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The Spinoff
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Spinoff
The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending May 30
The only published and available best-selling indie book chart in New Zealand is the top 10 sales list recorded every week at Unity Books' stores in High St, Auckland, and Willis St, Wellington. AUCKLAND 1 Air by John Boyne (Doubleday, $35) The conclusion to Boyne's four-part Elements Series and so far, so good over on Good Reads where 2402 ratings give it an average of 4.47 stars. 2 Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape, $26) Last year's Booker Prize winner. This year's Booker longlist is due on 29 July. 3 Delirious by Damien Wilkins (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38) The 2025 Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction winner! My heart is still pumping after that hair-raising ceremony in which Wilkins was delayed until the very last moment when he literally ran onto the stage to make his acceptance speech. Read a day-after-the-night-before interview with Wilkins right here on The Spinoff. 4 Is A River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane (Penguin Random House, $65) The people love Macfarlane and his nature writing. 5 M urriyang: Song of Time by Stan Grant (Simon and Schuster, $47) Remember when Stan Grant took the stage at Auckland Writers Festival's gala night and was simply outstanding? Grant is an indigenous Australian writer and journalist and an astonishing, moving storyteller. 6 1985 by Dominic Hoey (Penguin, $38) 'Reading it was just like being back in Auckland, growing up on the streets of Grey Lynn and hoping you might be able to scab some money off your mates and hit up the 562 Takeaway (made famous by appearing on the cover of Hoey's poetry collection 'I Thought We'd Be Famous'). OK, yeah, Hoey and I grew up in Auckland a few decades apart, but reading this felt like looking back on a childhood diary that myself or any one of my friends could have written.' Read more of The Spinoff's Lyric Waiwiri-Smith and Claire Mabey's thoughts on this propulsive new novel, here. 7 James by Percival Everett (Picador, $38) One of the bestselling books of 2024 looks to do the same this 2025. 8 Girl On Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Woman Against Themselves by Sophie Gilbert (John Murray, $40) Here's the publisher's explanation: 'What happened to feminism in the twenty-first century? This question feels increasingly urgent in a moment of cultural and legislative backlash, when widespread uncertainty about the movement's power, focus, and currency threatens decades of progress. Sophie Gilbert identifies an inflection point in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the energy of third-wave and 'riot grrrl' feminism collapsed into a regressive period of hyper-objectification, sexualization, and infantilization. Mining the darker side of nostalgia, Gilbert trains her keen analytic eye on the most revealing cultural objects of the era, across music, film, television, fashion, tabloid journalism, and more. What she recounts is harrowing, from the leering gaze of the paparazzi to the gleeful cruelty of early reality TV and a burgeoning internet culture vicious toward women in the spotlight and damaging for those who weren't. Gilbert tracks many of the period's dominant themes back to the rise of internet porn, which gained widespread influence as it began to pervade our collective consciousness. The result is a devastating portrait of a time when a distinctly American blend of excess, materialism, and power worship collided with the culture's reactionary, puritanical, and chauvinistic currents. Amid a collective reconsideration of the way women are treated in public, Girl on Girl is a blistering indictment of the matrix of misogyny that undergirded the cultural production of the early twenty-first century, and continues to shape our world today.' 9 Toi Te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art by Deidre Brown & Ngarino Ellis with Jonathan Mane-Wheoki (Auckland University Press, $100) Winner of the Bookhub Award for Illustrated Nonfiction at this year's Ockham New Zealand Book Awards! Read about how the writers approached this ground-breaking book, here. 10 Slags by Emma Jane Unsworth (HarperCollins, $35) 'On the first morning of their holiday together in a remote part of Scotland, 42-year-old Sarah convinces her younger sister, Juliette, to clamber on to the roof of their mobile home for a better phone signal,' writes Shahidha Bari on The Guardian. 'Juliette has three layers of tinfoil wrapped around her limbs and a tinfoil cone hat plonked on her head before she clocks that she's fallen for a prank. It's a pleasing bit of sibling slapstick in Slags, the new novel from Emma Jane Unsworth about desire, dissatisfaction and the ferocious loyalty of sisters. And sisterhood, as Unsworth writes it here, is an unbreakable connection for which no prank antenna is needed.' WELLINGTON 1 Slowing the Sun | Essays by Nadine Hura (Bridget Williams Books, $40) Spinoff readers may well be familiar with Nadine Hura's insightful essays. This is an outstanding collection, a long time in the making. Here's what the publisher says: 'In the midst of grief, Hura works through science, pūrākau, poetry and back again. Seeking to understand climate change in relation to whenua and people, she asks: how should we respond to what has been lost? Her many-sided essays explore environmental degradation, social disconnection and Indigenous reclamation, insisting that any meaningful response must be grounded in Te Tiriti and anti-colonialism.' 