Fires - Essays, Poems, Stories by Raymond Carver

$20.00 NZD

Category: Hardback fiction | Reading Level: good

More than sixty stories, poems, and essays are included in this wide-ranging collection by the extravagantly versatile Raymond Carver. Two of the stories--later revised for What We Talk About When We Talk About Love--are particularly notable in that between the first and the final versions, we see clear ly the astounding process of Carver's literary development. ...Show more

Surfacing by Kathleen Jamie

$16.00 NZD

Category: Essays | Reading Level: near fine

An immersive exploration of time and place in a shrinking world, from the award-winning author of Sightlines.   In this remarkable blend of memoir, cultural history, and travelogue, poet and author Kathleen Jamie touches points on a timeline spanning millennia, and considers what surfaces and wha t reconnects us to our past. From the thawing tundra linking a Yup'ik village in Alaska to its hunter-gatherer past to the shifting sand dunes revealing the impressiely preserved homes of neolithic farmers in Scotland, Jamie explores how the changing natural world can alter our sense of time. Most movingly, she considers, as her father dies and her children leave home, the surfacing of an older, less tethered sense of herself. In precise, luminous prose, Surfacing offers a profound sense of time passing and an antidote to all that is instant, ephemeral, unrooted. ...Show more

The Professor and Other Writings by Terry Castle

$20.00 NZD

Category: Literature | Reading Level: very good

From one of America's most brilliant critics and cultural commentators comes a collection of startling, gorgeously written autobiographical essays. [Castle] is a brilliant stylist, and everything she writes is gripping.--Edmund White.

The Spinoff Book by Toby Manhire

$18.00 NZD

Category: New Zealand | Reading Level: near fine

Five years ago, The Spinoff burst onto New Zealand's media scene with smart, screamingly funny and seriously relevant writing. Since then, it has enraged and inspired all the right people, respectably won Website of the Year at the 2019 Voyager Media Awards, and expanded into television, podcasts a nd now - shockingly - a book. Edited by Toby Manhire, it's jam-packed with The Spinoff's best work, along with full-colour artwork by Toby Morris, photography, collage, poetry and a clutch of new and exclusive essays. Simon Wilson, Jemaine Clement, Lorde, and Jesse Mulligan rub shoulders with Spinoff stars like Alex Casey, Madeleine Chapman and Emily Writes. From Shortland Street to sports, feminism to fashion and current events to Kiwi onion dip, this is an engrossing, original take on everything that matters in Aotearoa New Zealand in the 21st century. Featuring: Toby Morris Hera Lindsay Bird Leonie Hayden Mich le A'Court Ashleigh Young Lorde Jemaine Clement Alex Casey Madeleine Chapman Duncan Greive Simon Wilson Aldous Harding Emily Writes Scotty Stevenson David Farrier ...and more "The Spinoff is where we find stories no one else is covering . . . stories we need to hear." 2019 Voyager Media Awards Judges "Right now, every left-leaning, media-savvy, university-educated hipster you know (and probably their baby-boomer parents) is reading The Spinoff." Sunday magazine "Crap and a waste of our money." Mike Hosking ...Show more

The Evolution of Mirrors by Martin Edmond

$14.00 NZD

Category: New Zealand Literature | Reading Level: very good

Pen in Hand: Reading, Rereading and Other Mysteries by Tim Parks

$16.00 NZD

Category: Essays | Reading Level: near fine

How can other people like the books we don't like? What benefit can we get from rereading a work? Can we read better? If so, how? These and many other questions, ranging from the field of writing to that of reading and translation, are given a comprehensive answer in a series of stimulating and challeng ing literary essays that will be a perfect read for all book explorers and practitioners of the pen. After delighting us with his novels and many volumes of non-fiction, Tim Parks - who is not only an acclaimed author and a translator, but also a celebrated literary essayist - gives us a book to enjoy, savour and, most importantly, reread. ...Show more

