Five-star reads of 2022

4 books in a pile on a table. They are O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker; Orwell's Roses by Rebecca Solnit; Common Ground: Garden Histories of Aotearoa by Matt Morris; and New Zealand Nurses: Caring for our People 1880-1950 by Pamela Wood.

I read a lot of books in 2022! Looking at my reading app, StoryGraph, I see that I gave the top rating of 5 stars to 21 books. Others came close, but 21 seems enough to write about. They are a mixture of fiction and non-fiction, mostly recent but sometimes not, and I highly recommend them all. Science fiction was my most-read genre, thanks to my project to read all the novels which have won the Hugo Award for best science fiction or fantasy novel. I’ve read 30 of the 71 books on that list so far and four of them made it onto this year’s favourite reads. Hopefully I might finish this interesting project in 2023 or 24!

Well, here’s the list of my 2022 favourites, with brief notes on each.

Science fiction and fantasy

James Bradley, Clade (2015). A gripping cli-fi (science fiction focussed on climate change) novel, set in a future Australia and England. Told from the perspective of various members of one family over a long period as they deal with the crises of a rapidly-changing world.

Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls (2003). This was the first book of Bujold’s that I read, but I have since read some of her science fiction as well. She is a great storyteller and her books are especially hard to put down. This is a top-notch fantasy, which gets extra points for putting flawed middle-aged people at its romantic centre!

Zen Cho, Sorcerer to the Crown (2015). This fantasy set in Regency England is a sparkling tribute/response to the witty romances of Georgette Heyer, but it is also much more than that. It features a multiracial cast of characters and the most powerful magician is a woman. It fits into a new genre Cho has described as ‘postcolonial fluff’!

Susannah Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004). This is another novel set in Regency England with magic added, this time including scenes from the Napoleonic Wars. It’s very long, but not hard to read once you get into the story. It is also funny and subversive, with the senior magicians – elite white men – fumbling around while people of other ethnicities, genders and classes can see what is actually going on.

Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun (2021). A new book from Ishiguro is always a treat for me. This one has a fable-like feel and is told from the perspective of Klara, an ‘artificial friend’ who is the companion of a sick child. Raises all sorts of questions about AI, what makes us human, and how we interpret our world.

N.K. Jemisin, The Stone Sky (2017). This is the third book of her Broken Earth trilogy, and I liked it the best as it resolves various plot lines and ends the dystopian story on a hopeful note. All three books won the Hugo – the first time that has happened for a series and a reflection of its brilliance. Jemisin’s writing style is strikingly original, as is the world she has built – it is very geologically unstable, so anyone with earthquake PTSD should probably avoid this series. It deals with themes of oppression and violence and prejudice and clashing cultures in a totally gripping plot.

Juliet Marillier, A Song of Flight (2021). A YA fantasy, third in the Warrior Bards series. I love Marillier’s books and have read them all. They have great stories and characters and there is something very sensitive in her writing. She writes wonderfully about animals and about disability. Bonus – she is from Dunedin (though she long-since decamped to Australia)!

Dan Simmons, Hyperion (1989). This is an extraordinary book and it blew me away really. As a former student of English literature, I loved all its literary allusions, which range from Keats to the Wizard of Oz, but I suspect you wouldn’t have to be well-read to enjoy this book. It’s set in a dystopian future, where a diverse set of pilgrims on a quest tell tales in Canterbury Tales fashion. All of the tales are surprising and gripping. Parts of this book were especially terrifying to someone like me who doesn’t read much horror fiction! I felt the lack of good female characters early in the book, but that improves later. The sequel is now high on my reading list.

General fiction

Elspeth Barker, O Caledonia (1991). This is, according to Ali Smith, “the best least-known novel of the twentieth century”. Now acclaimed as a classic of Scottish literature, it is a highly original and beautifully written tale, with a Gothic-style setting.

Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum (2005). A quiet masterpiece from the acclaimed Indigenous American writer. A book centred around an old painted drum, but essentially about family and relationships. Beautifully written in a lyrical style that you want to linger over.

Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (2013). I don’t want to give any spoilers for this one, as it includes a massive twist! I picked it up in the local Lilliput library and knew nothing about it – the surprise was huge and I recommend reading it without knowing the main plot lines. An exciting and compelling read.

Clare Moleta, Unsheltered (2021). A remarkable debut novel by a Wellington writer who grew up in Australia. Maybe this should be in the SFF section, but Moleta herself has said the setting “has been described as futuristic, but I wrote it four years ago and it didn’t even feel like the future then”. It’s really climate fiction, set in a dystopian Australia destroyed by climate disasters, with a mother searching for her missing daughter. Really gripping.

Sue Orr, Loop Tracks (2021). A very good novel which particularly resonated with me as the central character is exactly my age and the settings – mostly in Wellington – are familiar. It is a story about family and relationships, moving from an unplanned pregnancy in 1978 through to the pandemic lockdown of 2020. It deals with some intense issues, including abortion and euthanasia, and is very alert to contemporary politics

Pip Williams, The Dictionary of Lost Words (2020). This book is a real treat for anyone fascinated by words and their histories and meanings. It’s tale of a woman who grows up among the men working on the Oxford English Dictionary and starts her own secret project to collect the words of women.

Non-fiction

Amitav Ghosh, The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis (2021). Ghosh is a master of both fiction and non-fiction, and an important thinker. In this brilliant book he uses the history of the nutmeg trade as the centre of a convincing argument that the world order created by Western colonialism, with its exploitation of both people and the natural world, led us into our current planetary crises.

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (2013). People often recommend this book and it has been on my reading list for years. I finally got to it this year and now I know why it is so popular! A wonderful piece of nature writing, weaving together Kimmerer’s own story and Indigenous knowledge together with her institutional training in botany.

Annette Lees, After Dark: Walking into the Nights of Aotearoa (2021). This is a lovely example of nature writing, organised around walks Lees takes in different locations and at different stages of the night. I learned a lot and also enjoyed the reading journey.

J.B. MacKinnon, The Day the World Stops Shopping: How Ending Consumerism Saves the Environment and Ourselves (2021). Only the most stubborn people can remain unaware that runaway consumerism is destroying our planet and hugely detrimental to society. This is a fascinating thought experiment – what would happen if we all stopped shopping? A surprising and very readable book.

Matt Morris, Common Ground: Garden Histories of Aotearoa (2020). This fabulous book is very much a people’s history of gardening, starting with early Māori gardening and moving through New Zealand history from there. The focus is not on elite or commercial gardens, but home and community gardening. It also has a strong ecological bent.

Rebecca Solnit, Orwell’s Roses (2021). Solnit is a fabulous writer and an interesting thinker, and I have enjoyed everything of hers that I’ve read. This somewhat eccentric book, based around the life of writer George Orwell and the garden he planted, is up to her usual high standard.

Pamela Wood, New Zealand Nurses: Caring for our People 1880-1950 (2022). Wood is a very good nursing academic, and also a very good writer. This is a scholarly but readable history, packed with interesting people and stories.

Happy reading everyone!

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Vegetarian ready meals

WW mushroom and pumpkin risotto

I’m the sort of person who grows fruit and vegetables, kneads their own bread and cooks everything from scratch. In part that’s to reduce my environmental impact, but they’re also just things I enjoy doing! Recently I had to put these things aside. I had surgery on my arm and was able to do very little with that hand and arm for a while. I know it’s possible to cook with one hand – my uncle lost most of the use of his arm following a stroke, and he’s an excellent one-armed cook! However, he has a few special tools to help him along. It didn’t seem worth investing in those for my temporary disability, so I decided to resort to prepared meals. If I’d realised how limited I would be, I could have had a big cook up in advance, but I didn’t. Also, my place is not convenient for takeaways, and my nearby family were in Covid isolation. I decided to order ready meals from the supermarket. I tried lots of different ones, so it seemed a good idea to record my impressions, both to help anyone else who is interested, and for my own benefit in case I have to do similar in future!

