Feijoa season is upon us! This abundant little fruit is everywhere in autumn – falling off trees and filling up bags and containers, ready to share. But how exactly did a South American fruit nestle itself so neatly into the hearts of people all across Aotearoa? Kate Evans asks that question and more in her book Feijoa: A Story of Obsession & Belonging.
Explorations of culture and history through the lens of one specific type of food are not unusual: there have been books written about milk, salt, sugar, bread, olive oil, the general concept of breakfast, and even two on cod – and that’s only scraping the surface. Whether you love them or hate them, it’s about time feijoas made the list, because this back-garden fruit has a global story, and a fascinating one at that. Click below to place a reserve, and browse the rest of our non-fiction picks for the month.
Feijoa : a story of obsession & belonging / Evans, Kate
“The feijoa comes from the highlands of Southern Brazil and the valleys of Uruguay, where it was woven into indigenous and Afro-Brazilian cultures. Today, it is celebrated by one small town in the Colombian Andes, and has become an icon of community and nationhood in New Zealand. Feijoas are among only a handful of plants that have made the journey from the wild to the orchard in the last few generations, providing a rare opportunity to watch, up close, the myriad ways plants seduce us. Feijoa is a book about connection: between people and plants, between individuals, between cultures, across disciplines, celebrating the ways our lives and loves intersect in surprising ways.” (Adapted from Catalogue)
Material world : the six raw materials that shape modern civilization / Conway, Ed
“Sand, iron, salt, oil, copper and lithium: the struggle for these fundamental materials has created empires, razed civilizations, and fed our ingenuity and our greed for thousands of years. Though we are told we now live in a weightless world of information, we dug more stuff out of the earth in 2017 than in all of human history before 1950. And it’s getting exponentially worse. Even as we pare back our consumption of fossil fuels we continue to redouble our consumption of everything else. Why? Because these ingredients are the basis for everything. Our modern world would not exist without them, and the hidden battle to control them will shape our future. This is a story of our past and future, from the ground up.” (Adapted from Catalogue)
A day in the life of Abed Salama : a Palestine story / Thrall, Nathan
“Milad is five years old and excited for his school trip to a theme park on the outskirts of Jerusalem, but tragedy awaits – his bus is involved in a horrific accident. His father, Abed, rushes to the chaotic site, only to find Milad has already been taken away. Abed sets off on a journey to learn Milad’s fate, navigating a maze of physical, emotional, and bureaucratic obstacles he must face as a Palestinian. Interwoven with Abed’s odyssey are the stories of Jewish and Palestinian characters whose lives and pasts unexpectedly converge. A Day in the Life of Abed Salama is a deeply immersive, stunningly detailed portrait of life in Israel and Palestine, and an illumination of the reality of one of the most contested places on earth.” (Adapted from Catalogue)
Lapidarium : the secret lives of stones / Judah, Hettie
“Inspired by the lapidaries of the ancient world, this book is a collection of true stories about sixty different stones that have influenced our shared history. Through the realms of art, myth, geology, philosophy, and power, the author tells the story of humanity through the minerals and materials that have allowed humans to evolve and create. Lapidarium uses the stories of these sixty stones to explore how human culture has formed stone, and the roles stone has played in forming human culture”– Provided by publisher.” (Catalogue)
Eve : how the female body drove 200 million years of human evolution / Bohannon, Cat
“In Eve, Cat Bohannon answers questions scientists should have been addressing for decades. With boundless curiosity and sharp wit, Bohannon covers the past 200 million years to explain the specific science behind the development of the female sex. Eve is not just a sweeping revision of human history, it’s an urgent and necessary corrective for a world that has focused primarily on the male body for far too long. A 21st-century update of Our Bodies, Ourselves, Bohannon offers a paradigm shift in our thinking about what the female body is and why it matters.” (Adapted from Catalogue)
A book of noises : notes on the auraculous / Henderson, Caspar
“Sound shapes our world in invisible but significant ways, and here Caspar Henderson brings his characteristic curiosity, knowledge and sense of wonder to the subject to take us on an exhilarating journey through the heard universe. A Book of Noises gathers together sounds from the cosmos, the natural world, the human world, and the invented world, as well as containing quiet pockets of silence. From the vast sound of sand in the desert to the tuneful warble of a songbird, to the meditative resonance of a temple bell and the improvisational melodies of jazz, this is a celebration of all things auricular.” (Catalogue)
Exit interview : the life and death of my ambitious career / Coulter, Kristi
“What would you sacrifice for your career? All your free time? Your sense of self-worth? Your sanity? In 2006, Kristi Coulter left her cozy but dull job for a promising new position at the fast-growing Amazon.com, but she never expected the soul-crushing pressure that would come with it. In no time she found the challenge and excitement she’d been craving – along with seven-day workweeks, lifeboat exercises, widespread burnout, and a culture driven largely by fear. For twelve years, she stayed – until she no longer recognized the face in the mirror or the mission she’d signed up for. Unsparing, absurd, and wickedly funny, Exit Interview is a rare journey inside the crucible that is Amazon.” (Adapted from Catalogue)
Sparks : China’s underground historians and their battle for the future / Johnson, Ian
“Based on years of research in Xi Jinping’s China, Sparks challenges stereotypes of a China where the state has quashed all free thought, revealing instead a country engaged in one of humanity’s great struggles of memory against forgetting – a battle that will shape the China that emerges in the mid-21st century.” (Catalogue)
