Books

Get Knotted

Posted 8:52pm Sunday 11th July 2010 by Kathy Young

Author: Michelle Holman Publisher: HarperCollins (2/5) Get Knotted is the story of how Danny falls in love with her twin sister’s American partner’s brother. The twin is dead (she had breast cancer), and so is her partner, Patrick (he drowned). This leaves Danny trying to Read more...

The Rehearsal

Posted 7:47pm Sunday 11th July 2010 by Henry Feltham

Author: Elanor Catton (4.5)     Victoria University Press does a strong line in novels written by photogenic dark-haired young women with fringes. The majority are graduates of Victoria University's creative writing program. I struggle to tell a lot of these woman apart, and Read more...

What Darwin Got Wrong

Posted 7:46pm Sunday 11th July 2010 by Jonathan Jong

uthors: Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Parmarini Publisher: Profile (3/5)     Let’s get this straight: Fodor and Piattelli-Parmarini (F&PP) are not creationists; they are atheists through and through. They don’t deny that species are descended from Read more...

Up in the Air.

Posted 3:47pm Sunday 11th July 2010 by Sue Hui Ong

Author: Walter Kirn Publisher: John Murray Rating: 3/5 Up in the Air. Now a major motion picture. What a great way to get someone to read your book. From the trailers, I envisaged the book would be about some hot-shot sweet talker whose entire job consisted of travelling the vastness of Read more...

The Wives of Henry Oades.

Posted 3:46pm Sunday 11th July 2010 by Sue Hui Ong

Author: Johanna Moran Publisher: Harper Press (5/5) The Wives of Henry Oades is Johanna Moran’s debut novel, and not a bad one to kick off a writing career either. Set in the 1890s, it follows the tale of Henry Oades as he uproots his family from England to Wellington, New Read more...

King Lear.

Posted 3:45pm Sunday 11th July 2010 by Sarah Maessen

Author: Gareth Hinds Publisher: Candlewick Press (4/5) Gareth Hinds’ graphic novel adaptation of Shakespeare’s King Lear bridges the gap between prose and performance with seductive, original artwork. The famous tragedy follows King Lear’s descent into madness after his Read more...

Dead White Men & Other Important People: Sociology’s Big Ideas.

Posted 3:45pm Sunday 11th July 2010 by Jonathan Jong

uthors: Ralph Fevre and Angus Bancroft Publisher: Palgrave (3.5/5) Dead White Men is sociology’s answer to Jostein Gaardner’s Sophie’s World, but it’s not quite as good. As in Sophie’s World, Fevre and Bancroft attempt to introduce the big ideas of their Read more...

The Most Beautiful Man in the World

Posted 2:52pm Sunday 11th July 2010 by Katie Hayes

Author: Jill Marshall Publisher: Penguin ( 4/5)     The blurb on the back of this book promised me a “pole dancer from Taranaki,” a beautiful man to be found “floating face-down in [a] Hollywood pool,” and “a tangled web of lies, sex and Read more...

Solar

Posted 2:52pm Sunday 11th July 2010 by Kathy Young

Author: Ian McEwan Publisher: Jonathan Cape Rating: 3/5 Fans of Ian McEwan, prepare to be disappointed. Solar may be the closest McEwan has gotten to a rush job. Indeed, I was dismayed, and about halfway through I kept wondering if McEwan had actually written the book himself. Read more...

Eternal Life: A New Vision

Posted 2:50pm Sunday 11th July 2010 by Deane Galbraith

Author: John Shelby Spong Publisher: HarperCollins (0/5) Bishop John Spong is Christianity’s version of the Dalai Lama: a purveyor of an earnestly inoffensive spirituality, which possesses all the substance and fibre of lukewarm parsnip juice. Spong dismisses fundamentalist Read more...