This week’s bestselling books – October 11

FICTION

1 Kataraina by Becky Manawatu (Makaro Press, $37)

A free copy of the eagerly-awaited sequel to Auē was up for grabs in last week’s giveaway contest. Readers were asked to state why they wanted to read Kataraina. It was a massive contest, signalling the public thirst for Manawatu’s latest book; some of the best entries are as follows.

Cherye from Westport wrote, “Auē took me by surprise it was so intense and local and gripping and wonderful.  I had to go to Rakiura to see it for myself.  It was so about the children and their whanau and it touched my soul. So, you can imagine how excited I feel to read another of her works, and I am proud beyond words that she is a Coaster done good.”

Diane wrote, “I love the literature of Aotearoa and have read a lot of it, and Auē by Becky Manawatu is right up there with the best of it. The spirit voice of past events is unique. Despite the menace lurking, It’s heart warming and hopeful and brutal and beautiful. Arama, the 8 year old narrator is now my favourite character, with his “plaster” solutions to lifes woes.  Powerful tale of intergenerational trauma. As excellent literature should do; it makes us reflect on our civilisation, our country, our progress and ourselves. It should be compulsory reading for all Aotearoa. So my anticipation for this next book is off the scale. Haere mai ki au Kataraina.”

Oh and Beth wrote, “Who doesn’t love a story with a good muttonbird in it?”

But the winner is a reader who did not give their name although supplied quite a bit of identifying biographical information. They wrote, “We love Becky Manawatu. She came to our place to interview us for an article she was writing for the Westport News. It was a series of stories about locals who’d been married for 50 years or more. 

“It was a rainy day when Becky came. She left her shoes at the door and sat crosslegged on the couch with a cuppatea, fresh bread & honey. She was a blue-eyed, blond-haired Maori woman, straight out of the Six60 song.

“We were pleased to meet her because we’d always enjoyed her reporting in the Westport News – here was someone who loved language. Also she was a local who lived up the Coast with her whanau. We knew her Inangahua cousins. 

“Becky laughed at our jokes. She was enlightened enough to include our story about my favourite dunny being dynamited on Waimarama Beach. We thought she was a lovely young woman and not just because she wrote nice things about us. She was just … lovely.

“As she was leaving Becky told us she was writing a book. I predicted it would clean up, win prizes. And so it did. That’s another reason why we love Becky – she made my prediction come true.

“I hope my next Becky-prediction comes true: that I will win her next book, Kataraina.”

It has come true. Huzzah to someone who has been married for 50 years or more, and loves Becky; a copy of Kataraina is theirs.

2 Tree of Nourishment (Kāwai 2) by Monty Soutar (David Bateman, $39.99)

A review is forthcoming in ReadingRoom by Buddy Mikaere.

3 Marry Me in Italy by Nicky Pellegrino (Hachette, $37.99)

4 The Bookshop Detectives: Dead Girl Gone by Gareth Ward & Louise Ward (Penguin Random House, $38)

5 Kāwai: For Such a Time as This (Kāwai 1) by Monty Soutar (David Bateman, $39.99)

6 All That We Know by Shilo Kino (Hachette, $37.99)

7 Pātea Boys by Airana Ngarewa (Hachette, $36.99)

From my review of this collection of short stories by the author of The Bone Tree: “The best of these fictions are among the very best New Zealand short stories of this century, up there with Alice Tawhai, Emma Neale, Breton Dukes, Charlotte Grimshaw, Pip Adam, Kirsty Gunn, Airini Beautrais.”

8 Auē by Becky Manawatu(Makaro Press, $35)

9 In the Half Light of a Dying Day by C.K. Stead (Auckland University Press, $24.99)

Oho! This great legend of New Zealand letters, 92 next week (October 17), is back on the bestseller list, which he has graced ever since his first book, Smith’s Dream, that classic imagined portrait of New Zealand under a fascist regime, was published in 1971. His latest collection of poems reads like fiction, too, and has a brisk, page-turning quality to it. The subject matter is the death of Stead’s wife Kay. He assumes the mask of Greek poet Catullus to tell stories of her illness and their love for each other, and he gives Kay the character of Kezia, as Katherine Mansfield was known. It’s a sophisticated idea that demands sophisticated readers – but actually the poems are simple and powerful, in seizures of grief, of longing, of missing. Sales of In the Half Light of a Dying Day were brisk at an event last week in Mt Eden, where Stead read wonderfully well from the book. “An extraordinary late masterpiece,” author Anna Jackson describes it on the back cover. She is entirely correct. Recommended, warmly and absolutely.

