Books

This poet enjoys luxuriating in a linguistic lake, and with his collection The Stupefying he invites us to take a dip.

I dog paddled a bit, but truly caught up with him when I reached Why I Changed My Surname. Although a check with the end notes was necessary to learn the answer to the question posed in the title, this ballad was delightful for two reasons: it deals with teenage agonies most of us can relate to, and Ascroft uses rhyme to enhance his wry observations. “For co-ed summer camps I’m good to go. / I have no friends in French class though.” And “The taunts of others’ loathing / are internalised and worn as clothing”.

I thought I was coasting along, but not a hope. Next came Great-Grandad Rants over Current Affairs in which our poet’s luxuriating turns to lunging. What a marvellous poetic excoriation of our digitally dominated world! “If some goon lobs a Frisbee, or a cherub swats a golf tee, SLAP? / Where do you find that crap? / That app.”

Therefore We Commit This Body to the Ground takes on board another contemporary theme – our plastic waste. No amount of rhyming can, or should, save this subject from such bald statements as “Production will assault a giddy new high / of 100 million tonnes in 2022.” Or indeed “Paper to paper. Recycled paper to ash. / Ashes to en dashes.” (Our poet couldn’t resist such an esoteric punctuational allusion.)

The Third and most Stupefying Bike Spill references the title, but more effective stupefying is to be found in Knock Knock. Who’s there? Nietzsche. This is Ascroft at his best – most personal and most devastating. The poem ostensibly deals with comedians and their ploys for laughs. But nevertheless “Comedy is the last line of defence against dogma and puritanism. / The other lines of defence had best be / better suited to the job or we’re all f**ked.” I’d say Ascroft the serious comedian is doing his bit to keep us all afloat.

If writing has taught me one thing, it is that everyone, regardless of who they are or what they do, has a story to tell. This is the story of Mike Bellamy, a New Zealander who spent 30 years mining in the Australian Outback.

Some of his stories are laugh-out-loud funny, and clearly happened before any real trade regulations or political correctness came into force. I say this because I am fairly certain none of these adventures would have been allowed to happen in today’s workforce.

And while I loved all his stories, it was the characters he met along the way that kept me the most engaged. As Bellamy himself put it, those that came to the mining industry were a mixed bag – or as the saying goes, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Some even ended up calling him their friend and helping him out with his career. For me, the characters were the real stars of the show. This isn’t meant as a negative, but the work he did took a back seat and didn’t quite capture my interest as much as the people and the small Outback towns he encountered.

Bellamy’s writing style is very personable; it felt as if he was standing in the room next to me as I read. One real nit-pick is that the book never really gives you much of a time reference. When the author decides to move on, a date isn’t specified so I was forced to ‘guesstimate’ every time he left and started a new job. Again a small issue, but one that was noticeable, especially when other memoirs give you a timestamp of when events occur.

Mining made Australia a powerhouse almost 20 years ago, and if you want to see that from the perspective of one of the people who helped make that happen, Tough Outback may be just up your alley. It’s a genuinely funny, honest story told from a unique perspective.

Big Feelings by Rebekah Ballagh explores the world of feelings and the raft of emotions children can feel. Big Feelings is immediately appealing with warm and charming illustrations; bright, encouraging, and inviting. Placing importance on expressing and normalising feelings rather than minimising them, Balllagh gives children insight into having their own agency to display their emotions, whatever they may be.

To me Big Feelings is a great introduction to emotional resilience. Who knows what future resilience will follow if children can let out all their big feelings from when they are little, knowing that everything will still be okay? One of my favourite quotes by Catherine M. Wallace is “Listen earnestly to anything your children want to tell you, no matter what. If you don’t listen eagerly to the little stuff when they are little, they won’t tell you the big stuff when they are big, because to them all of it has always been big stuff.” As a mother of primary and teenaged children, I can certainly attest to the merits of having kids who have learned to express their feelings as they grow and develop. Big Feelings includes a section for parents and teachers to support children to do this.

I asked my son a question from this section: “How do you act when you feel…” He chose happy and responded, “I feel joyous, like a happy virus is running through my body.” I certainly liked the sound of a happy virus instead of the one of late. On the subject of mad and angry feelings, he was quick to mention his ‘frenemy’ who is sometimes nice and sometimes mad.

Big Feelings helps to teach kids that it’s ok to be mad, sad, excited, afraid, or ashamed – the world will carry on, just like they will, and if they can do so with the support of those who love them, they’ll be all the better for it.

“Feeling silly now and then releases stress and strife. It helps to have a little fun to weather storms in life,” Ballagh says.

