Books

There comes a time in your day, in your week, in your year, or in your life in which everything gets a bit harder, a bit less manageable, a bit tougher to face. These moments are inevitable, and they serve a purpose, especially if dealt with knowledgeably and productively. Rebekah Ballagh’s Note to Self Journal: Tools to Transform Your World is for those more difficult moments and can help you turn negative or unproductive habits and thoughts into positive ones by retraining your mindset and providing useful tools to overcome the rough patches.

Through various exercises, affirmations, and prompts, Ballagh creates an engaging, dynamic, and interactive system in Note to Self Journal that shifts your perspective towards balance and acceptance. The journal contains the building blocks to overcome stress, anxiety, insecurity, and self-doubt by offering concrete solutions such as breathing exercises, writing prompts, wellbeing trackers, and scientific explanations for our emotional reactions. The journal guides you down a path of self-acceptance by reinterpreting concrete ways to approach an often-abstract problem. Ballagh confronts the problem head on to find a way to fix it; as long as you’re willing to put in some time, dedication, and mindfulness.

Note to Self Journal is framed by tender and colourful illustrations and characters, adding a layer of exceptional aestheticism. With these guides and companions along for your journey, just flipping through the pages brightens your day and motivates you to become your best self.

Ballagh proposes ways in which to “respond rather than react,” encouraging us to be gentle, understanding, and forgiving with ourselves. The journal prompts us to practice the same compassion we would with others towards ourselves, and reminds us that we not only “deserve to be here and take up space”, but also that “[our] voice and [our] needs matter.” Note to Self Journal is calming, it is forgiving, and it provides a safe space for anyone who needs a moment of self-care or encouragement, because as Ballagh reminds us: “[we are] worthy of a beautiful life.”

Karachi Vice is not some cops and robbers jaunt. It’s a really interesting collection of stories about real people (some names are changed) who live in Karachi, and the different roles they play in their communities and struggles they encounter in doing their jobs. Plus the fragility of life that is a given. 

First-time author Samira Shackle is a journalist who was born in Pakistan but lives in London. She goes back at various times to report on events and see her family. At the start of the book is a very handy guide of the nine political groups, including five political parties. There’s a timeline of events spanning from 1992-2018 that includes terrorism, flooding, and political party activity. This was very useful as all I know about Pakistan is that the Black Cap cricket games to be held in Pakistan are constantly cancelled due to terrorist threats. And Imran Khan is their current Prime Minister and he was the captain of the Pakistan national cricket team in the 1980s, when I was lucky enough to get his autograph at the Basin Reserve. 

The central character is Safdar, an ambulance driver who was working during the 2009 bomb blast that killed 30 people. He earns his weight in gold during that upsetting event. His wedding is funny and I guess typical of that culture? There are huge cultural differences that may never sadly change – a 10-year-old girl marrying a man 25 years older.

The local newspaper has columns called Shootings and raids and Mishaps and bodies. Safdar’s father said “Getting a Pashtun [local] to follow instructions is like getting a camel to sit in a rickshaw.” This and “Grief enveloped Parveen’s mother like a shroud” are some examples of the colourful text I loved. The description of the places, people, culture, and food made me eager to visit one day if we can in a more peaceful time and post-COVID. Karachi Vice is a cracking read, and I highly recommend it.

During an interview about his debut poetry book All Tito’s Children, which is about Yugoslav Marshal, then Prime Minister, then President Josip Broz Tito, Tim Grgec was asked, “Would you have a drink with him?” Grgec’s response was intriguingly equivocal – which can only mean that his research of Marshal Tito, whose shadow looms large over the book, must have revealed more than most of us know.

Grgec’s paternal grandparents arrived here in the 1950s having fled communist Yugoslavia. He has woven some of their memories of two siblings in similar circumstances into a verse biography of Tito. Despite, or perhaps because of, the poet’s research, his poetic creation is only loosely based on fact.

That said, the verbatim quote from Tito to Stalin is startlingly actual. “Stop sending people to kill me!” is a command more audacious than most of the Russian leader’s contemporaries would have essayed. Other sides of the former president are displayed in both historical quotes and poetic imagery. For example, we get him “offering spare cigarettes from my military jacket to Belgraders walking leisurely in the parliamentary gardens”.

The idea of Tito being or having a body double offers a dialogue – involving a cosmetic surgeon, Prime Minister Tito, and Marshal Tito body double – that’s redolent with intrigue and possibility. No wonder his people were entranced, an emotion, though, that was eventually to turn to disillusionment.

Whether Grgec is relating the strangeness and savagery of this peculiar leader, or relating some domestic detail, his imagery is evocative. He describes his mother thus: “Majka pinched her fingers to thread the eye of a needle, patching and repatching her hopes over our trousers”.

