What’s on our MPs’ reading lists?
Our politicians aren’t just taking a break from Wellington this summer, most of them are taking a break from the piles of briefings, memos and correspondence.
If you fancy holidaying like a politician (and I’m not recommending it), try picking up one of the following doorstops:
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told Stuff she’ll be cracking into the many books she hasn’t had the opportunity to finish in the past couple of years. She has publicly declared that daughter Neve was developing a fondness for The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.
Opposition leader Simon Bridges didn’t give Stuff any concrete recommendations either, but said: ‘‘I probably read, swot, study, think policy too much.’’ Bridges said he was thinking about taking Paul Goldsmith’s advice and read something more relaxing over summer.
Green party co-leader Marama Davidson will be reading Still Lives: A Memoir of Gaza by Marilyn Garson, a memoir about moving to Gaza and working with the United Nations and NGOs.
The other Green party co-leader, James Shaw, will be reading
Overstory by Richard Powers,
Agent Running in the Field by John le Carre and We are Here by Chris McDowall and Tim Denee.
ACT leader David Seymour is reading Good Keen Man by Barry Crump. Seymour was recently given Crump’s collected stories and was so excited he sent Stuff four photos of him reading it.
Green MP Golriz Ghahraman’s long reading list includes plenty of non-fiction and a smattering of graphic novels. She’ll start off with
The Interregnum, a collection of essays edited by Morgan Godfery,
Somewhere, Women’s Stories of Migration edited by Lorna Jane Harvey, No Friend but the Mountains by Behrouz Boochani,
Rolling Blackouts by Sarah Glidden and Persepolis 2 by Marjane Satrapi. Ghahraman also has Christopher Wylie’s Mindf*ck ,a book about the Cambridge Analytica scandal, on her list, but she’s putting it off until she’s had a bit of a break.
Finance Minister Grant Robertson told Stuff, ‘‘I haven’t actually made my summer reading list yet, but a significant part of it will be cricket programmes.’’ Robertson said Treasury was likely to sneak in some summer briefings and he’d be catching up on about 32 issues of The Economist
magazine.
His opposite number, National finance spokesman Paul Goldsmith, will be reading Red Notice: How I became Putin’s No 1 Enemy by Bill Browder, and Bill Bryson’s The Body. He will also be reading The Hobbit with his daughters.
National housing spokeswoman Judith Collins said she will be busy writing her own book over the summer break, which will make her too busy to read other books.
Trade Minister David Parker has a summer of heavy reading with The Siberian Dilemma by Martin Cruz Smith and The Triumph of Injustice – How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay
by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, perhaps a harbinger of a tough new tax policy in 2020?
Conservation Minister Eugene Sage will be reading the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s report on the environmental impact of tourism,
Pristine, popular . . . imperilled? The environmental consequences of tourism growth -- quite intense reading for a holiday. She’s also reading The Struggle for Maori Fishing Rights: Te Ika A Ma¯ori by Brian Bargh and The Reality Bubble: Blind Spots, Hidden Truths, and the Dangerous Illusions that Shape Our World by Ziya Tong.
On the fiction side of things, Sage will be cracking into The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See and The Book of Dust by Philip Pullman.
Minister for Women and Associate Transport and Health Minister Julie Anne Genter plans to finish Between Debt and the Devil: Money, Credit, and Fixing Global Finance by Adair Turner, a book about the role of debt in the Great Financial Crisis.
Bonus points to Nicola Willis for sending us not just a list of books, but a brief review of why she’s reading them. It’s a busy summer of reading for the National list MP, beginning with Tayi Tibble’s Pou¯kahangatus, with the poem ‘‘Hoki Mai’’ which Willis, a former English lit student, said hit her with a boom at the 2018 Anzac day ceremony. She’s also reading These Truths: A History of the United States by New Yorker writer Jill Lepore. Willis’ visit to the US this year made her want to read more about its history.
She’s also reading Fiona Kidman’s This Mortal Boy. ‘‘I’m interested by the events leading up to the Mazengarb report into youth delinquency in 50s NZ.’’ She plans to read Boris Johnson’s (yes, he writes books too) The Churchill Factor and Margaret Atwood’s Booker-prize winning The Testaments.
She’s catching up on issues of Cuisine magazine and The Economist and reading the Harry Potter novels to her children.
National’s transport spokesman, Chris Bishop, will also be reading a British political memoir, only this time from one of Johnson’s opponents, Ken Clarke, a pro-EU Tory MP until he resigned ahead of this year’s election. Bishop plans to read Clarke’s memoir, Kind of Blue.