E-books and the New Zealand Post Book Awards: discuss

E-books are a new area for the New Zealand Post Book Awards (NZPBA) and the New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards (NZPCBA). We’re keen to accept entries for books whether they are e-book or print, and we’re receiving good questions from e-book publishers about how to do this and what’s eligible.

The mechanics of submitting the e-book are still a work in progress, but we’d like to work with e-book publishers to make it happen. Some e-books will be digitally locked so an option for submission may be to supply us with a credit for purchasing the e-books online for our judges. Other works may be supplied in an appropriate file format; we’d be keen to hear from you what you think might suit.

The eligibility criteria for both NZPBA and NZPCBA often refer to print books being widely available for sale to retail book shops. As the forms are already in use, we’ll leave them as they are, but we’ll be flexible when applying the rules to e-books.

The background is that the books should be widely available to the bookselling trade and to the New Zealand public. With that in mind, we’d like e-books to be available from two or more of the leading online retailers if they are not nationally for sale in print.

For the 2013 awards, e-books will be judged alongside print books in existing categories. It is a good point for discussion and we welcome your views in the comments below. We’re keen to take your feedback into account so that the Book Awards Governance Group (BAGG) can review the types of e-book submissions we receive and make sure the awards reflect the developments in the industry.

by Amie Lightbourne, Awards Manager for Booksellers NZ

Book review: Playing with Fire by Peter Lange and Stuart Newby

This book is in stores now and is a finalist in the New Zealand Post Book Awards.

Playing with Fire - Auckland Studio Potters turns 50  is, as the title suggests, a celebration of the 50 years that Auckland Studio Potters (ASP) has been a force in the New Zealand Studio Pottery landscape.

The hardcover book is well presented with great photos by Yuki Sato with associated commentaries, letters and musings on the applied art from alumni and current members of the Society. One of the attributes that good Studio Pottery possess are its intrinsic photogenic qualities that mean this book is an excellent addition to any ‘coffee table’ library and like all good books of this type, Playing with Fire reflects well on its owners tastes and eye for visual art.

But this book isnt just eye candy, it also seeks to be a time capsule of sorts for the many people that have been part of the ASP over its first 50 years and a reference for those members that will follow in the second half of the Societies first century.

Flicking through the book, there is plenty to keep both those familiar with the arts of ceramic sculpture and domestic ware (functional studio pottery) alike. Pieces by co-author Peter Lange, Chester Nealie, Barry Brickell and Denis O’Connor were the standouts for me although in reality almost all included photos are of works that could be described as important in the Studio Pottery landscape.

The writings dont follow a particular theme as Peter Lange notes in the forward the only two compulsory elements being Auckland and Ceramics lending the book an eclectic if not accurate view into the hearts and minds of New Zealand’s Studio potters.

Chester Nealie describing his journey of discovery through kiln types that has helped to make him one of the most desired ceramic artists today, histories and insights into the lives and works of well known potters like John Parker, Barry Brickell, Helen Mason and the recently deceased Len Castle also make this book a resource for the contemporary collector who is always looking for clues and insights into the works of artists they collect.

Finally the book also gives voice to the potters in the Society whose names are not as well known but carry in them an attraction to the elemental milieu that Studio Pottery and potters possess.

Reviewed by Greer Monkley

Playing with Fire – Auckland Studio Potters turns 50 
by Peter Lange and Stuart Newby
Published by Auckland Studio Potters Society– in conjunction with the National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries Centre for New Zealand Art Research and Discovery (CNZARD)
ISBN 9780958281713

Book review: Shift by Rhian Gallagher

This book is in stores now and is a finalist in the New Zealand Post Book Awards.

Reviewing a collection of poetry is a much more daunting task than reviewing a book – probably because in many ways poetry is both less familiar and more subjective than prose fiction. While I enjoy poetry, I don’t often pick up a whole book of it, so I approached the task of reviewing Rhian Gallagher’s Shift with a little hesitation.

However, the first (and eponymous) section of Shift quickly won me over, with its lyrical and image-ful depiction of a New Zealand childhood.

Lines like: From trunk into the part between/two large limbs, you climbed./Sometimes wrapped your legs around, dangled, head mid-air threw me headlong back into my own tree-climbing youth, while her poems about her dead (at birth) sister were less familiar but poignant and very real.

