Cuba Press Book Gig

THURSDAY 12 FEBRUARY, 6PM
HAVELOCK NORTH LIBRARY

I’ve had a great run with publishers Cuba Press — Mary and Paul and all the other dedicated workers who have supported their efforts to publish local books, beautifully. It was Mary’s very cool idea to get some of their authors metaphorically on a bus tour for a gig in Hawke’s Bay.

THURSDAY 12 FEBRUARY, 6PM
HAVELOCK NORTH LIBRARY
Free event. Refreshments. Books for sale.
RSVP: [email protected]

Poets Michael Fitzsimons and Simon Sweetman (well known music reviewer) will be there, and Andrew Wright channelling the extraordinary Shirley Bagnall Metcalfe and her life in the early days between two rivers, Tracy Farr with the brilliant novel Wonderland which has left me star-struck and championing her for the Ockhams this year (obvious choice, I know), me talking history and murder and colonialism, and all tied up in a bow by Mary McCallum, novelist and publisher of Cuba Press… but also on this night wearing her poet’s hat and tackling the hens with her collection of read-out-loud poems.

That’s a lot of writers gathered together for an evening, and all keen to yabber about poetry, novels, writing, publishing, life. Come along and join us for a hell of a night.

The Wonderful Wardini Books will have books for sale.

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Featuring:

Michael Fitzsimons, High Wire: author of Michael, I Thought You Were Dead.

Simon Sweetman, The Richard Poems: author of The Death of Music Journalism.

Andrew Wright, My Three Rivers: the unpredictable waters of rural life.

Tracy Farr, Wonderland: Marie Curie and an early Wellington circus family. What? Yes!

Cristina Sanders, Ōkiwi Brown, colonial Wellington and its degenerates.

Mary McCallum, Tackling the Hens. Both the name of her fab book of poems and also an apt description of what she’ll be doing on the night, probably.

Bring your chickens along for a bok bok bok.

Writers & Lovers, Heart the Lover – book reviews

Heart the Lover, and Writers & Lovers, by Lily King

These are a pair of gorgeous stories about a woman growing up and her various boyfriends. Yes, it’s a love story, but not in the ‘trope’ sense (and God knows why anyone would read a ‘trope’). Straight away you know you’re in clever hands by the way King describes a character by the clutter in his garage: ‘…all the crap Adam has in here: old strollers, high chairs, bouncy seats, mattresses, bureaus, skis, skateboards, beach chairs, tiki torches, foosball. His ex-wife’s red minivan takes up the rest of the space.’ You know the guy already. Of her mother: “we talked on the phone, talked for hours sometimes. We’d pee and paint our nails and make food and brush our teeth.” You’re right there with the characters, in the scene. I made copious notes from these books in case someday I get to teach a writing class on character .

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Books for taking on Holidays

I don’t know why people say they want ‘trashy’ books to read on holidays. Who wants to read trash any time? It’s like getting stuck with a boring companion on holiday when you should toss them aside and pick up someone vibrant and exciting. With that in mind, here are ten of my favourite books, hammock tested, good company assured.

But before I hit the list, a quick plug! ‘Tis the season for long haul flights, wandering across walking trails, or hammocks. Kindle-time. I have it on good authority that my historical fiction novels have kept many travellers entertained on their journeys. So why not?
Type Cristina Sanders into kindle you’ll find them all:

Books by Cristina Sanders

Jerningham,
Mrs Jewell and the Wreck of the General Grant,
Ōkiwi Brown,
Displaced.

Four award listed, best-selling, kiwi historical novels to put in your pocket.

Here are ten other great holiday reads from Christmases past, ones that shouldn’t be missed but may now be out of stock in your local bookshop, so perfect to put onto your kindle and into your travel bag. In no particular order, and with links to reviews:

The Axeman’s Carnival, by Catherine Chidgey. The narrator is a magpie. This farming family story works on every level. A must read.
Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, by Josie Shapiro. In case you’re thinking of taking up running.
Poor People With Money, by Dominic Hoey. Just because its cool.
In Ascension, by Martin MacInnes. You think you’re far from home? This will take you further.
Wonderland, by Tracy Farr. An amusement park in 1912 Miramar and the Loverock family. Plus Marie Curie. Mixed up wonderful.
Foster, by Clarie Keegan. Or anything by Claire Keegan. Quick Novellas. Brilliant.
The Smuggler’s Wife, etc, by Deborah Challinor. If you want a bit of fun, lots of swashbuckling New Zealand history with a feisty heroine.
A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles. War & Peace lite, the descendants, sort of.
This Thing of Darkness, by Harry Thompson. A very long read that takes you all around the world on the Beagle with Darwin and Fitzroy and makes sense of so much. Can be re-read many times.
The Ministry of Time, by Kaliane Bradley. Let’s bring back arctic explorer Graham Gore and set him loose in modern London. Provocative, funny, sexy. Goes a bit James Bondy at the end.
Pretty Ugly, by Kirsty Gunn, well crafted, morally complex short stories.

