Blog Archives

Accessible field guide

27/12/2019

Volcanoes of Auckland: A Field Guide
by Bruce W. Hayward
Aerial photography by Alastair Jamieson

Often in chatting with on-line international friends I mention I live in a city built on a volcanic field and actually live on the boundaries of one of the many volcanoes dotted on the landscape. It is a quick and interesting factoid to engender conversation and while there are many ways of describing Auckland to an overseas acquaintance this quickly recognises and celebrates the uniqueness of the landscape.
Beyond that, what do I know about the volcanic history, the likelihood of future volcanic activity or even the location and scale of the volcanic field? It transpires not as much as I thought.
Volcanoes of Auckland is a very accessible field guide (to slip in a backpack?) and through the use of many maps, diagrams and photos gives you an easy method to appreciate or locate an interesting associated geological feature. My lunch-breaks from work has had me trotting around the Auckland Domain locating volcanic bombs, recognising tuff rings and lava flows – certainly an enriching walk.
My recommendation is to go straight to the section on your favourite or local volcano and read from there as I found the first section rather technical and heavy to read – but useful to dip into when you want/need to.
As to the illustrations and photos – quite simply, there’s an engaging and comprehensive collection of imagery with my favourites being the historical photos showing old pumphouses, paddle-steamers, previous land use or views of an uncluttered Auckland.
The structure of the book is well thought out and the illustrations add to the content giving this book "pickup and browse readability" – qualifying it for a place to sit casually on your coffee table or as a gift for someone else.
I am enjoying reading this book and look forward to pulling it out when circumstance or choice provides me with a chance to explore or reacquaint myself to other parts of my city.

Review by Si Burke

Title: Volcanoes of Auckland: A Field Guide
Author: Bruce W. Hayward
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781869409012
RRP: $49.99
Available: bookshops

Comments

Vibrant imagery in compilation

19/12/2019

Comments

Words of a Kaumātua
by Haare Williams,
Witi Ihimaera (ed)

Tēna koe mō tēnei taonga Haare. Ka nui te pai tāu whakaaro pūkōrero, tāu mōhiotanga hōhonu, tāu whakaute mō te tikanga Māori.
I have always enjoyed the literary excursions of Haare Williams. I have in front of me, for example, Pacific Moana Quarterly of April 1978, in which there are two fine poems by him, namely Totara Tree with its dedication to the interconnectivity of land and life; and Taupo-Nui-a-Tia, with its depiction of co-operative joy overcoming all exigencies.
So, reading this new, rather thick (260 pages, sectioned into four interrelated compartments) compilation of the thoughts of this respected Māori elder – as expressed in both prose and poetry and as shared between two reo – makes my heart feel warm. Because the self-same themes continue to flow unabated.
Here is a humble man who is never reluctant to pointedly address the historic and continued contemporaneous plight of ngā iwi Māori katoa, but is always at the same time, often within the same piece, enunciating so assuredly the force of wairua running through all living entities. Indeed, these two apparently polar aspects are in fact all part of a wider and holistic Māori metaphysic, which is ingrained in Williams’ very being, moulded as it was by his upbringing, his tipuna, his ‘Grans.’ As Witi Ihimaera so cogently puts it on the back cover, ‘we are privileged to obtain the wisdom of a Māori elder of the old school.’ Tika tēnei kōrero.
Trampling on indigenous land rights by ignoring the precepts of Waitangi, for example, was tantamount to killing what surrounds us all: ngā manu, ngā ika, ngā kararehe, ngā ngarehe – all life, including ourselves. Inauthenticity breeds breakdown of our existential balance. Williams does concede that the situation for Māori is improving steadily, but stresses that there remains a long route ahead for everyone in this country. He notes sagely,
‘Māori have since then peacefully remonstrated against the looting of a heritage by invaders who feigned piety and righteousness over a giving people who had an intrinsic generosity of spirit and who once controlled their lands and resources. After many, many years, that’s now beginning to change – not quantum leaps forward – but there have been incremental gains in the evolution of the nation towards maturity and securing a peaceful future’ (from What is Māori Education or Mātauranga Māori? p. 199.)
He writes well. His many and varied prose pieces remain cogent and concise, as in the abovementioned example. His poetry, in both tongues and as sometimes conveyed via shape/concrete verse, is full of vibrant and visceral imagery, as well as wit and expressions of wonder at the gift of Nature, of reverence for Creation. As combined succinctly here –
Our nation was born
in the bosom of the ocean
where the sea leans
on the land
(from Ngā Waiata o Tangaroa, p. 46.)
As I noted in my introduction: this book is a treasure, a warm stream that flows prolifically; a mystic current to plunge into at any bend. Refreshing and rewarding; resilient and real.
As here -
‘Isn’t it time we pensioned off the old celebrations that came from another hemisphere to Aotearoa and celebrate instead something like Matariki which is closer and more accessible to us all?’
(from The Seven Stars of Matariki p. 241.)
Whakarongo ki te manu kōpara? (Listen to the kōpara bird.)
Indeed.

