New Zealand Books

Despite the title, MOONLIGHT DRIVE is not as inclusive as it could have been. B-sides are barely mentioned. Studio-only/demos ignored. Other books of this type usually go through pains to include almost every scrap of music put to tape that a band has recorded. MOONLIGHT DRIVE fails in this capacity. To Crisafulli's credit, however, he does include ABSOLUTELY LIVE as well as OTHER VOICES and FULL CIRCLE. AMERICAN PRAYER, Jim Morrison's spoken word album (with music by The Doors) is also included.

The book is full of interesting facts and is well-written and recommended, but I would have preferred a more inclusive and in-depth look at the stories behind every single Doors song.

This book tells you in great depth about the doors and the Jim Morrison story and how they decided what to call each song and what to include in them, it is avery interesting book with facts you probably wouldn't of heard of in other doors related books, so its a must for all door's fans.

With absolutely stunning photographs and accurate definitions, this book is a landmark in publishing. The authors have created an illustrated dictionary using state-of-the-art imaging techniques. The nearly 1000 color pictures, the majority photomicrographs, are crisply reproduced. The book's strength is in presentation of details of cellular structure, so important for identifying mosses and their ilk. This book will be useful for years to come. This is not a book for the beginner; without solid training in general botany it is likely to be overwhelming, if not impenetrable. This is a reference book, not a text. For the beginning student of mosses, however, it can be a stepping stone to mastering this fascinating group of land plants. The only caution is for northern hemisphere botanists: almost all the subjects are drawn from the flora of New Zealand. Although the images might illustrate a term well, a North American reader will never encounter most of the species depicted.

This is a highly technical book. Brush up on your latin before you purchase it. Illustrations range from a few side views of whole clumps to individual plant photos. If you are interested in the molecular structure, this book is for you.

I enjoyed this book because I like to find out about how world wars affect peoples lives. Janet Lim has lived a very sad life but has always shown great willpower. She has always triumphed over several dangerous experiences. I would really love to know how the rest of her life turned out.

In "Sold for Silver" Janet Lim, a Singaporean Chinese, gives an autobiographical account of her life, from her early childhood in China to the end of World War II. Janet Lim was an ordinary person whom in normal times would have led a useful but undistinguished life. But what makes this book worth reading is that the times in which she lived were not normal at all. In the twenty years related here she was confronted by a series of extraordinary challenges, any one of which could have broken her. Sold to be a slave as a child, bombed at sea by the Japanese during the war, captured and held prisoner by them, selected to be a "comfort girl," and then sentenced to be executed, she withstood these challenges and emerged with her spirit intact. The events she experienced and the spirit she showed facing them make this book well worth reading.

The Transformation is all about hair, and widows and Cubans, but it is mostly about hair. Set in 1898 with the century almost gone, and the automobile coming, the story centers on the wig maker Lucien Goulet III - Manufacturer of Ladies' Imperceptible Hair-Pieces and Gentlemen's Invisible Coverings. Escaping a shady background in France, the mysterious perrupuier has found a new home in Tampa, Florida, a world of perpetual sunshine, oranges, mosquitoes, swamps, and the occasional hurricane.

Author, Catherine Chidgey paints a picture of Tampa as a happening place. The railroad magnate Henry B. Plant has just build the Tampa Bay Hotel, with its tangle of Moorish minarets and aches, "its Byzantine domes and its thirteen crescent moons, the Hotel resembles "fairy-tale" castle anchored at the water's edge. Taking a room in one of the minarets, Goulet takes advantage of the Hotel's wealthy clientele, while inwardly sniping at their self-indulgent, decadent ways. In tones of sycophantic menace, he declares that he can work miracles with "a hank of hair, glue and a net."

As Goulet relates his adventures in hair, his narrative interweaves with those of Marion Unger, a local widow and orange grove owner whose silver-blonde tresses so entrance Goulet, and Rafael Méndez, a young cigar-roller who has come to Florida to escape the war in Cuba. He too is drawn to Marion, and drawn into the dark side of Goulet's dream-weaving business: scavenging refuse tips for combings, and eventually scalping the dead. Goulet, whose obsession with Marion's hair, manipulates both and the transformation he determines to make for it, is the driving force of the plot.

The Transformation is obviously meticulously researched and it shows, especially in the pages devoted to Goulet's obsessive rambling about his past in France and his wordy discussions on the art of the perrupuier. Florida of 1898 in recreated in convincing, immediate detail. There is lots of attention paid to Rafael's background and his family back in Cuba, and Chidgey deftly evokes the political climate leading up to the Spanish American War, when the American soldiers were amassing in Tampa hoping to liberate Cuba.

Chidgey portrays Goulet as some kind of hair sucking monster, a man devoted to fakery and deception. In one instance he mocks a customer by employing two actresses to mimic her for his own entertainment. But as the book progresses, Goulet's gleeful inhumanity becomes almost pantomimic and unreal, a caricature of a self-made, foppish and dandified man. In the search for hair, he gloats, "Once I found a stillborn child, but the little hair I could recover was too downy for my purposes."

