Dandenong: 140,000 people, no book shop. It's not alone

Rachel Wells, September 19, 2011-The Age

THE City of Greater Dandenong has 140,000 residents, 49 schools and 117 supermarkets and grocery stores.
But it doesn't have a bookstore.
When Angus and Robertson recently closed down at Dandenong Plaza, residents in the municipality, which takes in Dandenong, Springvale, Noble Park and Keysborough, were left without a specialist book retailer for 130 square kilometres in Melbourne's south-east.

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The site formerly occupied by the Angus and Robertson bookstore at Dandenong Plaza. Photo: Michael Clayton-Jones

The choice for book lovers such as Chloe Trindall from Dandenong North is an hour-long trip into the city or shopping online.
''I used to go to the Borders at Knox or Chadstone but they've both closed down now, too,'' says Ms Trindall. ''So I shop a lot online now or I'll go into the city because there's a bit more choice there.''
Ms Trindall is a member of the Dandenong Library but she says there are often long waiting lists for new-release books.

The Angus and Robertson store in Camberwell has closed down. Photo: Rebecca Hallas

''It's a big area not to have a decent bookstore. It must be hard for people who can't travel or don't have access to the internet,'' she says.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/small-business/dandenong-140000-people-no-book-shop-its-not-alone-20110918-1kg1g.html#ixzz1YQTUOV3Y

Tuesday Poem Day

 "It's Tuesday Poem day and Helen Lowe has featured both Indigo, a poem by Christchurch poet, Barbara Strang, and a short review of Barbara's recent collection The Corrosion Zone (HeadworX, 2011), from which Indigo is drawn. Click here to read both the poem and the review."

A poem for International Day of Peace, Sept 21 2011

WRITING AN UNFINISHED POEM ON PEACE

What about words like Iraq and Afghanistan?

Yemeni, America, Syria and Sudan

Israel, Gaza, Libya, Russia and Iran?

Strange, so many silky words spell war.

Perhaps I should scan the latest riots in Britain  

or find a rhyme for France or Greece.

Far easier to talk of war and peace,

when it’s not in your own back yard.

With someone you love.

After our argument, we’re lost for words.

You drive us to Otaihanga

for a spell of stone-skimming ease.

Only a ripple can measure the surface tension.

We hear some people arguing near the trees.

She’s shrieking.  He’s hurling words of hate.

We stop to look back, and almost turn to stone.

The bell is ringing where peace is really born.

We thread our arms together.

You take us home.

                                                                  Julie Leibrich

I AS IN IDENTITY

Writing Based on Personal & Family History
A Creative Writing Workshop - with Jenny Argante

Friday 21st October 2011. 10 am to 4 pm
Fee $25. Booking essential.
All enquiries to nzsabop@gmail.com
PO Box 13533 Tauranga Central 3141

 How to turn incidents and events in your own life or in your family’s history into poetry and prose!
 A day of practical exercise, discussion and advice on writing for yourself or for others.
 Jenny Argante is a published writer, manuscript assessor, professional editor & creative writing tutor.

Venue- L&P Cafe & Bar
Seymour Street
PAEROA
Hauraki

In E-Books, Publishers Have Rivals: News Sites

By JULIE BOSMAN and JEREMY W. PETERS, New York Times, Published September 18, 2011

Book publishers are surrounded by hungry new competitors: Amazon, with its steadily growing imprints; authors who publish their own e-books; online start-ups like The Atavist and Byliner.

Now they have to contend with another group elbowing into their territory: news organizations.

Swiftly and at little cost, newspapers, magazines and sites like The Huffington Post are hunting for revenue by publishing their own version of e-books, either using brand-new content or repurposing material that they may have given away free in the past.

And by making e-books that are usually shorter, cheaper to buy and more quickly produced than the typical book, they are redefining what an e-book is — and who gets to publish it.
More at New York TImes.

Scotland to host Bloody crime writing festival

19.09.11 | Charlotte Williams - The Bookseller

Scotland is to hold its first crime writing festival next year, supported by Stirling Council, Creative Scotland and the University of Stirling, and working closely with Stirling's general literary festival, Off the Page.

The inaugural Bloody Scotland festival, the brainchild of crime writers Lin Anderson and Alex Gray, will take place from 14th to 16th September 2012, with the full programme to be announced in late spring next year. On 14th September next year, the University of Stirling will host masterclasses, workshops and a publishers and agents forum.
Head of the school of arts and humanities Douglas Brodie said: "Stirling has a thriving centre for publishing studies, and we've just launched a postgraduate creative writing programme. We're delighted to help aspiring crime writers at the festival develop their talent, technique and professional savvy."
Scottish crime writer Ian Rankin called the festival "a long overdue celebration of Scotland's favourite genre, one of its most successful cultural exports—and a chance to hear some of the most interesting international writers too".
Emma Turnbull, development officer at Creative Scotland, said: "Bloody Scotland will be a welcome addition to the host of vibrant and diverse literature festivals we support across Scotland."

