Holiday Book Club
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A late summer read I've just finished:
McMafia, by UK-based reporter Misha Glenny.
Very highly recommended for anyone who wants an in-depth look at the inter-relationship between governments, big business and organised crime
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One of my favourite pre-Treaty NZ sources is 'Letters from the Bay of Islands: the story of Marianne Williams' edited by Caroline Fitzgerald (Penguin, 2004).
This sounds like something to search out - NZ has one of the best recorded and most interesting histories around.
Last year I read (devoured) Anne Salmond's The Trial of the Cannibal Dog which prompted me to search out her earlier Two Worlds.
Along with several other people in the conversation I read and thoroughly enjoyed Hamish Keith's Native Wit which made me laugh out loud in several places. I loved the parts where he was trying to explain to (city councillors? I forget) that art gallery walls didn't need texture to make them less boring, as art was there to make the wall less boring. His descriptions of meeting Len Lye prompted me to search out Len Lye's biography, only to find it's out of print.
Lately I've been reading Truby King, The Man which I'm am finding fascinating, but I'm probably more interested in public health than most people. Truby King was amazing, and many of the systems for reducing infant mortality and optimising health of infants (as well as mental patients and "dipsomaniacs") in the early 20thC were because of King's tireless work and innovation. Like Pasteur, Lister or the Curies, we owe him a lot we take for granted. It's fascinating to read how much was known and understood back then and how it keeps getting recycled as new information every generation. You NZers should be more proud of the man, he did great things here and all over the world.
Other titles: Kelly Tyler Lewis The Lost Men: The Harrowing Saga of Shackleton's Lost Sea Party which shows up one of my childhood heroes to be a complete fuckwit.
Not yet read: Corvus: a Life With Birds by Esther Woolfson, who writes about a pet crow, relevant to me as I had a pet crow named Barkley when I was a kid. You don't have crows here, but you have Tuis, which I believe are just fancy crows. I'm also looking forward to O.E. Middleton's Beyond the Breakwater. He is a terrific writer in who hits the same notes as Raymond Carver, but Middleton is still with us.
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You don't have crows here, but you have Tuis, which I believe are just fancy crows.
Apart from anything else, the difference in sound is noticeable.
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You don't have crows here, but you have Tuis, which I believe are just fancy crows.
Apart from anything else, the difference in sound is noticeable.
Well, yes they sound fancier than crows. Tuis have, besides beautiful blue-green iridescent tints in their feathers, a strict adherence to white-tie, and a beautiful melodic song... which is occasionally punctuated by a coarse, crow-like squawk that betrays their true feathers. They are crows alright, but crows with airs. Maybe ornithologists and geneticists would disagree, but I know a crow when I meet one.
On closer inspection the book I got for Christmas and have not yet read is about a rook and a magpie, not a crow.
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