Book Review: Secret Art Powers
December 1, 2025
Everyone can be an artist! Randerson unravels lessons learned from a career in the arts and spells out why art is so vital for a good life.
Everyone can be an artist! Randerson unravels lessons learned from a career in the arts and spells out why art is so vital for a good life.
Koko’s voice has so much dry humour and warmth and it was the strength of his perspective that made the novel so absorbing for me.
This book offers insights into a fascinating, stigmatised history, giving voice to the abundance of stories emerging from pockets of community.
In a series of short essays based around garments she has sewn, Ballard epitomizes the experiences of those who have an affinity with making.
Laura Borrowdale is an author of immense talent, as this collection of work will prove to all daring enough to read.
Holm breaks down NZ finance-ing in a thorough yet easy to understand manner, outlining the many ways to financially prepare for the future.
The author weaves together ancestral Samoan knowledge and his own lived experience, strengthening the tether between the two.
Chewing on anything juicy and sour and rich, these poems will roll on your tongue and get stuck in your teeth. DO IT!
Kersel invites the reader to inhale this collection in a way that allows the words to move through you and tether to an internal rhythm.
By dropping enough breadcrumbs to give the discerning reader the clues they need, The Book of Guilt reveals its secrets with perfect pacing.
Affecting, politically pertinent and visually pleasing, PUHIA is a publication I read immediately as it arrives in-store.
A stealthily affecting novel exploring the uneven politics of care, caring and carelessness, centered around the residents of Victory Park.
Farm life – sweaty days spent sheering sheep, beers on the front porch – is observed afresh and curiously askew through Tama’s imagination.
This is a novel about familial tensions, the desperation caused by poverty and how to be yourself when so much is expected of you.
This memoir provided me with a beautiful escape. I needed a calm harbour and this understated memoir was perfect.
This journal always pulls me out of a scholarly reading rut and reinvigorates ideas of postcolonial leftist theory with creativity.
The writing is so courageously honest while sneakily feeding you an NZ history lesson through a series of intimate experiences.
This was a luminous read – descriptions of the natural world, history, and character’s inner voices are related with sensitivity and vivacity.
Don’t just take our word for it! See what others are saying about Becky Manawatu’s latest novel, Kataraina, here.
When she reflects on the good in life, it is hard not to smile, and small rich joyful sentences peek out unexpectedly all through the book.