Ruth Shaw is the bestselling author of The Bookseller at the End of the World. In 2016, in her late sixties, Ruth opened her first little bookshop in Manapōuri, Fiordland where she had settled with her husband Lance. They were quickly followed by a wee shop for children’s books and another that is filled with books that men might like. The Bookseller at the End of the World, consists partly of short vignettes about the people who visit her bookshops. This includes the story of how Ruth refused to sell a stack of books with green covers to a customer who...
Ann Cleeves is the author over thirty crime novels, including the Shetland books and the Vera Stanhope books which have been made into TV series. Her latest book is The Raging Storm, the third book in the Two Rivers series. This is only the second Ann Cleeves book that I’ve read, but I am now confident that if I need distraction and an easy read, this author will deliver. Ann Cleeves’ books are all anchored in place. The characters in the Shetland series are shaped by the rugged and isolated landscape. I read that the author planned the first...
The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese is a big book of 736 pages set in India and spanning from 1900 to 1977. It follows three generations of a family and starts when a 12-year-old girl is to marry a 40-year-old widower. Big Ammachi, as the girl and future matriarch of Parambil will come to be known, holds the narrative together through the seven decades. The saga is set against the background of the caste system, the colonised and later independent India and the scenery and geography of Southern India. But it is the people and their dramas and dreams...
If you love Vincent van Gogh’s art, you probably feel that most stories about this artist have been told already. But wait, there’s room for one more. Vincent and Sien is a fictional account of Vincent’s time with Sien Hoornik. It’s a historical fact that Sien was a pregnant prostitute in the Hague, with a six year-old daughter Maria, when Vincent took her into his home as a model and lover. At that time, he was at an early stage in his development as an artist and mostly did sketches of domestic life and the working poor and their hardships....
Grandma, I want to know everything about you. It is ironic that among the most popular books in the shop, is a quartet of books that still needs to be written: My Mother’s Life, My Father’s Life, My Grandmother’s Life, My Grandfather’s Life. They are a set of guided journals with thought-provoking and light-hearted writing prompts and guided exercises to help a parent or grandparent record their life’s memoir. We often tell people that they should write their stories down – but where to begin? The prompts in this journal are a great start. The 200 guided exercises are...
How to make the perfect home for plants from rocky places This week I would like to tell you about a book that features an unfamiliar type of garden, the crevice garden. My husband Michael Midgley is a life-long gardener and the dry, cold climate in Lake Tekapo works in favour of rock gardening. In 2012 he read an article on a crevice gardening in the Czech Republic. This is a style of rock gardening that employs the crevices between rocks to mimic the conditions that many difficult-to-grow plants need. The crevice garden grows plants better than other rock gardens...