2 This Compulsion In Us by Tina Makereti (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $40) What a week for Aotearoa books! Tina Makereti's long-awaited collection of nonfiction is exquisite. Read an excerpt from This Compulsion In Us on The Spinoff, here. 3 Delirious by Damien Wilkins (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38) 4 The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38) The Auckland Writers Festival's bestselling book and the first in New Zealand to reach 1000 sales in 2025 (are you surprised by that number?). It's a stonkingly good tale about an alternate England of the 1970s. Sinister, thought-provoking and gripping. Read books editor Claire Mabey's review right here. 5 Wonderland by Tracy Farr (Cuba Press, $38) Tracy Farr fans rejoice! We've another compelling novel from the author of The Lives and Loves of Lena Gaunt, and The Hope Fault. Here's the blurb for Wonderland: 'Te Motu Kairangi Miramar Peninsula, Wellington 1912. Doctor Matti Loverock spends her days and nights bringing babies into the world, which means her daughters – seven-year-old triplets Ada, Oona and Hanna – have grown up at Wonderland, the once-thriving amusement park owned by their father, Charlie. Then a grieving woman arrives to stay from the other side of the world, in pain and incognito, fleeing scandal. She ignites the triplets' curiosity and brings work for Matti, diverting them all from what is really happening at Wonderland. In a bold reimagining, Marie Curie – famous for her work on radioactivity – comes to Aotearoa and discovers both solace and wonder.' 6 Tackling the Hens by Mary McCallum (Cuba Press, $25) Local hero Mary McCallum's latest poetry book tackles hens … 'Hens can be fun visitors, when they gossip and sunbathe and pop inside for a chat, but they can outstay their welcome and tackling them to send them home isn't easy,' reads the charming blurb. 'They aren't the only creatures in the pages of this book— there's Ursula the golden-eyed cat, a leporine emperor, singing mice and all the swallows! Then there are the people who interact with them: an entomologist in love with the spiders he observes, a builder who releases a trapped mouse, a woman who attracts bees as a flower does—and Mary and the hens, of course.' 7 The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong (Jonathan Cape, $38) Vuong is unstoppable. This latest work is already a TikTok sensation and massive bestseller. Here's the blurb: 'One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to alter Hai's relationship to himself, his family, and a community at the brink.'
Chicago Tribune
24-05-2025
- Sport
- Chicago Tribune
Portage second-grader sets school record for reading 2 million words in a year
Philip Mulroe, 8, has a goal of reading 3 million words by the end of third grade, starting this summer. It follows up his successful goals of reading 1 million words as a first-grader and 2 million as a second-grader at Kyle Elementary School in Portage. Portage Township School Corp. honored Philip on Facebook earlier this month, saying he broke the all-time record at Kyle, becoming the first second-grader to read over 2 million words in a single school year. In fact, he was at 2,343,556 words as of Thursday, as measured by tests given at the school for reading comprehension for the books he's read. Each test, specific to a book, has the number of words in that book. Philip reads mostly fiction and humorous books, he said, although he's read others. He comes from a long line of readers. There's a video of him with his great-grandmother as he's learning to read. His grandmother was an avid reader. His mother, Kristin Mulroe, said she reads at least a book a week. 'I've always been a big reader, even as a kid,' she said. His father, Phil, is a social studies teacher at Portage High School and the head boys golf coach. As might be expected, Phil enjoys reading golf newsletters. He also enjoys books by Admiral William H. McRaven, including 'Make Your Bed,' which the Bears front office staff was reading last summer. As Phil works toward a master's degree in political science at Indiana University, he's reading books related to that topic as well. Kristin read to her son every night when he was little, before he learned to read. When he was a preschooler, she read Captain Underpants books to him. As he learned to read, they would alternate chapters. 'I really do the Kindle book because it's easier to read ebooks,' she said. A Kindle is easier to carry than a stack of books while traveling. Kristin uses Good Reads to keep track of what she's read. Her son uses stays up late, reading in bed. That's when he does most of his reading. 'The power went out last week, and I see him in there with a flashlight, reading,' Kristin said. Philip prefers physical books. He's an avid library user, going through many of the books at his school library, including all but two of the biographies in the series he read. He goes to the public library, too, and his mother signed him up for a book subscription, receiving five books a month. 'We found some new series that way,' Kristin said. Next up is the Harry Potter series, Philip said. 'I've never seen the movies, either,' Kristin said, so she's looking forward to that series as well. This late in the school year, Philip isn't able to borrow books from the school library after borrowing about a book a day the rest of the year. Now he's reading on his school Chromebook. Philip can read at a middle school level, Kristin said. His reading comprehension is impressive. 'All the books I read over summer last year, I got 100% on all the quizzes,' Philip said, when school started last August. Reading isn't Philip's only activity. He enjoys soccer and basketball, too. 'I honestly don't read all that much. I just read long, and I read fast,' he said.
