Passages by Linda Trubridge

$40.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover

$28.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

'Educated is a remarkable memoir of a young woman raised in a survivalist family in Idaho who strives for education while still showing great understanding and love for the world she leaves behind.' - BARACK OBAMA ________________________ Tara Westover grew up preparing for the End of Days, watching f or the sun to darken, for the moon to drip as if with blood. She spent her summers bottling peaches and her winters rotating emergency supplies, hoping that when the World of Men failed, her family would continue on, unaffected. She hadn't been registered for a birth certificate. She had no school records because she'd never set foot in a classroom, and no medical records because her father didn't believe in doctors or hospitals. According to the state and federal government, she didn't exist. As she grew older, her father became more radical, and her brother, more violent. At sixteen Tara decided to educate herself. Her struggle for knowledge would take her far from her Idaho mountains, over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge. Only then would she wonder if she'd travelled too far. If there was still a way home. EDUCATED is an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty, and of the grief that comes with the severing of the closest of ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, from her singular experience Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes, and the will to change it. ________________________ · Shortlisted for the 2018 BAMB Readers' Awards · Recommended as a summer read by Antony Beevor, India Knight, Blake Morrison and Nina Stibbe 'A memoir to stand alongside classics by the likes of Jeanette Winterson and Lorna Sage ... a compelling and ultimately joyous account of self-determination' - Sunday Times ...Show more

Being John Lennon by Ray Connolly

$38.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

John Lennon was a rock star, a school clown, a writer, a wit, an iconoclast, a sometime peace activist and finally an eccentric millionaire. He was also a Beatle - his plain-speaking and impudent rejection of authority catching, and eloquently articulating, the group's moment in history. Chronicling a t roubled life, from that of the cast-aside child of a broken wartime marriage to his murder by a deranged fan, Being John Lennon analyses the contradictions in the singer-songwriter's creative and destructive personality. A leader who could be easily led, he was often generous and often funny, but sometimes scathingly cruel. As a journalist, author Ray Connolly had a close working relationship with Lennon, and the entire Beatles coterie. In this biography he unsparingly reassesses the chameleon nature of the perpetually dissatisfied star who just couldn't stop reinventing himself. Drawing on many interviews and conversations with Lennon, his first wife Cynthia and second Yoko Ono, as well as his girlfriend May Pang and song-writing partner Paul McCartney, this complex portrait is a revealing insight into a restless man whose emotional turbulence governed his life and talent. ...Show more

Andris, Where Are You? From Latvia to New Zealand: The Family Story of Andris Apse by Ron Crosby

$20.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

Andris, Where Are You? tells the family story of renowned New Zealand photographer Andris Apse, who when middle aged, discovered that his father Voldemars, believed to be dead for 40 years, was still alive in Latvia. Told largely through insightful pre-war diary entries by Voldemars Apse, as well as cor respondence between Voldemars and his wife Kamilla, both before and during the war, this book describes the horrendous effects of war and the Soviet and German occupation on an ordinary rural Latvian family. For years after the war Kamilla and her baby Andris lived in West Germany in a refugee camp, but came to understand that Voldemars had died in the war, or in the Soviet gulag prison camps. Consequently, Kamilla and five-year-old Andris emigrated to New Zealand as refugees. Over time Andris became one of New Zealand’s most successful landscape photographers, and raised his own family. Following the breakdown of the Soviet Union, Kamilla and Andris miraculously discovered that Voldemars was still alive in Latvia. Andris arranged to take Kamilla, who was now in her seventies, back to Latvia. When they reunited in Riga, husband met wife, and son met father for the first time in over 40 years. This story of heart-rending separation and joyful rediscovery will touch a chord with all parents and everyone with a sense of history and the importance of family. Andris’s remarkable tale was first published as a large format photographic book, which was serialised by National Radio, and his life and photography has also featured in a 2010 TVNZ documentary ‘Through My Eyes’. ...Show more

Peter and Me: When a love story becomes a carer's anguish by Helen Ritchie

$33.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

When a love story becomes a carer’s anguish They first met when Helene was 18 years old. Together for nearly 40 years, this is the story of their relationship through Peter’s intense last four years involving 24/7 care, the impact of a horrible illness and a shameful and ad hoc health system . It aims to give a voice to isolated and exploited carers, especially those in private homes, and to expose fundamental issues about humanity and failed systems. It calls for and it calls a Royal Commission inquiry and a ‘bipartisan’ Parliamentary response to produce viable solutions. ...Show more

Sam Hunt: Off the Road by Sam Hunt; Colin Hogg

$50.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

Thirty years after Hogg and Hunt collaborated on the now-legendary Angel Gear: Off the Road with Sam Hunt, the pair have decided to throw caution to the wind and proceed without doctors' certificates, to create an older, possibly wiser twin to that earlier book. A backstage pass to the private side of o ne of our most public people, Sam Hunt: Off the Road is a wild, hilarious, no-holds-barred book about the non-stop life and poems of a man New Zealand thinks it knows, until now. Part conversation, part story-telling, part poems, it's also a book about friendship, solitude, love, death, self-destruction and endurance. With photographs and poems, some old, some new. ...Show more