Edna O’Brien first Irish author to win short story award

By Marc O’Sullivan, Arts Editor, Irish Examiner - Monday, September 19, 2011

THE veteran Irish writer Edna O’Brien was last night named the winner of the 2011 Frank O’Connor Short Story Award for her collection, Saints and Sinners. O’Brien received the prize in person, at the Metropole Hotel in Cork. She is the first Irish writer to win.

The award, worth €35,000 and now in its seventh year, is the richest in the world for a collection of short stories. It is sponsored by Cork City Council and organised by Munster Literature Centre as part of its annual Cork International Short Story Festival.

In announcing O’Brien as the winner, Munster Literature Centre director Patrick Cotter praised the standard of this year’s entries, which he said was uniformly high.

The decision to award O’Brien the prize was, he said, a majority one, and not unanimous, and there had been some heated debate among the judges, who included the poet Thomas McCarthy, novelist and journalist Alannah Hopkin, and music and book critic Chris Power.

The other shortlisted authors were Yiyun Li, Alexander McLeod, Suzanne Rivecca, Valerie Trueblood, and the Irish writer Colm Toibin.
 Frank O’Connor’s daughter, LIadin, was on hand to present O’Brien with a copy of O’Connor’s book, The Habit of Getting It Down Right.

O’Brien was born in Tuamgraney, Co Clare, in December 1930. She first began writing short stories in Dublin, to which she had moved to study pharmacy.
  O’Brien’s literary heroes were Frank O’Connor, Sean O Faoláin and Peadar O’Donnell, who published her first stories in the literary magazine The Bell.
  "I didn’t know much about seduction in those days. I still don’t. But Peadar O’Donnell would buy me sweets rather than ply me with drink, and he told me that I needed to read a lot more. I’m still grateful to Peadar for that, that he encouraged me to educate myself."

O’Brien’s earliest books were the novels The Country Girls, The Girl With Green Eyes and Girls in Their Wedded Bliss. For many years, her books were banned in Ireland.

Picture: Edna O’Brien, winner of the Frank O’Connor Short Story Award, for her collection, Saints and Sinners. Picture: Cillian Kelly

Read more: http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/obrien-first-irish-author-to-win-short-story-award-167995.html#ixzz1YQMaWkv9

Save St.Mark's Bookshop

Further to my blog post of September 13 this news just in:
 Thank you for acting so promptly by signing the petition to save the St. Mark's Bookshop.  As we write this, almost 30,000 have signed the petition.
 To bring you up to date: You and many of our elected officials have forced Cooper Union to meet with the owners to negotiate a new lease. Bravo! We will keep you up to date.
 We cannot stress how important it would be for you to take one more step: BUY ONE BOOK FROM THE ST. MARK'S BOOKSHOP! 
 We hope you realize how valuable your action has been.  Is something wrong on your block, your city, your state or your nation?   Do you need a pot hole fixed?  Are we sending our young to die in unjust wars?    
IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, DO SOMETHING! 
 To read Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer's letter to Cooper Union please go to: http://www.scribd.com/doc/65205703/Letter-to-Cooper-Union-regarding-the-St-Mark-s-Bookshop
City Council woman Rosie Mendez's letter is reproduced below.
 Again, our heart felt thanks.
for The Cooper Square Committee, Joyce Ravitz, Frances Goldin

T.C. Westcott
Vice President
Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science
51 Cooper Square
New York, NY 10003

Dear Ms. Westcott:

I write to add my name to others who call upon Cooper Union to grant all favorable consideration to the St. Mark's Bookshop, an institution which has a long tradition in our community and which serves an increasingly rare and admirable function. St. Marks is currently struggling to pay the market rent that Cooper Union is charging them at 31 Third Avenue, and a significant rent concession by Cooper Union could save this irreplaceable neighborhood institution.

St. Marks has occupied their small commercial space in the ground floor of your dormitory building since the structure was built in the mid-1980's. As I recall, Cooper Union agreed to house the bookstore in this space, at least in part, as a concession to the community when opposition arose to the construction of another dormitory along 3rd Ave. I know that economic difficulties are affecting all manner of organizations in these trying times. However, given the breath of Cooper Unions's real estate investments, including the soon to be redeveloped 51 Astor Place as a fully commercial building, I believe that a rent concession to St. Marks Bookshop would not constitute a large burden for your institution. It could on the other hand preserve a unique neighborhood bookstore.
I urge you to preserve St. Marks.
Sincerely,
Rosie Mendez
Councilwoman
cc: Claire McCarthy
rmendez@council.nyc.gov

The PEARL JAM TWENTY soundtrack hits stores today and Beattie's Book Blog has a copy of the soundtrack to giveaway

PEARL JAM TWENTY

Calling all Pearl Jam fans - past and present! For twenty years, Pearl Jam have been ground-breaking; they remain one of the most popular bands on the planet. Pearl Jam Twenty is an incredible Cameron Crowe documentary, along with a tie-in book and soundtrack, looking back over the past 20 years, when their now-classic album, TEN, was first released.  A must for anyone who has ever loved Pearl Jam over the last 20 years!

