SOME NEW RELEASES
Books either anticipated or surprising - just out of the carton. Follow the links for more information, to purchase these books or to have them put aside for you.
Language and thought wrestle and play as characters try and fail or succeed or fail/succeed to communicate.
"Fiddling with words, as if playing with them were all that mattered, her characters draw time to a standstill – then they stop, suddenly, blinking and thrilled. It’s beautiful, the way they get lost." - Guardian
Is this the Russian equivalent of Finnegans Wake? Language itself is the default protagonist in a novel in which plot, character, time and death all lack stability. The only thing that never changes is the frozen Russian landscape.
>> "I thought it would never happen."
Beautifully presented and full of accessible delicious recipes and the best advice for those who want to eat delicious, healthy, natural, nourishing food every day, this eagerly anticipated book starts with a section on kitchen essentials, sourdough, fermentation and preserving, the book, as the day, moves on through breakfast, lunch and dinner, and finishes off with an array of delectable sweet treats.
The remarkable intelligence of the cephalopds evolved quite separately from that of homonids and cetaceans. What does this tell us about the nature and evolution of consciousness, and what would it be like to have the mind of an octopus?
"Brilliant." - The Guardian
Parallel biographies of three New Zealanders who stood up for what they believed in and paid the price: Dr John Saxby, Brigadier Reginald Miles and Judge Peter Mahon. McNeish's work highlights the difficulties of living with integrity against the grain of society.
A history of dental intervention as evidenced in objects and illustrations, from the Bronze Age to the present. Concurrently attractive and repellent and consistently fascinating.
A wide gathering of voices and concerns. Poetry arises from an urgent wrangling between freedom and constraint and between the personal and the societal. It is never far away from being political.
Excellent examples of bold yet sensitive hybridisings of existing structures with modern architecture.
A young boy describes his life in a small seaside town, all the while remembering that as he is swimming or playing his father is at that moment in the dark under the sea digging for coal.
In ten years time, will antibiotics still work? Have we let bacteria get the upper hand in the evolutionary arms race?
An impassioned and informed defence of tertiary education in the face of the business model that has been forced upon it, both in Britain and New Zealand, and a reassertion of the role of the university as a a public good, first and foremost.
Capitalism is by definition an unsustainable model, but, since the 1970s, governments have acted widely to defer the consequences of capitalism's inherent pressures. This has caused the pressures to build. How will they be released? Which will ultimately survive, capitalism or democracy?
"When political passion connects with critical exposition of the facts and incisive argument, Streeck's sweeping and empirically founded inquiry reminds one of Karl Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte." - Jurgen Habermas
Despite their new prominence in world affairs, Moscow and Beijing have shown no capacity to cooperate on grand strategy or establish new international norms. Theirs is a partnership of strategic convenience: pragmatic, calculating and limited.
What is life really like for ordinary and not-so-ordinary people in North Korea? These stories by the anonymous 'Solzhenitsyn of Pyongyang' depict a country operating over the edge from sanity and under the sway of a demagogue.
"Very rare fiction to emerge from the secretive dictatorship. On its way to becoming a literary sensation." - Guardian
Full of surprising information, Spence's book is an examination of the multisensory experience of eating and the roles it plays in our multifaceted lives.
The search for answers to deep questions, motivated solely by curiosity and without concern for applications, often leads not only to the greatest scientific discoveries but also to the most revolutionary technological breakthroughs. This essay is a challenge to current application-based funding models.
The e-Tangata website is a focus of discussion for Maori and Pasifika issues in New Zealand. This selection brings together sharp commentary on political and social issues, history and popular culture.
A playful, modernised parody of the classical odyssey of Theseus with a feminist twist, immersed in seventies pop culture, and mixing standard English, black vernacular, and Yiddish with aplomb. Oreo, our young hero, navigates the labyrinth of sound studios and brothels and subway tunnels in Manhattan, seeking to claim her birthright while unwittingly experiencing and triggering a mythic journey of self-discovery. First published in 1974.
"A brilliant and biting satire, a feminist picaresque, absurd, unsettling, and hilarious, Ross' novel, with its Joycean language games and keen social critique, is as playful as it is profound. Criminally overlooked. A knockout." —Kirkus
A pleasing new hardback edition of Murnane's 1982 novel, exploring, with his signature perfect sentences and idiosyncratic genius, a sort of "inner Australia", a place under the surface of but also separate from the "outer Australia"; a dimension of existence that reveals its subtleties best against the emptiness of the inland plains. The narrator is an filmmaker attempting to film the plains in a way that will reconcile the opposing worldviews of two cliques of plainsmen who use their wealth to support an elaborate system of patronage whereby artists are employed to interpret or represent the meaning of their jealously guarded and endlessly elusive landscape.
>> Introduction by Ben Lerner.
>> Meet Gerald Murnane.
>> Thomas recommends books by Gerald Murnane.
A dialogue between history and science, re-evaluating the factors that have tipped the planet into a new geologic age, one in which human actions are the major determining factor for environmental conditions.
"Trees cannot change their place in the world so they are patient and learn to live where they are."
What place is there for love in a world torn by crisis? From the author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist.
"Exit West is a novel about migration and mutation, full of wormholes and rips in reality. It is animated by a constant motion between genre, between psychological and political space, and between a recent past, an intensified present and a near future." - The Guardian
A multifaceted examination of post-partum depression, drawing on critical theory, popular culture, and personal experience.
The New Zealand Project by Max Harris $40
New Zealand faces some urgent issues: climate change, wealth inequality, political populism, the degradation of health and education, housing affordability, racial tension. How are we going to grapple with them when our media and political discussion is so frustratingly superficial?
Are wars avoidable? Grayling examines, tests, and challenges the concept of war and proposes that a deeper, more accurate understanding of war may enable us to reduce its frequency, mitigate its horrors, and lessen the burden of its consequences.
What happens when Elizabeth and her unusual friend Zenobia enter the forbidden wing of the great house and find a room in which the wallpaper seems to be alive and they find a strange book that contains a different story every night?
A fascinating collection of objects made because the maker lacked the correct tool, the relevant source, sufficient money, or the requisite common sense to solve their problem or fill their needs in any other way. Endlessly inventive, often hilarious or sad, always interesting, each object is accompanied by a photograph of its maker and a description of its necessity and making in their own words.
50 stunning designs from books published by New Directions between 1941 and 1952.
>> Excellent Alvin Lustig website.
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