10 The Writing Desk by Di Morris (David Bateman, $45)

A graphic historical novel set in colonial New Zealand!

NONFICTION

1 Tasty by Chelsea Winter (Allen & Unwin, $55)

OMG it’s the new cookbook by the Queen of cookbooks and OMG she looks super fine on the cover and OMG a free copy is up for grabs in this week’s giveaway contest.

There are recipes for pies, lasagnes, curries, slices, salads, cakes, pastas, soups, desserts and “traybakes”. It’s very free, as in meat-free, egg-free, dairy-free and sugar-free, a direction she has been heading towards in her journey as Mama of the Nation. I am forever cooking up meals from two of her previous cookbooks (Tasty is her seventh), the 2016 meaty classic Scrumptious, back when she whipped up meaty delights such as sausage minestrone, chicken empanadas, and “my famous beef ragu”, and her 2020 plant-based, vegetarian classic Supergood, from which I constantly feed my 17-year-old cheese quesadillas, Moroccan roasted carrot and quinoa salad (it’s the roasted garlic which really brings it alive), and the similarish “That Moroccan Dish”, a chickpea curry that I mildly depart from by replacing apricots (not a fan) with raisins.

To enter, write a fan letter about Chelsea, telling us why you rate her as a paragon of healthy eating and kitchen goodness, by emailing stephen11@xtra.co.nz with the subject line in screaming caps EVERYONE LOVES CHELSEA. Entries close at midnight, Sunday October 13.

2 More Salad by Margo Flanagan & Rosa Power (Allen & Unwin, $49.99)

3 This is the F#$%ing News by Patrick Gower (Allen & Unwin, $37.99)

4 Atua Wāhine by Hana Tapiata (HarperCollins, $36.99)

5 Woman Uninterrupted by Brodie Kane (HarperCollins, $39.99)

This looks set to be a surprise big hit in the peak season of Xmas sales; it’s the frank, funny memoir of a broadcaster, who takes her no-holds-barred approach to a chapter on having an abortion. She writes, “I had my abortion in 2010, a full decade before the practice would be decriminalised. The pregnancy resulted from the night of the Radio Awards, which is always, every single year, a huge and debaucherous evening. I was at RadioLIVE and was awarded Journalist of the Year. I was ecstatic: I had been working hard and it had clearly paid off. So I decided to celebrate. I had a really fun time and I ended the night at a hotel with an Australian tourist I’d met at an Irish pub.

“I don’t know what his name was and we didn’t use a condom. But I did everything right the day after. I went to the pharmacy and got myself the emergency contraceptive pill. That’s never a fun thing to do. In case you’re not already feeling slutty enough, you have to walk up to the pharmacy counter and ask for the morning-after pill. It doesn’t matter how quietly you ask, there’s always someone else who magically appears right next to you at the counter to hear you in your moment of need.

“At the time I was living with two other women – Shellee and Lauren – and, as happens when women hang out a lot, we were all completely in sync. One of us would always know exactly where we all were in our cycle. I realised I hadn’t had a period in a while. And then my boobs started to get really sore and hard and big. I don’t have big boobs, but they were doing something, that’s for sure…”

6 The Life of Dai by Dai Henwood & Jaquie Brown (HarperCollins, $39.99)

7 View from the Second Row by Samuel Whitelock (HarperCollins, $49.99)

8 Serviceman J by Jamie Pennell (HarperCollins, $39.99)

9 Life Hacks from the Buddha by Tony Fernando (HarperCollins, $37.99)

10 The Last Secret Agent by Pippa Latour & Jude Dobson (Allen & Unwin, $37.99)