SRB Picks of the Week 19 July 2008

:By Jeremy Rose

No, I’m not going to have a kvetch about the wretched Veitch affair, I just couldn’t resist the headline. A story combining three of the media’s pet obsessions violence, celebrity and cover-ups was always going to be recipe for saturation coverage. All it needs now is for some sordid sex tapes to emerge and a Royal connection and it will be a tabloid full house. But even with just three of the five, the Sunday Star Times deemed it important enough to dedicate 100 percent of its comment section to the affair and the bulk of its news coverage to boot. Okay, maybe a little kvetching’s in order. Read more »

MEDIA RELEASE
Janet Charman’s Cold Snack, published by Auckland University Press, has won the 2008 Montana New Zealand Book Award for Poetry and $5,000. Read more »

MEDIA RELEASE
Two of last year’s most highly praised début novels were Susan Pearce’s Acts of Love and Mary McCallum’s The Blue, a finalist in the 2008 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. They track the lives of women isolated by religion (Acts of Love) and remoteness (The Blue). The two writers discuss the long hard process of producing a first novel with fellow novelist Kate Duignan.
Writers on Mondays is presented by the International Institute of Modern Letters in partnership with the National Library of New Zealand.

These events take place on Monday 21 July, at 1-2pm, at the National Library Auditorium, Wellington.

They are open to the public and free of charge.

The Dom: A Century of News, edited by Karl du Fresne.

Wellington: The Dominion Post, 2007. Reviewed by ALAN SAMSON

Let’s be blunt. Despite management spin and the timeline claims of this centenary publication, Wellington-based newspaper the Dominion did not merge with its sister publication The Evening Post in the big news media shake-up of 2002. That was the year when, in a shroud of secrecy but as a surprise to no one (apart, perhaps, for the timing), Wellington’s afternoon paper the Evening Post gave in to ever-falling circulation figures and closed. Read more »

Poem of the Week: Calypso

From: Calypso by Bob Orr, AUP, $25.

Read more »

A Thousand Splendid Suns By Khaled Hosseini

Bloomsbury Paperbacks, $28. Reviewed by ALISON McCULLOCH

When she is first made to wear a burqa, Mariam, one of the two main characters in Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, finds some comfort in it. The “shameful secrets of her past” – that she was born a harami or illegitimate child – are hidden from the outside world, “from the scrutinizing eyes of strangers.” But it’s tricky to walk without tripping over the hem, the headpiece is “tight and heavy” and it’s strange “seeing the world through a mesh screen.” Read more »

Novel About My Wife, by Emily Perkins

Bloomsbury, $35. Reviewed by JANE BLAIKIE

Kiwi celebrity writer Emily Perkins is back with a hot new story – very contemporary, on an old theme. Novel About My Wife is just that. Tom Stone, a London sceenwriter recalls the last years of his marriage to Ann, an Australian-born sculptor.

The action sits on a nexus of art, alcohol, love and madness – being a scenario that could go by any number of names: the creative life, self-destruction, abuse, the female as muse, addiction, a conflicted anima, and so on. Read more »

SRB Picks of the Week 12 July 2008

:By Jeremy Rose

My childhood bedroom was about 10 metres from the Johnsonville railway line – halfway between Simla Crescent and Boxhill Stations – and the passing trains rattled the Victorian sash-windows next to my bed. The English Electric DM/D Class Units that plied the line had a powerful Cyclops-like headlight and the shadows it cast raced around my bedroom walls.

So why the nostalgia? Read more »

MEDIA RELEASE
NZ Poet Laureate to MC celebration of Kiwi poetry on Montana Poetry Day, Friday 18 July

New Zealand Poet Laureate Michele Leggott will MC ‘Poetry Central’, a celebration of Kiwi poetry, on Montana Poetry Day, Friday 18 July. Read more »

Poem of the Week Blackberries

From: The Moon, In Seven Easy Steps by Scott Hamilton

Titus Books, $22.

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