Other Inquisitions 1937-1952 by Jorge Luis Borges; Ruth L. C. Simms

$30.00 NZD

Category: Essays | Reading Level: very good

This remarkable book by one of the great writers of our time includes essays on a proposed universal language, a justification of suicide, a refutation of time, the nature of dreams, and the intricacies of linguistic forms. Borges comments on such literary figures as Pascal, Coleridge, Cervantes, Hawtho rne, Whitman, Valery, Wilde, Shaw, and Kafka. With extraordinary grace and erudition, he ranges in time, place, and subject from Omar Khayyam to Joseph Conrad, from ancient China to modern England, from world revolution to contemporary slang. ...Show more

Tinderbox by Megan Dunn

$14.00 NZD

Category: New Zealand Literature | Reading Level: very good

Riffing on Ray Bradbury's classic novel about the end of reading, Tinderbox is one of the most interesting books in decades about literary culture and its place in the world. More than that, it's about how every one of us fits into that bigger picture - and the struggle to make sense of life in the twen ty-first century. ...Show more

The Mystery of Things by A. C. Grayling

$12.00 NZD

Category: Philosophy | Reading Level: very good

A.C. Grayling answers life's most important questions. In this new collection, A.C. Grayling extends the range of his previous two books to show how much understanding people can gain about themselves and their world by reflecting on the lessons offered by science, the arts (including literature) and history. The book's essays are divided into these three sections - The Arts, Science and History - and Grayling illustrates in his celebrated accessible prose what each area offers to thought. In doing so he covers subjects as wide-ranging as Jane Austen's Emma, The Rosetta Stone, Shakespeare and the Holocaust and the Brain. By extending the range of topics discussed, The Mystery of Things shows how far-reaching Grayling's masterly, and timely, commentary of the humanities is to the general reader. First published 2004. ...Show more

Adult Pleasures - Essays on Writers and Readers by Dan Jacobson

$14.00 NZD

Category: Essays | Reading Level: very good

Every Force Evolves a Form - Twenty Essays by Guy Davenport

$14.00 NZD

Category: Essays | Reading Level: very good

Guy Davenport demonstrates his unparalleled critical vision as he interprets art, literature, and culture In this collection of 20 essays, Guy Davenport applies his insightful gaze and critical wisdom to topics including modern art and the effects of the automobile on contemporary society. His work rang es from "What Are Those Monkeys Doing?" in which he links the paintings of Rousseau to the writings of Rimbaud and Flaubert, to "Imaginary Americas," a survey of the different roles America has filled in the imagination of Europeans. Davenport, 1 of the foremost American critics and intellectuals of the 20th century, brings his piercing intellect, encyclopedic references, and careful eye for detail to each piece in Every Force Evolves a Form. Whether writing on the philosophy behind modernism or a study of table manners, the paintings of Henri Rousseau or the design of Shaker handicrafts, Davenport always devotes his full attention and multi-angled analysis to the subject at hand. To read this thought-provoking collection is to see the inner-workings of Davenport's brilliant mind, with its varied fascinations and unparalleled insights. ...Show more

The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr

$14.00 NZD

Category: Essays | Reading Level: very good

Credited with sparking the current memoir explosion, Mary Karr's The Liars' Club spent more than a year at the top of the New York Times list. She followed with two other smash bestsellers: Cherry and Lit, which were critical hits as well. For thirty years Karr has also taught the form, winning teachin g prizes at Syracuse. (The writing program there produced such acclaimed authors as Cheryl Strayed, Keith Gessen, and Koren Zailckas.) In The Art of Memoir, she synthesizes her expertise as professor and therapy patient, writer and spiritual seeker, recovered alcoholic and "black belt sinner," providing a unique window into the mechanics and art of the form that is as irreverent, insightful, and entertaining as her own work in the genre. Anchored by excerpts from her favorite memoirs and anecdotes from fellow writers' experience, The Art of Memoir lays bare Karr's own process. (Plus all those inside stories about how she dealt with family and friends get told- and the dark spaces in her own skull probed in depth.) As she breaks down the key elements of great literary memoir, she breaks open our concepts of memory and identity, and illuminates the cathartic power of reflecting on the past; anybody with an inner life or complicated history, whether writer or reader, will relate. Joining such classics as Stephen King's On Writing and Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, The Art of Memoir is an elegant and accessible exploration of one of today's most popular literary forms-a tour de force from an accomplished master pulling back the curtain on her craft. ...Show more