To bring the people living in the upside-down-world of NotDownUnder up to speed, Trade Me is a New Zealand internet auction site with New Zealand‘s largest online audience. It was founded by Sam Morgan in 1999 and sold to John Fairfax Holdings Limited in 2006. The site has already spawned one book “Trade Me: Success Secrets” by Michael Carney in 2005 featuring tips and techniques on online auctioneering and bidding and stories about successful buyers and sellers.

Now on to this novel which is anything but serious.

Cristal66, who is an obsessive trader on New Zealand's Trade Me auction site, buys a second-hand men's designer jacket from her favourite seller Jade24 and gets much more than she bargained for (pun intended). In a world in which the worst catastrophe is to get negative feedback, a chain of events is unleashed which includes intense online auctions and bidding wars, industrial spies, cheating husbands, wives and lovers, a hip hop band and even a cheeky Australian parrot who can korero Maori fluently, every one of whom gets their 5 minutes of fame on the TV3 News!

This book is truly a piece of pure fun and loaded with action.

As far as I know it is Geoff Vause's first book, published in 2006. I really enjoyed it and so did my sons who would like Geoff to write more books yesterday even!

Oh, and where did I buy my copy from? Trade Me of course.

"There's a way the older people have of telling a story, a way where the beginning is not the beginning, the end is not the end. It starts from a centre and moves away from there in such widening circles that you don't know how you will finally arrive at the point of understanding, which becomes itself another core, a new centre. You can only trust these tellers as they start you on a blindfold journey with a handful of words which they have seemingly clutched from nowhere; there was a hei pounamu, a green moth, a suitcase, a birdnosed man, Rebecca who was a mother, a man who was a ghost, a woman good at making dresses, a teapot with a dent by its nose." (pg 28, Baby No-Eyes).

And thats what this story is. Baby No-Eyes is a novel which starts after the beginning where the present is always the pivot, the centre of the spiral, looking outward to the past and future that define it. It is a novel which merges some controversial actual events (land occupations and body tissue theft) with a family's histories but it isn't a difficult or complex book to read. Patricia Grace has a deceptively simple but very clear style of writing.

The events around the birth and loss of Baby No-Eyes which take place in the pathology department of a hospital, are a description of actual events occurring in 1991 in one of this country's hospitals.

Patricia Grace was born in Wellington, New Zealand in 1937. She is of Ngati Toa, Nagati Raukawa and Ngati Awa descent and affiliated to Ngati Porou by marriage.

This book is about one of the very dark chapters of Australian Aboriginal history. The "Aboriginal Protection Act" of 1897 allowed the authorities "to cause every Aboriginal within any district [...] to be removed to, and kept within the limits of, any reserve". In addition, article 31 allowed them to provide "for the care, custody, and education of the children of Aboriginals" and prescribed "the conditions on which any Aboriginal or half-caste children may be apprenticed to, or placed in service with, suitable persons".

Children as young as babies were forcibly taken from their families to be placed in girls and boys homes, foster families or missions. At the age of 18 they were 'released' into white society, often scarred for life by their experiences.

Today these Aboriginal people are collectively known as the 'Stolen Generations' because it was not just one generation which was affected by children being taken away. Many of these people are still searching for their families even today.

This is the true story of three girls, Molly, Gracie and Daisy, written years later by one of their daughters, Doris Pilkington. Molly, Gracie and Daisy are "half-caste", (actually I really dislike that term), mixed-race Aboriginal children living together with their family of the Mardu people at Jigalong, Western Australia until a constable, a "Protector" in the sense of the Act, comes to take the three girls away with him. The girls are placed in the Moore River Native Settlement north of Perth, some 1,600 kilometres away from their home. Most children this was done to never saw their parents again. Thousands are still trying to find them.

This story is different. The three girls manage to escape from the torturing and authoritarian rule of the settlement's head. Guided by the rabbit-proof fence, which, at that time ran from north to south through Western Australia, they walk the long distance back to their family.

The book was made into a film "Rabbit Proof Fence" in 2002, and directed by Philip Noyce.

In February of this year the new Labour Prime Minister of Australia made a public apology to the Aboriginal people.

Judith Bell and her husband Nelson Bell had a young family, a promising manufacturing business, and a passionate determination to get ahead. When The Warehouse came calling with a big order, they thought their dreams had come true but within four years they had lost almost everything.

This book is Judith's story about her battle to save her family and business. This is a deeply disturbing story, because what she writes about is not just the story of her factory closing due to the pressure of the cheap imported competition, but is in fact the story of the deliberate manoeuvres by The Warehouse to destroy the local competition of their cheap overseas suppliers. Judith and Nelson Bell were manufacturing LPG cylinders and were in fact supplying them at the same price as the imported cylinders.

