have new work by Carlos Fonseca (tr. Jessica Sequeira), Camilla Grudova, Benjamin Kunkel, Eka Kurniawan (tr. Annie Tucker) Rachel Kushner and Christian Lorentzen. Plus, photography by Danny Franzreb (introduced by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian) and Salvatore Vitale.

 

Tairāwhiti: Pine, profit, and the cyclone by Aaron Smale $18

An examination of the region's struggle with colonial legacies and environmental mismanagement. Through personal stories, interviews and critical analysis, Smale uncovers the multifaceted impacts of pine plantations, land confiscation and climate events of increasing severity on a landscape and its people. This book provides a nuanced understanding of the socioeconomic and ecological challenges facing the Tairāwhiti community and points toward a path that will honour and sustain the future.

 

Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson $38

The stage is set. Marooned overnight by a snowstorm in a grand country house are a cast of characters and a setting that even Agatha Christie might recognise — a vicar, an Army major, a Dowager, a sleuth and his sidekick — except that the sleuth is Jackson Brodie, and the 'sidekick' is DC Reggie Chase. The crumbling house — Burton Makepeace and its chatelaine the Dowager Lady Milton — suffered the loss of their last remaining painting of any value, a Turner, some years ago. The housekeeper, Sophie, who disappeared the same night, is suspected of stealing it. Jackson, a reluctant hostage to the snowstorm, has been investigating the theft of another painting: ‘The Woman with a Weasel’, a portrait, taken from the house of an elderly widow, on the morning she died. The suspect this time is the widow's carer, Melanie. Is this a coincidence or is there a connection? And what secrets does ‘The Woman with a Weasel’ hold? The puzzle is Jackson's to solve. And let's not forget that a convicted murderer is on the run on the moors around Burton Makepeace. All the while, in a bid to make money, Burton Makepeace is determined to keep hosting a shambolic Murder Mystery that acts as a backdrop while the real drama is being played out in the house. A brilliantly plotted, supremely entertaining, and utterly compulsive tour de force from a great writer at the height of her powers. [I’m sure that’s not a rook but perhaps a booby on the cover. {T}]

 

The House on Via Gemito by Dominico Starnone (translated from Italian by Oonagh Stransky)

The modest apartment in Via Gemito smells of paint and white spirit.The living room furniture is pushed up against the wall to create a make-shift studio, and drying canvases must be moved off the beds each night.
Federi, the father, a railway clerk, is convinced of possessing great artistic talent. If he didn't have a family to feed, he'd be a world-famous painter. Ambitious and frustrated, genuinely talented but full of arrogance and resentment, his life is marked by bitter disappointment.His long-suffering wife and their four sons bear the brunt. It's his first-born who, years later, will sift the lies from the truth to tell the story of a man he spent his whole life trying not to resemble. Narrated against the background of a Naples still marked by WWII and steeped in the city's language and imagery.

 

Determined: The science of life without free will by Robert Sapolski $30

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’; for example, for centuries we thought seizures were a sign of demonic possession. 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. By the end, 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. New paperback edition.
”Robert Sapolsky explains why the latest developments in neuroscience and psychology explode our conventional idea of Free Will. The book's chock-full of complex and often counter-intuitive ideas. It's also a joy to read. That's because Sapolsky is not only one of the world's most brilliant scientists, but also an immensely gifted writer who tells this important story with wit and compassion. It's impossible to recommend this book too highly. Reading it could change your life.” —Laurence Rees

 

Rare Singles by Benjamin Myers $37

Dinah has always lived in Scarborough. Trapped with her feckless husband and useless son, her one release comes at her town's Northern Soul nights, where she gets to put on her best and lose herself in the classics. Dinah has an especial hero- Bucky Bronco, who recorded a string of soul gems in the late Sixties and then vanished off the face of the earth. When she manages to contact Bucky she can't believe her luck. Over in Chicago, Bucky Bronco is down on his luck and has been since the loss of his beloved wife Maybelle. The best he can hope for is to make ends meet, and try and stay high. But then an unexpected invitation arrives, from someone he's never met, to come to somewhere he's never heard of. With nothing to lose and in need of the cash Bucky boards a plane. And so Bucky finds himself in rainy Scarborough, where everyone seems to know who is preparing to play for an audience for the first time in nearly half a century. Over the course of the week, he finds himself striking up new and unexpected friendships; and facing his past, and its losses, for the very first time.
”Myers is the laureate of friendship, a chronicler of unexpected, transformative connection. How beautiful to read something so affirming and full of light, and to have music, ephemeral as it might be, presented as precious and transformational.” —Wendy Erskine