The Company we Keep was a section that resonated especially with me, beginning as it does with a historical sequence of Tito’s life – useful to the woefully ignorant reader such as myself. Also useful are the scrupulously added notes and references that backend the book.

This is a scholarly work albeit with exquisitely expressed whimsy and nostalgia that lift it into the poetic realm.

Who knew there was so much more to Sharon Stone than her acting career? She had acted in 18 movies before Basic Instinct shot her to fame. All I remember about Basic Instinct is that scene. I forgot she was a psychopathic killer so I must watch it again. I learned a lot about Ms Stone. The first page captured me – a handsome doctor stroking her hair who said, “You’re bleeding into your brain.” On the next page she tells her best friend, “There is a very good-looking doctor here, and sadly I might not be able to flirt with him.” I thought this was funny and apt. Good for her in those horrible circumstances trying to cheer herself up.

She was expected to do chores from a young age – paint the barn annually, and at 10 years mow the two-acre lawn on a ride-on mower. Kids these days won’t empty the dishwasher! Her mother brought her up to stand on her own two feet. And she did and then some.

Stone’s done a lot of charity work, under the radar, including personally handing out sleeping bags to the homeless in the worst parts of town. She tells me this statistic: 10,000 children live on the streets in Los Angeles. Staggering. Stone helps them by giving the children a camp to go to and then getting their mothers off the streets too. She fundraises and gets her family involved in her charity work and is quite a remarkable woman who is extremely positive and grateful about everything she has.

The Beauty of Living Twice has given me a newfound respect for Stone and the way she lives her life by helping others. She gets more spiritual and becomes a mother at a late age, and that is the best thing that happens to her. There are men and marriages, but her giving back seems to be the best thing she can do to make herself feel good. That and loving her three boys.

I had at first thought the Meat-Free Kitchen looked and felt like one of the many cookbooks I have at home, and in some ways it certainly is. What stood out though was that each of the recipes within are relatively easy, most ingredients are already staples in my pantry, and for the odd anomaly, i.e. farro, a quick Google search was the only thing between me and a new untried and unheard of grain. Apparently farro is an ancient and complicated wholegrain wheat.

My hands-down favourite fare was the Spinach and Mushroom Pesto Breakfast Bowls. The delectable veggies and move away from my bog standard cereals that shall remain unnamed reminded me of our long-gone Japanese student and how he used to regale us with tales of his fish and vegetable breakfasts. From a healthy perspective and a ‘try something’ new perspective, I certainly can’t argue. Getting up and eating veggies was something new, but I liked it!

As I worked my way through the book, by no means cooking everything I must add, the goalpost for ‘favourite’ deftly moved. The Nut Burger was to me the holy grail. Simple, delicious, and full of nuts, it was in no way lacking from an absence of meat. Many of the Meat-Free Kitchen recipes feature nutritional yeast, another thing I found appealing. The Pepperoni Pizza Burgers were a winner with the youngest family member who thought it a hoot that a pizza was masquerading as a burger – not only that, they tasted great too. It forced me to rethink my definition of a pizza and a burger all at once.

The Meat-Free Kitchen has a whole section on sauces and there’s even The Better Mac, which I’m yet to try. What I love about cooking is that it challenges you to try different things, there’s always a bit of artistic licence, and if something doesn’t work, substituting ingredients and experimenting only adds to the creative process.

After escaping New Zealand via questionable means and surviving a harrowing experience in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Maia and her new companion Lucas find themselves in the soaking ruins of what used to be called California. While they’re a few steps closer to reaching their goal of the Old Arctic Circle, it isn’t long before they find new dangers trying to stop them.

In her latest entry of The Forgotten Ones saga, The Burn of a Thousand Suns, Webster has managed to ratchet up the tension by introducing newer and far deadlier threats than Maia ever faced in Aotearoa. Everything from the harsh deserts of California to marauding gangs in Los Angeles bring a new intensity that I didn’t feel in the first book. Everything in this broken new setting seems to want to harm or kill them by design.

Just like the first book, The Weight of a Thousand Oceans, the world is extraordinary and comes alive off the page. With the dangers ramped up this time, it’s nail-biting stuff. Every time Maia and Lucas found themselves in hot water, I was literally on the edge of my seat eager to see how they would find a way out. 

Maia herself has grown since the first book, and far from being the wide-eyed innocent she was in Webster’s first entry, she has evolved into a confident, strong character who takes on everything thrown at her. Her bond with Lucas (whom she met in the first book) continues to grow. They make something of a dynamic duo who complement each other nicely. I cannot wait to find out if their relationship develops even further than it already has in (hopefully) the next book. 

Reading The Burn of a Thousand Suns was a real treat and once again I find myself in that strange position of not having anything to complain about. All I can do now is sit back and patiently wait for the next instalment of The Forgotten Ones saga.

