In which we steer you through a selection of books published in Aotearoa and the world in 2022 that will make for thoughtful and timely gifts for family and friends when you’re panic buying this week. Tune in tomorrow for the children’s books list.

Memoir / personal essays

Memoir and personal essay collections have flourished in recent years: compelling insights into private and public lives are so good they drive like fiction.

Grand by Noelle McCarthy (Penguin, $35)

A sharp, sensitive and fearless memoir about the relationship with the self as filtered through the people and things that make us: mothers, the demon drink, place, desire, music, vampires. Give it to literally everyone. Read our review here.

How to be a Bad Muslim by Mohamed Hassan (Penguin, $35)

Spectacular writing in this book by (really fricken great) poet and journalist Mohamed Hassan. The collection tracks Hassan’s early life in Cairo, and then in Aotearoa, Hassan speaks to family, art, culture, media, racism, coming of age, Islamophobia, love, grief … they’re painful, funny, endlessly beautiful. Again, for everyone.

So far, for now by Dame Fiona Kidman (Penguin, $38)

Brilliant personal essays by one of our greatest authors. From to widowhood, to travel, to activism, to reading, this is a wide-ranging, thought-provoking collection. Give to everyone, but particularly for the armchair adventurer in your life.

International guest

Getting Lost by Annie Ernaux (Fitzcarraldo, $40) is the latest from this year’s winner of the Nobel Prize for literature: a blisteringly honest book about an affair. Wowsers. So good. If you don’t believe us read this rave review on The Guardian.

Fiction, crime / thriller

Is there anything better than the vicarious thrills of a tension-stacked page-turner? Crime and suspense match perfectly with sun and sand. Here are our top picks.

Slow Down, You’re Here by Brannavan Gnanalingam (Lawrence & Gibson, $25)

A gripping, domestic thriller set between a family home in Onehunga and an Airbnb on Waiheke, this book will have you on the edge of your deckchair. Read our review here.

Better the Blood by Michael Bennett (Simon & Schuster, $35)

“I wrote this book to entertain the hell out of the reader,” wrote Michael Bennett in his essay about this stonking great summer read. Go forth and purchase this un-put-downable, gift it, then demand it back so you can read it too.

The Doctor’s Wife by Fiona Sussman (Bateman, $38)

A woman’s body is found at the bottom of a cliff, and the investigation into why upends all manner of domestic harmony. This is the latest from a previous winner of the Ngaio Marsh awards for crime fiction, and would make a superb treat for any lover of crime stories.

International guest

Look at Christmas it’s hard to go past the latest Reacher novel. No Plan B by Lee Child with Andrew Child (Penguin, $37) is just-released, just in time. Or check out this ranking of all of them and take your pick.

Fiction, sci fi / fantasy

Marching through the tunnels and plains of the imagination, these books transport us right out of the shreds of Christmas wrapping paper and into other worlds.

The Dawnhounds by Sascha Stronach (Simon & Schuster, $35)

“The Dawnhounds is a homecoming for New Zealand fantasy,” wrote Tamsyn Muir in her review of this astonishing novel. This is a must-have for any fantasy reader: it’s rich, racy, fast and fabulous.

City of Souls by Melanie Harding-Shaw (Amazon, $35)

“Do you like enemies-to-lovers, fake dating, sexy winged people, and sexual tension like a raging conflagration? Then City of Souls by Mel Harding-Shaw will sweep you away,” writes Calanthe on SFF Romance Books. If you want to try before you buy, read an extract here.

Na Viro by Gina Cole (Huia, $35)

This is a family love story at heart, only set in the wilds of space exploration. Perfect for anyone into star-travel, sibling love, mother-daughter relationships and diving into Pasifikafuturism.

International guest

Babel by R. F. Kuang (Harper Collins, $35): set in an alternative Oxford of 1836, this is an ingenious exploration of how language can topple an empire.

Fiction, literary

There have been so many excellent novels published this year it was fricken hard to narrow them down, but here goes.

How to Loiter in a Turf War by Coco Solid (Penguin, $28)

From Natasha Lampard’s review: “Multi-genre, multifaceted, multitudinal, musical, a kaupapa both skux and scholarly, at times irreverent, all-the-time relevant, this is a potent, polyphonic work from a prolific polymath.” Novel of the year. Get it.