The second section is called ‘Butterfly’, and fittingly it seems to have a metamorphosis theme running through it, as Gallagher leaves her South Island home for “the hood/of London streets…”

Gallagher’s depictions of her time “Abroad” (For the first time in your life/you feel free of your story, walking street after street…) will be familiar to anyone who has been on their Kiwi OE. In ‘Butterfly’, Gallagher discovers not only places, but also herself – her feelings, needs and desires; her values and ethos.

Part three, ‘Shore’, brings us back to New Zealand – a homecoming many of us have experienced, tinged with joy and comfort at the familiar places and people, but also with regret for the places and people left behind. Her rediscovery of her home has elements of each of the previous sections echoed in it – the familiar made unfamiliar by time and distance, and the joy of finding places again as if for the first time.

Galaaher’s imagery is concrete and physical – her poems take you to the places she describes, feeling, smelling and tasting along with her. She writes mostly free verse, but immerses assonance, consonance and alliteration within her work, making her words a joy to read aloud inside your head.

She also plays with form – a villanelle, ‘Butterfly’, stood out as one example of this. Bill Manhire described Gallagher as “one of the quiet, astonishing secrets of New Zealand writing.” Now that she has settled back in New Zealand, I suspect we will be hearing a lot more of her.

Reviewed by Renee Boyer-Willisson

Shift
by Rhian Gallagher
Published by Auckland University Press
ISBN 9781869404871

Icarus in the Backyard by Leonel Alvarado #NationalPoetryDay

New Shoes, Old Eyes by Sean Monaghan #NationalPoetryDay

Announcing winners: Social media and the New Zealand Post Book Awards #nzpba

Next Wednesday, 1 August, the winners of the New Zealand Post Book Awards will be announced in a ceremony in Auckland.

We adjusted our approach to announcing winners for the New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards earlier in the year (read about it here) and we’re taking the same approach this time.

Media will still receive their embargoed media release ahead of time (to meet their deadlines) but those at the ceremony will be free to share the winners on social media sites – as they hear them called – from the ceremony.

Hear and see the winners first:

• Early photos from the ceremony will be posted to our Flickr gallery
• We’ll live tweet the winners and other awards news on our Twitter feed
• The Twitter hashtag for the Awards is #nzpba (this is a great way to be part of the action even if you don’t use Twitter)
• We’ve put together a list of people likely to tweet from the awards
• We’ll also post the winners and other awards on our New Zealand Post Book Awards Facebook page

Prepare for the awards

• Here’s the list of finalists
• Many of the finalist books have been reviewed by our army of reviewers – read their opinions

Book review: The Hungry Heart by Peter Wells

This book is in stores now and is a finalist in the New Zealand Post Book Awards.

“In winter, the milk freezes in the pantry, and the water in the bedroom.” William Colenso.

As I write this, these words ring a truth for me and others I know – student living, not all it’s cracked up to be.

When Booksellers NZ asked me to review a book from the New Zealand Post Book Awards shortlist, I immediately jumped to the non-fiction –my favourite genre. There I saw The Hungry Heart, and vaguely recognised the name Colenso. Intrigued, I requested, and was given.

Most know William Colenso as the missionary that protested the Treaty of Waitangi (he interrupted Hone Heke as he moved forward to sign), was kicked out of the church for fathering an illegitimate (‘interracial’) son, and for causing controversy when a new high school wanted to be named after him in Napier. In The Hungry Heart, Peter Wells mentions all of these things, while piecing together and creating a truly fascinating and detailed biography of Colenso.

As a publishing student, I was pleasantly surprised to read of Colenso’s added profession as a printer. He hand-set all 356 pages of the 1837 New Testament in Maori, and printed it on a press that required two waka lashed together to reach his house in Paihia – “It must have seemed as momentous as the arrival of the Trojan Horse inside the gates of Troy.” Colenso picked up the Maori language very quickly; this helped him create printed texts for Maori, as well as helping the job he actually came to do, be a missionary.

He also managed to create huge scandals in his life, and found himself in the middle of many confrontations, some verbal, others physical. I don’t want to ruin it for you, but Colenso was all over the place.

The remarkable thing I find about this book is Peter Wells’ ability to bring Colenso back so easily to a modern, and mostly commercial, audience. While reading, Wells involves you in every aspect – as he discovers more, you discover more about Wells’ life and journey to find Colenso, and about Colenso’s life. There are constant uses of ‘let’s’ – “Let’s look a little further…” Wells doesn’t mind reminding you that you’re reading about him writing about Colenso, the subtitle Journeys with William Colenso really does fit. You’re following Wells’ journey to find Colenso, who really was on his own life journey.

