Book sales up for holidays

Whether it's pulling out an old favourite sexy dog-eared blockbuster or turning page one of that new biography Santa provided, New Zealanders love a good summer read.

Booksellers and libraries report higher numbers of people wanting "a good book" over the festive period.

Whitcoulls national book manager Joan Mackenzie says fiction sales last week were up 60 per cent on a normal "vanilla" week. And general non-fiction sales were up by 50 per cent.

"Our fiction sales do tend to go through the roof in the late December early January period," she said.

Publishers tended to release a lot of books around Christmas.

"Very often it's a time people might pick up something they've been meaning to read or something they've heard about," she said.

Auckland Central Library assistant fiction librarian Karen Craig said there was a big increase in fiction novels being issued over summer.

More women than men seemed to borrow a stack of books for holiday reading.

"It's as if the men know they'll be off fishing, or stoking the barbecue, or painting the bach. It's the women who are rubbing their hands in anticipation of opening up a good book."

Bestsellers can be borrowed from libraries for $5 a week, and are a popular option for those who do not wish to buy.

Devonport poet Kevin Ireland says that as long as a reader is enjoying a book, it does not matter what genre it is.

"Some people are a bit snooty about reading," he says.

"And there is such a thing as good trash. Good trash is very good for you."

And on the beaches in holiday areas New Zealanders are turning the pages of a variety of books.

Mt Eden couple Timothy and Shereen Bell, both aged 37, were enjoying a good read in the sun on Papamoa Beach, near Tauranga, yesterday afternoon.

Mr Bell had picked The Eighth Day by John Case for "a light holiday read" while his wife was preoccupied with Bryce Courtenay's Matthew Flinders' Cat.

A member of a bookclub, Mrs Bell says she reads anything.

Matt Tilley, a Wellington primary school teacher, got Adam Parore's The Wicked Keeper for Christmas from his brother, but was finding it a slow start.

A cricket lover who likes biographies, the 23-year-old said he preferred Chris Cairns' biography, which the same brother gave him for his birthday.

On Whangamata's golden sands a range of paperbacks, novels and magazines were helping pass the day.

Jan Redma of Hamilton grabbed a chance to enjoy Woman's Day on the beach while her husband took their two daughters to the movies.

"I've got a book at home but sometimes you just don't feel like that. I didn't want to get too involved with anything too heavy ... "

On holiday from Melbourne, Heidi Hamilton says she always takes a good book to read at the beach. This year it is Patricia Cornwell's latest, Portrait of a Killer.

"It's really good. It's a true story about Jack the Ripper and how they have used techniques from the 21st Century, like DNA, to find the killer."

Murder mystery The Weight of Water was the choice of Matamata's Linda Brown. The Anita Shreve mystery tells the story of three Norwegian women who were murdered in the 1800s and of an American woman who tries to find out more about the murders.

Linda says the book is "quite different" from Anita Shreve's other novels but still just as good.