Review by Vaughan Rapatahana

Title: Words of a Kaumātua
Author: Haare Williams; Witi Ihimaera (ed)
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781869409043
RRP: $49.99
Available: bookshops

Comments

Elegant writing in journey through Sounds

12/12/2019

Comments

Passion - Living, Feasting and Writing deep in the Marlborough Sounds
by Marion Day

This is a book it would be easy to fall in love with. It is beautiful, well presented and could take pride of place on anyone’s coffee table. That should be obvious to anyone who idly flips though the delightful picture-pages. The same is true of many coffee table books. But this book contains so much more.
The first thing readers will notice is the elegance of the writing. The sentences are well constructed and the original metaphors and similes used by the author result in a fresh style of writing that compels further reading.
It wouldn’t be wrong to say the book is set in the heart of the Marlborough Sounds; but I think it would be more correct to say the Marlborough Sounds are set in the heart of the author and she’s sharing her heart with her readers. She takes us on a journey into her life. Arriving as a bewildered, misplaced city-girl she becomes enveloped in the natural environment of the Sounds and eventually it becomes part of her psyche.
The book takes us on several journeys. From her base in Clova Bay she exposes some of the characters and events that contributed to the mood and story of the Sounds. From there she invites us to “Roam the Land” where we visit the places where the ancestors tugged at nature’s strands and discovered the world was attached to the other end. Eventually their endeavours merged with the spirit of the Sounds. Along with this merger the author provides a bounty of rural recipes that emanate from the hills and smell of country gardens.
The Sounds are a place where forests, mountains, ocean and sky amalgamate. Out of this marriage of nature the author next invites us to explore the sea and obtain a glimpse of the lives that cling to the rocky limits of the shore and hunt within its depths. She takes us on adventures through sea fog, sparkling days and into the depths of scallop beds searching for sea food and the delights of a multitude of recipes.
From the realm of sky she shares with us the birds that visited and became part of her life. From the mountains came tales of the hunting expeditions that provided rabbits, goats, wild pork and venison for the family table, to compliment the abundance of food from her garden.
Finally, we understand what motivated the poetry and prose that spilled out of her writing shack, the pictures that mesh so beautifully with the love she shares with her family, community and the natural world of the Sounds.
Writing as someone who also lives within the Sounds I feel I can whole-heartedly recommend Marion Day’s “Passion” and her “Living, Feasting and Writing deep in the Marlborough Sounds”.

Review by Peter Thomas

Title: Passion - Living, Feasting and Writing deep in the Marlborough Sounds
Author: Marion Day
Publisher: AM Publishing New Zealand
ISBN: 978-0-473-47152-1
RRP: $65
Available: Print book: on-line stores such as Mighty Ape, Fishpond; library providers such as Wheelers, All Books etc.; bookstores; website www.marionday.nz

