NONFICTION
1 Nourish by Chelsea Winter (Allen & Unwin, $49.99)
We devoted all week to coverage of the latest cookbook by Her Divine Chelseaness. Monday: an exclusive personal essay by Chelsea on her reasons for returning to meat. Tuesday: Julie Biuso reviews Nourish. Wednesday: Steve Braunias on Chelsea’s classic dish Oozy Quesadillas. Thursday: Leah McFall on the Chelsea Winter phenomenon.
We conclude the week with the results of our giveaway contest to win a free signed copy of Nourish. Readers were asked to write something from the heart about their feelings for Chelsea and/or her recipes. Many readers did exactly that. The loveliest came from Jen, who wrote, “Chelsea’s recipes have been a part of my kitchen for years. There’s something about the way she writes that makes cooking feel like an act of love rather than a task. I can almost hear her voice when I’m stirring or kneading, that calm reassurance that even if things get messy, it’ll be delicious in the end.
“When she went vegan for a while, I admired her conviction (even if I panicked slightly about the fate of the pulled pork). But her return to recipes with meat feels like an old friend coming home, familiar, generous, full of flavour and comfort.
“Chelsea’s food has fed my family, soothed depression and anxiety, and made ordinary days feel less ordinary. Winning her new book would be like getting another beautiful chapter in a story I already love.”
Huzzah to Jen. She wins a free signed copy of Nourish by Chelsea Winter.
2 Nadia’s Farm Kitchen by Nadia Lim (Nude Food, $55)
It’s not easy to find anything interesting about the Lim Brand© but dogged persistence always pays off and I can report that among her possessions at her 1200-acre Raybourn Station spread between Wanaka and Queenstown is an original painting by good old Douglas Badcock. Douglas Badcock! He was the go-to alpine landscape painter of the nation for many, many years, prints of his Tip-Top vanilla ice-cream mountains and yellow Sunlight Soap pastures decorating tens of thousands of homes. They were nationalised wallpaper. They were signs and symbols. They were the New Zealand way. He won the prestigious Kelliher prize for landscape art in 1966; the government presented his work to Queen Elizabeth, and the King of Thailand; and he was the author of three books of his work.
I have a copy of My Kind of Country (1971). Nice book. He writes, “I came to Queenstown after World War II having been discharged from the air force because of ill health [asthma]. I had spent a short period in Hamner hospital recuperating. There, when health allowed it, I spent my time doing watercolours of the surrounding country or drawing charcoal portraits of my fellow patients. I managed to sell the few paintings I had done for modest sums.
“Some of my hospital companions had extolled the beauty of Queenstown and I determined to go there when I recovered. After acquiring a 1922 Buick, I bought from a farmer a dilapidated caravan, which contained some cupboards, a wire mattress and coal range. I set off for Queenstown. The tyres were showing canvas, and a stream of blue smoke combined with the dust as I approached my Shangri-La.”
The rest is Kiwiana, and now a place in the Lim Brand©.
3 Perspective by Shaun Jonson (Penguin Random House $40)
Lessons on living.
4 Mana by Tāme Iti (Allen & Unwin, $49.99)
A free copy of Iti’s newly published memoir is up for grabs in this week’s free book giveaway. To enter, share what it is you admire about this activist, revolutionary, ex-con, painter, sculptor, carver, author, wrestling champion, bowler-hat model and singular character in New Zealand public life, either by telling a story or expressing your views, and email it to stephen11@xtra.co.nz with the subject line in screaming caps MR ITI WOULD LIKE YOUR ATTENTION by midnight on Monday, October 27.
5 Lessons on Living by Nigel Latta (HarperCollins, $39.99)
More lessons on living.
6 Become Unstoppable by Gilbert Enoka (Penguin Random House, $40)
Yet more lessons on living.
7 A Different Kind of Power by Jacinda Ardern (Penguin Random House, $59.99)
Lessons on empathy.
8 Ara by Hinemoa Elder (Penguin Random House, $30.00)
Lessons on spiritual wellness.
9 Māori Ora by Hira Nathan (Allen & Unwin, $37.99)
More lessons on spiritual wellness.
10 Edible Weeds Handbook by Andrew Crowe (Penguin Random House, $35)
Nature lessons. The author of numerous compact little field guides to identifying spiders, seashells, birds, and native ferns turns his attention to edible weeds with reliably excellent results.
FICTION
1 Angels of Clay (Matakana Series 3) by Madeleine Eskedahl (Matheson Bay Press, $36.99)
Sales were evidently brisk at the book launch held recently at The Vintry in Matakana. It’s her third book in a mystery franchise. The premise is excellent: “At the beginning of summer, a young Lotto millionaire is found dead in the clay pit of a renowned pottery retreat. The body is laid out in the shape of an X, with markings in the earth that resemble an angel-deliberate, unsettling and inexplicable.”
Spooky cover.
2 The Last Living Cannibal by Airana Ngarewa (Hachette, $37.99)
A review by Jordan Tricklebank will appear in ReadingRoom next week.
3 The Vanishing Place by Zoe Rankin (Hachette, $37.99)
4 Julia Eichardt by Lauren Roche (Flying Books Publishing, $36.99)
The author of possibly the best historical novel of the year will be onstage at the Queenstown Writers Festival next weekend. Tickets–said to be selling fast–are available online.
5 The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38)
6 Where in All the World by Vanessa Croft (David Bateman, $38.99)
7 Delirious by Damien Wilkins (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38)
I will be chairing the author at an event next weekend at the Queenstown Writers Festival. Tickets—said to be selling fast—are available online. The three-day programme also features authors such as Tina Makereti; Diana Wichtel; Monty Soutar; Liam McIlvanney; Mike McRoberts; Owen Marshall; and Jenny Pattrick.
8 Dead Girl Gone (The Bookshop Detectives 1) by Gareth and Louise Ward (Penguin Random House, $26)
9 Landfall Tauraka 250: Spring 2025 by Lynley Edmeades (Otago University Press, $35)
The 250th anniversary issue of the most distinguished literary journal in New Zealand letters.
10 Tree of Nourishment (Kāwai 2) by Monty Soutar (David Bateman, $39.99)