Making it so: New biographies and memoirs

Have you set a reading goal for 2024?  Are you looking for some inspiration to get you rolling?  Look no further than these amazing new biographies hitting our collection this month.  We’ve got everything from a star of the Star Trek universe, to legendary filmmakers, to our former Prime Minister to pique your interest.  Take a look at this selection…

Making it so : a memoir / Stewart, Patrick
“From his acclaimed stage triumphs to his legendary onscreen work in the Star Trek and X-Men franchises, Sir Patrick Stewart has captivated audiences around the world and across multiple generations with his indelible command of stage and screen. Now, he presents his long-awaited memoir, Making It So, a revealing portrait of an artist whose astonishing life — from his humble beginnings in Yorkshire, England, to the heights of Hollywood and worldwide acclaim — proves a story as exuberant, definitive, and enduring as the author himself.” (Catalogue)

Lies my mirror told me : a frank, funny, fearless memoir / Harmer, Wendy
“Wendy Harmer has had an extraordinary life. From being born with a severe facial deformity, to performing as a stand-up comedian, a national television host and then the highest paid woman in the cut-throat world of Sydney FM radio … Wendy’s tale of overcoming adversity is told with her trademark in-your-face frankness and celebrated wit.  In Lies My Mirror Told Me Wendy reflects on her life – one of the most unlikely success stories you will ever read.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Sure, I’ll join your cult : a memoir of mental illness and the quest to belong anywhere / Bamford, Maria
“Maria Bamford is a comedian’s comedian (an outsider among outsiders) and has forever fought to find a place to belong. From struggling with an eating disorder as a child of the 1980s, to navigating a career in the arts (and medical debt and psychiatric institutionalization), she has tried just about every method possible to not only be a part of the world, but to want to be a part of it. In Bamford’s signature voice, Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult, brings us on a quest to participate in something.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Every man for himself and God against all : a memoir / Herzog, Werner
“Legendary filmmaker and celebrated author Werner Herzog tells in his inimitable voice the story of his epic artistic career in a long-awaited memoir that is as inventive and daring as anything he has done before. Every Man for Himself and God Against All is at once a firsthand personal record of one of the great and self-invented lives of our time, and a singular literary masterpiece that will enthrall fans old and new alike. In a hypnotic swirl of memory, Herzog untangles and relives his most important experiences and inspirations, telling the full story of his life for the first and only time.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

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If You Would Have Told Me: New biographies in the collection

Summer is here and that means beach reads, holiday reads, chilling on the deck reads… all those lovely ways to relax and enjoy a good book.  This month we have some cracking good reads in our new biographies, take a look at these that have hit the shelves recently.

If you would have told me : a memoir / Stamos, John
“If you would have told a young John Stamos flipping burgers at his dad’s fast-food joint that one day he’d be a household name and that, at the height of his success, he’d be living alone, divorced, with no kids, high on a cocktail of forgetting, he might’ve asked, “You want fries with that?” John burst onto the scene in General Hospital, propelling him into the teen idol stratosphere, a place that’s often a point of no return. Whether showing off his comedic chops on Full House or his dramatic skills on ER, pushing the boundaries on Broadway or living out his youthful dreams as an honorary Beach Boy, John has surprised everyone, most of all himself.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

The stirrings : a memoir in northern time / Taylor, Catherine
“This is a story about one young woman coming of age, and about the place and time that shaped her: the North of England in the 1970s and 80s. About the scorching summer of 1976 – the last Catherine Taylor would spend with both her parents in their home in Sheffield. About the Yorkshire Ripper, the serial killer whose haunting presence in Catherine’s childhood was matched only by the aching absence of her own father. About 1989’s ‘Second Summer of Love’, a time of sexual awakening for Catherine, and the unforeseen consequences that followed it.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Wifedom : Mrs Orwell’s invisible life / Funder, Anna
“Looking for wonder and some reprieve from the everyday, award-winning writer Anna Funder slips into the pages of her hero George Orwell. When she uncovers his forgotten wife, it’s a revelation. Eileen O’Shaughnessy’s literary brilliance shaped Orwell’s work and her practical common sense saved his life. But why-and how-was she written out of the story? Using newly discovered letters from Eileen to her best friend, Funder recreates the Orwells’ marriage, through the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War in London.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

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Wandering Through Life: New Biographies and Memoirs in the Collection

Reading about extraordinary lives is often inspirational, intriguing, fascinating, shocking or outrageous.  Every biography or memoir has the potential to take you on a real adventure in it’s pages.  We have another month of new titles that have arrived in the collection, and have selected some for you below to try.