Comments

Splendidly presented book a timely publication

7/12/2019

Comments

Pacific: An Ocean of Wonders
by Philip J. Hatfield

The title suggests that this book will feature picturesque scenery and the colourful cultures of the peoples of the Pacific. There are elements of these things, of course, but the first surprise is that it actually comprises a rare assemblage of maps, charts, drawings, etchings, paintings and diagrams by both European and American visitors to the Pacific and (much rarer, alas) by certain indigenous people (such as Tupaia from Ra’iatea) with whom those early visitors and settlers made contact.
Many of these illustrations are from collections in the British Museum, where the author is Head of the Eccles Centre for American Studies. They are an intensely interesting reminder that the greater Pacific was and is a region of immense historical, scientific, sociological, economic and strategic significance. On this count alone the book would be a valuable addition to the library of any who have an interest in this ocean we call our own. And surely that is, or should, be all of us.
  The second welcome surprise is that the illustrations are accompanied by thought-provoking mini essays on a wide range of topics. Underlying them all is the central theme that the Pacific Ocean is and has been much less a barrier to human settlement and inter-communication than a conduit. In this sense, the author argues, it is an ocean that “was crisscrossed by voyagers and traders long before the arrival of Europeans, and that housed trading and cultural networks which have ebbed and flowed over time.”
  It is also made clear, though, that the incursions that followed from European ‘discovery’ often had devastatingly profound effects, changing the nature of those earlier relationships and introducing a wide range of deadly new factors such as disease, firearms, rampant profiteering, proselytising missionaries, settlers and international rivalries. Some Pacific Islands (such as Japan) successfully resisted such incursions, at least for a time, while others, such as Tonga, were able to cling to a measure of self-determination through the colonial period.
  The author’s commentaries carry greatest authority when dealing with the North Pacific, but the Central and South Pacific also get due attention. For example, it is satisfying to be reminded of the arbitrary nature of the division of the islands into Melanesia, Polynesia and Micronesia. Regarding the western Pacific fringes, the author points out that Islam had spread to much of this area and become well established years before Spanish and Portuguese Catholics or Dutch Protestants arrived.
  Aotearoa/New Zealand gets considerable space, including a brief account of the tragic misunderstanding in the Bay of Islands between Frenchman du Fresne and the Ngare Raumati (rather confusingly referred to here simply as Ngare), this being illustrated by Charles Meryon’s dramatic depiction of the episode, held in the Alexander Turnbull Library.
  Among many other topics given coverage are the disastrous fate of the Aborigines in Tasmania, the annexation of Hawai’i by the United States and the notion of ‘manifest destiny’, the role of the Pacific in European literature, and current environmental crises arising from climate change and pollution. Regarding this last, the author notes that the people and cultures of the Pacific endure; but warns they will continue to do so “only if those of us in the wider world change our habits to reduce the growing list of new environmental dangers that face this ocean and its peoples.” Amen to that!
  There are some minor proofing lapses, but overall this is a splendidly presented book. It is also a very timely publication, visually fascinating and thought-provoking.

Review by Tony Chapelle

Title: Pacific: An Ocean of Wonders
Author: Philip J. Hatfield
Publisher: Bateman Books
ISBN: 978-1-98-853805-1
RRP: $49.99
Available: bookshops

Comments

Highly amusing story for younger readers

3/12/2019

Comments

Dawn Of The Zombie Apocalypse
by Lee Murray

This highly amusing story is suitable for younger readers because the zombies are dependent on electronics and not human brains!
A computer virus, unwittingly unleashed by Seb, ‘zombifies’ most of the town. Seb, his best mate, Darren, and Talia, The Prettiest Girl in School, are among the few left unaffected, so it’s up to them to find a cure. Seb thoughtfully takes on the added responsibility of his little sister, Ava, and Cody, the family dog. Seb demonstrates his caring nature, although his methods are somewhat unconventional, and hilarious.
Together the teenage trio face the challenge of looking after their zombie family members who are so engrossed in their devices, they are oblivious to what’s happening around them. There’s plenty of mayhem, antics, and unusual problem-solving as the teenagers seek answers.
Written through Seb’s point of view, the language is easy to follow, and includes lots of banter between the friends. There’s plenty of scenarios to interest tweens, like school with no teachers! A family-friendly story about screen addiction told in a non-judgemental fashion that will appeal to young readers and delight adults.

Review by Wendy Scott

Title: Dawn Of The Zombie Apocalypse
Author: Lee Murray
Publisher: IFWG Publishing International
ISBN: 978-1925956139
RRP: NZ$29
Available: Book stores and libraries

Comments

Accessible field guide

Vibrant imagery in compilation

Elegant writing in journey through Sounds

Splendidly presented book a timely publication

Highly amusing story for younger readers

FlaxFlower Reviews

Archives

Categories