1. (1) A Different Kind of Power: A Memoir by Jacinda Ardern (Penguin)
The former PM’s memoir, the first such account since Jim Bolger, tops the bestsellers for a second week, and is unlikely to be dislodged for some time. It also made the top five on Amazon and Audible, the New York Times hardcover nonfiction chart, and was a top seller in the UK and Australia.
The book generally found favour among reviewers, including Henry Cooke for the Listener. He thought it intimate and fluent, “compulsively readable, easily consumable in two or three sittings, and often very funny”, even if it barely explained her government’s policy decisions. “Ardernism was always more a sensibility than a full ideology. It was a way of looking at the world and reacting to it, not a theory of change.” Cooke says. “There are some hints, near the end of the book, that perhaps she isn’t so certain quitting was the right idea … There is little attempt to engage with the arguments against the latter half of the Covid period, when MIQ’s usefulness looked shaky and vaccine mandates radicalised thousands of people.”
Tracy Watkins, editor of The Post and Sunday Star-Times, agreed the book let us into some of Ardern’s emotional highs and lows. “We also gain some fresh insight into her own personal mechanisms for coping with such momentous events as the terror attack and Covid. But we don’t learn a lot more about what was going on behind closed doors within her government, which must, at times, have been under enormous strain.”
The Guardian considered it “an emotionally rich and candid read, [but] the downside of skipping the political detail is that it’s hard to get a sense of how exactly her astonishing early popularity ebbed away”.
Tim Stanley of The Telegraph was more acerbic, writing, “The practicalities of the job don’t interest her: this book hinges on how everything felt.” The natural disaster at Whakaari White Island and the Christchurch mosque killings “brought out Ardern’s best: authoritative and sensitive, she has a fine temperament”. But she subtly vilified her opponents, he says: “I am so kind that anyone who disagrees with me must be nasty; so reasonable that my critics must be nuts.”
2. (NEW) Leading Under Pressure by Ian Foster & Gregor Paul (HarperCollins)
Demonstrating the rule that rugby memoirs are a sure bet in the NZ books market, Ian Foster’s account of his time as All Blacks coach has leapt into second place in the bestsellers. I haven’t read the book, but I hope it goes into the – in my opinion – appalling way he was replaced as coach. Only super-retrospective refereeing stopped his team of All Blacks winning the RWC.
From the publisher: “Appointed as head coach 2019, Ian Foster led the All Blacks through one of the most tumultuous periods of the team’s 120-year history. Leading Under Pressure is a fascinating look into the pressure cooker inner-sanctum of the world’s most famous rugby team. With revelations about Foster’s time in the job, it also delves into the politics of rugby, and the events preceding the dramatic 2023 Rugby World Cup.”
3. (3) Whānau by Donovan Farnham & Rehua Wilson (Moa Press)
This illustrated pocket hardback, ideal as a gift, aims to improve your te reo Māori one special phrase at a time. Donovan Te Ahunui Farnham and Rehua Wilson offer up dozens of expressions, often with metaphorical or proverbial origins, such as “He toka tū moana” (stalwart) and “Kei mate wheke” (never surrender).
4. (NEW) A Dim Prognosis by Ivor Popovich (Allen & Unwin)
Ivor Popovich’s A Dim Prognosis opens with the horrors of the Whakaari White Island eruption. The hospital he was rotated to a few years into the job had the country’s mains burns ICU. Alongside a lively procession of cases he’s attended to, he notes, like all places, work culture issues, technology problems, tribalism, responsibility shifting. However, not all workplaces have people’s lives in their hands.
The book is candid on the ethical quandaries around patients, tactless and sometimes bullying senior doctors and the black humour of the trenches, but at the book’s heart is the stark calculus of a rapidly ageing population, medical advances, the public-private nexus and an improperly resourced health service: “Healthcare,” he notes, “is a zero-sum game.”
Popovich, who either kept a diary or has a remarkable memory, as he reports complex verbatim conversations, does offer suggestions on how to improve matters. Most involve more spending, but also better management, such as in caring for the many older patients who should be elsewhere – in care, rest homes, dementia units, hospices. Triaging these people to better situations would seem a major step forward.
