THE GROOVE BOOK REPORT

"Develop your own sense of taste and listen to your body, as this is the best way to identify what fruit and vegetables nourish you the most" - Pete Evans "Luke, I am your Father! Eat your Vegetables!"  Even the pickiest eater will be won over by crispy carrot fritters with garlicky yoghurt dipping sauce, oh-so-simple sweet potato waffles topped with guacamole and a fried egg or the oozy deliciousness that is eggplant parmigiana. Eat Your Greens also includes simple tips on: - increasing your family's veg intake for breakfast, lunch and dinner - buying and growing seasonal, organic produce - harnessing the health benefits of different veggies.  Earlier this year streaming giant Netflix was pressured to pull a documentary narrated and produced by celebrity chef Pete 'Paleo' Evans.  They had quietly released a show about the controversial ketogenic diet which features a number of people who claim (in the doco) that a diet high in p...

Who doesn’t love a decent ‘airport thriller’ by a big-name author? Baldacci’s latest offering, featuring a new heroine, FBI Special Agent Atlee Pine, delivers a tightly paced, gripping thriller with the promise of Agent Pine’s significant backstory to be slowly revealed in future novels. Agent Pine features all of the key characteristics of a leading detective: sad back-story with significant emotional distress? Tick. Loner with no real friends? Tick. Works outside the law when necessary to get the right result? Tick. Severe commitment issues? Tick. Inability to play nice with others? Tick, tick, tick. Ok, so there are a number of formulaic tropes being reused in this book. And, perhaps, not unexpected, given Baldacci’s prolific writing career. However, don’t get me wrong – it’s not a bad thing, especially if you just want to lose yourself in a good book for a week or so. Pine is an interesting character. Firstly, she’s tall. Really tall. And strong. Unusual, given most f...

Jennifer Andrewes The CoffeeBar Kid talks to writer Jennifer Andrewes about her own double life in France. Witty and winningly honest, this enthralling tale of the search for a new life – and ultimately a long-term home – is an elegy to the French village, a hymn to the simple pleasures of being alive and a siren call to step off the corporate ladder and experience the joy of life, come what may. Trading the monotony of everyday life for a complete change of scene in the French countryside is a dream for many. But it takes a huge degree of bravery, not to mention financial and career risk, to turn this fantasy into reality. Increasingly dissatisfied with the humdrum routine of corporate life, Jennifer Andrewes is one of the few who actually made this happen. In 2014 she and her family packed up and spent two seasons living in Quillan, a French village in the southwest region of France, nestled in the foothills of the Pyrenees. It wasn’t just any region as Jennifer di...

What would it take to prove the existence of God? This question and the consequences of its answer lies at the heart of Absolute Proof , the new international thriller from bestselling author Peter James. To provide absolute proof of a divine existence would trigger worldwide instability, with every one of the major faiths laying claim to such evidence by whatever means necessary. Promising intrigue, action and conspiracy on a global scale, this electrifying novel will have you hooked from the first page.

Head to the Wellington Public Library on Saturday December 1st, 1:30pm at the Central Library for a public talk and Q&A session on “How to get published”. There is a great panel for this exciting event made up of top industry experts from New Zealand’s publishing industry. Don’t miss this great panel of top industry experts from New Zealand’s publishing community, who will share with you all their tips, experiences and advice on how to get published. The panel comprises of: Mary McCallum, publishing director of two Wellington presses – established Mākaro Press and new The Cuba Press. The two presses cover fiction, poetry, non-fiction, memoir and children’s books through a variety of imprints, but she has a particular passion for publishing and editing NZ literary fiction and poetry as she is a novelist and poet herself. Catherine Robertson’s five novels have all been No.1 New Zealand bestsellers. Her fourth novel, The Hiding Places, won the 2015 Nelso...