 The PEARL JAM TWENTY film – ONE NIGHT ONLY IN NZ CINEMAS – Tuesday 20 September

Directed and produced by Cameron Crowe.

See the trailer here: http://vimeo.com/26633994

Pearl Jam Twenty chronicles the years leading up to the band’s formation, the chaos that ensued soon-after their rise to megastardom, their step back from center stage, and the creation of a trusted circle that would surround them—giving way to a work culture that would sustain them. Told in big themes and bold colors with blistering sound, the film is carved from over 1,200 hours of rarely-seen and never-before seen footage spanning the band’s career. Pearl Jam Twenty is the definitive portrait of Pearl Jam: part concert film, part intimate insider-hang, part testimonial to the power of music and uncompromising artists.

CAMERON CROWE, Director, Writer, Producer
At Age 13 Cameron Crowe began his professional life as a music critic, writing for magazines such as Creem and Crawdaddy, and at 15, became a staff writer for Rolling Stone. In 1979, Crowe (then 22) went undercover as a Southern California high schooler for his book, Fast Times at Ridgemont High. He then wrote the screenplay for the film upon which it was based. In 1989, Crowe made his feature film directorial debut with Say Anything…. His other films include Jerry Maguire, Vanilla Sky, Elizabethtown and Almost Famous, which earned him an Oscar® for Best Original Screenplay

The PEARL JAM TWENTY book:

 One of the key bands of the Seattle-based grunge movement of the 1990s, Pearl Jam broke on to the world stage with their album, Ten, which went on to become an alternative rock classic. For over two decades Pearl Jam have been one of the most influential and popular bands on the planet, but have maintained their personal integrity by refusing the traditional trappings of rock fame. They are praised for their rejection of rock star excesses and their fearless advocacy of causes they believe in, even when they risked losing their popularity. They have sold over sixty million albums worldwide and their shows continue to sell out within hours of their tickets going on sale. Now, for the first time, the publicity shy band have decided to tell their extraordinary story, in their own words, in a book which will be heralded by fans all over the globe.

Out now. $59.99. Published by Atlantic Books. Distributed by Allen & Unwin

 The PEARL JAM TWENTY soundtrack hits stores today and Beattie's Book Blog has a copy of the soundtrack to giveaway.

Just email AbbaR@allenandunwin.com with the subject line “PJ20” and answer this question: What year did Pearl Jam first play in New Zealand?

 For a hint, check out this never-before-seen clip of Pearl Jam in Auckland:

http://www.pj20.com/countdown/content/pj20blood/

J.D. Robb's 33rd title in her "In Death" series - first one not to carry "in Death" in the title

New York to Dallas

J.D. ROBB

 Piatkus- RRP $39.99

Twelve years ago, Eve Dallas was just a rookie NY cop when her instincts led her to the apartment of Isaac McQueen, a man she discovered to be a sick murderer and paedophile, who was keeping young girls in cages. Now a homicide Lieutenant, Eve is one of the most distinguished officers in the city – and then she learns that McQueen has escaped from jail.

Bent on revenge against Eve and with a need to punish more 'bad girls' McQueen heads to Dallas, Texas – the place where Eve was found as a child, the place where she killed her own abusive monster when she was only eight years old. With Eve and Roarke in pursuit of McQueen, everything is on the line and secrets from Eve's past are about to be shockingly revealed.

About the Author

 Under the pseudonym J.D. Robb, Nora Roberts published her first Eve Dallas novel in 1995. With the ‘In Death’ series, Robb has become one of the biggest thriller writers on earth, with each new novel reaching number one on best seller charts the world over. This is Robb's first full-length Robb novel that does not feature 'in Death' in the title.

Following the original Lonely Planet

stuff.co.nz - 17/09/2011

For decades, travellers worldwide have been carrying the all-encompassing 'traveller's bible' that is a Lonely Planet guidebook in their backpacks. They take them overseas and even into their own backyards for up-to-date information and advice on the best places to sleep, eat and visit.

Yet Brian Thacker has done things more than a little differently to the rest of the pack. He borrowed the original 1975 South-East Asia on a Shoestring from Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler and used it as his only guidebook.
Forget what's trendy along the Banana Pancake Trail now, Thacker wanted to find out what was still left and who was still around - minus the bell-bottoms.
And what an adventure he had. He broke bread with a gang of ravenous rats, swam with a goat-eating crocodile and got hopelessly lost while traipsing through Portuguese Timor, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Burma and Singapore.
Thacker followed in the footsteps of Tony and Maureen Wheeler for his latest travel narrative Tell Them to Get Lost. Thacker, who's visited 77 countries, is the author of six other travel books, which include tales about being a tour leader around Europe and couch surfing around the world.
The idea for Tell Them to Get Lost came when he and Tony Wheeler were at a book signing. After discovering that no one had used the 1975 guidebook to travel with decades after it was written, Thacker asked to borrow the original. A month later the pair met up and Wheeler regaled Thacker with memories of the regions he'd visited and people he'd met.
During Thacker's trip, for which he did no planning, he became hopelessly lost on a number of occasions. In Dili, in East Timor, the maps in the old guidebook didn't have street names and the places that were listed no longer existed, Thacker said.
"I was disorientated or lost, you could say, quite often; there's lots of walking around in circles," he laughs.
Over the 12-week adventure Thacker became obsessed with tracking down guesthouses and restaurants that were listed in that first shoestring book.
Full piece at stuff.co.nz

Three impressive New Zealand picture books from Scholastic

Out of Bed, Fred!

by Lucy Davey/Harriet Bailey - $19.50

A humorous tale of revenge and comeuppance!