 

Living With Our Dead: On loss and consolation by Delphine Horvilleur $30

Eleven stories of loss, mourning, and consolation, collected during years spent caring for the dying and their loved ones. From Charlie Hebdo columnist Elsa Cayat, to Simone Veil and Marceline Loridan, the ‘girls of Birkenau’; from Yitzhak Rabin, to Myriam, a New Yorker obsessed with planning her own funeral, to the author’s friend Ariane and her struggle with terminal illness, Horvilleur writes about death with intelligence, humour, and compassion. Rejecting the contemporary tendency to banish death from our thoughts, she encourages us to embrace its presence as a fundamental part of life. Drawing from the Jewish tradition, Living with Our Dead is a humanist, universal, and hopeful book that celebrates life, love, memory and the power of storytelling to inspire and sustain us.

 

Whale Fall by Elizabeth O’Connor $30

It is 1938 and for Manod, a young woman living on a remote island off the coast of Wales, the world looks ready to end just as she is trying to imagine a future for herself. The ominous appearance of a beached whale on the island's shore, and rumours of submarines circling beneath the waves, have villagers steeling themselves for what's to come. Empty houses remind them of the men taken by the Great War, and of the difficulty of building a life in the island's harsh, salt-stung landscape. When two anthropologists from the mainland arrive, Manod sees in them a rare moment of opportunity to leave the island and discover the life she has been searching for. But, as she guides them across the island's cliffs, she becomes entangled in their relationship, and her imagined future begins to seem desperately out of reach.
”Brief but complete, the book is an example of precisely observed writing that makes a character's specific existence glimmer with verisimilitude. To different eyes, the same island might look like a prison or a romantic enclave, but to actually apprehend the truth of a place or person requires patience, nuanced attention and the painstaking accrual of details. Understanding is hard work, O'Connor suggests, especially when we must release our preconceptions. While the researchers fail to grasp this, Manod does not, and her reward by book's end, painfully earned, is a new and thrilling resolve.” —Maggie Shipstead, New York Times
”An astonishingly assured debut that straddles many polarities: love and loss, the familiar and the strange, trust and betrayal, land and sea, life and death. O'Connor has created a beguiling and beguiled narrator in Manod: I loved seeing the world through her eyes, and I didn't want it to end.” —Maggie O'Farrell

 

Ten Nosey Weka by Kate Preece and Isobel Joy Te Aho-White $22

A trilingual picture book in ta rē Moriori, te reo Māori, and English. Learn basic words and numbers in the Moriori, Māori, and English languages in this book about ten nosy weka, who peck at ngarara (ngarara / insects), squeeze under a farm gate, and tease a tchuna (tuna / eel). Let's hope these curious weka can find their way back to their flock in the end.

 
VOLUME BooksNew releases
Book of the Week: CHINESE FISH by Grace Yee — Aotearoa National Poetry Day

WINNER: Victorian Prize for Literature 2024
WINNER: Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards – Poetry 2024
WINNER: Ockham New Zealand Book Awards – Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry 2024
SHORTLISTED: Mary Gilmore Award 2024
HIGHLY COMMENDED: Anne Elder Award 2023

Grace Yee’s debut book Chinese Fish took out the top poetry prizes in Aotearoa and Australia this year, and the Premier Literary Award in Australia. It’s sharp, provocative and laced with humour. It confronts racism, explores expectation and the complexities of migration. And it does so, brilliantly, shaking its poetic form with verve and intelligence to reward the reader with a deeply layered and thought-provoking experience.

In the words of our poet laurate, Chris Tse, it’s “an unflinchingly honest look at life behind closed doors, where resentment simmers, generations clash, and individual dreams are set aside for the interests of family.”

Chinese Fish is a family saga that spans the 1960s through to the 1980s. Narrated in multiple voices and laced with archival fragments and scholarly interjections, it offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of women and girls in a community that has historically been characterised as both a ‘yellow peril’ menace and an exotic ‘model minority’.

