Amy Stewart paints a powerful portrait of the human passion for plants in “The Tree Collectors” with fifty different tales of people who, for one fascinating reason or another, devote their life to trees. The book is illustrated with Amy’s vibrant watercolours of the trees and their idiosyncratic owners.

Compared in his heyday to Brett Whitely, painter, printmaker, teacher, writer and ornithologist Don Binney (1940–2012) was an artistic icon in New Zealand in the 1960s. His unmistakable, stylised depictions of birds and the Te Henga coastline are imprinted upon the psyche of that nation. Don Binney was a mercurial, eccentric and often abrasive character whose early brief fame defined his life. In “Don Binney: Flight Path” award-winning author and curator Gregory O’Brien follows the painter from the wild coast of New Zealand through Latin America and Europe, using his letters, journals, and distinctive bird paintings to take us inside Don Binney’s world.

Guests

Amy Stewart, NYT best-selling author of “The Tree Collectors; Tales of arboreal obsession”, “The Drunken Botanist; The Plants that Create the World’s Great Drinks” and “Wicked Plants; The Weed That Killed Lincoln's Mother & Other Botanical Atrocities”.

Greg O’Brien: Wellington-based poet, painter and curator who has written books on art for young people as well as several other books on artists including Ralph Hotere and Pat Hanly, and co-edited several poetry anthologies besides his solo poetry collections. His most recent book of poems is “House and Contents”, Auckland University Press.

Other books that get a mention

Cath mentions “An Uneasy Inheritance; My family and other radicals” by Polly Toynbee and Shankari Chandran’s new novel “Safe Haven”.

Michaela mentiones “The God of No Good” by Sita Walker.

INSTAGRAM

@amystewart

@text_publishing

@aucklanduniversitypress

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A story that is difficult to pin down to a narrative, playwright Finegan Kruckemeyer’s debut novel explores arrivals and departures, time and space, through the experiences of a curious cast of characters.

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Annie Warburton explores why we read the works of old writers, dissecting the work of Nancy Mitford in the context of her era and the happenings in the world around her.

Guests:

Finnegan Kruckemeyer, playwright whose works have been performed on six continents in 12 languages.

Annie Warburton, former ABC Broadcaster and reading addict.

Danny, our Random Reader

Danny mentions the following books:

“The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams

Author: Ruth Parks

“1984” by George Orwell

“The Mayor of Casterbridge” by Thomas Hardy

“Les Miserables” by Victor Hugo

“Shantaram” by Gregory David Roberts

“The Life Of Pi” by Yann Martel

“The White Tiger” by Aravind Adiga

Author: George Monbiot

“Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” by Yuval Noah Harari

“The Dawn of Everything” by David Graeber

“Entangled Life” by Merlin Sheldrake

“The Well Gardened Mind” by Sue Stuart-Smith

“The Secret Life of Trees” by Colin Tudge

“The Argonauts” by Maggie Nelson

“My Gita” by Devdutt Pattanaik

INSTAGRAM

@textpublishing

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Cath carries this episode with two great chats; the first with author Sophie Cunningham and the other with self-professed “book snob”, Ron Hoenig.

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Ostensibly a novel about Alice, a woman who’s spent the last 20 years writing the biography of Virginia Woolf’s husband, Leonard, “This Devastating Fever” is an insightful, moving and witty tale of what it’s like to live through a time that feels like the end of days, and how we can find comfort and answers in the past.​

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Meet Ron Hoenig, member of The Jewish Men’s Book Club where weighty tomes such as “The Book of Jacob” by Olga Tokarczuk (all 1,000 pages of it) are discussed.

Guests

Sophie Cunningham, author of “This Devastating Fever” and six other books including “Geography” (2004) and “Bird” (2008)

Ron Hoenig, enthusiastic member of the Jewish Men’s Book Club. Ron mentions “Anti-Judaism”by David Nirenberg, “Not In God’s Name: Con­fronting Reli­gious Violence”by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks and “The Book of Jacob”, a novel by Olga Tokarczuk.

Other books that get a mention

Annie mentions “Kings in Grass Castles” by Mary Durack

INSTAGRAM

@ultimopress

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