TOPSHOT – US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama read Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are” to children at the annual Easter Egg Roll at the White House in Washington, DC, on March 28, 2016. Some 35,000 guests have been invited to participate in the 138th annual Easter Egg roll. The theme of the day’s event is Let’s Celebrate! / AFP / Nicholas Kamm (Photo credit should read NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)
TOPSHOT – US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama read Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are” to children at the annual Easter Egg Roll at the White House in Washington, DC, on March 28, 2016. Some 35,000 guests have been invited to participate in the 138th annual Easter Egg roll. The theme of the day’s event is Let’s Celebrate! / AFP / Nicholas Kamm (Photo credit should read NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)

BooksFebruary 22, 2017

What do you look like when you’re reading: send in a selfie and win a lot of extremely good books

Staff writers
TOPSHOT – US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama read Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are” to children at the annual Easter Egg Roll at the White House in Washington, DC, on March 28, 2016. Some 35,000 guests have been invited to participate in the 138th annual Easter Egg roll. The theme of the day’s event is Let’s Celebrate! / AFP / Nicholas Kamm (Photo credit should read NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)
TOPSHOT – US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama read Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are” to children at the annual Easter Egg Roll at the White House in Washington, DC, on March 28, 2016. Some 35,000 guests have been invited to participate in the 138th annual Easter Egg roll. The theme of the day’s event is Let’s Celebrate! / AFP / Nicholas Kamm (Photo credit should read NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)

Win free things! In this case, books! No cost! Minimal effort! Huge rewards for your intellectual and emotional well-being!

The Spinoff Review of Books in association with our favourite arts and culture quango, the New Zealand Book Council and their Aotearoa Summer Reads campaign, wishes to give away two prize packs of 10 extremely good books, which works out as five books in each prize pack.

To go into the draw, you have to send in a brilliant or striking or fetching or in some way winning selfie of yourself reading a book. We need to see two things: the book, and your face. Actually you don’t even have to include the book. Just your face, of what you look like when you’re reading. Actually yeah nah fuck it, it doesn’t have to be a selfie, someone else can be the photographer, so long as it exhibits what you look like when you’re reading.

Pensive? Determined? A pompous ass? In the bath? On the bus? Wearing a suit? Wearing a mask? The possibilities are endless, possibly.

Entries must be better than this stock image

Prize pack A consists of these five New Zealand books by five established or older writers:

  • Maori Boy, a memoir by Witi Ihimaera: volume one of heaven knows how many volumes by the most charming man in New Zealand letters.
  • Wulf, a novel by Hamish Clayton: remarkable debut by the intensely bearded Wellington writer.
  • Hand-coloured New Zealand: the photographs of Whites Aviation, by Peter Alsop: fucken A. Really awesome black and white pictures from the air, hand-coloured.
  • Coming Rain, a novel by Stephen Daisley: winner of the book of the year gong at last year’s Ockham national book awards.
  • Trust No One, a thriller by Paul Cleave: trust Paul Cleave to write a compelling crime story.
More Reading

    Prize pack B consists of these five New Zealand books by five younger or in some way vaguely hipsterish writers:

    • The Magic Pen, a graphic novel by Dylan Horrocks: comic by a guy about a guy who writes comics.
    • Mansfield & Me, a graphic memoir by Sarah Laing: her life in pictures, candid and funny and beguiling.
    • Fale Aitu: Spirit House, a book of verse by Tusiata Avia: spectacular poetics by the wildly talented Auckland writer.
    • deleted scenes for lovers, short stories by Tracey Slaughter: lower-case and high tension in these brilliant tales about NZ fuck-ups and ho’s.
    • The Chimes, a novel by Anna Smaill: long-listed for the Man Booker award.

    Please send in selfies to the irrepressible and nice Claire Mabey from the NZ Book Council, on summerreads@bookcouncil.org.nz.

    The deadline is oh hm let’s make it tomorrow at noon. Quick! Send now!

    Keep going!