THE GROOVE BOOK REPORT

What a fantastic idea!  Gregory O’Brien has given us a a hybrid collection of illustration styled paintings and meditative poems which is both challenging and refreshing. Through this little book you get a sort of visual artefact - a catalogue of ideas featuring twenty plus paintings punctuated with short, punchy prose.   The images remind me of poems remind paintings of painter Dean Buchanan's work, that sort of stained glass window effect, fragmented like a collage of interconnected elements that you to look closer and closer over and over again.   O'Brien owns this completely writing in the intro that his works have' less to do with their geographical referents and more to do with colour, tone, phrasing or maybe a faint thematic thread’. It's a vibrant, inviting, welcoming collection.   The title piece (is it a poem?   I'm not really sure) called ‘House and contents’, is drafted in the form of a diary or travel log.   It's a record of an aftersho...

This week's guest is author and scientist Laurie Winkless.  Her topic is stickiness. With every step you take, air molecules cling to you and slow you down.  And then there's the capillary reaction of  water. When you hit the road, she says, you rely on grip to keep you safe.  Post-it notes, glue, paint, fingerprints, earthquakes, ice . All of these, she tells us, are controlled by tiny forces that operate on and between surfaces.  'Sticky' is her new book, where she investigates this phenomenon.   In this interview, she gets into an in-depth conversation with CoffeeBar Kid about sticky-ness  and the challenges of science education in these 'sticky' Covid times.   Laurie Winkless is a physicist and science writer. A contributor to Forbes Magazine, she has worked with schools and universities, the Royal Society, and The Naked Scientists. Born Dundalk, Ireland she received her BSc in Physics with Astrophysics from Trinity College, and went...

'Above the Treeline...' is the essential guide to our alpine world by leading expert Sir Alan Mark.   Extreme temperatures, short summers and constant erosion make for vulnerable and uncertain environments for many of out native alpine flora and fauna.  Emeritus Professor at the Botany Department of the University of Otago Sir Alan Mark has studied  the incredible ability of the plants and animals that live in these harsh environments to adapt and evolve to these ever changing conditions.   A revised edition of his 2013 book 'Above the Treeline - a guide to the plants and animals of alpine New Zealand', has just been released.  And it's utterly fantastic!  It's an engaging and provacative survey of the natural history of ecosystems that live in Aotearoas alpine terrains.  It's more than just birds and insects.  It includes frogs, lizards and other invertebrates along side rare and common flowering plants.  If ever you needed evidenc...

The Writers section of the Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts has gone online this year, thanks to Omicron. Content will be available to watch until Sunday, April 3.  'Shows' are 45 minutes and tickets are available at festival.nz.co.nz (Pay what you can) Here are some of the highlights this weekend Patricia Lockwood - No One is Talking About This Patricia Lockwood talks with Pip Adam about writing this book. The novel/memoir/auto-fiction takes us inside the mind of someone who is intimately engaged in ‘the Portal’: the sudden shifts between ideas and subjects, the brevity of thought. Alison Jones - This Pākehā Life Courtney Johnson, Tumu Whakarae Chief Executive of Te Papa, speaks to Alison Jones about a lifetime of learning how to live comfortably with discomfort. Jones’ memoir has been met with acclaim across Aotearoa for its frank interrogation of what being Pākehā means. Margaret Wilson - With Conviction Margaret Wilson DCNZM reveals a lifetime of acting on convict...

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Ockham New Zealand Book Awards Judges have just announced ‘Surprisingly Diverse’ Shortlist - writing that reveals and reflects our changing world, a hallmark of the sixteen finalist books in the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. The shortlist, whittled down from a 40 strong long list by four panels of specialist judges (fiction, poetry, illustrated non-fiction and general non-fiction) includes both literary luminaries and first-time authors. “These novels are packed with life in an array of ordinary and extraordinary forms; they all swell with vitality. A Good Winter by Gigi Fenster is an unnerving and absorbing reading experience as the darkness gradually closes in. Bryan Walpert’s Entanglement is dazzlingly intelligent and ambitious in scope. Rebecca K Reilly’s Greta & Valdin is gloriously queer, hilarious and relatable, and Kurangaituku by Whiti Hereaka is poetic, intense, clever and richly imagined.”  Rob Kidd, the convenor of judges for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize fo...