Books

Barefoot

Posted 4:24am Monday 14th March 2011 by Sarah Maessen

Author: Michelle Holman. Publisher: Harper Collins (2/5) Barefoot is a loose sequel to Michelle Holman’s debut novel Bonkers. She claims that she felt compelled to tell Sherry and Glenn’s story after they featured as more minor characters in their siblings’ story.   Read more...

August

Posted 4:21am Monday 14th March 2011 by Sarah Maessen

Author: Bernard Beckett. Publisher: Text Publishing (4/5) New Zealand author Bernard Beckett’s latest novel is described as a ‘philosophical thriller’. While I’m not sure that it’s quite a thriller, the combined tension of the characters’ back stories and Read more...

The Uninvited

Posted 4:13am Monday 14th March 2011 by Sarah Maessen

Author: Tim Wynne Jones. Publisher: Walker books (3/5) Mimi leaves the stress of the Big Apple for the tranquillity of her father’s house in small-town Canada, only to find that she is not the only one who thought it would be the perfect getaway. It doesn’t take long for Mimi to Read more...

Shaolin Burning

Posted 4:09am Monday 14th March 2011 by Pippa Maessen

Author: Ant Sang. Publisher: Harper Collins (3/5) Shaolin Burning is a graphic novel by the designer of bro’ Town, yet in it Ant Sang has chosen to steer clear of the New Zealand humour typical of this earlier work. Instead he explores kung fu mythology and Chinese legends. Background Read more...

DUD: The Dunedin Comic Revue

Posted 1:49am Tuesday 8th March 2011 by Sarah Maessen

Author: The Dunedin Comic Collective (3/5) In stark contrast to The Good Book, the Dunedin Comic Collective’s first comic revue is blissfully unpretentious.   A long time coming, this publication is a selection of works by members of the Dunedin Comic Collective and friends. It Read more...

The Good Book

Posted 1:47am Tuesday 8th March 2011 by Sarah Maessen

Author: Lucinda McMeeken and Trudy Cockroft. Self Published (2/5) When you choose such a name as The Good Book, you’re giving yourself awfully big shoes to fill and it doesn’t appear that Dunedin’s ‘fresh young designers’ have particularly large feet. Obvious Read more...

Permanent Vacation

Posted 1:42am Tuesday 8th March 2011 by Sarah Maessen

Author: Kerry Ann Lee. Self Published (4/5) Kerry Ann Lee knows her stuff. She’s been producing zines for at least a decade, with the result that her latest appears effortless and polished. Permanent Vacation is essentially a collection of musings on travel; what it’s like to be an Read more...

The God Instinct

Posted 3:39am Monday 28th February 2011 by Jonathan Jong

Author: Jesse Bering. Publisher: Nicholas Brealey. (4/5) ‘God (and others like Him) evolved in human minds as an “adaptive illusion”, one that directly helped our ancestors solve the unique problem of human gossip.’   Thus runs the central thesis of Jesse Read more...

Mirror

Posted 4:13am Monday 23rd August 2010 by Jonathan Jong

Author: Jeannie Baker Publisher: Walker Books (4/5)  There is something unspeakably happy-making about illustrated children’s books that are unapologetically forthright in their social messages. Jeannie Baker’s latest – Mirror – tells what is Read more...

How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog

Posted 4:12am Monday 23rd August 2010 by Jonathan Jong

Author: Chad Orzel Publisher: Oneworld (4/5) Particle-wave duality is not the doctrine that photons and elections (etc.) are simultaneously waves and particles. Neither are they really particles with wave-like properties or really waves with particle-like properties. Rather, Read more...