In the most basic way I can say it – I thought this book was fantastic. Wells has done an amazing job of research and writing to create it, and for that I thank him.

The one downfall is the physical weight – the book is filled with stunning photography, pictures, letters, all of which are printed on a lovely glossy and heavy paper to make each page stand out. I completely understand the need for this, but when it makes my bag weigh twice as much, I’m less likely to take it as my everyday book.

The book travels through all of Colenso’s life, focusing on his life in New Zealand since this is where he spent the majority of it. This is really the time that defined him; I have no doubt Colenso would agree with that. He had some serious highs and lows throughout his life, but without all of these, would New Zealand still know who William Colenso is today?

Reviewed by Kimaya McIntosh

The Hungry Heart
by Peter Wells
Published by Vintage, Random House NZ
ISBN 9781869794743 (Hardback)
ISBN 9781869794750 (Ebook)

Book review: New Zealand’s Native Trees by John Dawson and Rob Lucas

This book is in stores now and is a finalist in the New Zealand Post Book Awards.

New Zealand is a country of trees. Go for a walk in your neighbourhood and chances are you’ll see more trees than houses. They outnumber us, despite our best attempts. These trees are growing, reproducing and supporting entire ecosystems of smaller beings every moment of everyday, stoic and graceful. These are good enough reasons to learn a little more about them. Once you’ve reached this stage then, you’ll need a reference book, and you’re in luck because the most comprehensive book ever dedicated to New Zealand’s native trees has recently been published.

The sleeve notes of New Zealand’s Native Trees state that this is “a book of the kind that is published only once in a generation…” and this may well be because it took half a generation to write it and would take another half to read it from cover to cover.

It is likely though that this is not how this book is best approached. You could, as I did, turn directly to the pages and photographs devoted to the pin-up flora – pohutukawa, rata, kauri, ponga, nikau – and immerse yourself in the beautiful details: botanical features, distribution, habitat and key relationships with other plants and animals. Or you could, after being struck by appreciation of the trunk or branch structure of a particular tree you’d seen en situ, return to your lounge and augment your appreciation with information. One thing is certain, you won’t be carrying the book around with you: it weighs four kilograms and takes up as much space as a small child’s torso.

For as the sleeve notes also state, this book “describes and generously illustrates more than 320 species, subspecies and varieties…of conifers, tree ferns and flowering trees.” Generous is the word.

Readers might think fondly and sympathetically, as they thumb through nearly six hundred pages of accessible text and superb photographs, of the principal authors, John Dawson and Rob Lucas, who concede in their acknowledgements that they had become strangers to their wives during the seven years of the books gestation.

No doubt, New Zealand’s Native Trees is a labour of love.

It is clear that Dawson and Lucas and the many contributors love trees, and have laboured long to present that love (perhaps to the extent that they would love not to see another tree again.)

And like the lovely trees that it depicts, this book is an act of generosity. For whilst knowing doesn’t necessarily translate to appreciation, a book that inspires you to observe more closely and then complements your observation is a great thing.

Reviewed by Aaron Blaker

New Zealand’s Native Trees
by John Dawson and Rob Lucas
Published by Craig Potton
ISBN 9781877517013

Book review: Wulf by Hamish Clayton

This book is in stores now and was the 2012 Best First Book of Fiction.

From its opening words this book grabs you with its imagery. That first page conjures up a land of power, secrets, strangeness, and above all the inevitability of terrible and frightening things about to happen. It is eerie reading this book. You know you are not, but it certainly feels as if you too are trekking through dense New Zealand native bush, wandering on a desolate sandy beach, sitting on a brig slightly off shore on gentle seas. And all the time knowing that you are a foreigner in this land, always with the sense that you are being watched and observed by the locals. Very uncanny.

At the center of this story is an unnamed crewman on the ‘Elizabeth’, an English ship that in this tale arrived in New Zealand waters in 1830 looking to trade with the Maori, specifically for flax. For such a man and his fellow crew members, this new land would not have resembled their homeland in any way. Neither would the bird life, the fish life, the plant life. Combine this with the tales about the land’s fearsome inhabitants – warmongers, revenge-seekers, desirous of muskets, rumours of cannibalism – and the scariest of them all, the great chief Te Rauparaha, it is little wonder that the visitors are in such awe of this land.