No, the title of this book is not a joke! But can you think of a greater incongruity than that between members of the Stasi – East Germany’s secret police of the 1980s – and an interest in lyric poetry? Or does that question expose my ignorance of the cultural climate of the times and the German fanatical attachment to all such things?

To say that this book was a revelation – albeit an uncomfortable one – is an understatement. Author Philip Oltermann spent five years rifling through Stasi files, digging up lost volumes of poetry, and tracking down surviving members of this Red poet’s society to uncover the little-known story of the famously ruthless intelligence agency’s obsession with literature.

Why had the Stasi set up such a thing as “the working circle of writing Chekists”? Oltermann’s interviewees provide a range of answers, all of which make for fascinating reading. The group’s leader, “the thin man with the thick glasses”, was Uwe Berger, a man of reputedly “monkish asceticism” who had somehow avoided becoming a political tool, and instead used his role as poetry tutor to carry out a “personal mission as a living link to Germany’s darkest hour”.

One of the poems that made it into the Red booklet was called Come. It consisted of an appeal for honesty and comradeship, yet contained the lines “Come…but not just to complain / because then / You had better not come at all”.

Germany’s descent into a paranoid culture war is well charted. Were writers indeed embedding subversive ideas in their work? Annegret Gollin, a young woman who could be described as non-conformist, was ultimately arrested, and her poems seized. During interrogation, she was asked to explain and interpret her own poems!

Oltermann has employed literary terms as chapter headings. Some, such as sonnet, metaphor, and persona would be familiar to readers. Less familiar though would be consonance, bathos, and dissonance. Each title introduces content bearing on the author’s remarkable account.

Weaponising poetry – who would have thought it? Only the Stasi surely – or am I being naïve?

It probably would have been good to read the first three of Anh Do’s Skydragon series instead of diving headfirst into book four. Nevertheless I was pleasantly surprised despite having to play catchup on the premise.

First we meet Amber, so used to her innate ability to turn into a skydragon that after a concussion she is left worried her powers, which once saw her connect with insects and turn into a skydragon at the first sign of imminent danger, may never return.

Anh Do has a great ability to create adventures that are easy to read and not too daunting for the child listening or the parent reading, with chapters that are not too long yet entertaining nevertheless. With a healthy dose of cartoon-like images by illustrator James Hart, characters are brought to life in the ultimate adventure.

My son was not initially keen to read Brave the Storm: Skydragon 4. It was in his mind, presumably decided by first glance, a “girl’s book”. When I heard this I tried to discern whether it was the colourful cover, the female heroine on said cover, or something that seemed to scream there are girls lurking on the inside. It was, he admitted, the cover and its female protagonist Amber. Not to worry, we moved past this ideation pretty quickly with a “really, there’s no such thing as a girl’s or boy’s book”. Rather, in this book, there’s a promise of adventure, a quest to regain lost powers, and to boot, a strong female lead on a journey of self-discovery. Will she escape the clutches of nemesis Agent Ferris, despite not having her usual powers?

In Brave the Storm, adventure takes Amber and neighbour Irene deep into the jungle of Sennam where brief encounters as tourists quickly dissipate after they become embroiled in jungle warfare in a death-defying bid to help an ancient tribe. Spoiler, the end will certainly have you excited for book five.

“Sociability”, states author Ashley Ward, is “the ability to live and work alongside one another in groups, to co-operate”. Sociability forms the bedrock of our human existence and success, and in this remarkable tome he sets out to demonstrate such a thesis.

Ward wastes little time lamenting the march of technology and its destructive effect upon our lives. Instead, we get fascinating examples of communication and co-operation from the technology-free world of insects and animals.

Most of us would probably think at once of bees and cite their industrious nectar collecting and their egg-laying queen. You think you know all about bees? Buzz off! The chapter titled Honey, I fed the kids offers a hive of information: a bee in its lifetime produces only a fraction of a teaspoon of honey, the queen, laying thousands of eggs a day, works herself to death for the good of her colony, and bees employ a fearless kamikaze to defend their nests.

Ants and termites belong to the same category of super organisms and are equally fascinating – and cooperative.

Moving to a watery element, Ward’s expedition to the Azores to study the social behaviour of whales and dolphins nets some extraordinary observations. From his vantage point, safe in a vessel, he finds himself in the middle of a mammalian family frolic, smaller whales circling a huge matriarch. A small one would swim into the matriarch’s oar-like lower jaw and rest there, apparently receiving a very gentle nibble from Mum, before being released. Sociable? Not everyone’s idea of a whale of a time!

