1. (4) Understanding Te Tiriti by Roimata Smail (Wai Ako Books)
David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill is likely behind brisk sales of human rights lawyer and educator Roimata Small’s book, a brief and easily digestible guide to the basics of the Treaty of Waitangi.
2. (2) Tasty by Chelsea Winter (Allen & Unwin)
The MasterChef NZ winner’s latest cookbook, chock-full of plant-rich comfort food as it is, has held tight to the top spots of the bestsellers’ charts for months. It’s been four years since the mega-selling Supergood. As she told the Listener: “Tasty is a plant-based book, but it’s not staunchly plant-based. I’ve designed it to be flexible. If someone wants to use a recipe as fully plant-based – great. If they want to sub in a bit of cheese and cream – perfect. If they want to serve it alongside a cut of meat, or chuck some chicken or fish in one of the curries – perfect. It’s for every kind of eater.” She replaced refined sugar in recipes with the likes of coconut sugar after seeing the effects on her children. “Man, my children don’t need any more energy.” For recipes from Tasty, go here.
3. (1) The Last Secret Agent by Pippa Latour & Jude Dobson (A&U)
Staying close to the top of the charts is this fascinating account of spy Pippa Latour. Latour, who died in West Auckland late in 2023 aged 102, helped lay the groundwork for the D-Day’s success and the end of the war 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 SOEs 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. Read the review here.
4. (NEW) Mrs D is Not on a Diet by Lotta Dann (A&U)
Lotta Dann, who wrote a popular book about giving up drinking, turns to diet culture, working out from her own struggles with weight and food. From the publisher:
“Would you start another diet if you knew it would probably fail? Would you love your body if our culture didn’t tell you it was wrong? Lotta Dann’s journey with extreme dieting and drastic weight loss led to endless praise for her skinny body. But no one knew what she had to do to maintain it. When the weight came back on, Lotta started asking fundamental questions that she’d never considered before.
“Why do we believe that to be healthy you must be skinny? Why do we think any measure of fat on our body is bad? Why do so many of us hate our bodies? And why do we spend so much time, money and energy trying to shrink ourselves? The answers surprised her, angered her, and ultimately empowered her. She thinks they will do the same for you.” You can read listener.co.nz nutritionist Jennifer Bowden’s thoughts on the book here.
5. (RETURN) The Bookshop Detectives: Dead Girl Gone by Gareth Ward & Louise Ward (Penguin)
“When we opened Sherlock Tomes people warned us that we’d made a terrible mistake. People warned us that e-readers were taking over. People warned us that we’d never compete with Amazon. The one thing they didn’t warn us about was the murders.”
And so begins this first joint novel from actual Hawke’s Bay booksellers Gareth and Louise Ward, a cosy murder-mystery that promises bookshop insider titbits and literary puns galore. The plot has Garth and Eloise and their dog Stevie, who, telling the story in alternate chapters, “are drawn into the baffling case of a decades-old missing schoolgirl. Intrigued by the puzzling, bookish clues the two ex-cops are soon tangled in a web of crime, drugs and floral decapitations, while endeavouring to pull off the international celebrity book launch of the century.”
A follow-up is out later this year. Learn how Gareth and Louise Ward’s previous careers as UK police officers helped them write The Bookshop Detectives.
6. (9) 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.”
7. (3) More Salad by Margo Flanagan & Rosa Power (A&U)
The latest cookbook from sisters Margo Flanagan and Rosa Power, which promises more of the same tasty-looking food that delivered them previous bestsellers. Neither are vegetarian or vegan, they just encourage moderation in all things. Recipes go from raw to pan to oven, as well as desserts. Included are swappable ingredients, tips and timesavers, and pairing suggestions. You’ll find recipes from the book here.
8. (RETURN) Kataraina by Becky Manawatu (Makaro Press)
Becky Manawatu’s long-awaited sequel to her award-winning novel Auē.
As the Listener’s recent interview with Manawatu notes, a swamp, or kūkūwai, runs under and through Kataraina. “It is a shifting, changing body of water – an expansive wetland, a drained and lifeless bog, a deep lagoon. Like poet Seamus Heaney’s Irish bogs preserving Iron Age bodies in places where “there is no reflection”, it is a repository for memories of ancestral violence and retribution. As Aunty Moira says in the book, “That kūkūwai is all roimata. Tears.”
“Kataraina takes up the story of Kataraina Te Au, Aunty Kat. In Auē, she is a partially drawn character, seen through the eyes of the nephew she looks after, young Ārama, and feisty Beth. They see her spark, her love, her defensiveness, but also her bruises, meted out by Stuart Johnson, Uncle Stu, and never talked about. Never discussed.” You can read the full interview with Becky Manawatu here.
9. (6) Kāwai: Tree of Nourishment by Monty Soutar (David Bateman)
As the Listener’s review notes (you can read it here), Monty Soutar picks up the narrative where Kāwai: For Such a Time as This left off. “The advent of muskets placed the power of fire and death into the hands of any iwi with the cunning, the connections and the economic capacity to possess them. In so doing, the musket undermined the foundations of Māori society, including the mana of the tohunga, upending their command of magic and their bond with the spirit world through its blind disregard for the sacred pageantry of war, death and the interweaving of these things with all that is tapu. This in turn paved the way for European missionaries to bring stories of a different god, a new perspective on faith and the sanctity of life, and irrevocable change. Soutar uses this narrative to explore the power of words, both the writings of men who claimed to be holy and the fractious ink of te tiriti, whose intentions remain contested to this day.”
10. (5) Route 52: A Big Lump Of Country Unknown by Simon Burt (Ugly Hill Press)
Simon Burt travelled the back roads around Wairarapa and Southern Hawke’s Bay with a caravan in tow, nattering to locals along the way. From the first chapter: “One of those visitors is Masterton angler Nick Jolliffe. Nick is around my age and has been fishing for as long as he can remember. He’s been plying the Mākurī River for over 40 years. A natural storyteller (he’s a career salesman), Nick entertains me over a long black and a flat white at Masterton’s Trocadero Cafe with the history of his relationship with the waterway. He’s pleased I’m writing about the river – he’s not one to keep fishing secrets – and about the area in general. ‘Good on you,’ he says. ‘Fame for Route 52 is long overdue. It’s a big lump of country unknown.’”
Source: Nielsen Bookscan NZ – week ending February 8