Tauhou by Kōtuku Titihuia Nuttall (THWUP, $30)

Beautiful writing, a highly original concept, this is a dream of a read for summer. Ideal for those who like quiet yet dazzling books that linger and beautify from the inside out.

Poor People With Money by Dominic Hoey (Penguin, $37)

Fast, mouthy, moving and original, Dominic Hoey is becoming a powerhouse of Aotearoa lit. Try before you buy with this extract.

The Axeman’s Carnival by Catherine Chidgey (THWUP, $35)

Tama the Magpie stars in this outrageously good rural drama that ramps up and up. A must-read from one of the country’s most acclaimed and generative writers.

International guests

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (Faber, $23) is small and perfectly formed. Set at Christmas time, it will chill like snow and warm like fire. It’s been in the bestsellers lists for months and deserves to stay into the new year. Also recommended: Booker Prize winner The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka (Sort of Books, $49).

Poetry

Shit, we’re also good at poetry. Here’s a handful of favourites from 2022, though make sure you browse that section good and proper because there is an abundance of riches there.

Sedition by Anahera Gildea (Taraheke, $30)

Smoking, searing, heart-aching/flaming. A masterful collection from a powerhouse of poetry. For anyone needing fuel to fight colonisation.

Meat Lovers by Rebecca Hawkes (AUP, $24.95)

A fleshy, award-winning collection that redefines the Aotearoa pastoral into something that sits beguilingly between the realms of faery and farming. Buy it for the cover alone – it’s sure to stretch the eyes once that wrapping is peeled back.

Echidna by essa may ranapiri (THWUP, $25)

“Can’t remember any other work of art that’s brought together Hatupatu, Lucifer and the lead singer of My Chemical Romance, can you?” says Hinemoana Baker. This luscious, visceral collection is a stand-out. Get in lovers of poetry, and lovers.

International guest

Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced An Emergency by Chen Chen (Bloodaxe Books) is the pandemic-adjacent poetry collection you need in your life. Chen is a breathtaking wordsmith who pulls us together despite ourselves, and also check out the divine cover.

Short stories

Tricky things, short stories: they reward attentive readers and to read a whole collection is to listen to the whole album; so often the joy is in the interconnections, the motifs and rhythms. Here are our top picks.

Kōhine by Colleen Marie Lenihan (Huia, $25)

A stand-out across bookish news platforms this year, Kōhine travels back and forth between Aotearoa and Japan, slipping across time and place, past and future. Luminous writing loaded with feeling.

Beats of the Pau’u by Maria Samuela (THWUP, $30)

“Beats of the Pa’u will continue to enrich the literary seascape, with storytelling that is layered and textured with rich colours of warmth, just like the Cook Islands and our people’s new homes in Porirua, Tokoroa and South Auckland,” writes Audrey Brown-Pereira.

Home Theatre by Anthony Lapwood (THWUP, $30)

A “beautifully crafted and empathetic debut collection.” said Sally Blundell over on the Landfall Online. What if a building could reveal the secrets of the lives lived within it? A moving, clever series of stories that will entertain and stir this summer.

Special mention to Te Kaihau | The Windeater by Keri Hulme (THWUP, $30) which was originally published in 1985 but was reprinted this year in the wake of Hulme’s passing. She was one of the most brilliant writers we’ve ever had, and this is the perfect gift for the reader in your life, particularly one wanting to get to know Hulme beyond the bone people.

Aotearoa history

We have so much to learn. With the school curriculum changing for the better we need to be catching up to the kids.

A History of New Zealand in 100 Objects by Jock Phillips (Penguin, $55)

Definitely a presenty kind of book: its tight, object-based structure means you can dip in and out, read it in pairs or family clusters, and discover what appeals to who and why. A pressie for families, visitors from overseas, your folks.

Te Motonui Epa by Rachel Buchanan (BWB, $49.99)

BWB Publishers are maestros of non-fiction publishing on Aotearoa histories. This book is one of their latest and it is an extraordinary work that tells the story of taonga (Te Motonui Epa, five intensely beautiful carved panels) that were stolen out of Aotearoa.

Fragments from a Contested Past: Remembrance, Denial and New Zealand History by Joanna Kidman, Vincent O’Malley, Liana MacDonald, Tom Roa, Keziah Wallis (BWB, $17.99)

The latest in BWB’s wildly successful Texts series (they pack a punch and can slip into a stocking), the contributors travel into our silences: the hard conversations, the suppressed memories. Powerful and timely.

