THE GROOVE BOOK REPORT

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...

I liked this story.  There's two main characters, apart from Moonlight. They are  Clara and Sophias Honorary.  The Great-Aunties invite the girls to high tea. The girls get to be fancy and dress up in 'twirly dresses' and they wear a fancy hat and amazing shoes.   But then the mischievous Miniwings get involved.  They like like the sound of high tea, too.  They want to hold those fancy china cups and nibble little sandwiches and scoff sweet treats.  But Clara is not happy with this!  The 'Mini's' arent invited, she says.  But they want to join in and they don't take 'no' for an answer.    This is the sixth book in the Miniwing series, and follows its predecessors as once again the tiny flying horses cause mischief and mayhem. This a template that they follow over and over. Along side the girls mentioned above the story revolves around the character Moonlight, who's a unicorn, and a pony that loves food - especial...

The shocking, and completely true story of blogger Cameron Slater known as Whale Oil and his systematic online attack of Auckland businessman Matt Blomfield. In May 2012 Auckland businessman Matt Blomfield found himself the target of a vicious online attack, the work of Whale Oil blogger Cameron Slater. The attack came out of the blue, destroying Blomfields reputation and career, stealing his identity, turning him into a social outcast. Two years after the online attack began an armed gunman came to Blomfields house and tried to kill him. He only survived because the intruders shotgun misfired. But Matt Blomfield decided to fight back. He spent seven years and many hundreds of thousands of dollars taking a defamation case against Slater, which he ultimately won, establishing that Slater's vendetta was based entirely on lies. This book is a remarkable piece of investigative writing, a story of courage and tenacity, which reminds us how important it is to stand up to bullies, and ...

Harry Josephine Giles Wellington's Verb Festival, including the legendary LitCrawl begins tommorrow with a gala performance. Celebrate the start of Verb Festival with a trip into the unanswerable question of “what is the essential struggle”? Verb authors offer ideas that will take us from the personal to the political, the beautiful and the ludicrous, so prepare for a multi-faceted journey to the heart of it all. Speakers include: Nadine Anne Hura, Sarah Moss (UK), Sinéad Gleeson (Ireland), D. Nandi Odhiambo (Africa/Canada), Nick Ascroft, Eamonn Marra, Rijula Das, Harry Giles (Orkney), Duncan Sarkies. Grab a drink and meet the authors afterwards. Hosted by Mark Amery. There's heaps more to see over the next few days so check out the full line up here https://www.verbwellington.nz