Wandering through life : a memoir / Leon, Donna
“From a childhood in the company of her New Jersey family, with frequent visits to her grandfather’s farm and its beloved animals and summers spent selling homegrown tomatoes by the roadside, Donna Leon has long been open to adventure. In 1976, she made the spontaneous decision to teach English in Iran, before finding herself swept up in the early days of the 1979 Revolution. After teaching stints in China and Saudi Arabia, she finally landed in Venice. Having recently celebrated her eightieth birthday, Leon now confronts the dual challenges and pleasures of aging. Wandering through life offers Donna Leon at her most personal.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Berserker / Edmondson, Adrian
“Ade Edmondson smashed onto the comedy circuit in the 1980s, stormed The Comedy Store and, alongside Rik Mayall, brought anarchy to stage and screen. How did a child brought up in a strict Methodist household – and who spent his formative years incarcerated in repressive boarding schools – end up joining the revolution? Well, he is part Norse. Could it be his berserker heritage? With wisdom, nostalgia and uniquely observed humour, Ade traces his journey through life and comedy: starting out on the alternative scene, getting arrested in Soho, creating his outrageously violent characters and learning more about his curious (possibly Scandinavian) heritage. With star-studded anecdotes and set to a soundtrack of pop hits which transport the reader through time, it’s a memoir like no other.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Astor : the rise and fall of an American fortune / Cooper, Anderson
“The story of the Astors is an extraordinary but true tale of ambition, invention, destruction, and reinvention–and of cunning, determination, hard work, hubris, infighting, and greed. One of the wealthiest men to have ever lived, John Jacob Astor first arrived in New York in 1783 and built a fortune through a ruthless expansion of his beaver trapping business, which he grew into an empire through real estate that enriched him at the expense of Manhattan’s poorest residents.  In this unconventional, page-turning historical biography, featuring black-and-white and color photographs, Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe chronicle the lives of the Astors and offer a window onto the making of America itself.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

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Those Long-forgotten Dreams

For those young at heart – to be reminded of the long-forgotten dreams of castles, ninjas, fantasy and the wild. This selection of books, with their well-designed book covers and thoroughly illustrated book pages, is not to be missed.

Over the hills and far away : the life of Beatrix Potter / Dennison, Matthew
“Matthew Dennison takes a selection of quotations from Potter’s twenty-three stories, with photos of Potter’s life and Potter’s own illustrations, to explore her creativity, personality and her remarkable and unexpected Victorian life. This dramatic narrative charts encompass her past with a love of animals and fairy tales into a bestselling author and canny businesswoman. This biography will delight anyone who has been touched by Beatrix Potter’s work.” (Adapted from the Catalogue)

Ninja : the (unofficial) secret manual / Turnbull, Stephen R
“Ninjas are Japan’s famous black-clad spies, saboteurs, and undercover fighters, equipped with superb martial arts skills and an uncanny aptitude for sneakiness, are the stuff of myth, legend and movie and comic pop culture. Ninja takes the reader to Japan in 1789, conveying the excitement, danger, and subterfuge of the period. Illustrated throughout with contemporary artifacts, documents, and prints taken from the historical original manuals, this lighthearted but informative guide demonstrate real ninja in Japan.” (Adapted from the Catalogue)

