Rating: 2.5/5. Verdict: Acting the young fool

Craig Cliff's first collection of stories heralds the arrival of an electrifying new voice on the New Zealand writing scene. These stories are standalone gems, but the collection also brings together satisfying harmonies as a whole.

John Irving is the king of the long, multilayered novel. In the tradition of Dickens, he cleverly weaves together the intricate threads of cross-generational storylines.

There's the boy who kills sheep and gouges out their eyes. There's the young man who wishes literally to eat his girlfriend but who angrily denies he is a Hannibal Lecter figure.

This intermittently charming animated offering from Disney relocates Shakespeare's famous love story to the secret world of garden gnomes, then adds Elton John music.

Prepare to be outraged by this political drama, based on the autobiography of outed CIA agent Valerie Plame.

Paul Torday produces an intriguing page-turner that won't fail to surprise.

Mayfield was just a teenager when a copy of an album she'd recorded in her bedroom fell into the hands of Dan Auerbach from The Black Keys.

This work of speculative fiction arrives on New Zealand shelves with the degree of hype usually reserved for angst-ridden teen vamps or boy wizards.

Rating: 4/5

Rating: 3/5

Rating: 3/5. Verdict: More soul to her cry

Rating: 3.5/5. Verdict: Still dour, but more diverse second offering from London trio

Rating: 4/5. Verdict: Folk fellow finds the funk on his fifth.

Jeff Bridges' Cogburn retains the Wayne eyepatch and the girth but he's not up for the carbine twirl.

Fela Kuti was a revolutionary and a rogue. And man, could the Nigerian musician and pioneer of Afro-beat sing, dance and play saxophone.

Rating: 4/5. Verdict: Get down with the coolest grandma.

Director Danny Boyle goes from a cast of many with Slumdog Millionaire to pretty much a cast of one, in an intense tale of survival that takes the saying "I'd give my right arm ..." to a new level.

The Laneway Festival was loud and proud yesterday and in the process it found its home in the newly revamped Aotea Square.

Paul Auster writes splendidly about disaffected, damaged people, usually alienated from society in some way, often isolated, physically and/or psychologically.

After an interregnum of six years following the "retirement" of Justin Paton (the quotation marks are an intriguing addition by the publisher) in 2004, during which "guest editors" steered the ship, Landfall has a permanent editor again.

You'd be a fool to buy into the argument that Adele Adkins is just another packaged Brit School graduate with a great set of lungs.

The highly charged electro-pop that's pumped out by Fenech-Soler is relatively unknown here, but in the band's British homeland it's a floor-filling festival favourite.

Enough to make you spew Not even Kiwi talent can save the Oz "event" movie that is Panic at Rock Island, says Deborah Hill Cone.

Rhoda Janzen's memoir may be light on laughs, but it's heavy on affection.

Even though 2011 is still new, I suspect this debut novel from US author Susan Henderson will be one of my standout reads of the year.

Rating: 3.5/5

Rating: 4/5

Rating: 3/5