THE GROOVE BOOK REPORT

Children''s author Susan Diana Price was named in this year's New Year's Honours List. Supported by The Randell Cottage Writers Trust, the award was nominated by the Children’s Literature Association of Wellington.  Nor only an acclaimed writer but Susan was ultimately responsible for the existence of Randell Cottage.  Quite simply, were it not for Susan, the Randell Cottage Writers Trust would not exist. It was Susan who noticed her ancestors’ former 1867 home in Thorndon was for sale; who, with her parents Beverley Randell and Hugh Price, purchased it, saving it from property developers; and set about a painstaking rebuilding and restoration project with a view to preserving a small corner of Wellington’s colonial history.    While the building work was proceeding, a group of Wellington writers, including Dame Fiona Kidman and Vincent O’Sullivan, were looking for a suitable house in which to establish a writers residence. The two projects coincided, and...

New Zealand is a land of quiet legends.  Like Eldred Stebbing, a man who was in many ways, in the vanguard of many aspects of our early recording and music industry.  He passed away 10 years ago, aged 88. Eldred Stebbing (1921 – 2009) did it all, and this wonderfully illustrated volume leaves little of his empire untold. In nine chronological chapters, with stories and references going as far back in time as Eldred’s great-grandfather (a German imigrant of the mid-1800s).  There are separate but intersecting sound business paths of Eldred with mix with those of his brother Phil and local and early international business politics - these include Mercury Records, HMV, Benny Levin, RCA, Phil Warren and Harry Miller.  And plenty more, too. Stebbing at the Apras - Audioculture Stebbing was born at a time when air travel was only just taking off, the moving pictures were still silent,  and there were still market gardens around Avondale, where...

Melbourne-based but Wellington-born, writer, reviewer and editor Michalia Arathimos will be returning to her home city next year as the 2020 Creative New Zealand Randell Cottage Writing Fellow. Arathimos will be using her time at the Randell Cottage to work on her second novel,  Cartographia , which she describes as an exploration of place, migration and identity, through the eyes of a woman of Greek descent. Arathimos has published work in many places, including  The Lifted Brow ,  Overland Magazine ,  Landfall ,  Sport  and  Headland . She was twice short-listed for Australia’s  Overland  VU Short Story Prize and won 2016’s  New Zealand Sunday Times  Short Story Prize. Her first novel  Aukati  was published in 2017 by Wellington’s Mākaro Press. Arathimos holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Victoria University’s IIML and is currently fiction reviewer for the Melbourne-based  Overland Magazine . Sel...

New York Times bestselling author Karin Slaughter brings back Will Trent and Sara Linton in this superb and timely thriller full of devious twists, disturbing secrets, and shocking surprises you won’t see coming. This is Slaughter’s seventh novel featuring characters Medical Examiner Dr. Sara Linton and her boyfriend Will Trent of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent Will Trent (who came out of 2016’s book  The Kept Woman ). Sadly, this book is not a great read.  The plot is trite and unoriginal.  it goes that the happy couple are visiting her family in Atlanta when explosions rock the nearby University. The couple head down to the campus, encountering a multiple-car accident on the way. They stop to offer medical assistance and find that two of the accident victims contain armed men —two with gunshot wounds — and a very traumatized woman. Sara recognises the woman as the missing CDC epidemiologist Michelle Spivey. There's a huge and brutal fight scene ...

Here at the Groove Book Report we love Xmas and what makes a better pressie than a good book.  We also love music.  So what could be a better combination than a book about or by you favourite artist.  We've already covered off Elton's latest but there are loads more in the shops this year.  Here's our recommendations: Dead People I Have Known - Shayne Carter (VicoriaUniversity Press $40.00) Is Shayne Carter a legend?  We think so.  A musician that has existed on the fringes of our best music.  Skillful writer and producer of fantastically edgy, moody music. In his book Carter describes his life in music, holding our hands as we go behind the scenes and songs early teen bands like the Bored Games and Doublehappys, alongside his 'adult' bands - the infamous Straitjacket Fits and, of course. Dimmer. It's an intimate, almost avoiding history of the Dunedin Sound.  He refuses to specifically define how that distinctive jangly indie sound came ...