“Primates are the new kids on the animal block, having appeared around sixty five million years ago”, Ward reminds us. As you might expect, his chapter on our nearest relatives (there’s a huge overlap in our DNA) contains hilarious tales of monkey business in all its guises. One of my favourites was reading that vervet monkeys enjoy alcohol and get drunk! Who are we humans to point fingers? It’s all in the interests of sociability of course!

Skandar and the Unicorn Thief is a book about a boy named Skandar who loves to watch unicorns race and goes on a quest to try and find the right unicorn to match his spirit. He gets swept up in a lie when he tells his sister Kenna that he is training to be a unicorn rider, something only the best of the best get to do. Kenna then tells his whole school so he has no choice but to set out to make his little white lie a reality. On his travels he sees different unicorns. His favourite is New-Age Frost, whose rider Aspen McGrath had qualified for the Chaos Cup, the ultimate race every unicorn and rider dreams to participate in. The main characters are Skandar, his sister Kenna, and his dad. 

My favourite part of the book was the beginning because it was interesting to read about Skandar’s background and where he’s from. I also liked the end because there was much more action when the book started to wrap up. Even though at first I wasn’t that keen on reading about unicorns… mostly because it makes me think of pink and rainbows (which isn’t my usual thing), there was so much action and excitement that it changed my view on how I feel about all things unicorn.

There wasn’t much that I didn’t like apart from a few boring bits at the start. The only thing that didn’t interest me as much was that the book was about unicorns… which isn’t something that would usually catch my interest, but otherwise there wasn’t really anything that I didn’t enjoy.

Overall I enjoyed Skandar and the Unicorn Thief. It’s great to read before bed. For boys I think the age should be nine to 14 and for girls I reckon from eight to 15 would be a good age range, only because the majority of girls seem to be more interested in unicorns. Out of five stars I give it a 4.5.

My nine-year-old enjoyed Matariki, a children’s book written to celebrate and explore Matariki. “It reminds you of the Māori ways of the world; about protecting nature and the earth,” he says.

Authors Kitty Brown and Kirsten Parkinson, two cousins from Ōtepoti, Dunedin, delve into the meaning of Matariki. They ask, how can we celebrate Matariki? Let’s look to the stars. With rich bilingual text, we learn about each of the stars that form the Matariki star cluster.

With its earthy and uniquely Kiwi illustrations, Matariki offered an opportunity for my son and I to learn more about everything we didn’t know, which I discovered was a lot! Were there seven stars or nine? In the book there are nine but a little a visit to Te Papa’s website explained that it could be both. Different iwi share different kōrero regarding Matariki, they say. Next we visited Te Ara, The Encyclopeadia of New Zealand, which says iwi across New Zealand understand and celebrate Matariki in different ways and at different times. Te Aka Māori Dictionary came to our rescue a few times to help us pronounce words such as hiwaiterangi and waipunarangi correctly.

When my son and I were halfway through reading Matariki, he randomly asked me if I knew about Kupe and his stone and he proceeded to tell me what he knew when I told him that I didn’t. I thought this was really cool – it really hit home how we are all on a learning journey together and not only can we learn from each other, but the simple act of reading can educate, create connections, and encourage us to seek out more information to become more informed and more aware.

Matariki is a lovely simple book that encourages us to look deeper, stay connected, and celebrate Matariki by remembering our past, caring for our environment, and connecting with our people.

You’ll be the Death of Me was honestly one of the most intriguing books I’ve ever read. The story follows a group of ex-friends, who are brought together once more by a horrible scene they witnessed together, and in which they look terribly guilty…

One thing I liked about this book is the plot twists and how cleverly crafted they are. Karen M. McManus is well renowned for her mystery novels, so I entered this book wondering if she would manage to uphold the high standard she has already set. And my goodness she did. I adored the fact that the plot twists weren’t just thrown in there for the sake of it, but actually made you smack your head and wonder why you didn’t realise before. All throughout, McManus teases us with little bits of information that reveal a new way the story can go, or another possible suspect. These bits connect beautifully at the end, and that is one of the things I love most about this book.

Another thing is the fact that there are many, many characters but it is never difficult to recall who they are. I have noticed that in other books where there are several different characters, sometimes they all seem to blend in together. But it is never hard to tell who is who in this book. The characters are all wonderfully diverse and distinct from one another. 

Another thing is that McManus beautifully portrays the fact that these kids are children put into a very adult situation. The characters don’t suddenly become adult-like detectives but still retain the fact that they are, in fact, children chucked into a murder situation and are struggling to find their footing. They handle teenager crushes whilst hunting a suspect down, and navigate petty grudges whilst figuring out how to prove themselves innocent of a crime they didn’t commit.

All in all, You’ll be the Death of Me is an amazing read if you are looking for that book to keep you turning the page, to keep you on your toes. It’s amazingly written, with great characters and an even better storyline.