Newsroom
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Newsroom
Wilkins flies in late to win Ockhams
High drama on Wednesday night at the Ockham national book awards as Damien Wilkins only just made it from Wellington to Auckland in time to be presented with $65,000 as the winner of the fiction prize. Delayed flights meant the Wellington writer had to literally run onto the stage at the Aotea Centre for the final announcement of the night at the Ockham awards held in the Aotea Centre. His novel Delirious won the fiction prize and $65,000. In any case, righteousness and natural justice prevailed at the 2025 Ockham national book awards with the two best books published last year winning major awards: huzzah to Wilkins, and to Rotorua activist Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku, who won the $12,000 nonfiction prize for her astounding memoir Hine Toa. Both books are destined to re-enter the bestseller charts like two blazing comets. Other winners included Emma Neale, who won the $12,000 poetry prize for Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit, and Deidre Brown and Ngarino Ellis, authors of the winner of the $12,000 illustrated nonfiction prize, Toi Te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art. Prize money of $3000 was also awarded to the winners of best first book. The full list appears at the end of this article. The main spotlight belonged to Wilkins and his $65,000 windfall. It has been a long time between drinks: he won the fiction prize way back in 1994 for his debut novel The Miserables (recent inane review on GoodReads, by someone called Annie: 'Found it rather inaccessible, meandering, plotless and dry. Who gives out these literary awards anyway?') although he also won the prize for best YA novel for Aspiring at the 2020 children's book awards. Delirious may be his masterpiece, the book he was meant to write. It tells the story of a nice old couple who sell up their home and move to the arid lands of a retirement village. Pip Adam's review in ReadingRoom got it perfectly: 'At its heart it's a deeply affecting novel about the almost unbearable pains of being alive that are usually impossible for us to look at directly … It's an incredibly accomplished novel which demonstrates a deep and lived understanding of the ways we carry on while knowing what is coming for us at increasing speed the longer we live. In many ways this book destroyed me. It brought me to tears more than once, but it's a gift.' Note the highly emotional response. It's also there in the recent review in Landfall, by Breton Dukes, who wrote, 'Like Damien, maybe you have had a sister die, or a mum go nutty … In Delirious, Wilkins disappears entirely and that's what makes it a great book; it's what makes a masterpiece—the absence of author, combined with riveting content, faultless craft and heart, heart, heart.' If you have not read it already then you ought, ought, ought. Same goes for Hine Toa by Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku. It's such a powerful book. (Congratulations, also, are due to HarperCollins, a commercial publisher which rarely features in the rarefied air of book awards; the commercially unpressured university presses picked up six of the eight Ockham awards on Wednesday. The other exception was Saufo'i Press, which published the winner of the best first book of poetry, Manuali'I by Rex Letoa Paget.) I expected Ngāhuia would write fascinating chapters on her involvement with emergent Māori rights group Ngā Tamatoa at Auckland University in the 1970s, and she did not disappoint. But she was just as compelling in her personal stories growing up in Rotorua and, later, realising she was lesbian. It's a sexy book. Hine Toa marks her second win at the national book awards, after winning the culture prize in 2008 as co-author of Mau Moko: The World of Māori Tattoo. No surprises that Deidre Brown and Ngarino Ellis' Toi Te Mana: An Indigenous history of Māori art won the illustrated nonfiction prize. As Eva Corlett wrote in The Guardian, 'A landmark book celebrating Māori art has clocked up a couple of impressive firsts: not only is it the most comprehensive account of creative work by Indigenous New Zealanders ever published, it is also the first wide-ranging art history written entirely by Māori scholars.' It has since been published internationally, by the University of Chicago Press in the US and Australia. As for Emma Neale's prize-winning Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit, it follows the possibly equal honour of being named by poetry czar Nick Ascroft in ReadingRoom as one of the best collections of 2024. 'A lot always happens in an Emma Neale poem,' wrote the czar. 