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The Spinoff
3 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.'
The Spinoff
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Spinoff
The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending May 23
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. This week we are publishing Unity Auckland's bestsellers only, but will resume usual service and include Wellington next week. AUCKLAND 1 The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38) Thanks to an epic Auckland Writers Festival in which Chidgey appeared, The Book of Guilt is the first Aotearoa book to hit 1,000 book sales this year (according to NielsenIQ Bookdata). The Spinoff's books editor Claire Mabey gave Chidgey's latest novel a rave: read the review here. New Zealander Wynn-Williams on her time working for Meta. 3 Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape, $26) Last year's Booker Prize winner set in space over one day, and the subject of a headline event at the Auckland Writers Festival last weekend. This year's Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction offered one of the most memorable nights in Ockham New Zealand Book Awards lore: Wilkins arrived only just in time to give his acceptance speech after a day of flight delays and other hi-jinks. Read an interview with Wilkins on The Spinoff, here. 5 You Are Here by David Nicholls (Hachette, $28) Absolutely charming story of walking and thinking and romance. 6 When the Going Was Good by Graydon Carter (Grove Press, $40) The memoir of a magazine editor. 8 The Emperor Of Gladness by Ocean Vuong (Penguin Random House, $38) Poet and memoirist Ocean Vuong's long-awaited novel is finally here and has arrived to rave reviews. 'Ocean Vuong's second novel is a 416‑page tour of the edgeland between aspirational fantasy and self-deception. It opens with a long slow pan over the fictional small town of East Gladness, Connecticut, beginning with ghosts that rise 'as mist over the rye across the tracks' and ending on a bridge where the camera finds a young man called Hai –'19, in the midnight of his childhood and a lifetime from first light' – preparing to drown himself. There's an almost lazy richness to the picture: the late afternoon sun, the 'moss so lush between the wooden rail ties that, at a certain angle of thick, verdant light, it looks like algae', the junkyard 'packed with school buses in various stages of amnesia'.' Read the rest of The Guardian's review, here. 9 38 Londres Street: On Impunity, Pinochet in England and a Nazi in Patagonia by Phillipe Sands (Weidenfeld & Nicholson $40) 'In 38 Londres Street, Philippe Sands blends personal memoir, historical detective work and gripping courtroom drama to probe a secret double story of mass murder, one that reveals a shocking thread that links the horrors of the 1940s with those of our own times.' Sounds like … a lot. 10 Air by John Boyne (Doubleday UK, $35) For those who have been following Boyne's bestselling elements series this is the book that brings them all together.
The Spinoff
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Spinoff
The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending May 16
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 The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38) An absolute triumph. Here's a snippet from books editor Claire Mabey's review of Chidgey's latest bestseller: 'Chidgey's latest novel is uncannily similar to Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (which she has not read). It takes similar aim at British identity by puncturing its society with the normalisation of skewed medical ethics. What both novels have in common are questions of nature versus nurture and the eternal thought exercise of what does it mean to possess a soul? The two writers share an interest in the dehumanising potential of such questions. Both Ishiguro (one of the greatest novelists of all time) and Chidgey (fast becoming one of the greats herself) investigate how whole societies, entire countries, can enter a path of gross moral corruption one person, one concession, at a time.' Read the rest here. Including a yarn about the time Zuck snubbed then prime minister of New Zealand, John Key. 3 When the Going Was Good by Graydon Carter (Grove Press, $40) A memoir about the golden age of print magazines. 4 James by Percival Everett (Picador, $38) The Huckleberry Finn retelling that has emerged as one of the great novels of this decade. 5 Butter by Asako Yuzuki (Fourth Estate, $35) Asako Yuzuki's smash hit about food, murder and seduction. 6 Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic, $30) 7 Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape, $26) Harvey is in Aotearoa as we speak! Auckland Writers Festival is underway and is set to stage a huge weekend of book talk including a headline event about Harvey's Booker Prize winning novel. 