What We're Reading

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Neil

The Abundance, by Annie Dillard (Canongate 2016)

This is essentially a showcase of a lifetime of Annie Dillard's work - it's an anthology of previously published essays, selected from her 8 non-fiction books, arranged in chronological order. She's mostly known for a particular kind of observational writing, she is almost uniquely able to illuminate ordinary moments, or ordinary objects, and transform them through precise and meditative language into something extraordinary.
She's especially strong on observations of the natural world, eclipses, moths and birds, but also herself, her emotions and experiences.

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Neil

Things That Matter: Stories of Life and Death, by David Galler (Allen & Unwin 2016)

David Galler is an intensive care specialist at Middlemore Hospital. This is a memoir about his experiences as a medical specialist and the incidents that have influenced his life and thinking. It opens with the death of his father, and closes with the death of his mother, both Polish Jewish migrants to New Zealand in the 1940s. In between these two moving stories, he describes a variety of cases he has worked on, and muses on the politics of health care, euthanasia, organ transplants and other difficult issues.

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Neil

Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino (Vintage 1997, first published 1972)

Invisible Cities is acclaimed as a 20th Century classic from an author who died in 1985, having written a significant number of major works.

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Neil

Love As A Stranger, by Owen Marshall (Vintage 2016)

Sarah's husband is undergoing medical treatment in Auckland, they live in Hamilton, so are staying in a central city apartment temporarily. Sarah is walking in the Symonds Street cemetery and meets Hartley. They meet for coffee and soon begin an affair, which takes Sarah by surprise; middle-age is not meant to lend itself to passion and excitement, especially when one's husband's life is at risk. The conduct of the affair, the emotions involved from all parties, and the city of Auckland are all very finely observed with nuance and subtlety.

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Neil

Rain: Four Walks in English Weather, by Melissa Harrison (Faber 2016)

Melissa Harrison is a novelist and nature writer. This book is an evocative meditation on the English landscape in wet weather. She described four quite different expeditions in different landscapes, and describes what happens in those landscape when it rains, and how rainfall is essential both to the world around us, and also to the English identity. She has read widely on the subject, so the book refers to poets, historians, philosophers and others. A lovely little hardback.

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Neil

The Case of the Missing Body, by Jenny Powell (Otago University Press 2016)

Jenny Powell is a poet, and this moving memoir is essentially an extended prose poem of a little under 100 pages. Lily, the narrator, suffers from Proprioception Deficit. Proprioception, when functioning correctly, lets you know where your various body parts are, so that you can, subconsciously, make adjustments to keep yourself upright, walk etc. Through this memoir, Lily works with a physiotherapist, and succeeds, after some struggle, to find her own body.