 Kraken by China Miéville China Miéville is taking the reading world the hard way - starting at the oh-so-low level of ‘genre fiction' and forcing the rest of the literary world to damn well pay attention. His previous novel, the existential thriller The City & The City, received scintillating reviews extolling the intelligence and invention of a young novelist of prodigious originality, and blazed a path to awards and bestseller lists. Kraken is less philosophical than The City, but intoxicated with the same delirious creativity. Miéville tells the story of Billy Harrow, research scientist at London's Natural History Museum. Billy, in pursuing the mysterious disappearance of the museum's prize specimen, a giant squid, travels deep into the dark heart of an unexpected London. Miéville's London is obsessed with cephalopodic auguries and their eschatological implications: warring gangs, religious mania, secret agencies and bizarre cults litter the landscape of this irreverent and at times hilarious narrative. But beware! It would be a mistake to underestimate this unconventional story - satire resides in its aberrant heart as well as an intelligent parody of modern authority and maniacal ideology. There's a refreshing lack of need to compare Miéville to other writers; fascinatingly unique and tantalisingly creative he is becoming one of those writers almost necessary to read.
RRP $39.99, Our Price $34.99 Buy now
 Reading on the Farm by Lydia Wevers
"When I was first introduced to the Brancepeth library, as a collection of dirty books with faded covers in beautiful glass cases on the ground floor of the university library, I thought it would become the subject of an elegant essay about past reading habits, a little excursion into the back waters of a Victorian library. Then I opened the books, and immediately and vividly became aware that I was looking at their readers..." Lydia Wevers
In Reading on the Farm, Lydia Wevers uses the library of Brancepeth Station, a farm at the very heart of the Wairarapa, as the ground for an extended reflection on the meaning of books, reading and intellectual life in colonial NZ. Drawing on station records, the archive produced by the library, as well as the books themselves, she offers a fascinating window into the social and cultural world of books and reading in the early life of NZ. Through Wevers' engaging passion and sharp intellect the books themselves come to life - their borrowing histories, physical condition and marginalia summoning rich images and history. Captured in the library's reach are the Beetham family, owners of Brancepeth, Wairarapa Maori, farm workers, and the motley swaggers who sought shelter during the Depression. Most vivid of all is John Vaughan Miller, the clerk and librarian of the station. This learned and petulant man, with his letters to the newspapers and indiscreet private correspondence, epitomises the class cleavages, social anxieties and uncertainties that were at the heart of both Brancepeth and popular Victorian fiction.
In this rich and compelling work Wevers reveals a beguiling aspect of NZ history, surprising and revelatory for its depth and literature.
RRP $40.00, Our Price $35.00 Buy now
 Hicksville by Dylan Horrocks
Originally published in 1998, Hicksville has entered that rarefied field of classic graphic novel (though the author prefers the more direct comic book). It tells the story of an American journalist who, in trying to write a biography of Dick Burger, the world's most successful comic-book artist, finds himself in Burger's hometown, the eponymous Hicksville, a mysterious New Zealand town where the entire populace are comic book aficionados, yet all of whom are resistant to talking about the legendary Burger. Horrocks speaks of Hicksville as being about the truth of what comics have represented, "An industry that, for the most part, robbed artists of the chance of doing their real work. An industry that forced great cartoonists to waste their talents hacking out insipid stories for a half-interested audience." But as dark as that sounds Hicksville is a love story about the comic medium; heartfelt, funny and intelligent with a mature and subtle style, shifting as needed to encompass the full spectrum of the medium. It is a beautiful and sometimes heartbreaking homage to what comics are and what they could have been. Republished by VUP, this is an important work that draws to it, easily and naturally, all who invest importance in comics as an art-form.
RRP $38.00, Our Price $33.00 Buy now
 The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
Set on Dejima, the fan-shaped artificial island that housed and hid foreign traders from an isolationist Japan, Thousand Autumns follows the Dutchman De Zoet as he fumbles his way through love, some dodgy company accounts and a fair amount of dark magic. Perhaps a reflection of what is happening around them on a much larger scale, it is the Westerner De Zoet's sudden yet unrequited desire for a wise and scarred Eastern midwife, Orito that sets the plot (and, one can believe on reading this increasingly-eerie novel, the massive smoke-shrouded cogs of some ancient form of Eastern mysticism) in motion. De Zoet moves between a mundane island existence and the court - and brothels - of a not-quite-translated Nagasaki until a regretted decision sends both Orito and the reader into the cold and hostile forests to a fortress shrine whose sinister practices slowly unravel, the effect of which reverberates back to Nagasaki. A fan of Mitchell's Cloud Atlas and Ghostwritten, may be disappointed by the linear structure of Thousand Autumns, but it would be a short lived disappointment as the author's stunning good word play, coupled with thorough research will leave the reader dazzled by, and ever so slightly aghast at, how a mind like Mitchell's must work. Having received the long-list nod from the Man Booker judging panel, we will just have to wait and see what's next for De Zoet's Japan or rather his Thousand Autumns, as Mitchell much more romantically puts it.
RRP $38.99, Our Price $33.99 Buy now  Nothing to Envy: Life Love and Death in North Korea by Barbara Demick
North Korea is an inverted land, where the wonders are bizarre reversals of freedoms we justifiably take for granted: a place where you can't tune your radios away from the government station, where your facial expressions during political rallies are analysed to assess your sincerity, a place that, uniquely in the world, refuses the internet. A place where 22 million people live. The winner of the 2010 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non Fiction, Nothing to Envy humanises the long-suffering population of North Korea. Through a handful of lives the author reveals the complex minds and potent lives of a people that are often rendered as robotic adherents to a corrupt regime. Demick re-traces the life of Mi-ran and five other North Koreans, taking us into the heart of an elusive society. We see her subjects fall in love, nurture ambitions, and struggle with survival and betrayal.
Demick, an award winning reporter, describes a human rights tragedy of enormous proportions, one taking place out of Western public view. Her approach is all the more thorough, gentle and persuasive due to the biographic approach which forms a haunting portrait of a bizarre society, along with the cost it exacts on its citizens.
RRP $39.99, Our Price $34.99 Buy now
 Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: An Eclipse Novella by Stephenie Meyer
If you know someone submerged in the Twilight Saga then this is the book for them. Following the eponymous short vampiric life of Bree Tanner, a character introduced in Eclipse, a different perspective of the fictional series' struggle is explored, taking the reader ever deeper into Meyer's world. Through Bree's eyes this riveting story reveals the darker side of the vampire world she inhabits as well revealing the forces that propel her into the heart of the Eclipse narrative. Stephanie Meyer, in an irresistible combination of danger, mystery, and romance tells the devastating story of Bree and the Newborn Army as they prepare to close in on Bella Swan and the Cullens, following their story to its unforgettable conclusion.
RRP $26.99, Our Price $21.99 Buy now |
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