International guest

Super-Infinite by Katherine Rundell (Faber, $40) is hands down one of the books of the year. Rundell spent 10 years writing this biography of olde worlde poet John Donne. And it is one of the most entertaining, lively, immersive biographies that you’ll ever have the pleasure of reading. The famed children’s author is clearly a genius.

Cookbooks

Who doesn’t love a book full of food at this very muggy time of year? Full of potential for after the trifle and the pav are done with.

The RNZ Cookbook edited by David Cohen and Kathy Paterson (MUP, $65)

Genuinely stunning: classic creamy paper, sketchy, classy illustrations and a wealth of recipes all arranged in cutely chrono order by RNZ show. Also has the double ribbon for marking mains and puddings. A lovely, nostalgic yet pragmatic gift.

Kai by Christall Lowe (Bateman, $60)

Food photographer Christall Lowe shares the food of her whānau and the pictures are so delicious you’ll have to stop your kids licking the pages. True story. Perfect gift for anyone who likes to cook and/or eat.

Ripe Recipes: Thought for Food by Angela Redfern (Beatnik, $60)

The fourth book in the Ripe series is just as simple yet bright and delicious as the last three, only this time there’s some timely thinking on how to be sustainable in the kitchen. Excellent for the conscious food grower/lover in your life.

International guest

Cook As You Are by Ruby Tandoh (Knopf, $45). Bloody love Ruby Tandoh. She fights for the dignity of the timid/time-poor/anxious home cook every day (see her excellent sorrynotsorry smudgey photos Instagram account), and her book is designed for people who want to make nice food but fucking don’t have the time or money to make it all fancy. Follow Ruby and you’ll get a plate of something delicious and do-able.

Quick fire rounds by subject:

Books about Aotearoa music

Two clear stand-outs this year: Needles & Plastic: Flying Nun Records 1981-1988 by Matthew Goody (AUP, $70); and Jumping Sundays by Nick Bollinger (AUP, $50). The former is large format with lots of fantastic photography; the latter celebrates Bollinger’s talent for evoking the past with his pen. Both essential for alt music/history fans.

Books about Aotearoa art

Toi Tu Toi Ora edited by Nigel Borrell (Penguin, $65) is based on the century-defining exhibition at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki in 2021-22 and contains over 200 artworks by 110 Māori artists. A treasure to have and to give. The survey of Robin White’s painting at Te Papa this year was a highlight of the visual arts diary and so is the book, Robin White: Something is Happening Here (Te Papa Press, $70) edited by Sarah Farrar, Jill Trevelyan and Nina Tonga.

Books about Aotearoa’s natural world

Robert Vennell’s lush, illustrated book Secrets of the Sea: The Story of New Zealand’s Native Sea Creatures (Harper Collins, $55) would be a fine addition to any home library this summer (see extract here); and for the bird-watcher, nature-writing enthusiast please buy them In Pursuit of Champions (Pūkorokoro Miranda Naturalists’ Trust in association with Sherlock & Co Publishing, $40), in which Shorebird Centre manager Keith Woodley gives a fascinating insight into this small but mighty shorebird protection organisation in Pukorokoro, on the Firth of Thames.

Books about menopause

“I’m going back to my GP, books in hand. I’m still angry. But I’m also deeply grateful to the women who saw the need for information in this vast empty space, and filled it,” wrote Catherine Woulfe in her thorough and fiery review of both This Changes Everything by Nikki Bezzant (Penguin, $37) and Don’t Sweat It by Nicky Pellegrino (Allen & Unwin, $36.99). Two great local books to help us deal with the fuckery of the menopause, and that peri one too.

Bold and beautiful books

If you’re looking to get something for your Instagrammy/Kinfolk/Linens mate then don’t walk past the exquisite Rooms by Jane Ussher (MUP, $85) or Grow – Wāhine Finding Connection Through Food by Sophie Merkens (Beatnik, $60), a gorgeous collections of photos and profiles of women across Aotearoa who have a particular relationship with growing, finding and making food.