This story is also an in-depth scrutiny at the power of The Warehouse and other big-box retailers over local businesses, councils, the media, the government, the New Zealand economy and people who go shopping. As well, Judith has written searingly on the human cost of cheap foreign imports into our country and about why free-trade agreements will continue to destroy New Zealand jobs.

The Warehouse is New Zealand's largest retailer with approximately 130 stores throughout our country and a huge annual sales revenue. It came into being following the nineteen-eighties deregulating and liberalising of our economy. The chain probably has strong similarities with the American Walmart, and in fact the original owner of The Warehouse visited with directors of Walmart and learnt from them before he opened his first Warehouse store.

For people not so familiar with New Zealand, the title of this book "I See Red" is a play on the classic Split Enz song "I See Red" and on the fact that all of the large barn-like Warehouse stores are painted bright red.

Eric Beardsley's novel "Blackball 08" brings the tiny West Coast coalmining town to life, recreating the loves, lives, and sheer grit and determination of the people of Blackball.

This is the story of the epic strike of 1908 which was won, hands down, by the Blackball coalminers led by Bob Semple, Paddy Webb and Pat Hickey, names now famous in New Zealand. Activists like Pat Hickey wanted longer than "the time it takes to have a good shit" to eat their mutton sandwiches. They were also set on challenging an arbitration system that didn't allow strikes and believed that union power could become political power. The famous standoff between Mr Hickey and a mine manager who stood over him with a stopwatch while he ate lunch was in January. The strike started on February 27 and ended with a union victory on May 11. From this strike emerged the New Zealand Federation of Labour and eventually, the Labour Party.

~~~
Before the 1908 strike Blackball was just another coalmining town. After the strike Blackball had a reputation to keep up. And keep up it did. In 1925 the headquarters of the Communist Party was shifted to Blackball.

Tourism has now become important to the West Coast but in the hills behind Blackball, Pike River Coal is developing a new pit because coal prices are again booming.

I don't know if this book is still in print, but I have seen it for sale on TradeMe and it is available in libraries around the country. My copy originally belonged to my father and was published in 1984.

I am reviewing it now because this weekend the people of Blackball commemorated the one hundredth anniversary of the famous strike.

And because I lived there as a child and it's a beautiful place.

~~~
Sat, 22 Mar 2008 06:16pm.

This weekend on Saturday the 22nd of March politicians flocked to Labour's spiritual home on the West Coast to celebrate the centenary of a miners' strike which helped build the country's Labour movement into a political force.

It rained, but the parade went on as Blackball's swollen population cheered the descendants of the strikers.

Workers Unite is a symbolic march down the main street of Blackball to commemorate the centenary of one of the country's most famous strikes.

The strike led to the growth of the Labour movement in New Zealand, and later on the election of the first Labour Government. Blackball's mine closed in 1964 but its symbolism remains strong - and the old miners' songs are still remembered.

This book was one of my resources while I was writing my series on Polynesian Navigation. The information about the picture of the coconut sextant and description of how it was used came directly from this book.

There is a chapter about Polynesian life and another chapter about Polynesian navigation and about the boats complete with pictures of the various boats drawn by Sir Tom himself.

Tom Davis also tells of his childhood in Rarotonga and how he became the first Cook Islander to qualify as a doctor in New Zealand, how he returned as a "Doctor to the Islands" (the title of his first book) in 1945, and how he became the first Cook Islander to attend Harvard University, arriving there in a typically Tom Davis way - by sailing his small yacht from New Zealand to the USA.

You will remember that I also told you that he headed medical programmes in Alaska and the Himalayas, and managed medical research for a US consulting firm, qualified as a space surgeon and had a leading role in developing the US space programme.

In 1971 he returned to the Cook Islands where he became involved in politics and was Prime Minister there from 1978 - 1987. He was awarded the Order of Merit of Germany in 1979 and knighted by the Queen of England in 1980.

Sir Tom expresses his views clearly, and admits what he failed to achieve or wished he had done differently. His power of description, as in handling a ship in a storm, is tremendous.

This is a first novel by this author, published in 2007.

The novel is set in and around Lake Taupo, NZ, and explores the shadows between two worlds — the living and the dead, past and present, Maori and Pakeha, and what might happen when some unthinking fool breaks a tapu.

When Billy Delaney (the unthinking fool) steals coins from a rock pool to buy a burger, he has no idea what he is about to unleash. But Billy has always been in trouble, and when his sister Saffron steps in to try and sort him out, trouble quickly overwhelms the Delaney family.

First Saffron’s niece suffers an horrific accident, leaving her balanced precariously between life and death. And then the Delaneys begin to die one by one. It’s left to a disbelieving Saffron helped by her unlikely ally Nick, a burnt-out war photographer to try to appease the wrath of long deceased Tama Ariki, (not Tama Iti you Kiwis), whose quest for utu echoes down the centuries.