On the ‘Elizabeth’ is a young man, Cowell, who joined the ship in Sydney. He has been to New Zealand before, can speak Te Reo fluently and is there to act as a middle man between the ship’s captain and the Maori traders. He is also a marvellous story teller and over a period of time regales the mesmerised crew members with stories of the exploits and conquests of Te Rauparaha. Any New Zealand history book will tell you what an extraordinary man Te Rauparaha was, both in his ambitions and his brutality. Dubbed ‘Napoleon of the South’ he seemed to spend his whole life exacting revenge for many and various wrongs. Naturally the myths that had built up around this man were also many and various, being perfect fodder for the imaginations of the sailors. He became the Great Wolf, always there, watching and waiting for the right moment to attack.

Rumours of a huge load of flax coupled with the chief’s desire for muskets eventually lead the ‘Elizabeth’ to Kapiti Island, Te Rauparaha’s stronghold, lying just off the east coast of the lower half of the North Island. A waiting game begins, during which the tension slowly winds up notch by notch. You see, the Great Wolf is far cleverer than the white sea captain, resulting in a major clash of the two entirely different cultures. What is a moral and ethical dilemma for one is a perfectly acceptable negotiation and result to the other. The consequences are disastrous.

The ‘Elizabeth’ was a real ship, Cowell and Captain Stewart were real people, and the incident they all find themselves involved in did happen. This was only one of many encounters and clashes that the Pakeha visitor had with the local Maori. We generally learn about them through history books, objective and fact driven. Very rarely do we experience what it may have been like to encounter a people so different from oneself. And in a land that is so dramatic and awe-inspiring, and all the time threatening and unknown.

Reading this book is like reading poetry, but in a prose form. It is just so stunningly beautiful. Many New Zealand novels are dark, gothic and morbidly gloomy. This is not a happy tale either, but the writing is so full of colour and richness that it is almost as if it is all taking place in some sort of enchanted wonderland. Anybody with an interest in New Zealand history, or a love of the land will feel uncannily linked with this story and the people in it.

Reviewed by Felicity Murray.

Wulf
by Hamish Clayton
Published by Penguin Books NZ
ISBN 9780143206491 (paperback) and 9781742287720 (e-book).

Book review: Tupaia – The Remarkable Story of Captain Cook’s Polynesian Navigator by Joan Druett

This book is in stores now and is a finalist in the New Zealand Post Book Awards.

As remarkable as this sounds, when I first travelled to Australia, at the age of 20, I was taken aback to find that there were a number of James Cook monuments, hotels and the like. And that Joseph Banks was responsible for naming all of their plants too! The problem is that you only know what you know, and what you are taught and exposed to.

In my case, post-colonial views of history that seem to only focus on the New Zealand aspects of the voyages, and have removed, or at the very least diminished, certain key history makers from the stories. Tupaia, a noble Polynesian who encountered Captain James Cook in the Tahiti Islands and set sail with him on his journey south aboard the Endeavour, is one of them.

Joan Druett clearly sees Tupaia as an extraordinary man whom European history books have not served well. She clearly likes and respects her main character and yes, this biography does read at times like a story – a compelling story too. Druett sets the tone for her book early on when writing about Tupaia:

“… he was Tahiti’s highest priest. Then the canoe without an outrigger arrived.”
Immediately Druett had my attention and she held it until the end.

That the Crew of the Endeavour were not the first Europeans to meet Tupaia was probably “lost in translation”. But, in reality, by the time Cook and Banks arrived, Tupaia had already met and traded with another crew of Englishmen, and a French contingent led by Louis De Bouganville.

Regardless of these prior meetings, the meeting of the Endeavour crew on April 11, 1769 was momentous since as Druett puts it “the expectations of all on board had reached a pitch of excitement.” They could never have anticipated that they would sail away with local men on board, who would prove to be crucial for Cook’s navigation of both the South Pacific seas and its people and customs.

You know what happened next – the Endeavour crew sailed south to New Zealand. Tupaia, according to Druett’s meticulous research was a key figure on the boat, but he succumbed to illness before arriving back to England, and was almost forgotten in the public aftermath. Almost.

This engaging book, has made me reflect on the facts of the Cook voyages; reminding me that there were dozens of people either on board, or that the crew encountered on these great voyages of discovery. Tupaia was just one of them – a translator, astronomer, navigator, artist, mapmaker, geographer – one of a number of remarkable men of the time. And this is his story.

Reviewed by Gillian Torckler

Tupaia - The Remarkable Story of Captain Cook’s Polynesian Navigator
By Joan Druett
Random House NZ
9781869793869 (Hardback)
9781869797133 (Paperback)