Every morning, Mum has to give her seven sons a hurry-up,

but dear little Shirley is always up and ready to go …“Good girl, Shirl!” The boys decide to teach Shirl a lesson that involves changing the time on the alarm clock …

 About the author

Dr Lucy Davey is currently based at home in Auckland with her three young children who provide her with first-hand knowledge of the current preferences and interests of young readers (and their parents). Although Lucy has written many stories for Scholastic, this one won last year’s Joy Cowley award.

About the illustrator

Wellington graphic designer Harriet Bailey is an exciting newcomer to the world of children’s book illustration.

Awards

Winner of the 2010 Joy Cowley award

Illustrator won the 2010 Gavin Bishop award

Phoebe and the Night Creatures

 by Jenny Hessell/Donovan Bixley - $19.50

A reassuring tale about things that go bump in the night!

Its night time and Phoebe needs to go to the toilet.

As she ventures down the hall she thinks she is being followed by monsters. But is she?

        Hessell’s text revels in the power of the imagination, and Bixley’s illustrations are truly inspired.

About the author

A former high school English teacher, Hamilton author Jenny is best known for her Grandma McGarvey character.

About the illustrator

Taupo illustrator, Donovan Bixley, is a talented artist with a range of styles. He was the illustrator of Wacko Kakapo, The Tuatara and the Skink,  A Right Royal Christmas and the soon to be released Dinosaur Rescue series of junior novels. His work is bright and energetic with a terrific sense of humour.

Awards

Grandma McGarvey Paints the Shed was an Honour Book in the AIM Children’s Book Awards.

There’s a Hole in My Bucket 

(with CD) - $26

The Topp Twins/Jenny Cooper

Sing along with me! “There’s a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza …”

This traditional ‘infinite loop’ song is given the country treatment by the iconic Topp Twins, and the characters of Henry and Liza have been brought to uproarious life with Jenny Cooper’s hysterical illustrations!

About the artists

The Topp Twins need no introduction to a NZ & Australian audiences.

About the illustrator

Jenny Cooper lives in Christchurch and has illustrated a number of picture books for Scholastic, including the very popular Down in the Forest, Shut the Gate, On a Rabbit Hunt and the Pick’n’Mix anthologies. Her last illustrated novels were The Mad Tadpole Adventure and Stranger Madness.

Awards

The Mad Tadpole Adventure

Shortlisted for the NZ Post Children’s Book Awards 2008 Storylines Notable Book 2008

At The Turning Point – My Political Life with David Lange

The publishers have allowed me to reproduce the author's Introduction to this book which is generating so much interest and which is in bookstores now.

Introduction

 This is a book about the politics of the idiosyncratic and unsettling eighties and the influence of personality and personal relationships on politics. The book describes political events between 1982, when I went to work for the parliamentary Labour Party, and 1989, when I left my job as speechwriter in the Prime Minister’s Office.

It is not hard to see why the fourth Labour government, which took power with such high hopes in 1984 and had many able, talented and well-meaning individuals in its ranks, should have ended despised and discredited in 1990. Public disillusionment with the government grew with the acrimony and uncertainty of its second term in office. That is about as far as partisans could agree. Everything else — why and how Labour took a radical turn to the right in government, why it did so well in its first term and so badly in its second, why the champions of the revolution turned on each other and what exactly they were fighting about — is in dispute. This is my view of what happened.

It is also an account of my relationship with David Lange, or as much of it as is relevant to the politics of the day. My affair with David may be central to my personal history but it played a small part in the story of the fourth Labour government. For reasons described in the book, it plays a larger part in its legends.

I did not keep a diary in the eighties, but I have done my best to be accurate. I have used written sources, the public record and the recollections of others to reinforce my memory. Some spoken words from the past have stuck in my mind, and many impressions have lasted. The political battles described in the book still resonate, and this is not an objective account of them, but distance has given perspective to events that seemed like an unending series of accidents and incidents at the time.

I am grateful to Stephen Mills, who gave me access to his archive of political records of the 1980s and to many people who shared their memories of David and the events described in this book.

© 2011 Margaret Pope

At The Turning Point – My Political Life with David Lange - $39.99

www.ampublishingnz.com

Unusual Benefactor Finances Book Tour

By JULIE BOSMAN, New York Times, Published: September 16, 2011e

It is trickier than ever for an author to persuade a publisher to finance a traditional book tour. Brick-and-mortar bookstores are decreasing, travel is expensive, and money for marketing and promotion is increasingly being spent online.

