New Zealand/Aotearoa Recent Picks

March/April 2009

Click on the underlined title links to check the item's availability in our catalogue.
Some featured items are linked via a book cover to enable you to read more reviews.

Jane Hunter: Growing a Legacy by Tessa Anderson.
"From Marlborough to Manhattan, from Rapaura Road to the Ritz - the inspiring story of a quiet, unassuming woman who took her wines to the world. Jane Hunter had no romantic illusions about life among the vines. Growing up in South Australia, she always knew it was a business. When she met Ernie Hunter, a passionate, larger-than-life Irishman with a fledgling vineyard, they were the perfect team. Their complementary talents - his for dreaming large and her knowledge and experience - clearly belonged together. Ernie's genius for promotion saw their wines win international acclaim and their future seemed clear. It would be hard, but they had the right terroir and their wines were world class. When Ernie died tragically in a road accident, Jane's world was thrown into confusion. How she survived the personal trauma is a testament to the quiet strength and determination of this remarkable woman, who worked her way through an emotional and legal minefield, nurturing the vines and the business alike, fulfilling and exceeding their original dream. One of the pioneering marketers who introduced the world to Marlborough Sauvignon Blancs, her wines successfully challenged the established wine world. Now an internationally respected vintner, and recipient of the prestigious Women in Wine Award and an OBE, Jane shares both her own extraordinary story and its part in the history of the modern New Zealand wine industry". (Amazon.co.uk)

Ladies, a Plate: Traditional Home Baking by Alexa Johnston.
"There is a good chance you can remember a time when the family cake tins were always full of biscuits, slices, fruit loaves and cakes baked by mothers, aunts and grandmothers. And, of course, home-made sponges, ginger loaves, lamingtons, custard squares were an integral part of all special occasions - whether it was a birthday, a christening, a wedding or a wake. In Ladies, A Plate, Alexa Johnston looks back to this gentler time and shares her favourite traditional New Zealand recipes. An avid collector of community cookbooks, Alexa also writes about the history of some New Zealand baking classics, showing how our favourite recipes evolved over time. This gorgeous book contains over ninety recipes and will be treasured by every kitchen enthusiast, whether in your twenties or your nineties". (Amazon.co.uk)

A History of the New Zealand Fiction Feature Film by Bruce Babington.
"A History of the New Zealand Fiction Feature Film is the only comprehensive account of the New Zealand feature film from its beginnings to the present. Countering tendencies to think of New Zealand film as beginning in the 1970s, Bruce Babington discloses a longer saga showing how the present, for all its difference, can only be understood through the past. The book manages the feat of providing a reference map of the cinema, its genres, and its preoccupations, while at the same time giving fascinating detailed analysis of important texts. A History of the New Zealand Fiction Feature Film is essential reading for all students and followers of New Zealand cinema as well as those interested in the local post-colonial culture and its products." (Amazon.co.uk)

Over the Wide and Trackless Sea: the Pioneer Women and Girls of New Zealand by Megan Hutching.
"Facing danger, despair, back breaking work and heart breaking loss and loneliness, the women who forged a new life in New Zealand in colonial times have never been celebrated, and their stories, with a few notable exceptions, have not been widely shared. Best selling historian Megan Hutching has brought together the stories of a dozen women of all walks of life, whose personal tales of triumph and adversity make compelling reading, and whose contribution helped forge the character of contemporary Aotearoa, where their descendants owe their lives, and their lifestyles, to the sacrifices and strength of these women of the late 1800s." (Amazon.co.uk)

Mururoa Protest: The Story of the Voyages by HMNZ Ships Otago and Canterbury to Protest Against the French Atmospheric Nuclear Tests at Mururoa Atoll by G. C. Wright.
"Mururoa Protest tells the story of the Kirk-led Labour government’s protest against French nuclear weapon testing in the atmosphere over Mururoa Atoll in 1973. In this protest action the government took the case to the International Court of Justice and sent two naval frigates to protest off Mururoa Atoll, this is the naval story of that deployment." (Book Jacket)

Between Tides: Jewellery by Alan Preston by Damian Skinner.
"Between Tides: Jewellery by Alan Preston is a survey of over thirty years' work by one of New Zealand's leading contemporary jewellers. From his earliest work in the 1970s to his achievements as part of the bone stone shell movement and his most recent jeweller y using fibre and found materials, Between Tides tracks the ceaseless flow of creativity that informs Preston's jewellery." (Amazon.co.uk)

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