Writing in Elsewhere
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Books, authors, spoken word and poetry which may appeal to the curious spirit of Elsewhere.
PERLMANN'S SILENCE by PASCAL MERCIER
Those who are nervous about speaking in public usually have the perfect way out, they simply don't do it. And, for most, the required occasions are mercifully few so the paralysing fear never has to be addressed. But what of those for whom being in the public eye is what they do? What if they are struck with an anxiety attack or stage fright? The more they consider it, the worse the... more >>
Added: 25 Mar 2012
THE NEW 1000 PLACES TO SEE BEFORE YOU DIE by PATRICIA SCHULTZ
Any book of lists with a number in the title perhaps deserves some mathematical anaylsis. So first, the numbers. The 2003 original edition of this book sold three million copies and was number one on the New York Times best seller list. That's impressive -- and it spawned a number of spin-offs, not the least being Travel Channel series and, more recently, an app. But there are... more >>
Added: 9 Mar 2012
IN THE ABSENCE OF HEROES by ANTHONY McCARTEN
Recently, while sitting in airport lounge in Sydney waiting for a flight home, I glanced up from my hardcover book and surveyed the other travelers in my immediate vicinity. Everyone of them – perhaps 40 in total, of all ages from preschoolers to the elderly, from diverse backgrounds and cultures – was on some kind of electronic device. This our world, the one where... more >>
Added: 26 Feb 2012
THE WORLD OF TINTIN. The timeless boy
Age has not wearied him -- and nor can it. The little adventurer with a distinctive flick to his forelock, oddly unfashionable plus-fours and rarely a change of clothes, is frozen in time. As he globetrots from the old Orient to the Land of the Pharaohs - and even the Moon - he looks as he ever did. Yet in 2009 he turned 80. However he is with us still -- and suddenly back in the headlines... more >>
Added: 22 Jan 2012
AEROSMITH, THE ULTIMATE HISTORY OF THE BOSTON BAD BOYS by RICHARD BIENSTOCK
The real problem with the story of Aerosmith's five decade career is that -- despite the drugs, decadence, women, partying and internal friction -- it is rather boring. It follows such a familiar story arc: young and hungry band models itself on bad boys like the Rolling Stones, takes drugs, works in clubs, gets contract, makes albums and tours and then straightens up a bit and makes more... more >>
Added: 16 Dec 2011
NO REGRETS; A ROCK'N'ROLL MEMOIR by ACE FREHLEY
One of the more unusual and least played albums in my collection is Spaceways: A Salute to Ace Frehley from the mid Nineties on which people like Sebastian Bach, Gilby Clarke, Tracii Guns, Dimebag Darrell and others lined up to pay tribute to the original guitarist in Kiss. We say "original" because the Kiss story has seen him sidelined a few times, sometimes at his own volition.... more >>
Added: 7 Dec 2011
BULLFIGHTING by RODDY DOYLE
A recent profile of the astonishingly productive British military historian Max Hasting – a few thousand words a day, almost every day it seems – must have come as depressing reading for anyone struggling for years over their first novel, or even just a volume of poetry. If so, then there is more bad news in that Ireland's 53-year old Booker Prize-winning Roddy Doyle has yet... more >>
Added: 5 Dec 2011
CLAPTON, THE ULTIMATE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY by CHRIS WELCH
Open this handsome, cleanly presented, large format book at the midpoint of its 256 colourful pages and you learn much about its contents from just two words. The words are "Blind Faith", the name of the band Eric Clapton formed with drummer Ginger Baker, keyboard player Steve Winwood and bassist/violonist Ric Grech in 1969 and was launched by a debut concert in London's Hyde Park... more >>
Added: 28 Nov 2011 
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SPEAKING FRANKLY: THE FRANK SARGESON MEMORIAL LECTURES 2003-2010 edited by SARAH SHIEFF
Get past the crushingly obvious title and the cheap looking cover, and inside this collection are eight provocative, interesting, idiosyncratic and insightful essays which speak not just of New Zealand's Frank Sargeson but in some instances of how we see ourselves and our writers. You might also need to skip the introduction which begins with the uninviting, “ '23 March 1903,... more >>
Added: 27 Nov 2011
THE COOKBOOK TOUR, EUROPE by FLIP GRATER
Subtitled "Adventures in Food and Music", this substantial book is of reminiscences and vegetarian recipes gathered on a two month European tour by New Zealand singer-songwriter Flip Grater, and it follows her previous smilar volume of journeys playing and eating her way around New Zealand . . . playing and eating delicately we might hastily add. This also comes with a five-song... more >>
Added: 21 Nov 2011
