THE GROOVE BOOK REPORT

Encompassing nearly 2,000 years of heists and tunnel jobs, break-ins and escapes, A Burglar's Guide to the City offers an unexpected blueprint to the criminal possibilities in the world all around us. You'll never see the city the same way again. Quotes from the book:  “Architecture is the “magic of four walls,” he writes, referring to its power to fundamentally transform how certain crimes are judged and how their perpetrators can be sentenced.” “For the burglar, every building is infinite, endlessly weaving back into itself through meshed gears made of fire escapes and secondary stairways, window frames and screened-in porches, pet doors and ventilation shafts, everything interpenetrating, everything mixed together in a fantastic knot. Rooms and halls coil together like dragons inside of dragons or snakes eating their own tails, rooms opening onto every other room in the city. For the burglar, doors are everywhere. Where we see locks and alarms, they see M. C. Esc...

We are not born readers, we learn to turn words into worlds. But why is fine writing lauded while excellent reading is ignored? In The Art of Reading , philosopher Damon Young reveals the pleasures of this intimate pursuit through a rich sample of literature: from Virginia Woolf's diaries to Batman comics. He writes with honesty and humour about the blunders and revelations of his own bookish life.  Devoting each chapter to a literary virtue—curiosity, patience, courage, pride, temperance, justice— The Art of Reading celebrates the reader's power: to turn shapes on a page into a lifelong adventure. Damon Young is a prize-winning philosopher and writer. He is the author of 7 books, including How to Think About Exercise , Philosophy in the Garden and Distraction . Young is an Honorary Fellow at the  University of Melbourne. Find out more here .

Tell the story, tell it true - charm it crazy "Sam has strong feelings regarding theories about New Zealand poetry.  He has strong feelings about academia and those who specialize in pulling apart poems, analyzing, theorizing, sumerising and surmising," writes old mate, Journo Colin Hogg, in this slim volume, compiled to celebrate 'our national treasure's 70th Birthday.  In other words, Hunt would hate this review.  Salt River Songs is Sam Hunt's latest collection of poems written over the last couple of years at his house near the salt rivers of the Kaipara Harbour.  It's a magical place to retire, if that's what Hunt is actually doing.  He's long lived near some kind of water or inlet and is most famous for his boathouse in Plimmerton.  As always his poetry reflects the rise and fall of the emotional and spiritual tides.  It's unflinchingly honest, elegiac and sometimes quiet moving.  The themes are familiar - friends (especially childhood m...

This book is a unique take on our Rugby history.  Sure the amount of published literature on our early sports years is dominated by Rugby but, as I found out when writing my own Honors Thesis many year's ago it was the great leveler, bringing men of all walks of life and class together.  It was also the sport that saw the most players enlist during the Great War.  The book is a sort of encyclopedia of players running in the chronological order of enlistment, starting with Sergeant Frederick Harold 'Skin' Masters who fought in the war and later went on to play for New Zealand in 1922.  Others, though joined after or during their All Black careers and many had potentially great careers cut short, just like many of their contemporaries.   Frederick Harold Masters MM (20 December 1895 – 27 May 1980) was a New Zealand rugby union player. A lock, Masters represented Taranaki at a provincial level, and was a member of the New Zealand ...