'You are not left meandering imponderables. Each is told with her fluid grace.' Nicely put; and indeed I saw Ascroft at the awards ceremony, drinking fluids with considerable grace. It was a good night. Arts minister Paul Goldsmith was there. Miriama Kamo was a gracious and regal MC. Huzzah, most of all, to the winners of the 2025 awards. They deserve their loot and more so they deserve the most important thing: to be read. JANN MEDLICOTT ACORN PRIZE FOR FICTION Delirious by Damien Wilkins (Te Herenga Waka University Press) GENERAL NONFICTION AWARD Hine Toa: A Story of Bravery by Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku (HarperCollins) BOOKHUB AWARD FOR ILLUSTRATIVE NONFICTION Toi te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art by Deidre Brown and Ngarino Ellis (Auckland University Press) MARY AND PETER BIGGSY PRIZE FOR POETRY Liar, Liar, Lick, Spit by Emma Neale (Otago University Press) HUBERT CHURCH PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST WORK OF FICTION Poorhara by Michelle Rahurahu (Te Herenga Waka University Press) JESSIE MACKAY PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST BOOK OF POETRY Manuali'I by Rex Letoa Paget (Saufo'i Press) JUDITH BINNEY PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST BOOK OF ILLUSTRATED NONFICTION Sight Lines: Women and Art in Aotearoa by Kirsty Baker (Auckland University Press) EH McCORMICK PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST BOOK OF GENERAL NONFICTION The Chthonic Cycle by Una Cruickshank (Te Herenga Waka University Press)
The Independent
25-03-2025
- The Independent
Sydney erotic novel author charged after outrage over ‘child abuse material' in book
A woman in Australia has been charged over possession of child abuse material following outrage over her novel that outlines the relationship of an 18-year-old girl with her father's friend. Lauren Tesolin-Mastrosa, an author in Sydney who writes erotic fiction under the pen name 'Tori Woods', caused a stir on social media following the release of her new novel titled 'Daddy's Little Toy'. The book has been accused of containing graphic fictional child abuse material. New South Wales police said they began investigations into the book in March 'following reports of a fiction novel containing child abuse material'. On Friday at about 12.30pm local time, detectives attended a home in Quakers Hill in the suburbs of western Sydney where they arrested the 33-year-old woman. The police also executed a search warrant at the home and confiscated several hard copies of the book for forensic examination. "The woman was charged with [possessing] child abuse material, [disseminating] child abuse material and [producing] child abuse material,' the police said. She was granted a conditional bail to appear before Blacktown Local Court on Monday, 31 March, the police added. The author of the book took to social media to say that there has been a 'big misunderstanding'. She said the book 'is definitely not promoting or inciting anything ever to do with (child sexual abuse) or pedophilia'. 'What is being said is grossly disturbing and breaks my heart as well as makes me sick.' She said the book is a fictional read and she understands why some of the parts of the book is being frowned upon. She said that those associated with the book, such as the cover designer, graphic designer, and editor are being wrongly attacked as they were not aware of the contents. 'These ladies were under no impression that I was Lauren Ashley writing as Tori Woods. I reached out to these ladies to work with them as Tori and only as Tori,' she added. Ms Tesolin-Mastrosa has since taken down social media accounts. The book has also been pulled down from Amazon and GoodReads. The designer of the cover, Georgia Stove, also distanced herself from the author, saying that she is receiving death threats. 'I have cut ties with Tori Woods, effective immediately,' she said. 'All I had known about the book was the blurb which read 'barely legal' and in my mind I truly thought that was okay,' she said. 'I am here to answer any questions you may have. Just please stop with the threats over something I had no say in.' 'Daddy's little toy by tori woods is absolutely disgusting,' user Kyley Glenn on X said sharing the cover of the book. 'Brace yourselves! The plot = girl 18 & older man, attracted to her since she was 3. Police charge Lauren Tesolin-Mastrosa, pen name Tori Woods, with 3 child abuse material offences in relation to her book- previously an employee of News Corp Australia,' another user said. Ms Tesolin-Mastrosa worked as a marketing executive at the Christian organisation BaptistCare, but was allegedly removed from the role on 20 March. A BaptistCare spokesperson told B&T: 'However, we can confirm that we received complaints regarding an unnamed employee late last week. As a result of these complaints, the employee was stood down effective 20 March while we undertake an internal investigation. BaptistCare takes matters of ethical conduct seriously. Our focus remains on upholding the values and integrity of our organisation.'
