The books we loved
In a selection of Shelf Life extracts, notable New Zealanders reveal their literary picks.
In a selection of best-of Shelf Life extracts, notable New Zealanders reveal their literary likes.
We’re told that a book’s cover is no guide to the quality of its contents. So, what, if anything, can you tell about people based on their reading? Judge for yourself from the following Shelf Life interview snippets and the interviewees’ book recommendations.
JUSTICE PAUL DAVISON QC, on growing up and the influence of his father, Sir Ron Davison.
“I was living in a house where my father was a barrister and surrounded by his friends in the law. I was very influenced by that but not in the sense of ‘this is where you should go …’. My father didn’t patronise me in any way and nor did we talk in any depth about legal matters. When you are doing legal cases, no one can help you make the right decision, to analyse something correctly, no one can help you formulate the questions that will produce the answers that provide the evidence you require for the closing address.” Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest, by Wade Davis; All The Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr; Into Thin Air: A
Personal Account of the Everest Disaster, by Jon Krakauer; Into the Wider World: A Back Country Miscellany, by Brian Turner
JONATHAN LEMALU, opera singer, on his collection of books about sportsmen and women.
“I have so many sports biographies we need to buy a new house to accommodate them. They go back to when I was really little. There are some people who are very worldly; it’s not the size of their biceps – that’s not the sort of sports biography I want to read. I want to know about someone who has a life, an understanding outside their own genre.”
Anton Oliver Inside, by Brian Turner; Dan Carter: My Story, by Duncan Grieve; The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins; Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, by JK Rowling.
JOANNA WOODS, writer and Katherine Mansfield scholar, on growing up in Ireland. “My parents never had much money, but life in Ireland was always fun. We knew an amazing mix of extraordinary people who gave wonderful parties. I remember bumping into Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull at one of them.”
The Hare With Amber Eyes, by Edmund de Waal; H is for Hawk, by Helen Macdonald; The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt; Tigers at Awhitu, by Sarah Broom; Brooklyn, by Colm Tóibín.
GREG NEWBOLD, the University of Canterbury criminologist who did jail time for drug dealing, on his thoughts on the increasing rates of crime and violence among Māori.
“You have got to stop family violence, stop them being abused and being exposed to the kind of numbing, corrupting influences that destroy people’s life chances and give them perverse role models. You have a combination of far higher levels of drinking and alcoholism, far higher levels of serial parenting, far higher child pregnancy, far higher levels of child abuse and neglect that has intergenerational impact. Children who are abused and uneducated and poor tend to grow up the same way as their parents. That is the cycle that needs to be broken. In the end, it’s not complicated – it only takes two thinking people to break that cycle.”
Running with Scissors, by Augusten Burroughs; Mao: The Unknown Story, by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday; Mao: The Real Story, by Alexander V Pantsov and Steven Levine; Going Up Is Easy, by Lydia Bradey.
JAMES JAMESON, former broadcaster and restaurateur, on losing his home, most of his possessions and his business in the Christchurch earthquakes.
“It’s a funny thing. I have lost a lot of money, most of my fortune, really, but I have enough to live on. Buddhist teaching has been very helpful about accepting there is a time in your life of having plenty
and a time of having less. I am astounded at how much happier I am now, even having sustained that loss.”
The Teaching of Buddha; The Book of Disquiet, by Fernando Pessoa; Consolations of the Forest: Alone in a Cabin the Middle Taiga, by Sylvain Tesson; The Lifechanging Magic of Tidying: The Japanese Art, by Marie Kondo.
MOANA TE ORIWA PAPA, wife, mother and sister, on entering her final weeks with terminal breast cancer. She died on February 1, 2017.
“I am dealing with things by creating awesome memories and having quality time. For now, I am going to bloody well live. I would prefer not to go through this, but it is the hand I have been dealt, so I have to try to make the most of things. No one wants to be around a sad-pants all the time.”
Sushi for Beginners and Watermelon, by Marian Keyes; The Real McCaw: The Autobiography, by Richie McCaw; Stars of Aroha: Meditations, by Tess Moeke-Maxwell.
HELEN CLARK, former Prime Minister, on the importance, in her bookish rural childhood, of the Country Library Service.
“It was always my aim to read every book in my age group before they took them away again, and I read hundreds of books. When I used to go and stay with other children, I remember one of the mothers saying to Mum, “We can’t get Helen out to play because she is reading all the time.”
One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez; The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje; The Bone People, by Keri Hulme; A Suitable Boy, by Vikram Seth; A Passage to India, by EM Forster; The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco; and The House of the Spirits, by Isabel Allende.
HENRIETTA, DOWAGER DUCHESS OF BEDFORD, horse breeder, formerly of Woburn Abbey and now resident in New Zealand, on bequeathing books and a love of reading.
“Quite a long time ago, I decided that every book I really loved I would have beautifully leather bound and I would leave these books to whichever grandchild I thought was the closest to me mentally.”
And on the urban-rural divide.
“I love it when somebody quite grand says to me, ‘Where in New Zealand do you live?’, and I say, ‘Matamata’. They go, ‘Matamata?’ If I said ‘Auckland’, that would be fine, but Matamata – I learnt very early that if someone tells you that they come from the Wairarapa or Hawke’s Bay, it is to put themselves in a box, slightly apart from others.”
A Walk in Wolf Wood, by Mary Stewart; The Russells, by Christopher Trent; Henrietta’s House, by Elizabeth Goudge; Mao’s Last Dancer, by Li Cunxin; Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson; West with the Night, by Beryl
Markham; Green Darkness, by Anya Seton; The Shepherd, by Frederick Forsyth; The Uncommon Reader, by Alan Bennett.
PROFESSOR SIR RICHARD FAULL, brain researcher, on the establishment of the Centre for Brain Research at the University of Auckland.