Photo -Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

Leymah Gbowee, author of “Mighty Be Our Powers,” about her work in Liberia.

So it is striking that Leymah Gbowee, a relatively unknown author of a memoir describing her life as a peace activist in war-torn Liberia, has just embarked on an eight-city tour to promote her book, “Mighty Be Our Powers,” which was released by the tiny Beast Books on Tuesday.
The tour is possible because Ms. Gbowee has wrangled an unusual sponsor: Leonard Riggio, the chairman of Barnes & Noble, who is personally covering the costs.
“The nature of a book such as this” usually means that “there wouldn’t be a book tour,” Mr. Riggio said in an interview this week. “Leymah mentioned that she was looking to get sponsorship of a tour that she wanted to do on college campuses and churches, to talk about the struggle for peace and social justice in Africa. So I said, ‘If you need a sponsor, I’ll be glad to do it.’
Full story at the New York Times.

Lord of the Flies: can you judge a book by its cover?

Lord of the Flies, the masterpiece that launched William Golding's career, has never lost its relevance, even as Faber continually updated its image

• Peter Conrad
• guardian.co.uk, Saturday 17 September 2011 

Peter Brook's 1963 film adaptation of William Golding's Lord of the Flies. Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive

When I first read Lord of the Flies at school in Tasmania 50 years ago, I thought – as most boys probably do – that it was simply telling me the story of my life. That life had been short, and quite a bit of it was nasty and brutal. An hour in a school playground is an education in the bestiality of young males, who instinctively form packs and taunt those who don't conform or – in a variant of the war-whooping chant repeated by the boys in William Golding's novel as they hunt wild pigs on their desert island – bash them up. As children and adolescents, we have an intimate acquaintance with evil. We spend our days either committing acts of violence or recoiling from them; hatred surges through our undeveloped bodies like an electric current.

I had to make adjustments to the book. In Tasmania, we certainly had the flies, which didn't confine themselves to swarming on putrid meat, as they do when they consume the pig's severed head in the novel. In the sweaty summers we were all flyblown and, like dogs infested with fleas, exhausted ourselves in brushing them off. My island, however, was cool, not tropical, scantily populated but not deserted. Neither was it afloat in the Pacific, like the one on which the planeload of schoolboys was wrecked. All the same, I recognised Golding's terrain, which is a moral wilderness.
Instead of a jungle, we had the messy entanglement of the bush, where starving convicts who escaped from the colonial penitentiary in the early 19th century were supposed to have eaten each other. Marsupial devils snarled in the undergrowth, and Tasmania once had its own species of tiger. Our local mountain was an extinct volcano, higher and more rugged than the one in the novel on which a monster – actually a pilot whose decaying body freakishly twitches back to life when the wind catches his snagged parachute – alights. From the summit of our local peak you could see a literal no man's land: a waste of overgrown valleys and razor-edged escarpments, gashed by tectonic rifts like surgical scars. Beyond that was the indifferent, empty sea, with Antarctica as the next landfall.
In 1954, when Lord of the Flies was published, Golding had a job as a teacher at Bishop Wordsworth's school in Salisbury. The book was his guess about how a posse of privileged louts like those in his classes would behave if released from adult control. Peter Brook, who directed a film version in 1963, thought that his own task was simply to present "evidence", as if in a documentary. The untrained actors hardly needed direction; all that was required was to relieve them of inhibitions and set them loose on an island off Puerto Rico. Brook's only quibble concerned the novel's estimate of how long it might take the little tykes to run wild. Golding allots them three months. Brook believed that, left to their own devices, they would revert to savagery over the course of a long weekend.
Back in Tasmania, we managed this regression without having to be elaborately separated from our elders. We had parents and teachers, but they were hardly a civilising influence, since they relied on fists or sticks to inculcate better manners. Everyone struggled to survive with a Darwinian ferocity, and infantile play was a rehearsal for the warfare of adulthood. Books were my refuge, at least until I discovered from Golding that literature's purpose was to expose the truth, not beguile us with comforting lies.
Lord of the Flies was, and still is, the kind of novel in which you directly participate. Stephen King, reading it for the first time, "identified passionately" with Ralph, the would-be parliamentarian who wields the conch and tries to maintain order, as against the predatory Jack, who bedaubs himself with warpaint and leads the orgies of pig-killing. To me, King's preference sounds a little too high-minded. I always fancied the raffish, dissident Jack, though I'm not sure he would have accepted me in his tribe. Of course my natural avatar was Piggy, the plaintive fat boy who was "no chief" but "had brains". (Let me quickly point out that I was not overweight, and also didn't need to wear glasses; my ailment was eczema, not Piggy's asthma or, as his little mates mockingly put it, "ass-mar".) Returning to the book now, I find that the character who intrigues me most is Simon, the apparently epileptic visionary who goes to visit the monster in its lair and studies the flies as they worship their rotting lord. Jack and Ralph are both politicians, belonging to different parties, and Piggy, detached from a reality that he owlishly studies through his specs, is an intellectual. Simon is the novel's version of the artist, mysteriously gifted with an imagination that maddens him and ultimately causes his death. In his new introduction to Lord of the Flies, King remarks that it rendered the children's books he'd previously read obsolete. I'd say that it cheekily parodied them: Golding took the names of Jack and Ralph from The Coral Island, and the naval officer who rounds up the bloodthirsty kids at the end fondly alludes to RM Ballantyne's colonial fable, wanting to believe that their murderous sprees were hearty, healthy, outdoor fun and games.
Full story at The Guardian.