The Transformation is full of Chidgey's confidant commanding prose, and vivid atmospherics, but the meandering narrative often hampers the overall effectiveness of the book. This reader never really cared that much about the characters or what happened to them - they all seem to sink into the background, weighed down by the author's rather substantial prose. There should be at least a modicum of emotional payoff involved in this story, but Goulet and his obsessions swamp the narrative, sucking the life from all around him, and in the end neither his flighty customers nor most readers will really be that concerned or worried over his fate. Mike Leonard May 05.

Hauntingly beautiful engrossing summer read. This book sticks with you like sweat hungry flies in the oppressive Florida humidity. Captured the mood of the era just right and gave me all the seediness about it that I wanted. Enjoy this great off-the-radar book with a mint julip in an old creaky beachfront house with hosiery draped over Tiffany lamps for optimum pleasure.

This book shows that children in the 50's weren't as docile and obedient as your grandparents claim they were. Alice, the main character, constantly bickers with her mother, who has unwillingly dragged her to New Zealand(of all places!). In places, the book is sarcastic and funny, but I docked it major points for being rather boring in the beginning. Along with the normal problems of moving and being the new kid at school, Alice has to move into an intimidating old mansion with a lady that hates kids and an uncooperative, grumpy old man, and also discovers a mystery regarding her origins.

This book, Truth to Tell, is about a young girl called Alice who is being dragged halfway around the world by her mother, who is going to help an eccentric old lady, Miss Emilia Fairchild, write a book about her house. Alice hates New Zealand, and more, she has a stepfather. She struggles to find out who her true father was, for she looks like Len,her stepfather, but how can that be? Her mother claims that her father was killed during the war, but why had she never met her father's parents? Mrs.Fairchild then says, "It's a wise father that knows his own child," and Alice has to find out who her father was, and, more importantly, who she is. I loved this book because it offers wonderful insight into a girl's struggles to grasp a situation that's out of her control and find out who she is.

This book is an invaluable source book which documents the progression of New Zealand music (and New Zealand's own identity) over the past 150 years. As a teacher I have found this book to be irreplacable and cherish it dearly. I have also seen Mike in action and he is as talented as the book suggests. I only hope that I can track down recording of the songs (and Mikes own records) as easily.

Mike spent several years in libraries and the Radio New Zealand record archives researching NZ songs. This book contains marvellous lists of locally made songs:- colonial songs, around-the-piano songs, wartime songs, tramping songs, and all those songs we heard on the hit parades and at parties and thought we had forgotten. He also has them cross-indexed to other lists of all the records and songbooks where you can still find the songs. And for the academically inclined, the book also has an exhaustive bibliography of books, articles and songbooks. Mike now travels New Zealand singing the best of these songs live.

This is a nicely done bio of the three white rulers of Sarawak that will appeal to those who enjoy biographies and history. J.B. Brooke, the first white rajah, is a character that today could only exist in a work of fiction. At the time, however, he was typical of a small group of British adventurers and explorers who sought out intrigue in the remote corners of the earth. Unfortunately, since the book covers the lives of all three white rajahs (they ruled altogether for almost exactly 100 years), it lack's sufficient detail of the lives of each of its three subjects. But overall: well-done and well-written.

Robert Payne has produce a short history of the Broke dinasty in Sarawak (in todays Malaysian part of Borneo). The book in a concise and complete manner narrates the events that took place since James Broke first set his feet in the island of Borneo in the mid-XIX until the territory joined the Malaysian Federation after World War II.

The story is fascinating enough and Payne simply states general facts in quite a neutral manner. Maybe the book lacks some footnotes and references but is well written and clear. A few photos (not as many as it would be desired) complete the text

As a Planning Technician at Auckland City Council, Heritage Division, I deal with public enquiries and also internal enquiries regarding heritage matters. Our natural protection includes: Maori sites, natural ecological sites, significant trees and more. With regards to the Maori sites, this book is useful in finding out what sort of vegetation may have been present at the time of the Maori inhabiting that area. Also, with regards to heritage buildings that still have the original trees and what appears to be where are garden may have been, we can also "guess" what sort of vegetation was grown in this area.

We have been lent this book and will proceed to buy it through your site as a reference book.

This book is from the My Story series published in New Zealand, which is their version of the Dear America series. The books are diaries of fictional boys and girls during important events and eras in New Zealand history.

In March 1968, when thirteen-year-old Debbie Atherton becomes ill with glandular fever, she is sent to stay with relatives to rest and recovery. During her trip, she reads a diary her grandmother gave her, about their ancestor's long and dangerous sea voyage as an immigrant to Australia, and learns about the hardships faced by the early settlers. When Debbie is well again, she boards the ferry Wahine to travel home to Wellington, but becomes caught up in its tragic sinking and must fight for her survival as her ancestor did.

This was an interesting book from the My Story series, bringing to life a tragic disaster in New Zealand history. Young readers who enjoy fictional historical diaries or novels about historical disasters are sure to enjoy this book.

I found this book to be very interesting reading, well written, and well documented. If you are interested in part of Aboriginal History in Queensland this is an excellent book for this.