#New Zealand literature

[gennsoup]

It was so easy. Now that you had slept, everything was easy. It was as though you had been walking in a lead casing, and now you were free.

Tamsyn Muir, Harrow the Ninth

[have-you-read-this-short-fiction]

[aroundmesitsthenight]

"[...] feel sad and full of love."

Katherine Mansfield, from 'Late at Night', first published in 1917.

[illustration-alcove]

Studio Muti’s illustrated book covers for Ashling McCarthy’s The Poacher’s Moon Crime series.

[aroundmes1tsthen1ght]

"Why am I not writing too? Why, feeling so rich, [...], do I not begin? If only I have the courage to press against the stiff swollen gate all that lies within is mine; why do I linger for a moment?"

Katherine Mansfield, from a diary entry written in 1916, featured in 'Complete Works of Katherine Mansfield' (published in 2012)

[shortskirtsandsarcasm]

Birnam Wood Review

The contemporary answer to Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang

Eleanor Catton has a beautiful writing style and Birnam Wood is the contemporary answer to Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang. Books set in New Zealand are not often popular abroad and I was glad to be able to get my hands on one. I have had Catton’s Booker Prize winner The Luminaries on my list for years now and I was lucky enough to get Birnam Wood through Netgalley.

For the full review of this title, see my Medium page and my website.

Photo by Matthew Smith on Unsplash

[in-sufficientdata]

A bilingual book about the Māori creation story has won the highest accolade in children's literature.

Te Wehenga: The Separation of Ranginui and Papatūānuku by Motueka writer Mat Tait (Ngāti Apa ki te rātō) won the Margaret Mahy Book of the Year Award at New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults held at Wellington's Pipitea Marae.

Te Wehenga simultaneously tells the Māori creation pūrākau, which explains the beginning of the world, in te reo Māori and English.

[elleselanguitsansfin]

fabulously successful quick book shopping trip at the piggery second hand bookstore in whangarei! we were in a hurry so I didn't get to browse through all the sections but I still got a collection of russian plays, the prophet by kahlil gibran, selected verse from baudelaire, some seneca, and a textbook on historical linguistics (of which one of the authors was from the university of waikato, reminding me that sometimes things do actually happen in new zealand). very satisfied!!

[arconinternet]

Children of the Dog Star (Book, Marie Stuttard, 1984)

You can read it here. You can watch the 1984 New Zealand TV series here.

The series features the 1982 arcade game The Pit, which I posted about here. If in-browser emulation still isn't working, you can get the C64 version's .d64 file from here and play it in this alternate in-browser emulator. Fixing the controls is a lot easier in that one - just click the arrows between the two nine-pin ports at the bottom of the window.

[moonriver0312]

It is always:

"You are full of surprises"

But never:

(A Little Life, Part 5, Chapter 2, pg. 605 - Hanya Yanagihara)

[sapphia]

i used to think playing dr with your own psych meds in a funded health system was reckless. then i got treated by our public psychiatrists and actually it’s the only safe way to do it

[gennsoup]

I have more faith in you than I have ever had in mere gods

Phil Kawana, Songs for my children

[have-you-read-this-short-fiction]

"The Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex" is available to read here

[leavemeslowly]

I have just read that the new „East of Eden” is filmed in New Zealand and I think it is hilarious given that the novel takes place in California

[canadachronicles]

"Let us put awhile away All the cares of work-a-day, For a golden time forget, Task and worry, toil and fret, Let us take a day to dream In the meadow by the stream. We may lie in grasses cool Fringing a pellucid pool, We may learn the gay brook-runes Sung on amber afternoons, And the keen wind-rhyme that fills Mossy hollows of the hills. Where the wild-wood whisper stirs We may talk with lisping firs, We may gather honeyed blooms In the dappled forest glooms, We may eat of berries red O'er the emerald upland spread. We may linger as we will In the sunset valleys still, Till the gypsy shadows creep From the starlit land of sleep, And the mist of evening gray Girdles round our pilgrim way. We may bring to work again Courage from the tasselled glen, Bring a strength unfailing won From the paths of cloud and sun, And the wholesome zest that springs From all happy, growing things."

--A Day Off, Lucy Maud Montgomery.

Any day spent with my girl feels like a day off, even when I must leave her for a few hours to work. But travelling with her around North Island these past few days, proper days off, has been sheer bliss!

[aroundmes1tsthen1ght]

"I believe in immortality because he is not here, and I long to join him."

Katherine Mansfield, from a diary entry dated October 29th 1915, featured in 'Complete Works of Katherine Mansfield' (published in 2012)