King makes Montana shortlist

The Weekend Herald's book pages have been chosen as a finalist in the Montana Awards.

The pages, compiled by books editor Margie Thomson, appear in canvas magazine each week.

Other finalists are the Listener and Metro magazine.

Historian Michael King's last work is among 26 titles which will vie for the country's top book award.

Dr King, who died with his wife in a car crash in March, was nominated for The Penguin History of New Zealand in the history section of the Montana New Zealand Book Awards.

He had previously won the Montana Medal for non-fiction.

The finalists this year were announced yesterday from 188 sub missions across eight categories of New Zealand books published in 2003.

Maurice Gee, who has won the Montana fiction award four times, was also nominated in the history category for The Scornful Moon.

On the judging panel are: convenor of judges, Tony Simpson, the academic and J.K. Baxter expert Paul Millar, and poet Anne French.

The Deutz Medal for Fiction and the Montana Medal for Non Fiction, and the category and the Readers' Choice Award winners, will be announced at the awards ceremony on the evening of Monday, July 26.

The finalists for the New Zealand Book Awards 2004 are:

Fiction

Hummingbird by James George (Huia Publishers); Iridescence by Peter Wells (Vintage); The Scornful Moon by Maurice Gee (Penguin Books); The Sea Between Us by Elizabeth Smither (Penguin Books); Slow Water by Annamarie Jagose (Victoria University Press).

Poetry

The Adulterer's Bible by Cliff Fell (Victoria University Press); The Ballad of Fifty-one by Bill Sewell (Headworx); Sing-song by Anne Kennedy (Auckland University Press).

Biography

Long Journey to the Border: A Life of John Mulgan by Vincent O'Sullivan (Penguin Books); Mason: The Life of R.A.K. Mason by Rachel Barrowman (Victoria University Press); An Unsettled Spirit: The Life & Frontier Fiction of Edith Lyttleton (G B Lancaster) by Terry Sturm (Auckland University Press).

History

Leisure and Pleasure: Reshaping and Revealing the New Zealand Body 1900 - 1960 by Caroline Daley (Auckland University Press); The Penguin History of New Zealand by Michael King (Penguin Books); The Trial of the Cannibal Dog: Captain Cook in the South Seas by Anne Salmond (Allen Lane/Penguin Books).

Reference & Anthology

Robert Louis Stevenson: His Best Pacific Writings edited by Roger Robinson (Streamline Creative); Seven New Zealand Novellas edited by Peter Simpson (Reed Publishing); Whetu Moana: Contemporary Polynesian Poems in English edited by Albert Wendt, Reina Whaitiri and Robert Sullivan (Auckland University Press).

Lifestyle & Contemporary Culture

Classic Fly Fishing in New Zealand Rivers written by John Kent, illustrated by David Hallett (Craig Potton Publishing); Cooking to Impress - Without Stress by Annabel Langbein (Annabel Langbein Books); Ready to Fly: The Story of New Zealand Rock Music by David Eggleton (Craig Potton Publishing).

Environment

Birds of Aotearoa: A Natural and Cultural History by Margaret Orbell (Reed Publishing); Deep New Zealand: Blue Water, Black Abyss by Peter Batson (Canterbury University Press); The Living Reef: The Ecology of New Zealand's Rocky Reefs edited by Neil Andrew & Malcolm Francis (Craig Potton Publishing).

Illustrative

Central by Arno Gasteiger (Viking); Paste Up: A Century of New Zealand Poster Art by Hamish Thompson (Godwit); Why go to the Riviera: Images of Wellington by Peter Shaw (Godwit).

- NZPA