For a first novel I found this very good although I think this writer may improve her writing in later novels, however it was the kind of story which kept me reading just to see what the heck was going to happen next. I really enjoyed it.

Left unchecked, global warming will bring greater weather extremes, plant and animal extinctions and rapidly rising seas warns the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Climate change is already making its mark according to this latest report which cites melting glaciers, rising average temperatures and sea level rise.

The book Hot Topic - Global Warming And The Future of New Zealand by our own New Zealand science writer Gareth Renowden takes a serious look at how global climate change will affect the islands of New Zealand and the people who live here. "The world is warming twenty times faster than the most rapid changes that have happened in recent times, such as the warming that took place coming out of the last Ice Age", he states.

This all may seem irrelevant to people outside New Zealand's shores but New Zealand is a microcosm of the sorts of things that will happen world wide as our planet warms up. It is no good continuing to unproductively argue over whether global climate change exists or not, we need to be planning for the future now.

Currently Gareth Renowden owns a small farm in the Waipara wine district where he grows truffles, olives, and grapes. The main grape grown in Waipara currently is the Pinot Noir, but thirty years from now Waipara may have become to warm for these cool climate vines, instead, Gareth Renowden's book predicts that the Waipara growers may well need to change to warmer climate grapes like merlot. He also suggests that the way in which growers produce their crops is also likely to change and expect to see a trend towards "carbon labelling" on products like wine, as growers focus on reducing their carbon emissions.

According to Gareth Renowden, the temperatures that we are seeing today are in fact twenty or thirty years behind where the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is. This is because there is a lag in the warming of the world caused by the oceans which take a longer time to warm up. Therefore no matter what we do now, the planet will continue to warm over the next twenty to thirty years and adaptation to warming is a critical part of the response to this unavoidable climate change.

However carbon emission reductions made today will help to slow the rate of global warming thirty years from now. He therefore supports MainPower's proposed wind farm at Mt Cass.

While fresh water will become an increasingly precious commodity, the rates of future sea level rises come with potentially big impacts not just on New Zealand but on all low-lying Pacific Island nations. Global warming in the Pacific is likely to result in "climate refugees".

The Global Warming Outlook For Canterbury, NZ (from the book)

Over the next few decades warming is likely to continue at 0.2 deg C per decade. The warming will be greater in winter. The likelihood is that the eastern parts of our country will warm slightly more than the west.

As the average temperature increases, the probability of extreme events - either cold or hot - also increases. Heat waves will be more frequent and there will be fewer frosts.

The increase in the westerly flow of wind, (westerlies are hot, dry, and gusty winds), will have an important impact on the regions rainfall. By the end of this century Canterbury (which already has a dry climate) will be drier.

By the 2030's there will be water availability problems on all of the east coast of the South Island. Under a low to medium warming scenario, the risk of what is currently a one in twenty year drought may double in the easternmost parts of Canterbury.

Rising sea levels may accelerate coastal erosion and flood groundwater systems with seawater.

Marguerite van Geldermalsen was born in New Zealand; she was the second child of Dutch-born immigrant parents. When she was a young woman she travelled to the UK for her OE, (Overseas Experience), as many Kiwi kids do, and in 1978 while accompanying an Australian friend she went to Greece and Egypt and then into Jordan. Of course they visited Petra, a stunning ancient city carved by hand by the Nabataen people from the rock walls two thousand years ago. Here, Marguerite met Mohammed.

Mohammed was a member of a tribe of Bedouin who were no longer nomadic but who were not yet inhabiting houses either. Instead they occupied caves and tents in the ancient city of Petra in Jordan. Marguerite and Mohammed fell in love and married and what follows is the story of her married life in a cave in Petra with no electricity, no phones, nothing of which we all normally take for granted. She seems to have been a remarkably calm young woman, gradually learning the language of the people around her and fitting into their culture and eventually converting to Islam. She also had to relearn the basics of life such as collecting firewood and learning to cook over a fire, collecting water by donkey. She became their resident nurse, and even a tourist attraction as her presence in Petra became known to the outside world. In 1984 she even met Queen Elizabeth the second and Queen Noor of Jordan.

This book was published in 2006 by Virago.

I started smoking when I was sixteen. I had already left school for a year, I had a 'steady' boyfriend and all my friends smoked, my boyfriend smoked, his friends smoked, my parents smoked; in fact it seemed like everyone around me had fags hanging out their mouths except me. So it wasn't that I especially needed to smoke or even that anybody pressured me to smoke, it was just that I felt like such an idiot back then, not smoking.

I was addicted from the first cigarette.

The book, Allen Carr's Easy Way to Stop Smoking is not the flashiest written book by a long shot. Its not even overlong. In quite simple terms Allen Carr discusses smoking as an addiction, how this particular addiction works to keep the smoker under control so that they keep on smoking, and then by following Allen Carr's instructions, how the smoker can stop smoking successfully.

