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Our weekly round-up of the best-selling local books; numbers in brackets indicate the book’s position on the previous week’s list.
1. (3) The Life of Dai by Dai Henwood (HarperCollins)
For a long time, comedian Dai Henwood never told anyone he had incurable cancer. He was diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer in April of 2020, during lockdown, and told a small group of friends via WhatsApp. Turns out the large tumour found had circulated itself to his liver and beyond. It was not till early 2023 that he went public via a TV interview with his friend, comedy writer and actor Jaquie Brown. The Life of Dai (HarperCollins), written with Brown, came out of interviews done between chemo sessions in 2023. Unsurprisingly, it’s anything but linear, Dai-gressive even. Split into three sections called Comedy, Love and Peace, it’s half memoir, half spiritual search cum life advice for those going through cancer diagnosis and treatment. It begins with his early life and influences, Monty Python, Eddie Murphy, Robin Williams. He was a comedy geek. There is his father, the teacher-turned-toxicologist-turned-actor, his mother the judge who underwrote his early shows. Despite the subject, the tone is generally light, honest, loving in his familiar style. He adores his wife, his children, his friends. Loves rugby league. The book doesn’t shy from details of the “horrendous, life-saving poison” that is chemotherapy, the surgeries, his fear and anger and acceptance. “I’ve made the conscious decision to live now.”
2. (2) The Last Secret Agent by Pippa Latour & Jude Dobson (Allen & Unwin)
This month it’s 80 years since D-Day. Pippa Latour, who died in West Auckland late last year aged 102, helped lay the groundwork for the operation’s success by acting as a secret agent in France for Britain during WWII.
“I was not a James Bond-style spy,” said Latour. “I was a secret agent whose job it was to blend into the background and cause quiet chaos.” It was exhausting work; she was unable to trust anyone, had several code names, and was often hungry. It was desperately perilous, too. Many of the 13,000 agents were killed, including 14 women out of 39 in France. The average life expectancy of male wireless operators in France when she served was six weeks. Latour’s was a truly remarkable life all around, and The Last Secret Agent, co-written with Jude Dobson, is a clear and fluent account. You can read the Listener story here.
3. (NEW) The Final Diagnosis by Cynric Temple-Camp (HarperCollins)
Kiwi forensic and coronial pathologist Dr Cynric Temple-Camp returns with his third book of death, disease and murder. As well as tales of everyday mortal oddness, he weighs in on the New Year’s Eve disappearance of Ben Smart and Olivia Hope, the murder trial of Mark Lundy, and the ill-fated Ansett Flight 703, which crashed in the Tararua Range in 1995. Read an interview with Temple-Camp here.
4. (1) A Life Less Punishing by Matt Heath (A&U)
Broadcaster, writer and musician Matt Heath’s self-help guide, subtitled “13 ways to love the life you’ve got”, begins with the 1980s TV show The Greatest American Hero, about a hapless teacher, Ralph Hinkley, who can’t control the superhero suit he’s been given because he’s lost the manual, and Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. If you don’t see the connection, it happens in an epiphany for Heath, feeling sorry for himself on the shore of a South Island lake. “I will consume the writings, lectures and podcast appearances of great thinkers and regurgitate them into a personal Hinkley manual.” It’ll be a self-help book in its purest form, he says, written to help himself in times of trouble, dealing with, in his chatty, easy style, anger, fear, loneliness, stress, boredom, grief and so on.
5. (4) Waitohu by Hinemoa Elder (Penguin)
From the best-selling psychiatrist author of Aroha and Wawata comes a guided life journal based on the Māori lunar calendar.
“This writing journey is fuelled by the whakataukī (proverb) ‘ka mua, ka muri’, ‘walking backwards into the future’. Every month we circle back to the beginning of the book, rediscovering thoughts from the month before under the illuminating gaze of each moon face. New layers of ideas are added to earlier reflections, then collected together in a way that uncovers new truths.”
6. (6) Nanny Rina’s Amazing Nets by Qiane Matata-Sipu & Isobel Joy Te Aho-White (Picture Puffin)
In this story, translated from the original Māori, Nanny Rina is a terrific weaver who can make all sorts of nets. When her granddaughter asks her what net she will weave to herald the new year, Nanny Rina shows her how the Matariki stars guide her. Includes actual instructions on how to weave a net.
7. (5) My Matariki Colouring and Activity Book by Isobel Joy Te Aho-White (Scholastic)
A 96-page companion to Matariki Around the World from a couple of years back, it’s a colouring-in book based around all aspects of the star cluster, with activity guides, word puzzles, drawing tips and some recipes, written with a sprinkling of te reo Māori.
8. (7) Piki te Ora: Your Wellbeing Journal by Hira Nathan & Jessie Eyre (A&U)
An illustrated wellbeing journal for children based on the Māori principles of hauora, from the author of the bestselling Whakawhetai: Gratitude journal (#9) and a primary school teacher. It has activities and ideas aimed at helping kids learn about different aspects of their health and wellbeing, physical and mental, with room to write and doodle.
9. (8) The Everything Guide by Niki Bezzant (Penguin)
As bestselling health writer and Listener contributor Niki Bezzant writes in her introduction, “This is a book about the things we can do now – however old we are – to feel great and to help us be the vibrant, healthy, kick-ass old ladies we want to be. It’s not a book about loss – loss of youth, loss of weight, loss of how we used to be. It is a book about gain – gaining health, gaining confidence, gaining energy, gaining joy.” The book covers midlife change, food, exercise, stress, sex and other topics with a central message of how to love yourself. Read an interview with Niki Bezzant here.
10. (NEW) At The Grand Glacier Hotel by Laurence Fearnley (Penguin)
The Dunedin novelist’s latest tracks the journey of Libby and Curtis, married for 25 years, who go on a much-needed journey to the hotel of the title on the West Coast. There, they encounter a collection of guests and staff, including James, who has been searching for the elusive South Island kōkako. Curtis needs to briefly go back to Wānaka but can’t return after a storm closes the road. Alone at the hotel, Libby is consumed by her recent brutal brush with cancer, a sizeable tumour having been removed from her left leg. James and Libby form an unlikely pair, finding themselves on an unexpected quest. Never maudlin or sentimental, The Grand Glacier Hotel is a thoughtful, slow-moving, hopeful exploration of what it is to face one’s own mortality.
(Source: Nielsen Bookscan NZ – week ending June 15.)