VOLUME BooksBook of the week
Novels in verse — reviewed by Stella

Back in the 1990s, working in a bookshop in Wellington, I came across a novel that intrigued me. It was written in verse, by an author that many now  known for his epic second novel, A Suitable Boy. Vikram Seth’s first novel was The Golden Gate. It was set in San Francisco in the 1980s and revolved around the lives of a group of successful 20-somethings in the burgeoning Silicon Valley. It’s not so much the content that has stuck with me, but the mathematical wonder of this novel. It is written in iambic tetrameter, and — as I have just now researched — composed of 590 Onegin stanzas. This formal structure took a little adjusting to, but I remember finding the rhythm of the novel within a few pages and noticing how the verse style adjusted my way of reading, making me read this novel in its very own way. That discovery of the novel in verse continues to fascinate, and when it works, it is brilliant. A more recent novel that comes to mind was the award-winning The Long Take by Robin Robertson. This is a startlingly affecting novel, an epic narrative poem about brutality and the search for kindness — a book that I will never stop recommending. I’m not sure what it is about a verse novel that appeals so much. I think it is the precision, those sharp ideas and carefully chosen words. It is the skill, the craft that poetry demands; particularly in the novel form where, like The Golden Gate, the rules are so important but the strict rhythm, once you, as the reader, are in synch you are unaware of — the content and form become seamless. Or The Long Take, where imagery meets landscape meets emotion so beautifully on the page with an intensity that surprises. And, for me, I think it is the joy of the text on the page. The space that alights around these stanzas, that says I am poetry (but not a prose poem) and can confound your expectations of the novel and what it can be. So, in the spirit of Poetry Day, I suggest expanding your horizons with a new poet or poetic form, or just giving poetry a try. It’s mind-bogglingly various. It can be serious, dramatic, emotional, confronting, and soothing, as well as amusing and ironic, and a combination of all of these; and then there are the many forms to discover. You never know where it might lead to in your reading explorations. Have a look at this week's Volume Focus for a selection of novels in verse on our shelves right now (maybe your verse-novel journey starts here!).

VOLUME BooksReview by Stella
NEW RELEASES (23.8.24)

The following books are keenly awaiting admission to your shelf.
Click through to our webiste for your copies:

Diaries by Franz Kafka (translated by Ross Benjamin) $50

Dating from 1909 to 1923, Franz Kafka's Diaries contains a broad array of writing, including accounts of daily events, assorted reflections and observations, literary sketches, drafts of letters, records of dreams, and unrevised texts of stories. This volume makes available for the first time in English a comprehensive reconstruction of Kafka's handwritten diary entries and provides substantial new content, restoring all the material omitted from previous publications — notably, names of people and undisguised details about them, a number of literary writings, and passages of a sexual nature, some of them with homoerotic overtones. By faithfully reproducing the diaries' distinctive — and often surprisingly unpolished — writing as it appeared in Kafka's notebooks, translator Ross Benjamin brings to light not only the author's use of the diaries for literary invention and unsparing self-examination but also their value as a work of genius in and of themselves.
”One of the finest translating achievements in recent history.” —Literary Review
”A new translation of the writer's diaries from his twenties restores them to how he wrote them: chaotic, sometimes incoherent and full of black comedy. The diaries will open your eyes.” —John Self, The Times
”An unprecedented, almost 600-page peephole into the mind of a writer whose published prose is otherwise classically abstract and inscrutable. It's some secret to be let into.” —Tanjil Rashid, Financial Times
”This new edition restores the variegated richness of the diaries. Here Kafka seems both genius and ingenue, and the contradiction brings him closer to us.” —Guardian
”This edition of the Diaries seems a model of both scrupulousness and generosity. Here we find the unpolished inner life of one of the most significant writers that ever lived; and the entries, which come from the mind of an ordinary human being and not from some otherworldly realm of inner consciousness, do not in any way detract from Kafka's work.” —Nicholas Lezard, The Spectator

 

Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange $38

A tender, shattering story of generations of a Native American family, struggling to find ways through displacement, addiction and pain, towards home and hope. Following its unforgettable characters through almost two centuries of history, from the horrors of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1865 to the aftermath of a mass shooting in the early 21st century, Wandering Stars is an indelible novel of America’s war on its own people. Readers of Orange’s classic debut There There will know some of these characters and will be eager to learn what happened to Orvil Red Feather after the Oakland Powwow. New readers will discover a wondrous novel of poetry, music, rage and love, from one of the most astonishing voices of his generation.
”This powerful epic entwines the stories of a diverse cast of characters, each grappling with the weight of history, identity and trauma. Through well-crafted prose and deftly drawn perspectives, Tommy Orange paints a vivid portrait of the Native American experience – both the pain of displacement and the resilience of those who continue ancestral traditions. Spanning centuries, the novel explores universal themes of family, addiction and the search for belonging in a society that often fails to recognise the value of its Indigenous people. Wandering Stars is a stunning achievement, a literary tour de force that demands attention.” —Booker judges’ citation
”It’d be a mistake to think that the power of Wandering Stars lies solely in its astute observations, cultural commentary or historical reclamations, though these aspects of the novel would make reading it very much worthwhile. But make no mistake, this book has action! Suspense! The characters are fully formed and they get going right out of the gate […] Orange’s ability to highlight the contradictory forces that coexist within friendships, familial relationships and the characters themselves, who contend with holding private and public identities, makes Wandering Stars a towering achievement.” —Jonathan Escoffery, New York Times Book Review

 

Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood $37

A woman abandons her city life and marriage to return to the place she grew up, finding solace in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of the Monaro. She does not believe in God, doesn't know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive life almost by accident. As she gradually adjusts to the rhythms of monastic life, she ruminates on her childhood in the nearby town. She finds herself turning again and again to thoughts of her mother, whose early death she can't forget. Disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signalling a new battle against the rising infestation. Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who left the community decades before to minister to deprived women in Thailand - then disappeared, presumed murdered. Finally, a troubling visitor to the monastery pulls the narrator further back into her past. With each of these disturbing arrivals, the woman faces some deep questions. Can a person be truly good? What is forgiveness? Is loss of hope a moral failure? And can the business of grief ever really be finished?
”Sometimes a visitor becomes a resident, and a temporary retreat becomes permanent. This happens to the narrator in Stone Yard Devotional – a woman with seemingly solid connections to the world who changes her life and settles into a monastery in rural Australia. Yet no shelter is impermeable. The past, in the form of the returning bones of an old acquaintance, comes knocking at her door; the present, in the forms of a global pandemic and a local plague of mice and rats, demands her attention. The novel thrilled and chilled the judges – it’s a book we can’t wait to put into the hands of readers.” —Booker Judges’ citation
”I have rarely been so absorbed, so persuaded by a novel. Wood is a writer of the most intense attention. Everything here — the way mice move, the way two women pass each other a confiding look, the way a hero can love the world but also be brusque and inconsiderate to those around them — it all rings true. It's the story of a small group of people in a tiny town, but its resonance is global. This is a powerful, generous book.” —Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Guardian

 

What Is Mine by José Henrique Bortoluci (translated from Portuguese by Rahul Bery) $28

In What Is Mine, sociologist José Henrique Bortoluci uses interviews with his father, Didi, to retrace the recent history of Brazil and of his family. From the mid-1960s to the mid-2010s, Didi’s work as a truck driver took him away from home for long stretches at a time as he crisscrossed the country and participated in huge infrastructure projects including the Trans-Amazonian Highway, a scheme spearheaded by the military dictatorship of the time, undertaken through brutal deforestation. An observer of history, Didi also recounts the toll his work has taken on his health, from a heart attack in middle age to the cancer that defines his retirement. Bortoluci weaves the history of a nation with that of a man, uncovering parallels between cancer and capitalism — both sustained by expansion, both embodiments of ‘the gospel of growth at any cost’ — and traces the distance that class has placed between him and his father. Influenced by authors such as Annie Ernaux and Svetlana Alexievich, What Is Mine is a moving, thought-provoking and brilliantly constructed examination of the scars we carry, as people and as countries.
”A son’s journey, around father and country, subtle and complex, tender and brutal; an intimate work of rare beauty and power.” —Philippe Sands
”What Is Mine is an unforgettable oral history of truck driving along the potholed roads carving up the Amazon rainforest: bandits, sleep deprivation, beef barbecued on the engine. It is also an incisive political critique of ecocidal ideas of ‘progress’, a powerful reflection on the ways labour shapes a human body, and a loving exploration of a relationship between a father and son. It already has the feel of a classic.” —Caleb Klaces
”A political document told as memoir, this is a book of incredible beauty and insight, one which demonstrates one of the greatest truths: that our lives, and the lives of our families, are inextricably bound to the structures of class, economics, and history they were born into.” —Madeleine Watts

