The Librarian

If you ever hear of a Publishers' Roadshow near you, then my advice is to get to it by any means possible. Publishers' Roadshows are fab. Not only is there wine and usually a nice platter or two of chilly philly, but there is the thrill of hearing about all the new books that are coming out, way before they are on book shop shelves, (infact, way before their jacket pictures have come out on the internet...hence this post being a bit short on images), and there is something rather exciting about that, don't you think? So, since I suspect that sadly none of you made it to the Publishers' Roadshow that I went to the other night, consider me the informer. Here are the books I will be hunting down: Firstly, some non fiction goodness in time for Christmas - it's all cook books and station life:      Italia by Jo Seagar      Stoked by Al Brown      Otiwhiti Station by the Duncan family      Castlepoint -...

Every quite often it seems a New Zealand author writes a book that I love so much that I can't stop talking about it. In the last few years there was Let Me Sing You Gentle Songs, then Mr Pip , and this time it is..... The Conductor by Sarah Quigley. The Conductor by Sarah Quigley It's cold, it's spare and it's very stark, but Sarah Quigley has created something powerfully beautiful in this book that follows the story of the composition and first performance of Shostakovich's 7th symphony amidst the seige on Leningrad by the Nazi's in 1941. Based around the story of Shostakovich’s single-minded endeavour to write his 7 th Symphony, and see it performed, the book shows the lengths that an artist will go to to express himself. While most people are fleeing the city, and others starving and dying, Shostakovich determinedly writes his piece of music, and it falls upon conductor Karl Eliasberg to rise above his own starvation and grief to bring toget...