Let's hang on to Roald Dahl's writing hut

Half a million spent on saving a great writer's habitat would be money well spent.

Roald Dahl's writing hut, in need of £500,000 Photo: PA

By Philip Hensher, The Telegraph, 17 Sept 2011

So that’s where the magic happens – the Vermicious Knids, Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker, and the dreadful end of Veruca Salt. It’s a small brick outhouse, lined with nicotine-stained polystyrene tiles, a workroom guarded by a preliminary vestibule. There is a hideous old armchair with a hole cut in the back and a writing board laid across the arms. There are pictures of schooldays and children, and objects with a definite medical flavour – a hipbone on the desk, an artificial hip as a handle for a drawer, and on the wall a small cerebral valve, which it turns out the inhabitant helped invent. His last Marlboro sits in the ashtray, and the wastepaper bin is unemptied, though he died 21 years ago.

You will probably have identified this as Roald Dahl’s writing hut, which last week came to our attention when his granddaughter Sophie Dahl talked about it on the Today programme. She said that the family hoped to preserve the shed for the nation in the Roald Dahl museum in Great Missenden, and that £500,000 was needed to fund the preservation and removal.

A certain amount of outrage followed, along the lines of “Why can’t she pay for it herself?” The museum was quick to point out that the money was coming from “organisations which support museums, literacy and creative education, as well as companies involved in the publishing and other licensing of Roald Dahl’s work”. It’s highly regrettable that funding by such bodies nowadays seems to be preferable to voluntary contributions by admirers. If I thought that the Roald Dahl Hut Preservation Movement would welcome it, I would very happily send them 20 quid. Some of Radio 4’s listeners might not want to contribute to this splendid cause, but it seems very odd to turn away those who would like to help out directly.
Full story at The Telegraph

The Forgotten General

The biography of one of New Zealand's greatest military leaders, whose story has remained untold until now.

The Forgotten General highlights the courage, intelligence and determination of an exceptional New Zealander. Major-General Sir Andrew Russell was a distinguished soldier and a dedicated leader of men. He was among the top-ranked divisional commanders in the British armies that fought on the Western Front in World War I. He has been described as 'the one military commander of genius that New Zealand produced in the twentieth century. Yet little of his story is known.

Born into pioneer farming stock, Russell's early days were spent on sheep stations in the Hawke's Bay region; he was educated at Harrow and at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and later served in the British Army in India and Burma. When World War I broke out, Russell commanded the New Zealand brigade that served with distinction at Gallipoli. He was subsequently knighted and given command of the 20,000-strong New Zealand Division that under his leadership became one of the finest fighting formations on the Western Front.

The Forgotten General, however, is not just about a consummate military commander. It also tells the story of the men he led through four unbroken years of war-starting with the raw and inexperienced brigade that arrived on Gallipoli in May 1915 and finishing with the ?lite division at the spearhead of the British counter-offensive that finally ended the war on the Western Front.

About the author:
Jock Vennell is a historian by training, a former newspaper, radio and magazine journalist, and public affairs executive with the Ministry of Defence. For six years he edited New Zealand Defence Quarterly, and in this role first encountered Major-General Sir Andrew Russell.


The Forgotten General
Jock Vennell
Allen & Unwin - NZ$39.99

USP Press Literature Prize

 USP PRESS AWARDS
The USP Press wishes to announce the winners of its International Competition.
Close to 100 entries were submitted to this competition.
(Cash prizes are in US dollars)


USP Press Literature Prize for Overall Winner ($3,000):
Ancestors by Albert Wendt (collection of short stories)
Fiction ($1,000): Sleepless in Samoa by Lani Wendt Young (collection of short stories)
Commendable Mention ($300): Maiden Fiji by Samantha Peckham-Togiatama (novel)
Poetry ($1,000): '14 Degrees South' by John Enright ($500) 
and When Things are Dirty ($500) by David Howard
Drama or Screenplay ($1,000): The Cycle by Andrew Porteus
Commendable Mention ($300): The Visitors by Larry Thomas
USP Press Non-Fiction Prize for Overall Winner ($3,000):
Mystery Islands: Discovering Ancient Pacific by Tom Koppel
History/Autobiography ($1,000):
My Memories of David by Ilaisaane Kakala Taumoefolau
USP Press Best Children's Book ($2,000): 
Killer Waves by Sereima Lumelume
Commendable Mention: Hair Raising Cut by Emma Kruse Vaai ($300)
Welcome to Our Islands by Leslie Hayashi and Lori Philips ($300)
and Friends of Joji by Nicole Daniels ($300).


