Auckland Writer's Festival director Anne O'Brien. 17 April 2019 New Zealand Herald Photograph by Jason Oxenham
After a year of twists and turns, we're busy plotting our May 2021 event, with teetering book piles occupying every available surface at home and in the office. Into this milieu came the editor's request: could I write a piece on one to five books (up to me) that I'm
reading or planning to? Unsurprisingly, a festival reading list mid-stream isn't so easily corralled.
Two unforgettable books read this year are American novelist Sue Miller's beautifully crafted Monogamy; and the profound Memorial Drive: A Daughter's Memoir, from former US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey, whose mother was shot and killed by her stepfather.
From the current bedside selection, I'm dipping into Olivia Laing's Funny Weather: Art In An Emergency, in which this brilliant essayist deftly contemplates art's restorative and political powers.
Equally optimistic, although amplifying an urgent call to arms, is Hope in Hell: A decade to confront the climate emergency by Jonathon Porritt, son of 1967-1972 New Zealand Governor-General Arthur Porritt.
Near the other end of that decade, 14- year-old Miro Bilbrough is sent to live with her father, writer Norman Bilbrough, in a remote Marlborough Sounds hippie commune. Her memoir, In The Time of the Manaroans, is an intriguing account of an era and an ethos. As is poet and farmer Tim Saunders' account of a New Zealand rural existence in This Farming Life.
