Booksellers: this Thursday we’ll give you all the details about the New Zealand Listener Book Club … and POS items will be in the post soon. [no link]

Interesting to see major Kiwi bookseller @paperplusnz integrate Google Books Preview

Mark your calendars – on Tuesday 28 Feb we’ll be announcing the finalists in this year’s New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards.  [no link]

Opportunities
Designers, gather round… the PANZ Book Design Awards open on 12 March

Applications open for 2012 Michael King Writers’ Fellowship

Here’s Bill Manhire’s job being advertised

From around the internet
Hinemoana Baker’s new website is live!

All about the novel (part 124) – a comic

NZ Book Month
This year you can print your own $5 voucher from the NZ Book Month website – we’ll let you know details soon.  [no link]

March is New Zealand Book Month. Celebrate with Auckland Libraries!

Book reviews
Courtney Johnston reads How to Play a Video Game from Awa Press

Read written instructions about how to do it.

Watch the video below for a demonstration on how to secure a bookshelf to a wall.

We also enjoyed this related comic by Jonathan King.

Fiona Farrell reads from THE BROKEN BOOK as part of the Christchurch Earthquake commemorations tomorrow

New releases
Introducing Lonely Planet’s new-look phrasebooks

I whānau au ki Kaiapoi by Te Maire Tau

A Commemorative Edition of Christchurch 22.2: Beyond the Cordon has been released

April release for The Gathering of the Lost by Helen Lowe

Book reviews/interviews
Author interview with Madeleine Tobert: The Sea on our Skin

Opportunities
NZSA Mentor Programme Applications close – Next Monday

From around the internet
A list of Young Adult fiction you must read- what would you add to the list? 

All I’ve ever wanted is a library with a ladder!

On the anniversary of the big Christchurch earthquake Jonathan King has coloured and posted a comic he did last year

Tuesday poem
Cardboard Crowns by Selina Tusitala Marsh 

The Sea on our Skin is Madeleine Tobert’s first novel. Emma McCleary, web editor at Booksellers NZ read the book then talked to Madeleine about her work. Although the interview talks about details in the book it doesn’t give any spoilers.

EM: In The Sea on our Skin there’s an entire village of characters yet I never felt that I’d lost track of who was who. As the author, how did you keep track of the village and each person’s relationship to others while you were writing?
MT: All the characters come into the novel slowly; house by house, birth by birth. We get to know them really well and only then are they allowed to wander off, talk to other people, have their own lives.

I suppose I wrote it this way as it reflects how we meet people outside novels. On your first day at school, for example, you talk to the girl next to you and then the week after perhaps you make another friend and so it grows. By the end of the term you know exactly who is who, who likes who etc. It’s the same in Moana.

EM: What order did you write the book?
MT: I wrote random scenes first. One here, one there. Mostly from the second half of the novel (the majority of them are no longer in the book). I then needed to think about how they all tied together and found I had to go back in time to establish connections and ensure the story made sense. After that I started from the beginning and filled in the gaps.

EM: Tell me about why you created the novel in two parts – what was your thinking behind that?
MT: I experienced the Pacific in two parts. I went firstly when I was eighteen years old and found myself somewhere timeless, with almost no connection to the world I came from (or so it seemed to me). Six years later I returned. The villagers had mobile phones, there was internet in the town – in other words the world had caught up with the island. For me it was a jerky, shocking change and I wanted to reflect that in the novel.

EM: Was your use of symbolism in the novel intentional? I’m particularly thinking of Tamatoa swimming to the island to pick a mango/ the dead snakes having very biblical overtones about temptation. That scene also comes right before a turn towards temptation for a couple of key characters.
MT: Yes and no. In the novel Laita does quote the bible and Tom has a missionary’s background – so a snake can’t just be a snake and picking fruit has to signify an end to innocence. But the Matetes wouldn’t see it like that; and personally I prefer their animistic view of the world. So I suppose the symbolism is optional!

EM:  I quite like when pieces of a novel are unresolved but the role of Kara keeps playing over in my head – did her character have a purpose other than illustrating island beliefs about the sea people? She seemed to be very transient.
MT: Kara comes from the outside world. Angel knows her for a few days and becomes obsessed. Even though he is the brother that wants to stay on the island – who loves the sea, the plantation, the village – he is not immune from the exotic; just like his father and younger brother. Unlike them, Angel eventually realises that she is not going to be part of his life and is able to leave her in the sea and return to Moana.

EM: There are two white women in The Sea on our Skin – given your own history did you model either on yourself?
MT: Perhaps in one small respect, Kara contains a trace of me. Every now and again, when I was living in the Pacific, the fact that I was white was more important than any other detail of my personality/history/culture etc. This is true of Kara. She is the blonde stranger. We never really have a chance to find out more about her.