Whoops, that’s eleven. Bonus!

I hope your holiday finds you in a hammock with a bowl of cherries and a good book.
xxx

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Foster – book review

Foster, by Clarie Keegan

‘I’d better hit the road,’ Da says. ‘What hurry is on you?’ Kinsella says. ‘The daylight is burning, and I’ve yet the spuds to spray.’ We’re in Ireland again, back with the wonderful Claire Keegan and her intimate descriptions of all the small things that make up a life. Another top class novella from a writer fast becoming my favourite. Here a girl is sent from a struggling household to stay with an older couple, her mother’s people, on a Wexford farm. Her mother is pregnant again and unable to cope, her siblings run wild. Her dad drops her off and hits the road.

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So Late in the Day – book review

So Late in the Day, by Claire Keegan

Cathal is one of those blokes a friend might go out with and say, you know, he’s OK. He’s got a job, not bad looking. We meet Cathal looking out of his office window where the day is good: sunshine; birds; the smell of cut grass; “so much of life carrying smoothly on, despite the tangle of human upsets and the knowledge of how everything must end.” Cathal is writing rejection letters for bursary applicants. And there we have it, Keegan gives us the heads up that this is not a happily-ever-after. In this poignant novella, the fact that Cathal is not one of life’s winners is revealed through the world around him.

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Trust – book review

Trust, By Hernan Diaz

‘I am a financier in a city ruled by financiers. My father was a financier in a city ruled by industrialists. His father was a financier in a city ruled by merchants. His father was a financier in a city ruled by a tight-knit society, indolent and priggish, like most provincial aristocracies. These four cities are one and the same, New York.’ And here’s me trying to boycott all American culture until they get themselves a decent president! It was a book club choice, inescapable. Interesting book, though and a topic that’s resonating, so it gets a review.

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Seascraper – book review

Seascraper, by Benjamin Wood

Thomas Flett lives in a fictional seaside town of Longferry with his mother. He is a ‘shanker’ and takes his horse and cart out on the mudflats when the tide goes way out, trawling for shrimp. Coasts like Morcombe Bay immediately come to mind, with its treacherous history of drowning as the tide races for miles on the ebb and flow, faster than you can run, leaving quick sands and strandings. In this beautiful, hugely atmospheric book, Thomas, a thinker and observer, takes us with him out on the shifting sand.

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Atmosphere – book review

Atmosphere, by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Interesting book on the life of an astronaut in training. In 1980, NASA is a male dominated place with the door just beginning to open to the ladies. Sometimes this inclusion feels very modern, with non-gender-specific spewing in zero gravity, sometimes it is fraught with the same old-fashioned misogyny that made the 1980s a confusing time to be a woman. During training, both physical and academic, Joan Goodwin excels. She also fails to fall for the many handsome and smart male astronauts who try to pick her up, and discovers (with surprise, having never thought of this before) that her inclinations lie elsewhere. She falls in love with a fellow astronaut. Vanessa. For reasons that seems unfathomable to us now, this is unacceptable on the programme and wider world and, if discovered, might end her career.

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Always Home, Always Homesick

Always Home, Always Homesick, by Hannah Kent

Why fall in love with Iceland? Hannah Kent counts the ways. As a young Australian woman she picks up the default option of a Rotary exchange to Iceland, spends the first few months in a cold house with a cold family and an inhospitable frozen land, but after a while, both Hannah an Iceland thaw. She works hard to learn the language “my conversation has always been pockmarked with grammatical error and the foreigner’s manner of jamming in known vocabulary at the expense of clarity and precision”, makes some friends, and moves in with a new family who became her greatest support and friends for life. She falls in love with Iceland itself.

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A Marriage at Sea – book review

A marriage at Sea, by Sophie Elmhirst

Maurice and Maralyn Bailey are an odd couple. “Love, when it works, can feel like such a terrifying fluke,” and that is certainly the case in this story. He is eccentric, moody, lacking confidence. Several years older, his life is narrowing and “loneliness had closed around him like a case”. She “coloured in his gaps“. Lucky him. She’s terrific, outgoing, brave and smart. But Maralyn falls in love with Maurice, and it feels true. For some reason, women seem to love an oddball.

They go sailing to get away from the confines of their English life and, in a move that seems inevitable for the pair, sell the bungalow, have a boat built to their specifications and head off into the blue. They’re running away from a difficult England where they feel they don’t fit, and New Zealand is the chosen destination, via a long ocean voyage. They leave in the summer to catch the trade winds across the Atlantic. I was quickly caught up in this story, always a sucker for a tale of life at sea but also I wanted to find out how long it would take for Maralyn to throw Maurice overboard.

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