The Bookseller at the End of the World is such an evocative title, I had to read it after I read articles about the author Ruth Shaw. What a wonderful book! It had everything – great characters both animal and human, interesting travel adventures, heartbreak (several times over), but mostly joy.

Ruth has lived more in one year than some people do in their whole lives. She leaves men behind and has a restless soul due to various things that happened in her past. Ruth learns how to sail and spends time living on boats. She adopts pets along the way too and even nurses a baby bird back to health who she aptly names Katherine Mansfield (Katie for short). Katie is quite a feature in the shop. Her work stories in King’s Cross in the 1980s are eye-opening. Never a dull day in Ruth’s life. Her open manner means she can talk to sex workers and gain their respect without telling them how to live their lives. She gets a hug from a staunch regular and even she was surprised.

Ruth’s life story is interspersed with excerpts from her bookshop encounters. I loved it. It made me cry and laugh. The opening chapter, Two Wee Bookshops, is fantastic. I was hooked. The interaction with the American woman who asks if the shop is open and sells books is priceless. But even better is the gentle way she encourages young children to read and the story about young Toby made me weep. I want to read it again but will have to wait a while to get over it. I would love to visit my namesake Ruth and see her wonderful empire and meet Lance, who quite rightly gets his own chapter The Adventures of Lance.

Ruth Shaw has certainly made her mark on this world and has helped countless people. This book is lovingly and thoughtfully crafted, and beautifully descriptive. A joy to read. Five stars.

Most of us bumble into relationships, without a manual, as the author states early on in this book, and then wonder why we have challenges. For example, the last time I read a relationship book it was Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus by John Gray several decades ago while I was single. Now I’m married and far from the perfect partner, as very few of us are, and that’s the point of this book.

Karen Nimmo is a Wellington-based registered clinical psychologist so, unlike many self-help books, this one is based on New Zealand culture and lived experiences and importantly has some efficacy behind it.

Best of all, it’s chock-full of practical, no-nonsense advice and strategies delivered in plain English.

This isn’t a book you work on with your partner, nor is it about changing your partner. It’s about becoming at ease with yourself and ultimately at ease in your relationship. The author does this by getting the reader to take a look at their ‘love bucket’ of all the things they bring to a relationship, which she then themes up into the seven pillars of relationships. I’ve read reviews that described this as a transformational book, which sounds a bit dramatic. In contrast I found it supported very gentle shifts that felt more realistic and sustainable to me.

In terms of structure and readability, The Good Partner is full of clear sub-headings so you can dip in and out of it. It also has well signposted chapters so you can flick straight to the topics you want to explore further, like conflict resolution.

I found it invaluable in supporting me and my attitude during a period of self-isolation when otherwise tempers might have frayed. Instead, I came out thanking my partner for the time we’d had together, and I meant it.

I was so impressed I signed up to the author’s regular emails and continue to learn and upskill myself on this important topic.

What a breath of fresh air is this collection! With its theme of climate change, expressed in mostly accessible language, it was bound to win my approval. In Another Beautiful Day Indoors, writer Erik Kennedy thankfully doesn’t feel the need to indulge in any of the current fashionable poets’ practices – abuse of punctuation, inexplicable gaps in text, and lengthy obscure prose passages! I like to think his undecorated style is informed by his sense of urgency.

The contents page sets up a list of titles as intriguing as the cover photo of a formally dressed man seated at a desk with his jacket draped over his head. He’s enjoying another beautiful day indoors?

Microplastics in Antarctica is a striking example of the poet’s main preoccupation. “The snow contains a finer snow” is a telling description of microplastics, as is the uncomfortably graphic “Scratch the scalp of civilisation / And bits of it go all over the place”. Our writer even manages to lighten the seriousness of his message by concluding the poem with a whimsical rhyme.

And who wouldn’t be captivated by a poem titled To a Couple Who Had Their Rings Brought to the Altar by Drone at Their Garden Wedding? Is the couple concerned typical? They “are unafraid of the wind, which bucked the drone almost to ringlessness”. “It was just an everyday wind really”, observes the poet, thus pointing up the lack of awareness most of us are still suffering from.

In Shin-deep in Flood Waters, Already Afraid, our poet lets images replace the temptation to hit us over the head with blame or dire warning – which is why his work is eminently readable and palatable. “I’m just in my wellies / gawping at river spillover / out of curiosity”, suggests an onlooker – albeit a concerned one.

Kennedy has chosen a subject of world-changing import for his poetic attention. Not all the poems comment on climate change and the need for action, but I’m not apologising for including here only ones that do.