The latest Nielsen BookScan New Zealand bestseller list, described by Steve Braunias
NONFICTION
1 The Art of Winning by Dan Carter (Penguin Random House, $40)
No one entered last week's free book giveaway of Dan Carter's new self-helper. No one! I don't know why. Dan's self-helper shares "timeless truths on leadership, purpose and potential". Sounds great! I wish I had more time to read self-help books. I want to be best person I can be rather than the shabby version I have inhabited these past 63 years. The only self-help book I ever read was Alan Carr's little book on how to stop smoking – and I stopped smoking. Result! What's another truly effective and actually inspiring self-help book that has made a difference to your life? To enter the draw to win Dan's self-helper, describe your favourite self-help book, and email it to stephen11@xtra.co.nz with the subject line in screaming caps I WANT TO WIN DAN'S SELF-HELPER ABOUT LEADERSHIP AND THAT. Entries close at midnight on Sunday, August 6.
Please someone take this book off my hands.
2 Whakawhetai: Gratitude by Hira Nathan (Allen & Unwin, $36.99)
3 This is ADHD by Chanelle Moriah (Allen & Unwin, $32.99)
4 Aroha by Hinemoa Elder (Penguin Random House, $30)
5 Head On by Carl Hayman & Dylan Cleaver (HarperCollins, $39.99)
6 Fungi of Aotearoa by Liv Sisson (Penguin Random House, $45)
7 One of Them by Shaneel Lal (Allen & Unwin, $36.99)
8 Privilege in Perpetuity by Peter Meihana (Bridget Williams Books, $17.99)
From a review by Vincent O'Malley: "Meihana’s book, based on his 2015 PhD thesis, explores and critiques the notion that Māori are a uniquely privileged people, tracing its origins to James Cook’s 18th Century voyages.
"He attributes his own interest in the topic to Stuart C. Scott’s 1995 book, The Travesty of Waitangi (which he mistitles Travesty of the Treaty). Scott's self-published volume was a publishing phenomenon, selling more than 18,000 copies in less than a year according to Meihana. It's also a deeply racist work, repeating all of the familiar tropes that writers of this kind like to peddle…
"Some Pākehā would rather believe the Treaty settlements process is simply a con-job being perpetrated against non-Māori, since to do otherwise would be to call into question core elements of their sense of national identity. But, frankly, it is time for new forms of identity to emerge based on a full, frank and honest reckoning with our past. Only then will the tired platitudes on Māori privilege finally be laid to rest."
9 Wawata – Moon Dreaming by Hinemoa Elder (Penguin Random House, $30)
10 Straight Up by Ruby Tui (Allen & Unwin, $36.99)
FICTION
1 Pet by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38)
You, too, could write a book as inventive, as popular, as publishable as Pet by Catherine Chidgey if only you had the talent – and the room to work on that talent. Help is at hand: entries are open for the 2023 Surrey Hotel Writers Residency Award in association with Newsroom and Dick Frizzell. There is $5000 to be won in cold hard cash plus the honour and prestige of being awarded the coolest writers residency prize in New Zealand.
The award is now in its seventh year. Previous winners and finalists include Talia Marshall, Becky Manawatu, Naomi Arnold, Anna Rankin, and Laurence Fearnley. Some men have won it, too.
The first-place winner will receive a week's free accommodation at the singular Surrey Hotel in Grey Lynn, Auckland, with cooked breakfast thrown in plus the Surrey's famous Sunday roast. Vegetarians can elect for more peas I suppose. There are two runners-up. Second place will receive five nights accommodation a the Surrey; third place will receive four nights accommodation. Dick Frizzell is putting up the $5,000 from the goodness of his heart, and his loot will be shared by the winners.
Writers wanting to apply can email stephen11@xtra.co.nz with the subject line in screaming caps THE SURREY HOTEL WRITERS RESIDENCY AWARD IN ASSOCIATION WITH NEWSROOM AND DICK FRIZZELL. The cut-off is midnight, Sunday, August 20. Send in a brief covering letter outlining the project you have in mind, and it wouldn’t hurt to maybe attach a few pages of the work in progress. Otherwise, the conditions of entry are really quite permissive. Previous winners and finalists can apply. New Zealand writers will be preferred, meaning anyone who lives here or has lived here or is thinking about it. Established authors and complete nobodies will be assessed on the merit of their application so long as they have had something published somewhere, in print or online. Novelists, short story writers, poets, memoirists, biographers....This is for writers of books, and books only for adults; no screenplay writers, no playwrights, no comics illustrators, no YA or children's authors. It's all about a book intended for grown-ups, like Pet by Catherine Chidgey.
2 The Axeman’s Carnival by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $35)
3 Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38)
4 Kāwai by Monty Soutar (David Bateman, $39.99)
5 Tangi by Witi Ihimaera (Penguin Random House, $30)
6 Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts by Josie Shapiro (Allen & Unwin, $36.99)
7 Mrs Jewell and the Wreck of the General Grant by Cristina Sanders (The Cuba Press, $37)
8 Double Jeopardy by Stef Harris (Quentin Wilson, $37.50)
The author is a frontline cop in Motueka. His novel is set in Boston and tells the story of a former detective whose daughter’s killer is released from prison.
9 The Witching Tide by Margaret Meyer (Hachette, $37.99)
10 Audition by Pip Adam (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $35)
From a review by Sarah Laing: "Pip Adam's new novel Audition, set in a spaceship, crewed by giants, is all about noise. The spaceship is crazy with it. It is the loudest ship ever built, and the noise generates the energy to propel it. Or maybe it doesn’t – nothing is entirely explained in this novel, and we know as much as the giants who are incarcerated inside it. The noise is at an unbearable level and the giants are unable to escape it. They must talk continuously or else they will grow and the ship will burst. The title Audition has the roots of auditory in it, but perhaps the characters in the novel are auditioning. But what for? A new life in a new universe, beyond incarceration? Or are they in some kind of reality show, performing the act of piloting a space ship, when in fact an external force is in control?
"One more question: Is Audition Pip Adam’s most bonkers book yet? Quite possibly so. It’s also audacious, inventive and radical, and this time round, a little hallucinatory."
Generic hallucinatory cover.