Anthony Doerr won the Pulitzer Prize in 2015 for his desperately moving wartime story All the Light We Cannot See. The novel remains one of my favourites of the last decade. And now, we have Cloud Cuckoo Land, an epic of 600 pages, beginning and ending with a Greek myth and, in between, five stories which cover wonderful journeys of fantasy and reality. All are linked quite simply by books, ancient and modern.

We meet Konstance, with her parents in a spaceship Argos already having travelled 65 years from a ravished Earth, much of her time spent in the ship’s library exploring legends and what may or may not be truth. Anna lives in Constantinople in the 15th century awaiting the Muslim Sultan’s attack while secretly learning to read. Omeir has been living in a farm with his family and his oxen but has now been dragooned to help the Sultan, as this young boy is a master at controlling Moonlight and Tree, his adorable oxen. Zeno is introduced first in his eighties at the local library in modern day Lakeport Ohio, where he is rehearsing with a group of young children a play called Cloud Cuckoo Land. Seymour, a young ecoterrorist, has a bomb on the premises and is preparing to target local estate developments.

Each of these characters may survive and relate, but what is certain is their common belief in humanity. All the stories are brought together in a triumph of textual brilliance by an author at the top of his achievements. Doerr uses the Greek and English languages with challenges to the reader that will, by turns, exhilarate and demand absolute attention. But books and their survival are central to this extraordinary accomplishment.

“For the librarians then, now, and in the years to come”, is Doerr’s dedication.

And, of course, the last acknowledgment is to his dear readers.

“Without you I’d be all alone, adrift atop a dark sea, with no home to return to.”

Get aboard.

There are times when my background in plain English gets in the way of my task as a poetry reviewer. Plain English – you know, words we all understand, some kind of discernible narrative line, conventional use of punctuation – that sort of thing. But when reviewing poetry, such a constricted approach has got to go out the window. This is decidedly the case with Sam Duckor-Jones’ new collection Party Legend.

What’s he on? I wondered as I blundered into his seven-pages-long first poem Party Legend. A few verses in, I wondered what’s he on about? And the answer is a blast of admiration for a piece of satire as amusing as it is devastating. Does its title give it away? Only if you’ve got an eye for puns.

Otherwise, do these lines help? “Vote for me. I’m from a very distinguished flame...I have a very relatable familiar regular story”. Party Legend is a sustained rant of contemporary relevance decorated with unlikely metaphors, tall stories, and shameless exaggerations – all of which enhance its satirical intent.

I’m not so full of praise for another long piece. The Embryo Repeats contains all the latest cleverness. Its featured character is a God scorned: “God is one of these creatives who gets bored quickly”. It also features invented words, esoteric abbreviations such as pbu (peace be upon), ampersands, slashes, and mystifying spaces in the text. It gallops along with a great deal of quirkiness and energy – and it’s unintelligible. That’s fashionable too though – and it’s the sort of thing publishers love.

There are explanatory notes to this collection – and it’s just as well. How else would I have known that Allemande in G by J.S. Bach uses “the lettered notes of the western octatonic scale in the order found in Bach’s Cello Suites”?

I’m tempted to accuse Duckor-Jones of showing off. But then I’m just a good old-fashioned fan of plain English and consideration for the general reader.

It’s been a long time since I was able to settle into a rich juicy novel, and Jillian Webster’s The Weight of a Thousand Oceans has helped scratch that itch. The story focuses on a young woman named Maia growing up in a dystopian New Zealand.

Having been raised solely by her grandfather in isolation, Maia grows up restless and eagerly wants to see the world and live her own life. When she hears something about the Old Arctic Circle, she decides to set off and see it for herself.

This book really impressed me. In a richly detailed world that has been knocked back to the literal stone age, everyone is just trying their best to survive. They all have their own motivations that make sense, and not all will have Maia’s best interests at heart. 

Webster has managed to capture the humanity of each character – their desperation, their pain, and their joy – wonderfully. Her writing makes them literally spring to life. They feel real and relatable, which added to my overall immersion when reading the book. The story is a real treat that had me on the edge of my seat, with Maia’s escape being one of my favourite moments (don’t worry, no spoilers here).

The standout is Maia herself. During the course of The Weight of a Thousand Oceans she goes from naïve and starry-eyed to a genuinely tough heroine. I liked her transformation, and in my opinion, it was natural and organic. 

Normally at this point I would list some of the things I didn’t like about the book, but here I got nothing. The entire story is so amazing, the characters are so deep, and the world they live in is well put together. With luck Webster can use the momentum she’s generated in this book and carry it over to the sequel The Burn of a Thousand Suns. Fingers crossed she can pull it off.

The striking cover of Tōku Pāpā, featuring author Ruby Solly and (one may only guess) her father in full traditional dress, lends itself to the depth and drama you will find beneath. Strong and powerful, Solly writes of her journey and her connection to her whakapapa then, now, and forever. Her poetry collection is loosly connected by themes, firstly awe (the strength and power of the soul) and secondly, kura (feathers; a glow; the colour red).