Allen Carr himself was a smoker, smoking for over thirty years and smoking his way through up to one hundred cigarettes a day, an amount which even I can self-righteously find incredible, but when, as a smoker, you read his story and his instructions for stopping smoking and know that if he can do it you can do it too, the whole idea becomes at least credible to you. This is not some posh doctor pontificating from some high-up pedestal, telling you, the smoker, how bad you should feel about yourself. This is another human being just like you, who has fought the same demons that you are now girding yourself to fight and reaching out a hand to show you how. That's part of why the book works.

Smokers are not actually idiots, (well maybe some are, but most aren't). They all know, even if they won't admit it, that smoking is expensive and unhealthy. Most wish they had never started. Smoking is a drug addiction just like alcohol addiction or heroin addiction. Being addicted means that a substance is controlling you and your behaviour. It means that no matter how you run your budget the biggest priority of a smoker is always making sure that there is enough money to run the addiction, even at the expense of your family and the people you love. In this respect a smoking addiction is no different from any other addiction. It still amazes me how much more money I have to spend on things that I should have been buying all along. Even on a low income and still running a family, I am feeling so much richer now.

Actually it still amazes me that I am not still smoking too, and the fact that I am not smoking is down to this book by Allen Carr.

"The object of the book" wrote Carr, "is to get you into the frame of mind in which, instead of the normal method of stopping whereby you start off with the feeling that you are climbing Mount Everest and spend the next few days craving a cigarette and envying other smokers, you start off right away with a feeling of elation, as if you had been cured of a terrible disease."

"If you follow my instructions, you will be happy to be a non-smoker for the rest of your life" reads the blurb on the back of my copy of the book. It's true too. I have been a non-smoker after reading this book, (I actually read it twice), since the 2nd of February this year (2007) and I do not feel 'deprived". He does indeed offer a unique method without scare tactics which focuses on removing the psychological "need" to smoke.

Most support structures around now, (government-run or otherwise), that exist to encourage people to not smoke any more focus on supporting a smoker, (just like in any other addiction), to "give up" the terrible vice. They will even give out, or subsidise the drug in another form such as nicotine patches or gum. This is why they have a low success rate, argues Allen Carr's book, a smoker "giving up smoking" in this manner only ends up feeling "deprived"; moreover the unwitting smoker who may not only be failing to 'give up' smoking is also in danger of becoming addicted to wearing a nicotine patch or chewing on the nicotine gum while working as well.

All this may well raise some interesting thoughts about the politics of governments and corporates and the way in which pharmaceutical companies are gradually wresting the nicotine industry from the tobacco companies in Western countries at least. Allen Carr touches on these ideas in this book as well and on his website, (I will add his website link onto Links on the home page), there is a free download of his unpublished book Scandal in which he expands on these ideas.

Allen Carr’s Easy Way to Stop Smoking is now an international bestseller and has been published in over 20 different languages. His second book, The Only Way to Stop Smoking Permanently, and DVD, audio and CD-ROM versions of his method are also available.

Imre Kertesz won the Nobel Peace Prize in Literature 2002 "for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history". He was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1929 and experienced all of the horrors of the Nazi system when the Germans occupied Hungary in 1944 and began exterminating Jews. Kertesz was deported together with seven thousand Hungarian Jews from Budapest to Auschwitz and from there to Buchenwald. "I am a nonbelieving Jew", Kertesz once said in an interview. "Yet as a Jew I was taken to Auschwitz." Thus there is nothing one can do to avoid being killed. The mere fact of "being" is enough. In the factory of death Kertesz realized that he could be killed anywhere at any time. This existentialist moment became crucial for him as a writer.

Kaddish for a Child Not Born by Imre Kertesz was first published in Hungary in 1990, and translated into English in 1997, by Christopher C. Wilson and Katharina M. Wilson. This is the book I own but another translation by Tim Wilkinson (retitled Kaddish for an Unborn Child) was published in 2004. It is a short book comprising only around a hundred pages and is in the form of an intense monologue which seeks an answer to a question, and is also an explanation to the child who has not been born and will never be born because he/she cannot be allowed to be born into a world where anyone, (any Jew), can be killed at any time. It is a thematic view of the Germans as the "ever embodied shadow of death" always around the corner.

In the Jewish tradition it is the deeds of the child that can redeem the life of the parent and therefore, as the children live, so shall the parent live. Further the wicked soul is said to undergo judgement for a full year but the reverent child ends this by saying the Kaddish at eleven months after the death has taken place in order to bear witness to the goodness of those who bore him/her. Therefore, to refuse to give life to a child , to refuse to agree to the conception of your potential child in this framework carries important implications not only for the unborn child but for the childless "parent". This idea, this refusal underlines the title of this novel and underlines the actions and the thoughts of the central character.