This week’s bestselling books – March 27
2026-03-26 - 16:03
NONFICTION 1 Money, Money, Money by Rachel Davies & Angela Meyer (Allen & Unwin, 37.99) Number 1 with a bullet in its first week in the shops. Great title! But the self-helper is terribly sexist. Blurbology: “An essential guide to financial freedom for every woman, the only book you need to reset your money beliefs and grow your wealth.” 2 Surviving White Island by Kelsey Waghorn (HarperCollins, $39.99) 3 Be Brave by Barbara Dreaver (Awa Press, $45) I’m a big fan of Dreaver’s journalism. She’s a trusted, determined Pacific affairs veteran, and I value her accuracy and her mana. Her memoir is one of the year’s best books. It’s an inside look at her job but also within TVNZ and all its politics. There’s a fascinating passage about the time Paul Holmes made his truly madly deeply racist remark about Kofi Annan being a “cheeky darky”. She writes that his producer, Paul Yandall, decided he couldn’t keep working with Holmes “and retain his self- respect”. Dreaver made a formal complaint to the head of news and current affairs, Bill Ralston, and to HR. “I said I was considering my position and was given a week off to think about things.” The matter was dropped after Yandall was moved elsewhere within TVNZ, and Holmes apologised. There is an unexpected postscript. “The following year I did a story about a Samoan family, the Ofafonuas. Tevita and Silaita Ofafonua had bought a home but because of a number of issues raw sewage was leaking through it.” Her story aired on One News. The Holmes show followed it up and viewers responded by offering to help, “all of which the Holmes show coordinated. A few months later the family had a brand-new home. The big reveal was on Holmes and there were tears of joy.” All of which is good, but it comes with a suspicion of the usual performative condescension of palagi broadcasting. Look at whitey, being nice to the brown folks on camera. But then Dreaver writes, “I popped in to see the family and check out their new home. They told me they had become friends with the building company owner. Then came some surprising news. Paul Holmes would often pop in to see them, they said, to catch up over a cuppa. They loved him. By this time I had made my peace with Paul. Sometimes he did and said dumb things but he was also extraordinary.” 4 Lessons on Living by Nigel Latta (HarperCollins, $39.99) 5 Every Second Counts by Charlotte Glennie (Hachette, $39.99) By strange coincidence, two journo memoirs have been published at the exact time, from two colleagues; and both have overlap. In Be Brave, Barbara Dreaver writes how she made her way in NZ journalism, in 1998: “Finlay Macdonald gave me a weekly column at the Listener ... [Then] a position came up for a reporter in Radio New Zealand’s Auckland newsroom. I applied and was called in for an interview with a panel of three, including managing editor Lynne Snowdon and acting chief reporter Lisa Owen. The interview was intense. I knew that, whether or not I got the job, I was being judged on merit. A few days later I received a call: the job was mine ... Lisa Owen moved to Television New Zealand. She told me about a job going there. I applied and was interviewed but the job went to Charlotte Glennie, an experienced television reporter who had just returned from overseas. The chief reporter, Paul Patrick, explained that Charlotte could hit the ground running. He asked me not to apply for any TV3 jobs, and to go for the next One News vacancy that came up. Encouraged by this I waited and was hired not long afterwards.” Glennie considers the state of foreign desks in 2026. She writes in Every Second Counts, “Today, TVNZ is the only New Zealand media organisation still employing foreign correspondents on staff. Based in London, Sydney and New York, they help connect viewers to these cities and regions, including in London’s case, to some extent, the Middle East. The Pacific has been covered brilliantly for more than 20 years by correspondent Barbara Dreaver from her base in Auckland, and Radio New Zealand has a specialist team reporting on the Pacific. But our other neighbours, Asia, miss out. In contrast, five Australian media outlets employ full-time correspondents in Asia, including the ABC, which has them in five Asian cities.” Both memoirs will be reviewed together, in ReadingRoom, by Scott Hamilton. We have been corresponding this week on the subject of his review. It is likely to be fairly critical. 6 Champions Do Extra by Brad Thorn (HarperCollins, $39.99) 7 The Dead Speak by Thomas Coyle (Allen & Unwin, $37.99) 8 The Hollows Boys by Peta Carey (Potton & Burton, $39.99) Shortlisted for the nonfiction prize at the Ockham NZ book awards on May 13, and among all 16 shortlisted titles that will be won by one reader in the Greatest Book Prize of All Times, a contest exclusive to ReadingRoom and now in its fourth week. There are five weeks left to go until it closes. I make no apologies for dragging it out. The books are worth north of $1000 and they are the best of the best. Also, the contest is providing an interesting and even thrilling subplot to the Ockhams. To enter the draw, readers need to nominate their favourite NZ book of last year, and share a few lines stating why that is so; entries continued to pour in this week, and He Puāwai: A Natural History of New Zealand Flowers by Philip Garnock-Jones was bumped off pole position as the book with the most votes. The numbers now favour The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey. The