*** GET LOST OVER EASTER! *** Read your way to another place. 25% off all general books* on Wednesday April 8th. *Offer applies only to general books and excludes textbooks, sale books and others already discounted. If you are a member of turningpoints, you will still receive points for any qualifying purchases. |
Floating Worlds: Essays on Contemporary New Zealand Fiction by Jane Stafford & Anna Jackson RRP $40.00 vicbooks price $36.00 VUP Focusing on eight specific books, these essays examine New Zealand fiction from the last fifteen years. Topics and themes discussed include the fake versus the authentic; the fluctuating boundary between the real and the imaginary and the act of writing itself. Contents include: Nicholas Wright on The Miserables by Damien Wilkins Kirstine Moffat on In A Fishbone Church by Catherine Chidgey Jane Stafford on The Vintner's Luck by Elizabeth Knox Hamish Clayton and Mark Williams on Hicksville by Dylan Horrocks Lydia Wevers on Slow Water by Annamarie Jagose Anna Jackson on The Time of the Giants by Anne Kennedy Erin Mercer on Hibiscus Coast by Paula Morris Jennifer Lawn on Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones. **all books discussed are available from vicbooks, with the exception of Hicksville, which unfortunately is out of print.** Buy now Limestone by Fiona Farrell $29.99 Vintage Clare takes advantage of a work trip to Ireland to try to trace her father, who went out for a pack of cigarettes when she was a child, and never came back. Chance meetings with strangers propel her towards an answer, but of course the truth is closer to home than she realises. Buy now Innocents in the Dry Valleys by Colin Bull RRP $40.00 vicbooks price $36.00 VUP Physicist Bull, a biologist and two undergraduate geology students spent the summer of 1958-1959 in the Dry Valleys of Victoria Land in Antarctica, in the first foray of what was to become an annual research programme now organised by the Antarctic Research Centre. Bull recounts the beg-borrow-or-steal ethos which allowed the expedition to proceed with enthusiasm seemingly undimmed by lack of funds, or by the intervening years. Buy now | Twenty Contemporary New Zealand Poets edited by Andrew Johnston & Robyn Marsack RRP $40.00 vicbooks price $36.00 VUP A critical anthology including the featured poets' own comments on context and themes, this is a showcase for the most vital poets writing in New Zealand, from 1986 to the present day. Poets featured: *Tusiata Avia *Jenny Bornholdt *James Brown *Geoff Cochrane *Glenn Colquhoun *Allen Curnow *Fiona Farrell *Bernadette Hall *Dinah Hawken *Anne Kennedy *Bill Manhire *Cilla McQueen *Gregory O'Brien *Vincent O'Sullivan *Elizabeth Smither *C.K. Stead *Robert Sullivan *Brian Turner *Hone Tuwhare *Ian Wedde. Buy now Vivid Familiar by Stephanie de Montalk
RRP $40.00 vicbooks price $36.00 VUP From the voyages made by colonial settlers of New Zealand, to the fantastical airship flight taken by the narrator of "Feathers & Wax", these poems journey into familiar and unfamiliar worlds, playing with ideas of belonging, distance and arrival. Buy now Art at Te Papa by William McAloon regular edition $130.00 (pictured, left). Te Papa Press Four hundred art works selected by curators illuminate New Zealand's national art collection - from early European prints to the most recent acquisitions. "Superstars" of art such as Durer and Mapplethorpe and significant New Zealand artists from Goldie to Cotton are represented, but so too are lesser known artists and works. The development of the collection parallels and reflects the cultural journey New Zealand has made during the history of the museum. Buy now deluxe edition $300.00 (pictured, right) Buy now |
The Winter Vault by Anne Michaels $36.99 Bloomsbury Avery, a young engineer, is charged with the task of overseeing the dismantling and reconstruction of the temple of Abu Simbel above the rising waters of the Aswan Dam. At the same time, he and his new wife Jean are constructing a life together. But nothing can save the ancestral homes, gravesites and lifestyles of thousands of villagers whose fortunes depended on the river, whose flooding will displace them. And no amount of love can protect the young couple from the impending grief which may tear them apart. The long-awaited second novel from the acclaimed author of Fugitive Pieces. Buy now | Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese $37.99 Chatto & Windus An Indian nun saves the life of a British doctor on his way to a missionary hospital in Ethiopia. Seven years later, she dies giving birth to their conjoined-twin sons. Marion and Shiva's father is the attending doctor and his last act before fleeing in horror is the surgery which separates them. Effectively orphaned, they are brought up by two doctors in the medical compound, and become doctors themselves. But as Ethiopia moves towards revolution, the twins fall for the same woman. Marion tries to make a new life for himself in New York, working in an underfunded Bronx hospital, but he cannot escape the past, and eventually must place his trust in two men he believes betrayed him - his brother and his father. An epic novel exploring power, danger, medicine and the intimate connections between the human body and emotional life. Buy now |
The Pleasures & Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton $50.00 Hamish Hamilton Alain de Botton explores the paradox of work: it takes up much of our lives, but little attention is paid to what this work means. He examines the routines and processes of a range of entrepreneurs, professionals and labourers to try to find out what can make work pleasurable and what happens when it is not rewarding. Ultimately he asks, "Why do we continually exhaust ourselves and the planet?" Buy now | The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross $24.99 HarperCollins Written by a music critic for The New Yorker, this is a history of the twentieth century through its music. Ross reveals surprising connections between the century's most influential composers and the wider culture. He examines the role played by music makers' collusion or resistance in wars and propaganda and the rule of dictators; and the cross-fertilisation of technical and social experiments and revolutions with the musical avant-garde. Buy now |