Tōku Pāpā is Solly’s first book – a multi-talented creative, musician, and writer, she is also the composer of the album Pōneke, featuring the soundscapes of Wellington. I could easily imagine this as a backdrop to her orated poems. Her words, beautifully crafted yet hauntingly stark, harness the fragility yet strength of parenting, and the relationships that hold for a lifetime. Woven effortlessly throughout is the presence of Solly’s father.

Through her poems I considered the elements of nature and nurture and what it means to grow up outside your culture and feel alienated or disconnected from it; or instead, to grow up surrounded by your culture, embedded in all that you are and all that you will be.

There’s a sense of the latter throughout Solly’s poems where her connection to her whakapapa and knowledge of where she came from was ever-present, despite growing up away from her marae. There is pain and sorrow around this. Enveloped in her voice is a longing, at times heartbreaking.

The beauty of her poetry is that the inane and the ordinary becomes startling, unique and imbued with wisdom and the passing of time. Solly’s lyrics immerse you, as if crossing generations.

“You buried my whenua at a motel”.

“When my brother is born you bury his on someone else’s mountains”.

Tōku Pāpā is a sweeping collection of poems that convey a sense of the ties that bind us, and of Solly’s connection and identity, nurtured by her father who showed up for her past, present, and future.

Lynda La Plante (CBE no less), aka ‘The Queen of Crime Drama’, has written her 45th book – Judas Horse. It’s about a gang of professional burglars in the scenic Cotswolds countryside who haven’t been caught in their very successful three years on the job. Enter Detective Sergeant Jack Warr to right the wrongs. Maybe I missed the description of Jack but I have no idea what he looks like. You know when you have a really strong image of how a character looks and then you watch the film and your vision is shattered? Won’t be happening here… but I digress. 

Judas Horse has the usual English PC plods trying to keep up with the big boys from the big smoke. The burglars’ crimes are set in the equestrian world with horse floats making excellent getaway vehicles full of stolen items. Hiding in plain sight as it were. There are wacky locals to work with and lots of egos in the police force that Jack has to deal with, including his own.

Some aspects of the storyline were implausible – like the burglars getting a horse to trample its owner. As an experienced equestrian, this would be difficult to achieve without a lot of training. Other examples are unarmed police taking on a professional and armed gang of burglars in the big sting. The police leaving the door open to make it easier for the burglars… thoughtful! The gang made mistakes by using another form of horsepower, driving expensive, go-faster red Ducati Streetfighter V4 motorbikes that should have stood out to locals and police alike. There is a James Bond-style helicopter chase which sounded fun, if not hair-raising.

I could put this book down easily, and felt deflated as I was looking forward to a gripping page-turner. La Plante’s Prime Suspect books, which became a highly watched BBC TV series, were great. But maybe because Helen Mirren was the star? Perhaps after writing 44 books the author is jaded? Or I am? The jury’s out.

A celebration of womanhood, Sista, Stanap Strong! explores ni-Vanuatu women’s struggle against sexism and misogyny in conjunction with Oceanian colonialism, slavery, racism, and independence.

Sista, Stanap Strong! is important for its reclamation of language, recounting, remembering, and rising above the horrors of colonialism and slavery. Stories and poems such as The bitterness of sugar cane by Losana Natuman recount the incipience of colonialism and blackbirding, whereas Dirty white by Jane Kanas portrays the lasting effect of 19th century colonialism in the 70s and 80s. Kanas’ story directly outlines the role language plays in colonisation, placing English in direct opposition to Bislama and native languages. Though not a direct act of physical violence, cultural, emotional, and psychological damage persist through modern day.

This anthology spans multiple generations of Vanuatu women’s perspectives, with writings ranging from teenagers to octogenarians. Despite the variation in age and experiences however, the perspective remains relatively unchanged. These women are nurturing and strong, trailblazers and keepers of tradition, culture, and history, and yet almost all of them encounter and are defiant in the face of sexism and misogyny. Whether it be domestic violence as in Is this real love by Roselyn Qwenako Tor or men’s insistence upon female inferiority in Mildred Sope’s recollection of the independence movement. “I was targeted and victimised cruelly... the priority was the boys... no more should my girls feel unequal, their rights and voices drowned by some people”, Telstar Jimmy’s voice proclaims in Their lives matter more. Every piece of writing in this anthology is about perseverance and endurance in the face of oppression.

Aside from its focus on universal feminism and female oppression, Sista, Stanap Stong! also presents the intersectional struggle of Vanuatu women in particular. Most of these voices have not been heard until now; they are empowering, they are strong, they are female, and they call for not only Vanuatu women but women everywhere to endure, overcome, and Stanap Strong!