Finally, our book of the year

Straight Up by Ruby Tui (Allen & Unwin, $37)

A moving, surprising autobiography by a brilliant rugby player and exceptional person. Great for both rugby fans and non-rugby fans alike. Read our review here.

PHEW. Good luck out there. Please be kind to the books, it’s not their fault you’re squishing all your shopping into one half-day on 24 December, it’s the system’s. Tune in tomorrow for the children’s book list. Now, where’s the mince pies and the mulled wine (with ice) at?

All of the above books can be purchased from Unity Books Wellington or Unity Books Auckland.

Books editor Claire Mabey weeps her way through the year’s biggest book.

CW: This review includes mention of suicide. Please take care.

Ruby Tui wasn’t initially keen to publish a book. She was approached by Jenny Hellen at Allen & Unwin NZ, one of New Zealand’s most experienced and gifted publishers, who saw Ruby being interviewed by the BBC after she and the Black Ferns won gold at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. As Tui writes in the book: “This book almost didn’t happen. I was hesitant, I was nervous, I was uncomfortable.” 

What changed was the realisation that there are hardly any autobiographies of women in sport in Aotearoa: “I went to my local bookshop to check out other books on female sportspeople, in particular women’s rugby players. […] I stood in the sports section, and I searched and searched. I pulled out book after book, but there wasn’t a single biography on a Kiwi female athlete in the whole section. […] I pictured a young brown female sportsperson walking in there and seeing herself nowhere, not belonging in the book world. My eyes welled up right there in the bookshop.”

I wonder if Hellen knew the depths of what she was going to get once Tui did say yes. I did not. Straight up: I’m not much of a rugby fan. I went to games as a kid and as a student at Otago, I was even a member of the All Blacks Club once, but I was really only there for the hot chips with that particular kind of stadium tomato sauce. The patriarchy turned me off rugby in a big way – as a regular at Gardies pub in Dunedin I more than once witnessed the toxic aftermath of the post-match piss up. These days my idea of team sports is sustained silent reading, and at a push, a round of bowls accompanied by cheap bowling club beverages. So it was with the spectre of men’s rugby culture on my mind that I opened the first pages of Ruby Tui’s story. I didn’t at all expect what was coming. To be honest, I thought I’d get a bit bored.

My copy of Straight Up now looks like it’s snapped its way through a ticker tape parade, there are so many post-its hanging out of it. I marked the pages that made me well up, that triggered my fight or flight response, that worked my heart up into my mouth, that made me want to punch the air in triumph, that tucked a nugget of wisdom into my sport-shy little heart. Reading Tui’s life story is like joining a boot camp for life, with a steady and capable coach to guide you through its sweeping emotional landscape. 

The book begins where everyone begins: with childhood and the profound ways that our early years shape who we are. Tui’s early life shifts between her large and loving Sāmoan family (on her dad’s side) and her more isolated palagi one (her mum’s). That she was loved is a fact often affirmed: Tui’s perspective throughout the book is frank and without blame, without bitterness or even regret. Very gently, with a tone of patience and an acceptance that becomes the undercurrent of the entire book, Tui describes a childhood made unstable by alcoholism, drug abuse and psychological and physical violence. 

The most difficult chapters describe how 11-year-old Tui witnesses the death of a woman from a crack overdose and how the event plays upon her state of mind so profoundly that she takes a kitchen knife and contemplates suicide. The scene is narrated in a devastatingly close present tense (“That’s where I go now with my knife.”) which pulls the reader into the depths of a child’s despair. It is terrible to read but we’re deftly manoeuvred through and then past it. One of the ways in which this book is successful is that careful and honest way it treats traumatic events. The present tense switches out very quickly and reminds us that adult Ruby Tui is right there with us, surveying her life with clear and open appraisal. “Suicidal thoughts,” writes Tui, “are a lot more common in minors than we would all like to think.” It is an unbearable truth but one offered to the reader with the voice of experience and the safe scaffolding of the knowledge that our protagonist is going to be OK. The intimate and moving first half of Straight Up ensures that we know trauma is a big part of Ruby Tui’s story, but also that it is not the whole – not by a long shot.