 

Philosophy of the Home: Domestic space and happiness by Emanuele Coccia (translated by Richard Dixon) $30

A bedroom, a kitchen, a bathroom — are these three rooms all that make a home? Not at all, argues Emanuele Coccia. The buildings we inhabit are of immense psychological and cultural significance. They play a decisive role in human flourishing and, for hundreds of years, their walls and walkways, windows and doorways have guided our relationships with others and with ourselves. They reflect and reinforce social inequalities; they allow us to celebrate and cherish those we love. They are the places of return that allow us to venture out into the world. In this intimate, elegantly argued account, Coccia shows how the architecture of home has shaped, and continues to shape, our psyches and our societies, before then masterfully leading us towards a more creative, ecological way of dwelling in the world.
”I have been waiting for Philosophy of the Home. Coccia's reflections take you through the complexity of the notion of home — not merely as a place, but as a space of philosophy, history, politics, and art.” —Hans Ulrich Obrist
”A precious guide. There is so much more at stake than the material quality of a place for living — for us human beings, the house represents the universe.” —Chris Dercon

 

Pity by Andrew McMillan $37

The debut novel from award-winning poet Andrew McMillan, exploring community, masculinity and post-industrialisation in Northern England. The town was once a hub of industry. A place where men toiled underground in darkness, picking and shovelling in the dust and the sleck. It was dangerous and back-breaking work but it meant something. Once, the town provided, it was important, it had purpose. But what is it now? Brothers Alex and Brian have spent their whole life in the town where their father lived and his father, too. Still reeling from the collapse of his personal life, Alex, is now in his middle age, and must reckon with a part of his identity he has long tried to mask. Simon is the only child of Alex and had practically no memory of the mines. Now in his twenties and working in a call centre, he derives passion from his side hustle in sex work and his weekly drag gigs. Set across three generations of South Yorkshire mining family, Andrew McMillan's short and magnificent debut novel is a lament for a lost way of a life as well as a celebration of resilience and the possibility for change. [Hardback]
”Tender and true. It explores with brilliance and deep empathy how our lives — and our secrets — are always intertwined with those who went before us.” —Douglas Stuart
”Pity digs deep into the heart and history of South Yorkshire and brings out the black gold of love, longing and loss. A triumph.” —Jon McGregor
”Pity pays a great poet's tough but tender attention to the unspoken layers and historic fissures which lie beneath the wounded town of the self. This beautiful book about the marks that are left on people and places in turn leaves a deep empathic mark on the reader.” —Max Porter
”Pity is as tough, glittering and multilayered as the coal upon which it rests. With lyrical prose and deep tenderness, Andrew McMillan beautifully explores the complex hauntings of love and grief across generations.” —Liz Berry
”Truly stunning. A novel that deals with the ways history intervenes in our lives and how we can use our lives to intervene in history. South Yorkshire is a crucible.” —Helen Mort

 

Quit Everything: Interpreting depression by Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi $40

Depression is rife amongst young people the world over. But what if this isn't depression as we know it, but instead a reaction to the chaos and collapse of a seemingly unchangeable and unliveable future? In Quit Everything, Franco Berardi argues that this "depression" is actually conscious or unconscious withdrawal of psychological energy and a dis-investment of desire that he defines instead as "desertion". A desertion from political participation, from the daily grind of capitalism, from the brutal reality of climate collapse and from a society which offers nothing but chaos and pain. Berardi analyses why this desertion is on the rise and why more people are quitting everything in our age of political impotence and the rise of the far-right, asking if we can find some political hope in desertion amongst the ruins of a world on the brink of collapse.
”Berardi, your words are disgusting.” —Giorgia Meloni

 

