Folks who bought yesterday's edition (December 4) of the New Zealand Herald and who are planning to give books as gifts at Christmas had a bonus with a huge 12 page feature in the Canvas magazine in which their book reviewing team came up with gift suggestions from this year's crop of best books all usefully sorted into various categories from cookbooks, biographies, coffee table books etc through to general fiction, chick lit, teen reads and picture books for the youngest members of the family..
Thanks to Books Editor Linda Herrick and her team for a thoughtful and most useful shopping guide.
4 comments:
wish I could see it online. Hate missing out on such things.
Can get the chch press here in Dunedin but nothing much else
I looked at the Herald's "best of" and thought, yes books have been given good space - but is that it? The categories were all lowest common denominator stuff: where was the quality fiction, and the non fiction that wasn't about gardening, pop stars or "mind and faith"?
Maybe there will be more next week.
I think that is a bit unfair and I shouldn't really publish your comment as you haven't got got the gumption to even give your name.This may mean you work in rival media or perhaps you are a disappointed and envious author?
However I have to wonder if we were reading the same feature? You say what about quality fiction? Hang on a minute - the fiction list comprised The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis, To the End of the Land by David Grossman, The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson, Gifted by Patrick Evans, In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut, Their Faces Were Shining by Tim Wilson, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet, Union Atlantic by Adama Haslett, Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada and Heartbreak by Craig Raine.
This is quality fiction in my book. I wonder how many of them you have actually read? I have read 7 of the 10, including the Man Booker Prize Winner, and for me they all deserved the description of quality fiction.
Sorry, you're absolutely right, I was too quick to press "print" and forgot about that fiction which is top shelf. But my lasting impression of the feature was the gardening and cooking and "mind" books - bread and butter to the industry, granted - and the gaping holes in its non-fiction.
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