Tiny castles / Wills, Dixe
“Dixe Wills unleash his trademark style on the very first compendium of Britain’s most interesting diminutive castles. Praised by BBC Countryfile Magazine for writing “intelligently and amusingly, with evident excitement and imagination.” Beautifully presented, the book uncovers the country’s most compelling and now-standing castles. From Henry VIII’s beautifully preserved St Mawes Castle in Cornwall to Scalloway Castle in Shetland, many of these tiny fortresses occupy a unique place in history.” (Adapted from the Catalogue)

The fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm
“This beautiful hardback anthology is based on the Grimm’s popular 1857 edition and features 27 of their best-loved stories. The tales are accompanied by exquisite vintage illustrations from the past 200 years, including masterpieces from the legendary Kay Nielsen, British artists Walter Crane and Arthur Rackham, and giants of 19th-century German illustration Gustav Süs, Heinrich Leutemann, and Viktor Paul Mohn. Additional historic and contemporary silhouettes dance across the pages.” (Amazon.com)

Everything I need to know I learned from Peanuts / Schulz, Charles M.
“Collects Peanuts comic strips that present significant and amusing bits of advice on life, including how to make friends, the importance of perseverance, and how to appear intelligent.” (Catalogue)

 

 

Comics in Conversation with Literature: The Immortal Hulk – Part 3

The Immortal Hulk is the newest comic to feature Dr Bruce Banner and his green alter ego. Since the series’ debut in 2018, it’s become a massive hit with fans and critics. Written by Al Ewing and drawn by Joe Bennett, the series centres on a new revelation about the character: Bruce Banner can die but the Hulk cannot, which makes them, as the title suggests, immortal.

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks to this undead twist, Ewing and Bennett use the story opportunity to turn Hulk into a horror book. The newly-minted Immortal Hulk battles such terrors as radioactive zombies, paranormal possessions, city-destroying kaiju, the Devil, the legions of Hell, and — my personal favourite — Xemnu the Titan, a cyborg yeti alien who can manipulate people’s memories through smartphones.

The other unique angle to The Immortal Hulk is that every issue opens with a quote from a famous book or writer, chosen by Ewing to give thematic weight to each issue and something for the audience to ponder on a close reading. Below, I’ve picked out some of the best opening quotations from volumes seven to nine of The Immortal Hulk, and linked them to the works of their respective writers so you can find them in our collection.

If you want to read the comic first, you can order the first volume here or read it on Overdrive here. Check out the previous editions of this blog (Part One and Part Two) to read about all the references in the first six volumes. If you’ve read up to volume seven, reserve it here.

“And from this mind I will not flee, but to you all that misjudge me, do protest as ye may see, that I am as I am and so will I be” – Collected poems / Wyatt, Thomas

The quote that opens Volume 7 is the final line from Sir Thomas Wyatt’s poem, “The recured Lover exulteth in his Freedom, and voweth to remain free until Death“, a poem about defining one’s identity in the face of other narratives forced upon it. Volume 7 also introduces Xemnu the Titan to the series (who first appeared as ‘Xemnu the Living Hulk’ in Journey into Mystery #62 from 1960). The Roxxon corporation exploits Xemnu’s ability to hypnotise people through media like televisions and smartphones to make everyone forget the Hulk existed, including Banner himself, and plant a false memory in the public consciousness that Xemnu was always the Hulk. With the other personas of the Hulk locked up in Banner’s mind, it falls to the child-like ‘Savage Hulk’ to remind Banner who he is: that ‘Hulk is Hulk’.

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Reading the NZ Book Awards Longlist: Poetry

The 2020 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards’ longlist is here! Among the forty titles are ten works of poetry, all vying for the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry (won last year by Helen Heath with Are Friends Electric?).

This year’s list has a range of fantastic titles from both well-known names and emerging writers. The shortlist will be announced on March 4, so you’ve still got time to read them all, and we’ve included links to reviews so you can see how they’ve been received by critics. Who do you think should make the shortlist?

Under Glass / Kan, Gregory
“A colossal jungle. Two suns. The sea on fire. Under Glass is an ambitious new collection by one of the most exciting young poets writing today. Gregory Kan’s second book is a dialogue between a series of prose poems, following a protagonist through a mysterious and threatening landscape, and a series of verse poems, driven by the speaker’s compulsive hunger to make sense of things. This is a collection full of maps and trapdoors, labyrinths and fragmented traces.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Read a review of Gregory Kan’s Under Glass here.