No Judgement: On being critical by Lauren Oyler $40

It is the age of internet gossip; of social networks, repackaged ideas and rating everything out of five stars. Mega-famous celebrities respond with fury to critics who publish less-than-rapturous reviews of their work (and then delete their tweets); CEOs talk about reclaiming 'the power of vulnerability'; and in the world of fiction, writers eschew actually making things up in favour of 'always just talking about themselves'. In this blistering, irreverent and funny first book of non-fiction, Lauren Oyler — one of the most trenchant, influential, and revelatory critics of her generation — takes on the bizarre particularities of our present moment in a series of interconnected essays about literature, the attention economy, gossip, the role of criticism and her own relentless, teeth-grinding anxiety. No Judgement excavates the layers of psychology and meaning in how we communicate, tell stories and make critical judgements.
”Brisk, honest and soaring with elan. Oyler persuasively advocates clear thinking through doing it herself with such poise. Her critical approach isn't currently common sense, but it should be, and soon enough maybe it will.” —Naoise Dolan

 

Tipo 00: The pasta cookbook by Andreas Papadakis $55

This attractive and informative book is packed with everything you want to know to be able to make superb pasta — from scratch to sauce — any time of the day. With over 80 recipes and illustrations that will soon make you an expert in the kitchen and very popular with anyone who eats in your house, this is a good book to have. You’ll soon be eating pasta for every meal of the day. [Hardback]

 

Living on Earth: Life, consciousness, and the making of the natural world by Peter Godfrey-Smith $40

How has life shaped and been shaped by our planet? He visits the largest living stromatolite fields, examples of how cyanobacteria began belching oxygen into the atmosphere as they converted carbon dioxide and water into living matter using the sun's light. The extraordinary increase in oxygen in the atmosphere resulted in an explosion in the diversity of life. And so began a riotous tangle of coevolution between plants and animals, as each changed the environment around them allowing others to utilise these new ecosystems and thus new species to evolve. From cyanobacteria, through algae on to ferns or trees or grasses, and from protists , through invertebrates and fish through the dinosaurs and on to birds and mammals - our planet has seen an explosion of life forms, all reacting to their environment and all creating new environments that allow other life to evolve. In our own evolutionary line, an initially unremarkable mammal changed in new ways, evolving to come out of the trees to inhabit new savannas and then onto inhabit the whole planet. One of the most adaptable species ever found on Earth, and arguably the species causing the most change, humans are still part of this 3.8 billion year history of life forms changing the world around them. In Living on Earth, Godfrey-Smith takes us on a grand tour of the history of life on earth. He visits Rwandan gorillas and Australian bowerbirds, returns to coral reefs and octopus dens, considers the impact of language and writing, and weighs the responsibilities our unique powers bring with them, as they relate to factory farming, habitat preservation, climate change, and the use of animals in experiments. Living on Earth shows that Humans belong to the infinitely complex system that is the Earth, and our minds are products of that system, but we are also an acting force within it. We are creatures of Earth, but we hold Earth's future in our hands.
”An exquisite account of intelligence across species. Living on Earth is consistently rewarding, packed with insights and invitations to reflect, and blessed with exquisite writing'.” —Guardian
”Clever, compassionate and often deeply moving. An excellent finale to an ambitious trilogy exploring the evolution of intelligence.” —New Scientist

 

Mrs S. by K. Patrick $35

In an elite English boarding school where the girls kiss the marble statue of the famous dead author who used to walk the halls, a young Australian woman arrives to take up the antiquated role of ‘matron’. Within this landscape of immense privilege, in which the girls can sense the slightest weakness in those around them, she finds herself unsure of her role, her accent and her body. That is until she meets Mrs S, the headmaster’s wife, a woman who is her polar opposite: assured, sophisticated, a paragon of femininity. Over the course of a long, restless heatwave, the matron finds herself irresistibly drawn ever closer into Mrs S’s world and their unspoken desire blooms into an illicit affair of electric intensity. But, as the summer begins to fade, both women know that a choice must be made. K. Patrick’s portrait of the butch experience is revelatory; exploring the contested terrain of our bodies, our desires and the constraints society places around both.
”The intense physicality of the novel's emotions and its stylish, stripped-back prose make for an arresting pairing.” —Observer
”Entirely captivating. Patrick's staccato sentences become a secondary language for butchness, powerful and confident” —New York Times