Chasing the Rose: An Adventure in the Venetian Countryside by Andrea Di Robilant

$37.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

From the author of the best-selling "A Venetian Affair," here is the charming chronicle of his search for the identity of a mysterious old rose. Andrea di Robilant's tale takes us back to the time of Josephine Bonaparte, as well as into some of the most delightful rose gardens in Italy today, brought to colorful life on the page in the watercolors of artist Nina Fuga. In his 2008 biography of the Venetian lady Lucia Mocenigo (his great-great-great-great- grandmother), di Robilant described a pink rose that grows wild on the family's former country estate, mentioning its light peach-and-raspberry scent. This passing detail led to an invitation for an audience with a local rose doyenne, Eleonora Garlant. She and other experts wondered if di Robilant's unnamed rose could possibly be one of the long-lost China varieties that nineteenth-century European growers had cultivated but which have since disappeared. On the hunt for the identity of his anonymous yet quietly distinctive rose, Di Robilant finds himself captivated by roseophiles through time--from Lucia and her friend Josephine Bonaparte to the gifted Eleonora, whose garden of nearly fifteen hundred varieties of old roses is one of the most significant in Europe--and by the roses themselves, each of which has a tale to tell. What starts out as a lighthearted quest becomes a meaningful journey as di Robilant contemplates the enduring beauty of what is passed down to us in a rose, through both the generosity of nature and the cultivating hand of human beings, who for centuries have embraced and extended the life of this mysterious flower. ...Show more

What Does the Sea Sound Like?: Memoirs of a Coda (Child of Deaf Adults) by Evie Mahoney

$30.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

Evie Mahoney is a CODA, a Child Of Deaf Adults, raised in Auckland, New Zealand. She is the eldest of six hearing children. Being first born her early life was mainly in a deaf environment and she was sensitive to how hearing people outside that environment reacted to her family. She lived on the edge b etween the two cultures and naturally slipped into the role of interpreter, from a young age, ensuring the Deaf and Hearing understood each other when communicating. While she learnt the values of her deaf parents with their perception of the mainstream hearing world, she also learnt the different values of the hearing world that she belonged to. Six decades later Evie is happy to have been raised by inspiring parents and enjoys the special dimension the deaf culture has given her. She has seen communication become easier for the Deaf with New Zealand Sign Language now being an official language and becoming a more accepted form of communication. Modern technology is also providing visual communication options for the Deaf. Nevertheless, Evie sees attitudes of the Hearing towards the Deaf still having a long way to go. ...Show more

Crossing the Floor: The Story of Tariana Turia by Helen Leahy

$45.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir | Reading Level: Very Good

"This biography of Tariana Turia sees family members, iwi leaders, social justice advocates and politicians share their experiences of this remarkable woman. While parliament was not originally part of her life plan, Tariana Turia was involved in many community initiatives. A turning point came in 1995, when Tariana's leadership was evident in the reoccupation of Pakaitore. Here was a woman with the courage to care, the determination to speak up and a deep commitment to whānau. Inevitably, she was invited to stand in the 1996 general election. In her eighteen years as an MP, she advanced thinking in the disability area, advocated for tobacco reform and spoke out about sexual abuse, violence and racism. She also led the Whānau Ora initiative. In 2004, she crossed the floor, leading to the birth of the Māori Party"--Publisher information. ...Show more

Elisabeth's Lists - A Life Between Lines by Lulah Ellender

$25.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

Many years after the death of her grandmother, Lulah Ellender inherited a curious object - a book of handwritten lists.On the face of it, Elisabeth's lists seemed rather ordinary - shopping lists, items to be packed for a foreign trip, a tally of the eggs laid by her hens. But from these everyday fragme nts, Lulah began to weave together the extraordinary life of the grandmother she never knew - a life lived in the most rarefied and glamorous of circles, from Elisabeth's early years as an ambassador's daughter in 1930s China, to her marriage to a British diplomat and postings in Madrid under Franco's regime, post-war Beirut, Rio de Janeiro and Paris. But it was also a life of stark contrasts - between the opulent excess of embassy banquets and the deprivations of wartime rationing in England, between the unfailing charm she displayed in public and the dark depressions that blanketed her in private, between her great appetite for life and her sudden, early death.Throughout Elisabeth's adult life, the lists were a source of structure and comfort. And now, as Lulah learns that she is losing her own mother, she finds herself turning to her grandmother's life, and to her much-travelled book of lists, in search of meaning and solace.Elisabeth's Lists is both a vivid memoir and a moving study of the familial threads that binds us, even beyond death. ...Show more

These Two Hands : A Memoir by Renee

$38.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

Renee was born grumpy (Ngati Kahungunu/Scot) and nothing has changed. She is an avid and faithful reader, who enjoys cooking and gardening. Everyone, she says, should grow leafy greens. Renee always thought she would die at forty-two but for some reason this didn't happen. She considers herself very luc ky to still have most of her marbles, and credits reading, writing, walking and teaching for this. She has written eight novels and eighteen plays, among which Wednesday To Come is probably her most loved work. Iris: I remember when Dad died we stayed up all night. About one in the morning Mum made scones. Crazy the things you do. Ted: Like singing round a coffin? Iris: Hang around Ted - that's just the start. Renee lives in Otaki and teaches her Your Life, Your Story and her Poem a Week workshops there. This is just one version of her life, her story, told in patches, like a quilt. ...Show more

Memory Pieces by Maurice Gee

$35.00 NZD

Category: Biography/Memoir

Memory Pieces is an intimate and evocative memoir in three parts. `Double Unit' tells the story of Maurice Gee's parents - Lyndahl Chapple Gee, a talented writer who for reasons that become clear never went on with a writing career, and Len Gee, a boxer, builder, and man's man. `Blind Road' is Gee's st ory up to the age of eighteen, when his apprenticeship as a writer began. `Running on the Stairs' tells the story of Margaretha Garden, beginning in 1940, the year of her birth, when she travelled with her mother Greta from Nazi-sympathising Sweden to New Zealand, through to her meeting Maurice Gee when they were working together in the Alexander Turnbull Library in 1967. Design by Keely O'Shannessey ...Show more