From space, much of night-time Europe blazes in light, clear evidence of industry, urbanism and modernity but this was not always the case. Australian palaeontologist-ecologist Tim Flannery, author of The Future Eaters and The Weather Makers , (and, I might point out, discoverer of 29 species of kangaroo) turns his gaze on the oldest and most well-explored continent as if it was never looked at before. In his 'time machine' he flies us back through the centuries through nameless, numberless layers, to expose a chthonic continent. This is a place where tectonics churned, seas rose, dried and refilled, and centillions of alien life forms moved like urgent soldiers across an indifferent Earth “without form, and void”. This is a place where “darkness was upon the face of the deep”. The world’s first coral reefs may have quite likely have been formed here. The first moles sifted soil. The hills were made by snails, while the earliest hominids came out of Europe before humans cam...

The feisty writer, editor and publisher was responsible for such iconic characters as Spider-Man, the X-Men, Thor, Iron Man, Black Panther and the Fantastic Four  and many more. Stan Lee, the legendary writer, editor and publisher of Marvel Comics whose fantabulous but flawed creations made him a real-life superhero to comic book lovers everywhere, has died. He was 95.  Lee, who began in the business in 1939 and created or co-created Black Panther, Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Mighty Thor, Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, Daredevil and Ant-Man, among countless other characters, died early Monday morning at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, a family representative told  The Hollywood Reporter . Kirk Schenck, an attorney for Lee's daughter, J.C. Lee, also confirmed his death to the Associated Press. Lee's final few years were tumultuous. After Joan, his wife of 69 years,  died in July 2017,  he sued executives at POW! Enterta...

Booksellers, in my experience, are a very unique lot.  They not only live and breathe literature but they seem to be a special breed that demands respect beyond any other retailer.  If you remember Black Books , the TV show, then cast your mind back to the way the customers were treated with disgust and almost gleeful vengeance by the characters played by Dylan Moran and Bill Bailey.  In the show they almost never sell anything, going out of their way to prevent any book ever leaving the shop.  I kind of imagine this is the kind of bookseller we're dealing with here.  Given their attitude to customers, it's hard not to draw a bit of a parallel with real life Scottish bookseller Shaun Bythell, who takes great delight in his book at ridiculing his own customer base. Albeit, in a slightly less offensive manner. Take Mr Deacon, for example, “His dark, thinning hair is combed over his pate in the unconvincing way that some balding men try to persuade others t...

As with every year, Litcrawl has grown.  Now there is a selection of events that go on outside the actual 'crawl day', including visiting speakers, workshops and book launches.  But for those that want to do the crawl, then one must choose carefully.  The CoffeeBar Kid, camera in hand, chose 3 events: 1. Tasters  with Irish Poet Doireann Ni Ghriofa , Kirsten Warner ( The Sound of Breaking Glass ) Mystery writer Jennifer Lane ( All Our Secrets ) and author David Coventry  (The Invisible Mile) Doireann Ni Ghriofa Jennifer Lane David Coventry Kirsten Warner   2. In Memorandum (mourning the death of a beloved character) with Ines Almeida, Jane Arthur, Jerome Chandrahasan, Matt Powell and Emily Writes.   3. Aotearotica  with Laura Borrowdale, Zoe Higgins, George Fowler, Dominic Hoey and essa may ...

ESSENTIAL INFORMATION FOR LITCRAWLERS OUR HUB: LitCrawl's home on Saturday 10 November and Sunday 11 November is at Te Auaha at 65 Dixon Street (in the heart of the CBD). We will be there from 9am on Saturday with information, a place to buy tickets, print programmes, a lounge to hang out in and read and meet fellow Crawlers, and Vic Books who will have all of the books available from all of the writers in the whole festival... Come and see us! There are many events on at Te Auaha from 10am on Saturday and running all the way through until Sunday afternoon. You can check out the  programme online here . THE CRAWL ON SATURDAY NIGHT 10 NOVEMBER: Some tips from old pros for the Crawl which starts at 6pm and goes until 9.15pm: 1) If you're planning your Crawl around beverages... then you need to know that BATS bar is open from 5pm so you can have a pre-Crawl drink there (then you could go to  In Your Head  at BATS),  Crumpet  bar is creating si...