8 Unforgetting: A Memoir by Belinda Robinson (Vox Pop Productions, $40) 9 1985 by Dominic Hoey (Penguin, $38) A superb new novel about Obi who lives in inner city Auckland of 1985 and whose life is full of challenges: a sick mum, a dreamer for a dad, dodgy adults abound. But Obi games his way through obstacle after obstacle in a breathtaking story about survival and how the best strategy is to keep living another life. 10 You Are Here by David Nicholls (Hachette, $28) A truly lovely novel about finding love late in life, about walking and the random events that can shape what you do and how you think. Funny, moving, warm. WELLINGTON 1 The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $38) 2 1985 by Dominic Hoey (Penguin, $38) 3 Fire & Ice Secrets: Histories, Treasures and Mysteries of Tongariro National Park by Hazel Philips (Massey University Press, $50) Absolutely riveting stories. Sample one of them – about Ruapehu's smashed summit stone – right here on The Spinoff. 4 That's What I Am: Oral Histories of Older Lesbians by Lois Cox (Townbelt Press, $35) 'That's What I Am draws on oral history interviews conducted in the late 1990s with sixteen New Zealand lesbians over the age of 50,' reads the publisher's blurb. 'It tells the women's stories through the decades, capturing memories of childhood, adolescence and early adulthood, falling in love and establishing relationships. The storytellers talk of navigating identity and social stigma and forging connections in Wellington's evolving lesbian community. Together, their lives paint a vivid portrait of resilience and solidarity. This book, based on the Older Lesbians Oral History Project, is now published for the first time. A vital document for the history of lesbian communities in twentieth century New Zealand, it is a must-read for anyone interested in lesbian lives over time, feminist studies or queer history.' 5 James by Percival Everett (Picador, $38) 6 Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic, $30) 7 Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata (Granta, $33) A stunning new novel from the author of Convenience Store Woman. Here's the blurb: 'As a girl, Amane realises with horror that her parents 'copulated' in order to bring her into the world, rather than using artificial insemination, which became the norm in the mid-twentieth century. Amane strives to get away from what she considers an indoctrination in this strange 'system' by her mother, but her infatuations with both anime characters and real people have a sexual force that is undeniable. As an adult in an appropriately sexless marriage—sex between married couples is now considered as taboo as incest—Amane and her husband Saku decide to go and live in a mysterious new town called Experiment City or Paradise-Eden, where all children are raised communally, and every person is considered a Mother to all children. Men are beginning to become pregnant using artificial wombs that sit outside of their bodies like balloons, and children are nameless, called only 'Kodomo-chan.' Is this the new world that will purify Amane of her strangeness once and for all?' 8 The Tear Bottle by Annemarie Jutel (Self published, $40) A lovely, local publication about 'the objects families covet as a way of holding on to their past. It is a graphic memoir, told by bickering sisters trying to find out the truth about something their grandmother left behind.' A majestically produced hardback that compels you to learn te reo Māori phrases to express love and other emotions with friends and family. 10 The Covid Response: A Scientist's Account of New Zealand's Pandemic and What Comes Next by Shaun Hendy (Bridget Williams Books, $40) Hendy's comprehensive breakdown of Aotearoa's Covid response: the why, the how and the what it all means.
The Spinoff
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Spinoff
The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending May 9
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 Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic, $30) 'Believe the hype,' said Unity Bookseller Eden Denyer in their review of this latest instalment of the Hunger Games. 2 Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape, $26) Samantha Harvey is touching down on Aotearoa soil any day now as the Booker Prize winner is starring in this year's Auckland Writers Festival. 3 Careless People: A Story of Where I Used to Work by Sarah Wynn-Williams (Pan UK, $40) From surviving shark attacks to surviving Meta, this is the exposé of the year. Read Julie Hill's review of Wynn-Williams' words on her previous place of work on The Spinoff. 4 Eurotrash by Christian Kracht (Serpents Tail, $30) A mother-son story like no other. 5 Butter by Asako Yuzuki (Fourth Estate, $35) Asako Yuzuki is also winging her way to Aotearoa for the Auckland Writers Festival and we hope she has a delicious time! 6 Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Fourth Estate, $38) Auckland Writers Festival's digital event with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has been cancelled ('due to unforeseen circumstances') and replaced by this one, which looks extremely different but extremely interesting. 7 Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow (Ad Astra, $37) Doctorow did a whirlwind tour of Aotearoa over the weekend and brought hordes of fans to Unity's doors. Red Team Blues is a novel about a forensic accountant in Silicon Valley and crypto and crime. 