contest will run for another month. The book that receives the most votes will be named winner of the People’s Choice Award on the morning of the Ockham awards on May 13. Readers can choose from the Ockham shortlist or the Ockham longlist. Equally they can pick any NZ book whether it was nominated or not, so long as it was published in 2025. About 40 entries arrived this week, bringing the total to nearly 160. Chidgey’s novel edged ahead of He Puāwai, a 3D picture book; in third place, only two votes behind, is the Jacinda Ardern memoir. A wide range of books have been nominated. A fellah called Warren sent in a brilliant 370-word review of his favourite book, Atholl Anderson’s The Welcome of Strangers, which traces the early migrations of Waitaha and Kāti Māmoe people and the later arrival and settlement of Ngāi Tahu. Warren wrote. “It’s a no-pretences narrative of the disenfranchisement of Te Waipounamu Maori from the land, whether this was by the preference for inter-racial marriage, subordination/annihilation by marauding Te-Ika-a Maui empire builders, inter-tribal utu, sickness or simply the aggrandisement of some of the local chiefs.” I was rather partial to the entry from Susan. She wrote, “I live on Rēkohu and we don’t have a library, or a bookshop, or any shops really and we have plenty of time for reading. I would love to win this prize. What a diverse collection. Some I may give away, others I’ll treasure, like Tina Makereti’s essays This Compulsion in Us. Why isn’t your book Polkinghorne on the Ockhams shortlist? I can’t wait to read Sam Mahon’s novel How to Paint a Nude. The illustrated nonfiction books are glorious – He Puāwai, the book on Mark Adams, and Mr Ward’s Map. PS You are my favourite part of The Listener (in case that helps my claim)”. Well, it doesn’t hurt, but I am only one voice on a judging panel of nine experts. Some of them are very pious and regard flattery as a vice. To enter, send in your vote (with comments) for your favourite NZ book of 2025, and email it to stephen11@xtra.co.nz with the subject line I WANT TO WIN ALL 16 BOOKS SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2026 OCKHAM NZ AWARDS PLEASE. The deadline is midnight on Sunday, April 26. 9 Become Unstoppable by Gilbert Enoka (Penguin Random House, $40) 10 Ara by Hinemoa Elder (Penguin Random House, $30) FICTION 1 Black Velvet and Vengeance (Tatty Crowe 3) by Deborah Challinor (HarperCollins, $37.99) 2 The Black Monk by Charlotte Grimshaw (Penguin Random House, $38) Eileen Merriman is a wonderful novelist (Moonlight Sonata, Silence of Snow, Double Helix, The Night She Fell) but clearly she cannot read too good. She entered the Greatest Book Prize of All Times (see details, above) this week by nominating The Black Monk. Clearly she had not seen the fine print or the point of the exercise, which is to nominate the best NZ book published in 2025. The Black Monk has only just been published. Still, I liked her enthusiasm for the book. Merriman wrote, “This is a disturbing read, not least because it epitomises the elements of meta-fiction that make it so addictive; a double helix of fact and fiction to tantalise and taunt the reader long after they put the book down. As always, Grimshaw captures the NZ zeitgeist so well in a novel that is deeply introspective, yet clearly haunted by the ever-present threat of pandemics, Trumpism and climate change.” 3 The Secrets of the Lost Vineyard by Erin Palmisano (Hachette, $37.99) 4 Seed by Elisabeth Easther (Penguin Random House, $38) 5 Blue is a Cracked Vase in Memory by Riemke Ensing (Cold Hub Press, $33) Riemke Ensing! How great to see her name again; her contribution to NZ writing is immense, as a poet of long practice (she was born in 1939, in Holland, emigrating here with her family, to Dargaville when she was 12 and spoke no English), and as a lecturer in the English department at Auckland University for 22 years. She also edited the first substantial anthology of NZ women’s poetry, Private Gardens, in 1977. Her latest collection (her 18th, by my count) contains 60 previously unpublished poems plus verse taken from her last three limited edition books. A few years ago she sent me a poem as entry to a giveaway contest at ReadingRoom. A copy of the cookbook Ripe Recipes: Thought for Food by Angela Redfern & Sophie Merkens & Amy Melchior (Beatnik Publishing, $59.99) was up for grabs. I loved her poem. Of course she won the book. Recipe for rhubarb from Katherine Mansfield Two sticks of rhubarb depending on the money and who’s coming to dinner. One local paper (out of date will do). One gas stove. Snip up the rhubarb and put in a saucepan. Add a little water and bring to the boil reading the news or items of interest. Virginia’s written a review. Turn down the gas to a pinch and continue to savour the full flavour of burning. Take off the rhubarb and cool also yourself with great goblets of clear water flecked with goldfish. 6 Julia Eichardt by Lauren Roche (Flying Books Publishing, $36.99) 7 The American Boys by Olivia Spooner (Hachette, $37.99) 8 The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey (Te Herenga Waka University Press, $28) Shortlisted for the $65,000 fiction prize at the Ockham NZ book awards, and in pole position as the most popular book published last year, as voted by readers entering the Greatest Book Prize of All Times (details, above). 9 The Last Living Cannibal by Airana Ngarewa (Hachette, $37.99) 10 Dead Girl Gone (The Bookshop Detectives 1) by Gareth and Louise Ward (Penguin Random House, $28)