Mma Precious Ramotswe

EM: Initially, I felt Amalia had a quieter but similar spirit to Precious Ramotswe – the lead female character in Alexander McCall Smith’s The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency. What were your influences in developing her character?
I’m ashamed to say I’ve never read that one of McCall Smith’s novels (others yes). Now I’m intrigued, I’ll search it out! My Amalia actually didn’t come from literature but from life. She is inspired by a few people I met in Tonga and Fiji who changed my view on what it means to be female. I’d never before come across anyone who was in many ways passive – unquestioningly accepting what life threw at them – but who also had a great strength that allowed them to protect, feed and shelter their families in very difficult situation. Amazing women!

EM: What’s next? I felt there were a number of characters in The Sea on our Skin that could easily feature in subsequent works. What are your writing plans now?
MT: I’m currently writing my second novel, which is a total departure from the first, except that it shares an interest in small communities and cross cultural relationships. For now Angel and co will be left in peace – but who knows what the future brings!

The Sea on Our Skin
by Madeleine Tobert
Published by Two Roads
ISBN  9781444734119

I’m with
eighteen year olds
we talk about the crisis
in NZ lit
and the problem of reading
like
they don’t

there’s a fictional yawn from the back

their books weigh down
their bodies not their minds
afternoon

I’m cooking with five year olds
sculpt flour, yeast, water
mozzarella fingers dip and rise

I keep an eye
on my new starter
his bony body
under an over-confident uniform

he’s educating me
in bravery

yesterday

I’m baking a cake and roasting a chicken
simultaneously

blowing up gold balloons
taping them to the king’s throne
a creased kindy hat becomes a tama aiga crown
as green spears fan between toetoe heads
over a crayoned five

kids said the chicken was good
it tasted like cake

today

the eighteen year olds buzz over
Wendt’s ‘Robocop in Long Bay’
theory pop pops the air
V guarana cans
moor the tables
as the book floats away

I throw out a life line
but no one’s read it
tomorrow

the five year olds
are Tagaloa’s boat builders

o le tala i tufuga o le vaa o Tagaloa

they stomp-sing, pull
fell and gnaw with their teeth in the dark
till they see the dawn

they know when to hide
they’ve all read the story

By Selina Tusitala Marsh from fast talking PI (pages 19-21)
Published by Auckland University Press
Used with the permission of Auckland University Press
This poem is part of the Tuesday Poem Scheme.

Book news
‘Indecent’ book now safe reading for all

Janet Frame classics reissued in Germany

Looks like there’s good news about Hone Tuwhare’s crib at Kaka Point 

Closure of one Wellington Whitcoulls likely

From around the internet
Did you know Valentine’s Day is also Clifford’s birthday? He closed NASDAQ today! (USA) 

Did you know Jo Nesbo is touring NZ in March? Details on our calendar

Book News
Lonely Planet’s Year of Adventures now a TV show

NZ-based publishing startup Pear Jam Books partners with MyLi.com

Single people awareness day Valentine’s Day
10 of the Greatest Kisses in Literature

Valentine’s Day, 1876

New books
New release book: The Wrong Boy by Suzy Zail 

Tuesday poem
Tight by Helen Heath

Now we are hiding
from each other
but I’m the only one
playing the game.

Inside the wardrobe
I spy old wallpaper
and under the carpet
oiled floorboards.

Who’ll find me
now she’s gone –
knees by ears tight
breathing all of me?

By Helen Heath.
Published by Seraph Press in Watching for Smoke. And to be published by Victoria University Press in Graft (May 2012)
Used with the permission of Helen Heath.
This poem is part of the Tuesday Poem Scheme.

Book news
Tony Fisk resigns from HarperCollins

Marilyn Duckworth to deliver the Janet Frame Memorial Lecture

Auckland Museum Library National Research Grant

Auckland Writers & Readers Festival announces Schools’ Programme

Twitter people – attention!
We’re doing something super cool soon with Guy Somerset and listener.co.nz – if you’re on Twitter follow @nzlbookclub to find out what. (This isn’t a Twitter-based project so you won’t miss out if you’re not on Twitter).

From around the internet
This bookshelf is shaped like a tree!

In time for Valentine’s: Top 5 rules for writing love letters

Opportunity knocks
Applications open for Ashton Wylie Charitable Trust Awards

Get loved up with our Valentine’s Day giveaway

Get your tickets now for True Stories WLG with an All-Star Cast!

Book reviews
Listen to an interview with Claire Bidwell Smith, author of THE RULES OF INHERITANCE (out 27 Feb)! 

Review of The Hours author’s latest book wins inaugural hatchet job award

NZ Book Month
This simple and honest Children’s Book Week poster from 1962 made us smile . . . 

Slowly but surely we’re adding NZ Book Month events to the website – check if yours is there…

From around the internet
Reading makes you smarter – it’s true!

Hardback Book Lamps

Opinion: Dickens was always a struggle

Happenings around the office
Hera Bird opening the lunchtime Literaturhaus event in Wellington