The structure and pace of Tui’s life story has been expertly handled. The chapters are tight and flow effortlessly from one episode to the next, with each one wrapping up with a segment in bold called Ruby’s Training Bag: a quote from within the chapter that reflects Tui’s approach to life as a continuous opportunity to learn. The clarity and strength of pace is likely down to Margie Thomson, who is one of New Zealand’s most experienced ghost writers. Her titles include All Blacks Don’t Cry and Stand By Me (both with John Kirwan), Impossible: My Story (with Stan Walker), and The Resilient Farmer (with Doug Avery). In her acknowledgements, Tui writes: “To Margie, thank you for the hours upon hours of connection that brought this book to life.” It’s a curious task, to help someone mine the details of their intimate memories and craft them so that others can get close. In the documentary film The Ground We Won (2015) about Reparoa’s local rugby team, the intertwining of daily farm life and rugby is almost beautiful. We never see or hear the filmmakers Christopher Pryor and Miriam Smith but the care of their subjects is obvious. I started to think of Margie Thomson in the same way: it is clear that hiding behind this book is a masterful, respectful relationship with the subject in order to get to the truth. 

The second half of the book is all about rugby and the intense intertwining of team and personal life. All of Tui’s efforts feed her determination to become a good player and a good person. At university she worked a gruelling schedule of multiple jobs to pay her way through; she describes selling sausages and massage sticks to fundraise the cash for international Sevens tournaments; and the endless training to get bigger, faster, stronger.

Alongside the physical work is an ever-present question of money: how to afford to be an athlete. It’s a fact universally acknowledged (these days, thanks to the activism of the players themselves and their allies) that women have gotten a hell of a lot less than the men. In 2014, Tui explains, the first ever women’s semi-professional squad was contracted: “There would be at least four ‘tier one’ contracts of $30,000; and at least four ‘tier two’ of $25,000; and others on $20,000 and $15,000.” At the time, Tui was stoked – she went from getting $2,000 to $25,000: “It seemed an incredible dream to me.” But, as Tui says in the book, the history of low pay meant that some had to drop out of contention well before this hike in 2014, as the demands of juggling family, work and training was impossible.

I finished reading Straight Up in Greymouth. I was there to visit the now iconic pink church, Gloria, created by artist Sam Duckor-Jones. The West Coast is a beautiful part of Aotearoa, but remote: dense bush on one side and a wild surf on the other. Tui grew up there, in Blackball and in Greymouth. Some of her hardest times happened there. I wandered around the town and noticed Tui everywhere I went: in the local newspaper that reported that Tui was the star of the Christmas Parade the day before; posters of the book in the window of a pub; at the gift shop in Punakaiki where her book was proudly displayed, the only book not about wildlife on offer. Brave people make a difference in communities like this. Duckor-Jones is changing lives with his beautiful pink church and life as an artist. And it is clear that Tui, too, is a treasured member of the community: a young, brown, woman athlete.

Tui’s publisher told me that “sales of Ruby’s book are extraordinary”, and that there are urgent reprints while the book sells out in bookstores across the country. This is unsurprising at this point, of course, given the dramatic and spectacular success of the Black Ferns this year. But what interests me is the way the book is set up as more than the story of a rugby icon. The cover is minimalist and shows Tui not mid-rugby game or in uniform, but in plain clothes, fixing the barrel of the lens with an open and relaxed gaze, the glimmer of a smile on her lips. The silver sheen on the title and the black T-shirt, and the white name is a nod to the black jersey and the trifecta of hues that make up our national sporting identities, but it’s subtle compared to, say, books about Richie McCaw (dark covers, staunch expressions, often shots from the field). What Tui’s cover indicates is that it’s a whole person that makes up a player, not just the sport bits. And this is reflected throughout the book: there are conversations about love, about the ways the women had to change their own game and stand up to inequities in the system, about a huge shift in the team culture that led to their ultimate successes personally and on the field. It is a story of personal and systemic metamorphosis, which has ultimately led us to a new, women-led era for sport at large in Aotearoa.

I cried a lot while reading this book, but there’s a passage early on in Straight Up about reading and the value of books, that gets me every time: “Every single night [Mum] buried herself in a book when she got into bed, and it made me look up to reading, and that’s the reason I am still a reader. I got Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone one Christmas, and it was just the best to have my very own novel to read.” I can imagine many a lonely child, adults too, thinking of Tui’s’ book in the same way. What a gift.

Straight Up by Ruby Tui (Allen & Unwin NZ, $37) can be purchased from Unity Books Wellington or Unity Books Auckland.