 

The Samurai of the Red Carnation by Denis Thériault (translated from French by Louise Rogers Lalaurie) $45

Matsuo is born to be a samurai, but as he is being trained in the art of war he realises he was meant for a different art altogether. Turning his back on his future as a warrior of the sword, he decides instead to do battle with words, as a poet. Thus begins a story of romance and adventure, love and betrayal, that takes Matsuo across medieval Japan, through bloody battlefields and burning cities, culminating in his ultimate test at the uta awase — where Japan's greatest poets engage in fierce verbal combat for the honour of victory. [Hardback]
”A charming, magical, picaresque journey through medieval Japan, filled with mystery, meaning and wonderful imagery. Denis Theriault's brilliant evocation of the noble art of the waka (classical Japanese poetry) is an absorbing, pacy and immensely enjoyable read.” —Sean Lusk

 

The Tree Collectors: Tales of arboreal obsession by Amy Stewart $55

When Amy Stewart discovered a community of tree collectors, she expected to meet horticultural fanatics driven to plant every species of oak or maple. But she also discovered that the urge to collect trees springs from deeper, more profound motives, such as a longing for community, a vision for the future, or a path to healing and reconciliation. In this slyly humorous, informative, often poignant volume, Stewart brings us fifty captivating stories of people who spend their lives in pursuit of rare and wonderful trees and are transformed in the process. Vivian Keh has forged a connection to her Korean elders through her persimmon orchard. The former poet laureate W. S. Merwin planted a tree almost every day for more than three decades, until he had turned a barren estate into a palm sanctuary. And Joe Hamilton cultivates pines on land passed down to him by his once-enslaved great-grandfather, building a legacy for the future. Stewart populates this lively compendium with her own watercolour portraits of these extraordinary people and their trees, side trips to investigate famous tree collections, arboreal glossaries, and even tips for 'unauthorised' forestry. [Hardback]

 

Sick Of It: The global fight for women’s health by Sophie Harman $40

We know the causes of death and disease among women all over the world. We have the funding and commitment from governments and philanthropists to tackle it. So why are women still dying when they don't have to? Harman argues that women's health is being caught in the crossfires of global politics — and gives us a roadmap for how we might stop it. There are multiple case studies on how women's health is being used and abused by politics and politicians across the globe: the repeal of abortion rights, Serena Williams's near-death experience, the bombing of Ukrainian maternity hospitals, and lesser-known issues like healthwashing by countries like Rwanda and the exploitation of women by the very health organisations that are supposed to help them. Through these stories, Sick of It explores urgent, topical questions around populist politics, big data and how women's work is valued, and offers smart solutions on how to fix this crisis through activism and political work.
”A powerful and inspiring must-read.” —Elinor Cleghorn
”Radical and thought-provoking, this book should drive us all to action — and the author tells us how.” —Gina Rippon

 

Cake for Everyone by Thé Tjong-Khing $30

Just when it is time for cake, an eagle swipes up the picnic blanket and flies away. The animals chase after to find all their stolen picnic things. Thé Tjong-Khing's visual storytelling slows us down and invites us to look more closely. Can you remember everything on the blanket? Hat, ball, doll, feather, cake? Who is hiding in the bush? What has the dog seen on the cliff? How will pig get back her sun umbrella? Why is the rabbit crying? And how can there be cake for everyone when the very hungry rat family has eaten it already? Collect all the missing objects, find out who they belong to, and come back home for more cake in this cheerful, wordless look-and-find story. (There is cake at the end.) [Hardback]

 
VOLUME BooksNew releases
BORDERING ON MIRACULOUS by Lynley Edmeades and Saskia Leek — reviewed by Thomas