..... .. ... _... ._ _._. _._ (Morse Code for He is Back)  That's right, the Morse speaking, self appointed, agent and legend in his own lunchtime returns.  Off-beat and quirky as ever, comedian Rhys Darby delivers yet more words and more pictures in his second hilarious book for kids! In his first installment, Darby introduced us to Buttons McGinty (who is effectively a 12 year old version of the writer).  In Book 2, the character gives us more of the same nutty insights and oddball observations.  This time he's travelling through space and time... in search of his parents who are missing.  Well, presumed missing.  As with every McGinty story, we're never really sure.  Buttons and his friends enter a universe unlike any you’ve seen before.  It would be difficult to give anything away with out spoiling the plot but let's just say that this particular world could have easily fallen out of one of Darby's comedy stand up routines.  Once ag...

The 'Bitch is Back!' In print.  In his first, and only official autobiography, Elton John reveals the truth about his extraordinary career and life. Me is joyous, self lacerating, always funny, honest and moving. It's an almost impossible story of one of the most beloved, successful and enduring successful singer/songwriters of our lifetime. Elton John’s career has always been .  Over the decased there were two distinctive periods. There was Elton, the chaotic drug-addled, extravagantly dressed and ridiculously talented performer. This was the man that once wore a Mozart wig, a glittering baseball uniform, even a full Chicken suit! He even dressed in full feathers like a Vega Show girls.  The crazier the better.  His creativity was spurred on by a chemically enhanced confidence that made him belive that nothing was impossible - and nothing was too outlandish.  Reality and fantasy were one. And then there’s the sober, demurer, conservatively dressed fr...

Clive James - poet, writer, wit, TV host, reviewer and, oddly, climate change sceptic - has died.   Thoughtfully, he left us his obituary, which was distributed via a number of media outlets, including The Herald Sun He said of the obit that it "will serve as a cheaper obituary than anything most newspapers are likely to have in the freezer".  Click the link above to read it in full. Clive James died at home in Cambridge on Sunday 24th November 2019.

Author, Editor and Novelist Ian Cross, defender of public radio and television and one-time editor of The Listener, died on 2 November 2019. Broadcaster once described as "a sullen old f...wit", measured as a stalwart of the old guard.  But Holmes was so very wrong.  Ian Robert Cross CMG (6 November 1925 – 2 November 2019) was a New Zealand novelist, journalist and administrator, and contributed significantly to New Zealand letters. His first novel,  The God Boy , was released in 1957 to critical acclaim. Later novels are  The Backward Sex  (1959),  After ANZAC Day  (1961) and  The Family Man  (1993). Cross was born in Masterton and educated at Wanganui Technical College. He was a newspaper reporter from 1943 to 1956, including at The Dominion (1943–1947 and chief reporter 1951–1956), the Panamá América (1947–1949) and the Southern Cross(the Labour Party newspaper, 1949–1950)...

"I am so happy to be returning to New Zealand, where I have spent much time in the past, and where readers have always been so warm and welcoming." Margaret Atwood FANE presents In Conversation with Margaret Atwood live on stage across New Zealand in collaboration with Andrew Kay, Phil Bathols and BBC Studios Australia. The dates are a celebration of the global publication of The Testaments, Atwood’s highly anticipated sequel to her seminal work,  The Handmaid’s Tale .   The evening will also feature Atwood’s remarkable career, her diverse range of works and why she has returned to the fictional world of Gilead 34 years later. This momentous touring event commences in Wellington on February 10, 2020 and travels to Auckland and Christchurch. Tickets pre-sales will commence at 12noon on Monday 25 November with the general public on sale confirmed for 12noon on Friday 29 November...

A brother and sister team like to stay with their grandmother.  It's all great - until he wicked cat comes on the scene.  This bedraggled moggy drags all things horrible, gross and frightful through the cat door each night of the week.  Monday, there's bugs crawling, and rambling -and a hedgehog and an enormous, dead, rat; Grandma is freaking! “When we woke up on Tuesday / got dressed and ran downstairs / we found our troubled grandma tearing out her hair.”  Downstairs are bats, mice, lizards, ants, and someone's gross undies! And then there's Wednesday!  Grandma's “pointing at the kitchen and looking very grim." Snakes, fat gangly maggots, creepy spiders, dead birds, and very angry weasel.  And so  it goes - all week! More and more horrible visitors came in through the flap!  It's a complete nightmare.  Anybody else would have strangled puss by now! By the end of the week our two are just too terrified to venture into the kitchen,....

