1. A Life Less Punishing by Matt Heath (Allen & Unwin)
Jumping straight in at No 1 and shoving everyone else down the list is broadcaster, writer and musician Matt Heath’s self-help guide. Subtitled “13 ways to love the live you’ve got”, it begins with 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.
2. The Last Secret Agent by Pippa Latour & Jude Dobson (A&U)
This month, it will be 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 World War II.
“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 SOEs (special operations executives) 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 more about the book here.
3. 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 (health), from the author of the bestselling Whakawhetai: Gratitude journal 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.
4. My Matariki Colouring & Activity Book by Isobel Joy Te Aho-White (Scholastic)
We must be approaching June 28, with three Matariki titles in the top 10 NZ books. This is a 96-page companion to Matariki Around the World from a couple of years ago (now back in at No 10). This is a colouring-in book based on all aspects of the Matariki star cluster, also with activity guides, word puzzles, drawing tips and some recipes, written with a sprinkling of te reo Māori.
5. The Everything Guide by Niki Bezzant (Penguin)
As bestselling health writer 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. To read an interview with Niki Bezzant go here and you can read an extract here.
6. Foraging New Zealand by Peter Langlands (Penguin)
Kiwis clearly love the idea of foraging our forests and fields and riverbanks for edible wild plants, and in current times there’s probably an economic element as well. Liv Sisson’s Fungi of Aotearoa sold pallet loads when it came out last year, and we can expect Peter Langlands’ book, from the same publisher, to do the same. Langlands is perhaps the country’s only professional forager, collecting wild flora for restaurants and running workshops. It’s a chunky guide, 500 pages, which picks out 250 plants and fungi from about 7500 edible species. The book warns of stuff not to touch, and plants that look like others but are verboten. The range is impressive. You may know you can eat samphire and wild chervil but be surprised that you can scarf parts of rengarenga, pōhutukawa stamens and wandering willie. To read an interview with Peter Langlands, go here.
7. Evolving by Judy Bailey (HarperCollins)
In which the person who presented our TV news from 1986 to 2005 (“I just fell into it”) offers an “inspiring and personal guide to ageing well and with happiness”. It covers older health, fitness (she does Pilates), finances and embracing joy, as well as the inevitable losses and griefs of a lifetime. Bailey says being in your 70s today is a world away from what it used to be. “We’re out there doing things and we’ve got a lot to contribute,” she told the Australian Women’s Weekly NZ.
8. Aroha by Hinemoa Elder (Penguin)
The wisdom of 52 Māori proverbs explained by psychiatrist Hinemoa Elder in this bestselling book first released in 2020. An extract:
“Ko te mauri, he mea huna ki te moana – The life force is hidden in the sea.
“Powerful aspects of life are hidden in plain sight.
“This whakataukī stems from one of our famous ancestors from the north, Nukutawhiti. He cast his kura, his feathered cloak, into the Hokianga Harbour to calm the waters for safe passage. And this treasure remains there, out of sight, yet signifies the ancient presence of those that have gone before.
“This saying has given me strength so many times. I have always found it comforting because it speaks to the hidden magic of life.
“It reminds me of those things we feel intuitively but often ignore – we can choose to tune in to our gut instinct, for example, or wait until the messages become clearer and more obvious.
“And it reminds me that we all have hidden powers inside us that we can too easily forget.”
9. My Matariki Stories by Kat Quin & Miriama Kamo (Scholastic)
And yet another out for the Māori New Year, this one features three bilingual stories, originally sold in a nifty kete gift bag.
10. Matariki Around the World by Rangi Matamua, Miriama Kamo & Isobel Joy Te Aho-White (Scholastic)
Back in the charts is this 2022 book of stories for young people from here and elsewhere about the constellation we know and celebrate as Matariki.
Source: Nielsen Bookscan NZ – week ending June 1.