THE BEST AUSTRALIAN SCIENCE WRITING, 2011 edited by STEPHEN PINCOCK
Science is a problem for mainstream media. It isn't sexy, usually can't be reduced to a snappy headline or soundbite, progress is glacially slow in a fast-turnaround world, there are too many big words, and its practitioners are often more at home in the lab than blinking into the light of the public domain. Science takes its time. Darwin didn't exactly bolt into print with his... more >>
Added: 8 Nov 2011
TREASURES OF THE BEE GEES by BRIAN SOUTHALL (Carlton Books)
If the Beatles were the greatest songwriters since Schubert as William Mann, the chief music critic of The Times, once asserted (in the very early Sixties, they got better) then what is to be said about the Bee Gees? Brian Wilson's comment that they were "Britain's first family of harmony" when inducting them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame hardly seems adequate. That was just... more >>
Added: 28 Sep 2011
ARNOLD ZABLE INTERVIEWED (2011): Speaking for those who cannot
When the Australian writer Arnold Zable read Primo Levi's reference to “the eloquent episode” in prose he recognised immediately what was meant. His own short pieces, fiction and non-fiction, frequently have a memorable incident as an emotional or structural pivot. In each story of his non-fiction collection Violin Lessons – which reaches from experiences in Vietnam... more >>
Added: 3 Sep 2011
AMY WINEHOUSE: THE BIOGRAPHY 1983-2011 by CHAS NEWKEY-BURDEN
As with many of my acquaintance, when I heard of Amy Winehouse's death it was with mixed emotions: a gloomy sense of the inevitability of it, sadness and then anger. That weird anger we reserve for those who have committed suicide or gone out in the manner of so many talented people, before their time and by their own actions. Winehouse was too talented to go from us so soon. Billie... more >>
Added: 22 Aug 2011
45 SOUTH IN CONCERT by NEIL McKELVIE (Southland Musicians Club)
There are a number of big and ambitious books about New Zealand popular music (like Chris Bourke's Blue Smoke and John Dix's Stranded in Paradise) and then there are others which are smaller and more focused in their subject matter, like Roger Watkins' When Rock Got Rolling: The Wellington Scene 1958-70. But this book about music in Southland up to 2005 is a bit of both: it is focused into... more >>
Added: 21 Aug 2011 1 Comment
DARK NIGHT: WALKING WITH McCAHON by MARTIN EDMOND
When Colin McCahon went to Sydney in 1984 to attend an exhibition of his work the attritions of alcoholism and that intensely personal religiosity he explored had taken their toll. He had given up any meaningful painting two years previous and was just three year short of death at age 67. In a bizarre but telling incident, he went into a toilet block in the Botanic Gardens and seemingly... more >>
Added: 17 Aug 2011
EVERY POSTER TELLS A STORY! 30 YEARS OF THE FRONTIER TOURING COMPANY edited by ELOISE GLANVILLE and SARAH MORGAN
Many people who have grown up in the rock era have band posters knocking about the house. Some of these are artistic (my framed one of Big Brother and the Holding Company with Moby Grape in San Francisco in '68) and some aren't that special but evoke a particular memory (mine of John Cale at the Gluepot in September '83). Posters can speak of an era -- compare brightly coloured late Sixties... more >>
Added: 15 Aug 2011
THE BEATLES Vs THE ROLLING STONES by JIM DeROGATIS and GREG KOT
At a first glance this lavishly illustrated and beautifully presented book -- with dozens of relevant, interesting and never before seen photos of the bands, and of period-piece memorabilia, movie posters and the like -- looks fairly lightweight. But fun. A quick read and you've got it: the two authors posit a rivalry between these two bands and in a series of themed conversations --... more >>
Added: 8 Aug 2011
1950s RADIO IN COLOUR; THE LOST PHOTOGRAPHS OF DEEJAY TOMMY EDWARDS by CHRISTOPHER KENNEDY
Cleveland, Ohio has a formidable reputation as a rock'n'roll city -- today it is the home of the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame and Museum -- but you'd have to guess there was more to it than just that old adage about "something in the water". Back in the Fifties there, as everywhere, the emerging musical culture was fed by radio, notably Alan Freed who kick-started rock'n'roll.... more >>
Added: 5 Aug 2011
TWO WALK IN EDINBURGH, photographs by Mari Mahr, poems by Gregory O'Brien. DEVONPORT: A DIARY by Bill Direen
As these two slim, hand-printed, limited edition volumes confirm, the necessaries of the poetic writer are observation and considered contemplation, and the words are vehicles which realise them. And for the photographer, close observation and an eye that edits intuitively come before the shutter opens and closes. Writer, poet and curator O'Brien has had a two decade-long association... more >>
Added: 22 Jul 2011
