This week’s review will be rather more personal than usual. After the loss of our son Luca to suicide in 2019, local librarian and friend Jackie Phillips recommended the book Resilient Grieving. I knew that our family would never be the same, that we would always miss Luca and that life as we knew it was over. But even in those early days I was so scared that our future was going to be an unbearable endurance contest without joy and meaning that I was looking for buoys to keep me afloat. There is a sense of passivity in...
I have just finished reading Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (best known for The Poisonwood Bible) and I am still enthralled with Demon’s world. This book is set in an impoverished community of Appalachian America, well known for its coal mining and tobacco plantations. Thanks to his copper-red hair, Damon Fields is nicknamed after the copperhead, a poisonous red snake that allegedly slithers around in the woods. The story is told in the wonderful voice of Demon when he is in his early twenties and starts with the event of his birth. It’s the story of a mother who tries...
On most days the 6PM news covers at least one court case that is gripping the nation. We often wonder if the prosecution and lawyers are not overly complicating the obvious crime. But rarely do we envy the jury members for the difficult decision they have to make. Dice is a new novel, set in Rotorua, by Claire Baylis. Four teenage boys, the Dice Bros, have invented a sex game based on the toss of a dice. They are now in court charged with multiple sexual offences against three teenage girls. The story is told through the eyes of...
Reading GOING ZERO is like binge watching ten episodes of a reality TV show, staying up late to find out if your favourite contestant is going to win. In the case of GOING ZERO, the reader will keep their fingers crossed for librarian Kaitlyn Day. The villain is billionaire tech mogul Cy Baxter who has teamed up with the CIA to beta-test a ground-breaking piece of spyware named Fusion. Ten carefully selected contestants, ‘Zeros’, have been given two hours to go off the grid and ‘Go Zero’. If they can evade detection by Fusion for 30 days, they will win...
The subtitle of Michael Rosen’s memoir is Life lessons on going under, getting over it and getting through it. If these lines sound familiar, you are right. Michael Rosen is the author of the forever popular children’s book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. In 2020 Michael Rosen suffered severe effects from Covid and he was in coma for 40 days with doctors uncertain if he would survive. When he came home from the hospital, he was still very unwell, and this made him think about getting better: “what it means and how we do it.” In each chapter, the...
When we hear the names Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius and the word Stoicism our eyes may glaze over because does it really matter what “some long-dead dudes from almost 2000 years ago have said?” In her book, REASONS NOT TO WORRY, Australian journalist Brigid Delaney has made the Stoics accessible and relatable to everyday life. She describes how she queried the Stoic principles but now uses them as a tool to regain a sense of agency and tranquillity. One of the main principles in Stoicism is to learn to determine which things in life are within our control...