How does a word reveal its meaning at the same moment as it becomes strange to us, he wondered. Or should that be the other way round, how does a word become strange to us at the same moment as it reveals its meaning. Same difference, though he was a little surprised. No closer to an answer in any case. Words, experiences, thoughts, the same principle seems to apply, he thought, or certainly its inverse, or complement, or opposite, or whatever. Familiarity suppresses meaning, he thought, the most familiar is that for which meaning is the least accessible, for which meaning has been obscured by wear until a point of comprehensibility has been attained, a point of dullness and comfort, a point of functional usefulness, if that is not a tautology, a point of habituation sufficient for carrying on with whatever there is to which we are inclined to carry on, if there is any such thing to which we are so inclined. Perhaps ‘meaning’ is not the right word. Or ‘strange’. Or the others. I should maybe start again and use other words, or other thoughts, or both, he thought. All philosophical problems can be solved by changing the meanings of the words used to express them, he had somewhere read, or written, or, more dangerously, both. All that is not the same or not exactly the same as to say that the simplest thing carries the most meaning but is too difficult to think about so we complicate it until we can grasp it in our thoughts, at the moment that its meaning is lost, the moment of comprehension, he thought. Again this strange use of the word ‘meaning’, whatever he meant by that, he was no longer sure. The everyday is that to which we are most habituated, that of which we are the most unaware, or the least aware, if this is not the same thing, to help us to survive the stimulation, he thought, a functional repression of our compulsion to be aware, but this comes at the cost of existing less, of being less aware, of becoming blind to those things that are either the simplest or the most important to us or both. Our dullness stops us being overwhelmed, awareness being after all not so much rapture as terror, not that there was ever much difference. Life denuminised, that is not the word, flat. How then to regain the terrible paradise of the instant, awareness, without risking lives or sanity? How to produce the new and be produced by it? These are not the same question but each applies. They are possibly related. Perhaps now, he thought, I should mention this book, Bordering on Miraculous, a collaboration between poet Lynley Edmeades and painter Saskia Leek, as there appear to be some answers here or, if not answers, related effects that you could be forgiven for mistaking for answers even though there are no such things as answers. Near enough. Poetry seems sometimes capable, as often here, of briefly reinstating awareness, as does the discipline of painting, as does the presence of a baby as it simultaneously wipes your mind. And alters time. What a relief, at least temporarily, to lose what made you you, he thought, or remembered, or imagined that he remembered. What a relief to be only aware of that which is right now pressing itself upon you, or aware only, though only aware is the more precise choice. “Which is more miracle: the things / moving through the sky or the eyes that move / to watch them” asks the poet, looking at a baby looking, he assumes. Such simplicities, the early noticings of babies, infant concepts, are the bases of all consciousness, he ventured, all our complexities are built on these. The first act of comprehension, he thought, is to divide something from that which it is not. “A border is / as a border does.” This book, the poems and the paintings in this book, continually address this primal impulse to give entities edges or to bring forth entities through their edges. All knowledge is built from this ‘bordering’, he thought, but it is always fragile, arbitrary, subject to the possibility of revision, more functional than actual. The second act of comprehension is to associate something with something that it is not (“One cannot help but make associations,” the poet writes), but it is never clear to what extent such associations are inherent in the world or to what extent they are mental only, the result of the impulse to associate, he thought. Not that this matters. Everything is simultaneously both separating and connecting, it is too much for us to sustain, we would be overwhelmed, we reach for a word, for an image, for relief. We pacify it with a noun. To some extent. To hold it all at bay. But also perhaps to invite the onslaught, he wondered, perhaps, he thought, the words release what the words hold back, perhaps these words can reconnect while simultaneously holding that experience at bay. Not that that makes any sense, or much. “One / cannot help but make / nouns,” the poet writes, but there is always this tension, he thinks, between accomplishment and insufficiency in language, never resolved, the world plucking at the words and vice-versa: “Something is there that doesn’t love a page.” “It is this kind of ordinary straining / that makes the margins restless.” The most meaningful is that which reaches closest to the meaninglessness that it most closely resembles. He has thought all this but his thoughts have not been clear, he has lost perhaps the capacity to think, not that he ever had such a capacity other than the capacity to think he had it. He feels perhaps he has not been clear but this beautiful book by Edmeades and Leek is clear, these poems and these paintings address the simplest and most difficult things, the simplest are the most difficult, and vice-versa, this conversation, so to call it, between a poet and a painter, reaches down to the bases of their arts, he thought, to the primalities of consciousness, have I made that word up, a gift to us from babies, perhaps the babies we once were. It is not as if we ever escape the impulses we had as babies. A baby comes, the world is changed. “Goodbye to a future / without this / big head / in it.”

VOLUME BooksReview by Thomas