“Leadership is about having a vision, making sure it is true and correct and never compromising on it. If you are doing something new, you will, by definition, have people question it. You should always listen to them but take them on a path with you. People love success and will get on the train once the engine is running and you have left the station.”
The Dwarf Who Moved: And Other Remarkable Tales from a Life in the Law, by Peter Williams; Magic, Science, and Civilization, by Jacob Bronowski; The History of the English-Speaking Peoples: The Great Democracies, by Winston Churchill; Markings, by Dag Hammarskjöld.
MICHELLE DICKINSON, scientist and social entrepreneur, on a childhood without literary influences.
“My parents were not academic and did not have any qualifications and I did not grow up in an academic household at all. I always wonder how much better I would have done if I had had parents who knew what homework was and told me to do it, and if we had had books in the house. I wasn’t read to as a child and I would listen to children talking about being read bedtime stories and I thought that must be amazing.”
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari.
PRIME MINISTER JACINDA ARDERN, on her liking for stories of adventurers and achievers.
“I read a lot of non-fiction, and I have done that since I was young. Real-life stories of people doing amazing things. When I was a kid, I used to read a lot of books about Antarctic explorers – it was a love I picked up from my father that I have held on to. That hasn’t changed in terms of my reading habits. Over summer, I read more fiction, but what I was reading before things got much busier was Diary of the Kirk Years, by Margaret Hayward. There’s a section where Margaret talks about Kirk struggling with people getting a sense of who he is through the medium of television. I found that fascinating because we think that is an issue that only modern-day politicians face, but it’s been around for a while.”
The Regeneration Trilogy, by Pat Barker; Endurance, by Alfred Lansing; Diary of the Kirk Years, by Margaret Hayward.
COMPANY DIRECTOR AND CULTURAL PERFORMER PRECIOUS CLARK, on rising above prejudice.
“Growing up, people would tell me, and tease me at school, because I was Māori, that I would be a glue sniffer or a gang member, because that is what they saw on TV then. I am really keen to balance that perception because I see a beautiful and strong culture that has a lot to offer the world in terms of how we think about things, how we construct things. I am in love with my culture.”
Te Ao Hurihuri: The World Moves On, by Michael King; Te Awa Atua: Menstruation in the Pre-Colonial Māori World, by Ngāhuia Murphy.
AUCKLAND ARTIST ROBYN HUGHES, on reading numerous war histories in preparation for working on her World War I exhibition Home Front to Home.
“There were days when I did not want to deal with the war. Texts such as Monty Ingram’s – he was a Lewis gunner, losing members of his team and he describes it graphically. It was very draining to read – and so real even though it was 100 years ago. The first time I read these accounts, it was shocking. You can’t believe what you are dealing with and then you realise this is part of our history, and how do I deal with that in paint?”
In Flanders Fields: The World
War One Diary of Private Monty Ingram; Massacre at Passchendaele: The New Zealand Story, by Glyn Harper; Now It Can Be Told, by Philip Gibbs; Te Mura o Te Ahi: The Story of the Maori Battalion, by Wira Gardiner.
FARMER, AUTHOR, AND RURAL DEPRESSION OUTREACH CHAMPION DOUG AVERY, on his battles with farming and depression.
“In those hard-working earlier days, I barely lifted my head – I was a car wreck waiting to happen with the approach to my business, because I just wanted to get on with the job and do it and there was no change. I look at farming systems now and they lack change and vision. I still rate New Zealand farming as being at the top of the world, but we are in two or three different teams now. There are 15% that are progressive and doing really well. There is another body, maybe 20%, not far behind, and quite a big tail clinging on to the past.”
All Blacks Don’t Cry: A Story of Hope and Stand By Me: Helping Your Teens Through Tough Times, by John Kirwan; What Cancer Taught Me, by Jake Bailey.
BILL ENGLISH, OPPOSITION LEADER AND ENGLISH LITERATURE GRADUATE, on finding time to read.
“Of necessity, I read a lot of non-fiction so I am choosy about the fiction I read. I enjoy good stories and a lot of those are captured in good books but they can be captured in other ways. For instance, I saw the New Zealand version of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, at Circa.”
And on maintaining his political nerve under pressure.
“Politics is like a good story – it is important not to get too distracted. In a campaign, when the scrutiny is strong, you are best to be who you are – you can’t suddenly construct something different.”
Angle of Repose, by Wallace Stegner; The Years of Lyndon Johnson, by Robert Caro.
PHD RESEARCHER AND MUSICIAN JASMINE PLOWS, on the legacy of Liggins Institute founder Sir Graham Liggins.
“In the same way that people care about the history of the All Blacks, everyone should know and appreciate how influential our contribution, as a small country, has been to science worldwide. What Liggins discovered is that if you give steroids to pregnant sheep, their premature lambs’ lungs develop, and so, where babies used to die of respiratory distress, they now live. Hundreds of thousands of babies have been saved thanks to his accidental discovery.”
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot; Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy, by Sheryl Sandberg.
JOANNE DRAYTON, academic and author, who wrote New York Times best-seller The Search for Anne Perry, on meeting Perry, who was convicted with Pauline Parker in 1954 for the murder of Parker’s mother in Christchurch, which inspired the movie Heavenly Creatures.
“The meeting … got off to a shaky start. I was tense. She was suspicious. To fill an awkward gap, I started rambling on about ancestry and told her I was of Scandinavian descent. She asked me how I knew and I told her I had the “curse of the Vikings”, Dupuytren’s Contractures, and I showed her the syndrome in my hands. She asked me if she had it. I took one of her hands, then the other, and checked them for signs of the syndrome. As far as I know, she has a clean bill of health, but this contact was a game changer.”
Dracula, by Bram Stoker.