8 Chokepoint Capitalism by Cory Doctorow & Rebecca Giblin (Scribe Publications, $37) A huge deal when it came out in 2022, this nonfiction book is about what exactly chokepoint capitalism is and why it's choking us. Here's the blurb: 'In Chokepoint Capitalism, scholar Rebecca Giblin and writer and activist Cory Doctorow argue we're in a new era of 'chokepoint capitalism', with exploitative businesses creating insurmountable barriers to competition that enable them to capture value that should rightfully go to others. All workers are weakened by this, but the problem is especially well illustrated by the plight of creative workers. By analysing book publishing and news, live music and music streaming, screenwriting, radio, and more, Giblin and Doctorow deftly show how powerful corporations construct 'anti-competitive flywheels' designed to lock in users and suppliers, make their markets hostile to new entrants, and then force workers and suppliers to accept unfairly low prices. In the book's second half, Giblin and Doctorow explain how to batter through those chokepoints, with tools ranging from transparency rights to collective action and ownership, radical interoperability, contract terminations, job guarantees, and minimum wages for creative work.' 9 Better the Blood by Michael Bennett (Simon & Schuster, $27) Brilliantly done crime novel from an Aotearoa king of crime (and guest curator at Auckland Writers Festival). Here's the blurb: 'Detective Senior Sergeant Hana Westerman is a tenacious Māori detective juggling single motherhood and the pressures of her career in Auckland's Central Investigation Branch. When she's led to a crime scene by a mysterious video, she discovers a man hanging in a hidden room. With little to go on, Hana knows one thing: the killer is sending her a message. As a Māori officer, there has always been a clash between duty and culture for Hana, but it is something that she's found a way to live with. Until now. When more murders follow, Hana realises that her heritage and past are the keys to finding the perpetrator.' 10 Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden (Viking Penguin, $38) A terrific, terrific novel that was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2024 and whose author is … you guessed it, appearing at next week's Auckland Writers Festiva l. Here's the blurb: 'It's 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is well and truly over. Living alone in her late mother's country home, Isabel's life is as it should be: led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel's doorstep-as a guest, there to stay for the season… Eva is Isabel's antithesis: sleeps late, wakes late, walks loudly through the house and touches things she shouldn't. In response Isabel develops a fury-fuelled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house-a spoon, a knife, a bowl-Isabel' suspicions spiral out of control. In the sweltering peak of summer, Isabel's paranoia gives way to desire – leading to a discovery that unravels all Isabel has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva – nor the house in which they live – are what they seem.' WELLINGTON 1 The Art and Making of Arcane: League of Legends by Elizabeth Vincentelli (Titan Books, $99) 'The Art and Making of Arcane is an immersive journey behind the scenes of the Emmy Award-winning Animated Series!' 2 Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic, $30) 3 Careless People: A Story of Where I Used to Work by Sarah Wynn-Williams (Pan UK, $40) 4 Silverborn: The Mystery of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend (Lothian Children's Books, $25) The fourth instalment in the absolutely brilliant fantasy series set in the world of Nevermoor. In this novel Morrigan Crow is about to turn 14 and her life is only getting more complicated: this hefty adventure includes finding lost family, a whole new part of Nevermoor we've never seen before, new friends as well as new enemies, and murder! A must-read series for ages seven to those who feel at least 700. 5 Amma by Saraid de Silva (Moa Press, $38) Welcome back The Spinoff's best book of 2024 according to our readers! 6 The Cat Who Saved the Library by Sosuke Natsukawa (Picador, $25) Another cosy, bookish, cat-filled novel to comfort you during the long, chilly months of winter. 7 The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing (Picador, $28) Welcome back! This beautiful book marries memoir with research into the why and the what of gardens. Laing details the making and breaking of her own garden alongside research into what gardens and gardening means to humanity at large. 8 How to Be Enough: Seven Life-Changing Steps for Self-critics, Overthinkers and Perfectionists by Ellen Hendriksen (Bonnier, $40) Phwoar. Attacked. 9 Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference by Rutger Bregman (Bloomsbury, $39) Whoa! Double punch. 10 38 Londres Street: On Impunity, Pinochet in England and a Nazi in Patagonia by Philippe Sands (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, $40) 'In 38 Londres Street, Philippe Sands blends personal memoir, historical detective work and gripping courtroom drama to probe a secret double story of mass murder, one that reveals a shocking thread that links the horrors of the 1940s with those of our own times,' reads the publisher's blurb. 'The house at 38 Londres Street is home to the legacies of two men whose personal stories span continents, nationalities and decades of atrocity: Augusto Pinochet, President of Chile, and Walther Rauff, a Nazi SS officer responsible for the use of gas vans.' The Spinoff Books section is proudly brought to you by Unity Books and Creative New Zealand. Visit Unity Books online today.
