NONFICTION
1 On Call: Stories from My Life as a Surgeon, a Daughter and a Mother by Ineke Meredith (HarperCollins, $39.99)
Tales from the operating room! Bizarre example: a man who swallowed 35 fishhooks. Terrifying example: a convicted murderer is brought in with a gunshot wound after going on a shooting rampage while on parole. Poignant examples: the good doctor also writes of holding hands with patients and giving them silent goodbyes. Joanna Wane profiled her in Canvas: “Meredith is at home in her Paris apartment, a stone’s throw from the Eiffel Tower, when she takes my video call. Her husband, Krishna Clough, is one of the world’s leading breast surgeons and after several years of dividing her time between New Zealand and Europe, she’s finally settled with him in France… She hopes people involved in making decisions about the health system will read On Call. She hopes medical students and young doctors, too, will read it and see – as she does – the beauty in patients and that there’s ‘something wonderful in this rollercoaster’ choice of career.”
2 Dinner, Done Better by My Food Bag (Penguin Random House, $40)
Food.
3 BBQ Economics by Liam Dann (Penguin Random House, $40)
Not food, although the author, a business journo at the Herald, does write about the price of cheese. His book is full of sound advice and calm vibes. He writes, “Think about how much you want to worry about money. If you enjoy investing and moving money around, then go for it. But if it makes you stressed, just do the basics well and forget about it. Life’s too short.” And: “Successful people set goals and get a buzz from achieving them. Get good at something and financial security will likely follow.” Also: “Economic forecasts usually come with best, central and worst-case scenarios. It’s safest to expect the worst – so, for example, if interest rates do go higher, you don’t get caught short. But assume things will be all right in the end. In the long run, markets create wealth.”
4 Feijoa by Kate Evans (Hachette, $39.99)
A food.
5 The Unsettled: Small Stories of Colonisation by Richard Shaw (Massey University Press, $39.99)
From a review by Sally Blundell: “Shaw’s book begins with a photo of his great-grandfather with other members of the AC rugby team at Rāhotu Domain, taken in 1881 just a few kilometres away from Parihaka pā. It asks: how could the son of poor tenant farmers in Ireland who’d been dispossessed in their own land become a colonial landowner in just two decades? Shaw writes, ‘There is no earthly way he could have managed this in Ireland. There is no earthly way he could have managed here, either, had it not been for the availability of cheap land that had been taken from Māori.’
“The Unsettled will undoubtedly incite defensiveness, sound and fury, allegations of wokeness or impishness. But Shaw isn’t calling for a public falling on the sword or yet another apology… Nor is he calling for another log on the pyre of Pākehā guilt…Shaw’s idea of ‘lifting the veil’ is rather a quieter reckoning with our own family stories – the history of our ancestors, the history of the land that they used and bestowed to future generations.”
6 Aroha by Hinemoa Elder (Penguin Random House, $30)
7 Fungi of Aotearoa by Liv Sisson (Penguin Random House, $45)
Food.
8 Whakawhetai: Gratitude by Hira Nathan (Allen & Unwin, $36.99)
9 101 Ways to Find Calm by Rebekah Ballagh (Allen & Unwin, $29.99)
10 Bookshop Dogs by Ruth Shaw (Allen & Unwin, $38.99)
Food.
FICTION
1 The Secrets of the Little Greek Taverna by Erin Palmisano (Hachette, $36.99)
Greek food.
2 The Space Between by Lauren Keenan (Penguin Random House, $37)
3 Bird Child and Other Stories by Patricia Grace (Penguin Random House, $37)
4 The Night She Fell by Eileen Merriman (Penguin Random House, $37)
The author wrote a startling essay in ReadingRoom last week about being stalked by a narcissist, and concluded, “I was able to draw on the experience when I wrote the character Ashleigh Marlow in my new thriller The Night She Fell. Ashleigh is a total narcissist. She’s completely self-centred, used to having whatever she wants whenever she wants, and woe betide anyone who stands in her way. Ashleigh has it all – she’s an attractive A grade law student from a privileged background with a hunky medical student boyfriend who’ll do anything for her. But what happens when Ashleigh alienates everyone around her, including her boyfriend and flatmates?
“The book opens with her death. She’s fallen from the third storey window of her flat. Maybe it was an accident. Maybe she took her own life. Maybe it was murder…”
5 Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38)
Among the 16 books shortlisted for this year’s Ockham awards – and all 16 are up for grabs in the third annual Greatest Book Giveaway of All Times. We’re talking novels by Emily Perkins and Pip Adam, four collections of poetry, a really beautiful book of paintings by Don Binney, Emma Espiner’s memoir which I am betting will win the nonfiction prize – the whole lot, and more, is available for the person who wins this year’s Greatest Book Giveaway of All Times.
To enter, name the one book you regard as the very best book published in New Zealand last year, and say why it is that you esteem it so highly. Choose whichever book was your favourite of all books published in New Zealand in 2023, and write a few lines, or a great many lines, up to you, saying what you like about it. The book that gets the most nominations, by the way, can be informally regarded as winner of a People’s Choice Award. This is Week Three of the giveaway and so far the books leading the vote are There’s a Cure for This by Emma Espiner, Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton, Our Land in Colour by Brendan Graham with Jock Phillips, and Big Fat Brown Bitch by Tusiata Avia.
Email your entry to stephen11@xtra.co.nz with the subject line in screaming caps I REALLY WANT TO WIN THE 2024 READINGROOM GREATEST BOOK PRIZE OF ALL TIMES SINCE LAST YEAR AND THE YEAR BEFORE THAT. Entries close at midnight on Sunday, April 28. The winner will be announced in ReadingRoom on Wednesday, May 15; the Ockhams will be announced that evening.
6 The Axeman’s Carnival by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $35)
7 Kāwai by Monty Soutar (David Bateman, $39.99)
8 The Girl from London by Olivia Spooner (Hachette, $37.99)
9 Pet by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38)
10 Bird Life by Anna Smaill (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38)