Mini Whinny, the mischievous little horse, plans to escape her annoyingly perfect stable neighbour! Goody Four-Shoes is the best … at everything. She’s graceful. She can jump really, really high. And her mane is too perfect. Mini Whinny doesn’t like her. Not one little bit. So naughty little Mini Whinny decides to run away. Another adorable story of horsey friendship from internationally bestselling Kiwi author Stacy Gregg and talented illustrator Ruth Paul. A great little story, with a moral about how to tame that green eyed monster, jealousy.  Emily, my youngest, enjoyed this one.  She told me how the story subty introduced the idea of not judging on first appearances.  Goody Four-Shoes is the new horse on the block and being perfect at everything, Mini Whinny feels threatened.  She feels like she is no longer going to be liked as she was before.  It's all a myth of course.  But she soon learns that it's actually the new comer who's looking to fit in...

"Wonky Donkey had a child, It was a little girl, HEE HAW! She was cute and small.  She was a Dinky Donkey." We were promised an offspring from Craig Smith and Katz Cowley's famous creation and here she is! Yes, indeed our beloved Wonkey Donkey - a character that is now part of every young reader's DNA.  Kids, parents and teachers all know this cheeky, funny, quirky.  And so is his adorable (but equally smelly) protege.  No mention of a mother, interestingly.  It appears this is a father/daughter thing.  Our Dinky Donkey is a chipette of the old block. There's not a great deal to this, really.  More of the same.  Like the original, this book is a song, or poem that builds line by line, repeating each previous page, building by repetition.  A formula that works again and again.  Like her father, she has a musical bent (punky), and a dodgy eye (wink-tinky).  There's even a connection with her dad's hoofs (he's only got one leg)...

Late last week, at two special events held in the banquet hall at Parliament in Wellington, Creative Director Marnie Karmelita presented the programme for New Zealand Festival Of The Arts 2020. The programme has an extra special angle to it this time with three guest curators putting together mini programmes. Director and Choreographer Lemi Ponifasio has put together a range of music and dance shows such as Chosen and Beloved, a vast and spectacular reworking of Goreki’s Symphony No.3 Symphony of Sorrowful Songs and Jerusalem written by Ponifasio and inspired by the great Middle Eastern Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said Esber). The second guest curator will be well known to music fans and art fans alike. Laurie Anderson made her mark in the mid-80’s with avant garde pop such as Language Is A Virus and the boundary smashing O Superman . She’s worked with Kronos Quartet, Philip Glass and Lou Reed. One of her works at the festival, Here Comes The Ocean, is a concert that interprets Reed’...

Former New Zealand Poet Laureate and notable Pacific scholar Associate Professor Selina Tusitala Marsh ONZM has been awarded the Humanities Aronui Medal by Royal Society Te Apārangi for her outstanding creative and scholarly work which has had a profound impact in academic, literary and public domains. A notable Pacific feminist scholar and vanguard Pacific poet, when Associate Professor Selina Tusitala Marsh obtained her undergraduate degree in English from University of Auckland, she was the first Pasifika student to do so, despite Auckland's claim as the largest Pacific city in the world. She also found that little attention had been paid to Pacific poets. Selina has worked tirelessly for the last ten years to bring the voices of Pasifika poetry, her own and others, to the forefront Winner of the 2010 New Zealand Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry for Fast Talking PI (2009), Selina’s subsequent poetry books have also been highly acclaimed nationally. Dark Spa...

This from the Verb Wellington Team We are all set to start five days of festival.  From our  opening gala evening  showcasing international and Aotearoa voices, to  LitCrawl  on Saturday night, there are conversations and events about all kinds of stories and why they matter. Make the most of this gathering of writers coming from across Aotearoa and the world!  There's a digital creative writing challenge for you too... more below. Some practical information before your festival begins: It's cheaper to purchase tickets in advance. You can book online for ticketed events up to one hour before the event begins. Door sales will be available from 30mins before an event starts from our lovely Front of House teams (if there are tickets left). Cash and eftpos available.  If there are a number of things you'd like to see then ticket passes are very useful: You can get 4 tickets or 6 tickets for less and enjoy a who...