In 2020, Amy Bloom and her much loved husband travelled to Switzerland, where Dignitas helped Brian to end his life, due to his diagnosis with Alzheimers disease. It's very honest, surprising, heartbreaking, compassionate, angry, and funny. A beautifully written, passionate memoir, that fills a bit of a gap in the available literature around euthanasia.

This is a vibrant anthology of writing about the book trade in Aotearoa, written by a well chosen cross section of key figures in all sides of the industry. It's a real insiders view of how the industry works, how it's structured, how everything at every stage actually works. A vital book for anyone even slightly interested.

I haven't read Richard Flanagan before, and this seems like a brilliant place to start. Question 7 is a memoir, a meandering, drifty kind of memoir, which shouldn't work, but does work, brilliantly. He writes of his father, enslaved by the Japanese near Hiroshima when the bomb is dropped, through the history of the Manhattan Project to develop the bomb, and the life of the Americans who flew the fateful plane. H. G.

Michel Faber is better known as an inventive novelist, for such varied titles as 'The Crimson Petal and the White', and 'The Book of Strange New Things'. In this book he turns his attention to one of his great passes: music. He explores the subject deeply, and explores what is happening to us when we listen to music, why we listen, the effect of age and illness, what good and bad taste are etc. It's a fascinating book, like having a highly opinionated older brother tell you what's what - sometimes you will agree, sometimes you won't.

Matt Heath had an epiphany a few years ago. He determined to find out why his life wasn't as good and fulfilling as he wanted it to be, and why he was always grumpy. He read the classics, the stoics, Marcus Aurelius, and consulted the world's experts in science, philosophy and psychology.

Ash is a potent and oblique novel, interspersed with stream of consciousness bursts of free verse. It's short, ingenious, angry, and follows Thea, a vet at a rural practice, juggling mothering, a toxic workplace, a detached partner and other daily challenges. A nearby volcano coats the countryside with ash, making life even more difficult. It's intense, very readable, and far bigger than its 150 pages would indicate.