The Spinoff
02-05-2025
- General
- The Spinoff
The Unity Books bestseller chart for the week ending May 2
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 Preachers, Pastors, Prophets: The Dominican Friars of Aotearoa by Susannah Grant (Otago University Press, $60) This sound fascinating. Here is the publisher's full and fulsome blurb: 'Preachers, Pastors, Prophets draws on a rich collection of archival material and oral interviews to tell the story of the Dominican friars of Aotearoa New Zealand. Heirs to a spiritual tradition dating back to the early thirteenth century, the friars' lives are shaped by their commitment to the Order's motto: Veritas (Truth). They have served as university and hospital chaplains, parish priests, liturgists, itinerant retreat leaders and theologians, and in media and justice roles. Never a large group, they have nevertheless reached deep into Catholic life in Aotearoa, working up and down the length of the country and across denominational boundaries. Although no longer involved in active ministry the New Zealand friars continue to fund and facilitate Aaiotanga – the Peace Place – a community space in downtown Auckland focused on peace and social justice issues. More than the history of a religious organisation, this is the story of a group of dissimilar – often eccentric – individuals who worked in a range of ministries; of the faith that united them as brothers and gave purpose to their mission as preachers; and of their impact on the communities and churches they served in Aotearoa New Zealand. Alongside the many positive achievements of Dominican ministry, this account also addresses previously silenced stories of abuse of power. Preachers, Pastors, Prophets is not a sacred history. It's a human history. Like Grant's previous book, a study of the Dominican sisters, Preachers, Pastors, Prophets offers a window into a particular world and the ways that world has transformed over time.' 2 Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic, $30) Hunger Games fans are calling this best book in the series yet. 3 Butter by Asako Yuzuki (Fourth Estate, $35) Hugely popular crime novel enjoying a sales bump due to the fact that the author is appearing at Auckland Writers Festival very soon. 4 When the Going Was Good by Graydon Carter (Atlantic Books, $40) Nostalgic for the golden age of magazines? This is the book for you. 5 Unforgetting by Belinda Robinson (Quentin Wilson Publishing, $40) The daughter of playwright Bruce Mason shares her memoir of abuse at the hands of a childhood nanny. RNZ's Kathryn Ryan talked to Robinson about her story, here. 6 Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape, $26) Wonder if anyone on the Blue Origin flight read this Booker Prize winner? 7 Careless People: A Story of Where I Used to Work by Sarah Wynn-Williams (Pan UK, $40) 'The shark brings Wynn-Williams many gifts, if by 'gifts' we mean big shark bite marks on her torso and lifelong trauma. It also seems to ignite her already eldest-sister-of-four levels of ambition and determination into shooting flames. But the shark's greatest gift, as far as the reader is concerned, is a truly unbelievable-seeming yarn and the ability to spin it.' Read more of Julie Hill's review of this book, here on The Spinoff. 8 Understanding Te Tiriti by Roimata Smail (Wai Ako, $25) Welcome back! The small book that has done big things pairs well with The Spinoff's guide to Te Tiriti. 9 Northbound by Naomi Arnold (Harper Collins, $40) 'The way Arnold has managed to condense nine months and 3028 kilometres into bang-on 300 pages is impressive throughout. From the nature descriptions, to the meal recaps and interactions she has with other walkers – the story includes many small but perfectly formed vignettes – like that chat with Doug – that illuminate more than their page space would suggest.' Wrote The Spinoff's Liv Sisson in her glowing review of Arnold's odyssey. 10 Eurotrash by Christian Kracht (Serpents Tail, $30) Purchasing for the cover and title typeface alone. Here's the blurb: 'A rambunctious, tragicomic absurd road trip novel about a wealthy Swiss-German mother and son. Realising he and she are the very worst kind of people, our unnamed middle-aged narrator embarks on a highly dubious road trip through Switzerland with his terminally ill and terminally drunken mother. They try unsuccessfully to give away or squander the fortune she has amassed from investing in armament industry shares. Along the journey they bicker endlessly over the past, throw handfuls of francs into a ravine and exasperate the living daylights out of their long-suffering taxi driver. The crimes of the twentieth century are never far behind, but neither is the need for more is a bitterly comic, vertiginous mirror-cabinet of familial and historical reckoning. Kracht's novel is a narrative tour-de-force of the tenderness and spite meted out between two people who cannot escape one another.' WELLINGTON 1 Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic, $30) 2 Covid Response: A scientist's account of New Zealand's pandemic and what comes next by Shaun Hendy (Bridget Williams Books, $40) Professor Shaun Hendy returns us to the Covid years and how and why government made their decisions about what to do and when. It's a very readable piece of literature: smartly arranged in chapters with subheadings and including chapters outlining what to do in future. 3 Sea Change by Jenny Pattrick (Bateman, $38) The unstoppable Jenny Pattrick (author of The Denniston Rose) is back with this novel imagining a tsunami has devastated the Paekākāriki community on the Kāpiti Coast. Aptly, the novel has been reviewed over on paekākā 'Four novels for the price of one,' enthuses this reviewer on The Guardian. 6 Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry (Viking, $38) Something about an heiress and two writers battling to tell her story. 7 Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape, $26) 8 Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (Faber $25) Welcome back brilliant friend! The slim novella that might well be staging a return to this hallowed chart due to the fact that the movie adaptation staring Cillian Murphy is now out in cinemas around Aotearoa. 9 Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins (Hay House, $32) The latest book that's telling you how to change your life.