5. (2) The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
A crop of new releases has bumped Catherine Chidgey’s much-praised latest novel – which tells the mysterious, ominous story of three boys in an alternative 1970s Britain – down the list.
“It’s a tense, compelling, genre-fusing book,” said the Listener. “There is the hint of submerged identity; of aspiration and prosperity, rubbing skins with disappointment and neglect; a preoccupation with what is authentic and what is fraudulent; the self and truth only dimly visible … Calling on the deeply rooted psychological power of the storytelling rule of three, the novel is divided into The Book of Dreams, The Book of Knowledge and The Book of Guilt. Three women, Mother Morning, Mother Afternoon and Mother Night, care for a set of 13-year-old triplets in an all-boy’s orphanage. There are three main narrative perspectives: Vincent, one of the triplets; the Minister of Loneliness, a government minister in charge of national care institutions known as the Sycamore Homes; and Nancy, a young girl kept in seclusion by fastidious older parents. This attention to pattern also coolly embodies the quest for order and control, the troubling obsession at the core of the fictional investigation.”
You can read Michele Hewitson’s interview with Catherine Chidgey here.
6. (5) My Matariki Colouring and Activity Book by Isobel Joy Te Aho-White (Scholastic)
A 96-page companion to Matariki Around the World from a couple of years back, it’s a colouring-in book based around all aspects of the star cluster, with activity guides, word puzzles, drawing tips and some recipes, written with a sprinkling of te reo Māori.
7. (4) Dr Libby Fix Iron First by Libby Weaver (Little Green Frog)
“The one thing that changes everything,” reckons the subtitle of the latest book from Libby Weaver.
Iron is essential for our health, and its lack is particularly common among girls and women. Menstruation, pregnancy and hormonal change can lead to iron deficiency, iron absorption can be an issue for some people, and it’s often a trial to eat enough iron-rich foods.
Weaver’s new book Fix Iron First aims to address this. As her website, which also sells iron supplements made from organic peas, notes that low iron doesn’t just make you tired. “It can alter your brain chemistry, slow your metabolism, impact your thyroid, disturb your sleep and lower your emotional resilience. It affects how you think, how you feel, how you show up in the world – every single day.”
8. (7) The Bookshop Detectives: Tea And Cake And Death by Gareth and Louise Ward (Penguin)
The bestselling Bookshop Detectives, owner of Sherlock Tomes, have another mysterious case to solve.
From the publisher: “In this rollicking new adventure, Garth and Eloise (and Stevie) must sniff out a prolific poisoner ahead of a vital fundraising event, the Battle of the Book Clubs. As time runs out and the body count rises, it seems the bad actors are circling closer to the people and places they care about. Could Pinter, the infamous serial killer from Eloise’s past, somehow be involved? And when anyone could be a suspect, how can Garth and Eloise keep their customers, their small town and their beloved bookshop safe?”
9. (6) See How They Fall by Rachel Paris (Moa Press)
Sydney-set thriller from Auckland writer features a Succession-style family gathering in their retreat after the patriarch dies. Tragedy ensues and, as the Listener noted: “the gilded family will fall … Some of the family will fall by dying. By poison. Others by other methods: loss of reputation, loss of fortune. Those golden sands turn out to be quick sand which swallows nasty rich people up. You have to applaud.”
10. (NEW) Māori Millionaire by Te Kahukura Boynton (Penguin)
The publisher says the book “offers a beginner’s guide to healing your money mindset, building better habits for your money and life, and understanding how you can increase your income. Because no amount of budgeting can compensate for not earning enough.
Discover how to:
- Introduce small, life-changing habits
- Master your mindset to align with prosperity
- Get out of debt
- See real returns by investing in yourself
- Protect yourself with insurance
- Overcome obstacles to achieve your goals
The lessons in this book will teach you how to become 1% better every day — not only for you, but for your whānau too.”
Source: NielsenIQ BookScan – week ending June 21