Moth Hour / Kennedy, Anne
“In 1973, Anne Kennedy’s brother Philip was partying on a hillside when he accidentally fell to his death. Among books and records, Philip left a poem typed in Courier on thick, cream, letter-sized paper. Come catch me little child And put me in a jar . . . In Moth Hour, Anne Kennedy returns to the death of her brother and the world he inhabited. She grapples with the rebellious world of her brother and his friends in the 1970s; with grief and loss; with the arch of time.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Read a review of Anne Kennedy’s Moth Hour here.

ransack / ranapiri, essa may
“In ransack, essa may ranapiri addresses the difficulty of assembling and understanding a fractured, unwieldy self through an inherited language – a language whose assumptions and expectations make it inadequate for such a task. These poems seek richer, less hierarchical sets of words to describe ways of being. This immersive collection is about discovering, articulating, and defending – to oneself and to others – what it means to exist outside of the western gender binary, as takatapui.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Read a review of essa may ranapiri’s ransack here.

How to Live / Rickerby, Helen
“A new poetry collection that takes readers among ‘the unsilent women’, from Hipparchia to J. K. Rowling. ‘Women who speak have always been monstrous. That twisty sphinx, those tempting sirens; better plug your ears with wax, boys.’ Where are the female philosophers? Why are women silenced? Who can tell us how to live? In her fourth collection of poetry, Helen Rickerby takes readers on a journey into women’s writing, a quest for philosophical answers, and an investigation of poetic form.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Read a review of Helen Rickerby’s How to Live here.

Because a Woman’s Heart is Like a Needle at the Bottom of the Ocean / Wilson, Sugar Magnolia
“This is a first collection from a significant new voice in New Zealand poetry. Through fun and gore, love and monsters, Sugar Magnolia Wilson’s riveting first collection takes readers inside a world where past and present, fiction and fact, author and subject collide. Playful and yet not so sunny, these poems invite you in with extravagant and surprising imagery, only to reveal the uneasy, Frankenstein world within.” (Catalogue)

Read a review of Sugar Magnolia Wilson’s Because a Woman’s Heart is Like a Needle at the Bottom of the Ocean here.

How I Get Ready / Young, Ashleigh
“In her new poetry collection How I Get Ready, Ashleigh Young fails to learn to drive, vanishes from the fossil record, and finally finishes writing a book.” (Catalogue)

Read a review of Ashleigh Young’s How I Get Ready here.

Craven / Arthur, Jane
“Craven is an exceptional debut: Jane Arthur delights, unnerves and challenges in poems that circle both the everyday and the ineffable – piano practice, past lives, being forced onto dancefloors. This is a smart and disarming collection that traces the ever-changing forms of light and dark in our lives, and how our eyes adjust, despite ourselves, as we go along.” (Catalogue)

Listen to a review of Jane Arthur’s Craven here.

Back Before You Know / Edmond, Murray

Read a review of Murray Edmond’s Back Before You Know here.

Listening In / Edmeades, Lynley
“In this original second collection, Lynley Edmeades turns her attention to ideas of sound, listening and speech. Listening In is full of the verbal play and linguistic experimentation that characterised her first collection, but it also shows the poet pushing the form into new territories. Her poems show, often sardonically, how language can be undermined: linguistic registers are rife with uncertainties, ambiguities and accidental comedy.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Read a review of Lynley Edmeades’ Listening In here.

Lay Studies / Toussaint, Steven
“In Lay Studies, Steven Toussaint conducts an impressive range of lyric inventions, pitching his poems to that precarious interval between love and rage. With great skill and compassion, he depicts scenes of domestic life in his adopted home of New Zealand, a transient year of religious and artistic soul-searching in the United Kingdom, and a growing sense of dislocation from his native United States in the Trump era.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Read a review of Steven Toussaint’s Lay Studies here.