The USP Press will publish the winning titles. Congratulations to the winners
and many thanks to the panel of judges and everyone who made submissions.
Professor Vilsoni Hereniko, Chair, Editorial Board of the USP Press

At The Turning Point – My Political Life with David Lange - Finlay Macdonald's Foreword to book - Kathryn Ryan's interview with author

The publishers have allowed me to reproduce Finlay Macdonald's Foreword to the book .

When the central character in the following narrative published his own memoir in 2005 he confined reference to the central character in his life to a bare minimum. He may have wished to say more, but he had wishes other than his own to consider. ‘Margaret I know would be happiest if she did not appear at all in this book,’ he wrote, ‘and I have as a result said less about her than I wanted to. She means so much to me; she always has.’ Nevertheless, Margaret Pope remains a palpable presence within the pages of David Lange’s My Life. The few, brief mentions of her and their relationship serve to suggest a rich off-stage drama that keeps threatening to invade the main action — which, in the end, is probably an accurate reflection of the political reality as it played out during those hectic years in the 1980s.

Perhaps because neither party spoke much about it publicly, Margaret’s role in David’s life, and by implication his actions as prime minister, have assumed somewhat mythical proportions. To read some versions of history you could be forgiven, as someone once suggested, for viewing her as a ninth floor Yoko bent on breaking up the cabinet Fab Four of Lange, Douglas, Prebble and Moore — a conceit as demeaning as it is convenient. If she dwells here on the context of her affair with David at any greater length than he chose to, it is only to demonstrate that its role in the government’s fortunes suits the “legend” better than the truth.

As the commissioning editor of David Lange’s memoir I was all too aware of his failing health during the year he worked on the manuscript. I know he was anxious at times that he may not be able to finish the task — which, as anyone who has even tried to write a book will know, is a considerable one. That he did complete it was testament to his will and determination, and it is no criticism to say he might have written a different book had he begun it sooner. Perhaps he would have described in greater detail the machinations behind his eventual resignation, and forensically re-litigated the policy debate that caused it. I don’t know. I suspect he was content by then to place such supposedly momentous events within the broader trajectory of his life. As he put it, ‘A lot has been left out, but it is not always because I have forgotten what happened.’

Still, I was aware some readers would have liked more about the crucial period, post-1987, when promise curdled into broken promises and the personal truly did become political (and vice versa). Here then is the perfect companion volume to David’s — a companion volume in more ways than one, you might say. David stated in his memoir, ‘What I have written in this book is subjective, and that is its only perspective.’ Margaret, too, is scrupulous to offer the same disclaimer. Eyewitness accounts are, in my experience anyway, reliable in inverse ratio to protestations of objectivity or disinterest.

More than two decades on, the story of the fourth Labour government’s rise and fall still makes for unusually compelling reading. At the risk of resorting to cliché, it’s a page-turner. But then, as Margaret’s choice of title alludes, so much turning was going on anyway; social democrats into free market zealots, political friends into bitter foes, an entire nation from social and economic fortress into vaunted neoliberal utopia. And at the centre of it all, a prime minister turning away from a path he felt he could no longer follow, towards a clearer conscience — but inevitable isolation.

I’m glad Margaret has decided to fill some of the silence David left when he wrote less about her than he wanted to. That she has done it with such clarity, wit and wry insight is both a tribute to her subject and a very valuable contribution to our understanding of the recent political past.

Finlay Macdonald

June 2011

Also here for your interest is Kathryn Ryan's interview with the author - 

http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/ntn/ntn-20110916-1006-margaret_pope_-_david_langes_speechwriter_and_widow-048.mp3

  

At The Turning Point – My Political Life with David Lange

© 2011 Margaret Pope - $39.99

www.ampublishingnz.com 

GREEN URBAN LIVING

As life gets busier and backyards get smaller, it is a challenge to grow food and live more sustainably. Janet Luke shows that it can be done. She calls it Gurbing or Green Urban Living – a way of working with nature to create a productive urban garden. There are no hard and fast rules, and it might just be a worm-farm on an apartment balcony or some herbs in pots but the basic principles are the same. 

              

This book evokes some of the methods used in traditional Kiwi backyards, with modern concepts like recycling, organics and using water sustainably to grow food and keep chickens and bees in an urban environment. Janet recommends re-using low-cost materials over heading off to the store to buy new products. The book includes top tips, handy hints from green community forums and heaps of brilliant, easy and original ideas. Step-by-step projects range from planting a tree to building a chicken tractor, with seed bombs (guerrilla gardening), a garden bug Hilton hotel and lolly flowers for the kids to enjoy.

About the author:

Janet Luke BLA, MRP (Hons) is a qualified landscape architect with a Masters degree in Environmental and Resource Planning from Massey University. She has a passion for sustainable design and eco-living and she has written articles for Woman’s Day magazine about growing organic vegetables. Her garden in Havelock North has been featured in Next magazine and she is a regular exhibitor with her business Green Urban Living at the Auckland Home Show.

Green Urban Living by Janet Luke, published by New Holland, RRP $45.00

www.greenurbanliving.co.nz

Affair of state

By Andrew Stone, New Zealand Herald, Saturday Sept 17, 2011

David Lange's widow, Margaret Pope, at his memorial in Otahuhu. Photo / Paul Estcourt

Andrew Stone takes a look at a new book by Margaret Pope - the speechwriter who became David Lange's second wife


The phrase that turned Margaret Pope towards David Lange - and started a five-year affair - was a throwaway line from the Prime Minister just a few days before Christmas in 1984.
Lange had been premier since July, when Labour defeated a tired Muldoon administration. Pope, a public servant-turned-party researcher, worked as Lange's speechwriter.
One of the women in Lange's Beehive office had already indicated that Pope was a favourite on the ninth floor.
"You're obviously number one," Pope was told.
Her status was confirmed a short time later. Lange appeared at her office door, just before heading back to Auckland and his wife Naomi and family for the weekend.
Pope: "He said nothing of moment until I said I hoped he would enjoy his weekend."
Lange: "I won't. You won't be there."

Pope, whose own marriage to architect Campbell Pope had run its course, was thrown off-balance: "I was dazzled. I was moved, because I knew reserve was an essential element of his character."
Here was a man, she thought, unwilling to seek out support from political colleagues, yet who had sought from her a commitment "when he could not be sure of the reply".

Pope, who is 60, has not talked publicly or written previously of these matters of the heart. She does so, sparingly, in a book published today: At The Turning Point.
Subtitled "My Political Life With David Lange", much of its core rests on the souring relationship between Lange and his Finance Minister Sir Roger Douglas, and the conflict that ripped Labour apart.
Full story at The NZ Herald.

All new delicious slow cooker recipes - from Simon & Alison Holst

Until eight years ago, neither Simon nor Alison Holst had used a slow cooker.

They thought that (like many other kitchen gadgets) slow cookers were just another ‘passing fad’, but maybe they should give them a try anyway – they quickly became slow cooker converts!

The incredible popularity of the Holsts’ first two slow cooker books 100 Great Ways to Use Slow Cookers & Crockpots and Year Round Recipes for Crockpots & Slow Cookers, which have sold over 360 000 copies, is testament to the fact there are many other slow cooker devotees out there too!

If you’re hooked on your slow cooker (or if you’re a novice) and are looking for more interesting and practical ideas to try in your slow cooker then All New Delicious Slow Cooker Recipes is for you! (Hyndman Publishing - $24.99)

Recipes include:

n Simple but hearty and satisfying soups

n Succulent simmered fish dishes

n Chicken recipes for any occasion from family dinners to festive fare

n New ways with mince and sausages

n Beef and lamb curries, casseroles and braises from around the world

n Tasty and tender ideas for pork

n Tempting sweet treats from Apple Crumble to Spiced Sago

Here is one for you to try:

  

SLOW-COOKED CHICKEN LAKSA (page 14)

We love laksa (creamy coconut-flavoured noodle soups). Although it is popular as a fast food option in the food courts found in New Zealand’s larger cities, or from street vendors in parts of Asia, we think this slow cooker version works very well too. Don’t be put off by the long list of ingredients as the method is really rather simple.

For 6 servings:

2 Tbsp canola oil

2 medium onions, quartered and sliced

2 cloves garlic, chopped

2–3cm piece root ginger, finely chopped

1 Tbsp curry powder

750g skinless boneless chicken thighs, diced

2 heaped Tbsp peanut butter

1 x 400ml can of light coconut cream

4 cups chicken stock (or 4 cups hot water plus 1 Tbsp instant chicken stock powder)

1 medium carrot, sliced

½ red pepper, deseeded and sliced

2 stalks lemongrass, halved

2–3 kaffir lime leaves

2 Tbsp light soy sauce

2 Tbsp brown sugar

1 Tbsp fish sauce

500g fresh egg noodles

2 cups green beans, fresh or frozen (thawed first)

Chopped coriander leaves and/or spring onion and/or a few beansprouts to garnish

Method:

·        Heat the oil in a large pot (or suitable slow cooker insert) on your conventional stove top.  Add the onion, garlic and ginger. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion has softened, then stir in the curry powder and cook for 1–2 minutes longer.

·        Add the diced chicken and stir-fry for a couple of minutes until it loses its pink colour. Transfer the chicken mixture to the slow cooker (or place the insert in the slow cooker). Stir in the peanut butter and coconut cream, then add the remaining ingredients except the noodles and the garnishes.

·        Cover, turn to LOW and cook for 6–8 hours or cook on HIGH for 3–4 hours. At the end of the cooking time, turn the slow cooker to HIGH, then add the noodles and beans and cook for 30 minutes.


The recipes, like this one, all carry the Holst trademarks - easy to prepare, taste great, good for you.