First, a general comment: I feel uneasy about the energy emissions of food – especially frozen items – being shipped around the world, though the reality is that many frozen items in New Zealand supermarkets are imported, from frozen vegetables grown in China to frozen berries grown in Chile. People on a tight budget will choose these items because locally-grown options are usually much more expensive. Of course, that then raises the question of how poorly paid the growers and workers that produce some of the imported foods might be.

Plantry frozen meals

I tried three of these vegan frozen meals: Pad Thai; Spaghetti Bolognese; and Green Curry. Their regular price at my usual supermarket is $9 for each 350g meal, but one of them I got on special at $7. Made in Singapore. The flavours in the sauces were good, but my beef (pun intended) with these meals is that they are packed with fake meat. That may be fine for some people, but I’ve been a vegetarian for nearly twenty years and I have no interest in pretend meat and don’t like the texture. In particular, I would expect a vegan green curry to be packed with vegetables, but instead its main ingredient was pretend chicken. On the positive side, these meals are very filling – their calorie counts come in between 1590kJ and 2550kJ. The cardboard covering is recyclable, but the inner container didn’t look it to me and had no recycling number so I had to throw it in the rubbish. I wouldn’t buy these again because I didn’t like the meaty texture.

WW frozen meals

WW, as Weight Watchers foods is branded, has various frozen ready meals, but I could only find one that was vegetarian (not vegan), Mushroom and pumpkin risotto. This 320g meal cost me $5 on special (usually $5.99) and has 1170kJ. Made in Australia. The packaging is recyclable except for the plastic cling top. I expected this to have more of a mushroom flavour than it did. Nevertheless, this was very tasty and I would buy it again.

Naked Kitchen chilled meals

I tried a few of these: Peanut satay and kumara bowl; California wellness bowl with red lentils; Lentil, potato and caramelised onion soup; Malaysian laksa with rice noodles and coriander; and Tomato, aubergine and chickpea bowl. The ones called ‘bowls’ are essentially very thick soups, so I would class them all as soups. They come in 450 to 500g plastic pouches, each with two servings ranging in energy from 545 to 866kJ. One night I was quite hungry and ate two servings. Made in New Zealand. I paid various amounts, from $5 on special to $6.50 full price (cheap given there are two serves). They don’t claim to be vegan, but I couldn’t spot any non-vegan ingredients in the lists of those I bought. These are packed with nutritious ingredients and nicely spiced, except for the potato and onion soup which I found a bit bland. The others I really liked and would certainly buy again. I was puzzled about whether or not the packaging was recyclable. Some packets were marked as okay for soft plastic recycling, but some was marked as number 7, or the ‘other’ category, which as far as I know isn’t accepted for recycling here.

Rosie’s Kitchen chilled meals

I tried the Pumpkin and feta lasagne, the only vegetarian choice in my supermarket from this brand. It comes in a 350g packet of 1906kJ and I paid $6.50 on special (usual price $7). I couldn’t manage the whole serving and saved some for lunch the next day. Made in New Zealand (Paraparaumu). I liked the texture and flavour, though it was a little bland, so I wouldn’t rush to get it again. The cardboard and plastic packaging is recyclable, except for the cling film top.

Wattie’s Plant Proteinz

These come in a pouch and don’t need to be refrigerated. They have a long shelf life – the ones I tried had nearly a year to go before expiry. I bought them on special at $4.50 each, the regular price being $5. Each package is 330g and has one serving of 1070kJ (suspiciously identical for each variety). Made in New Zealand. I tried two varieties, Lentil and roasted kumara dahl and 7 veg soup with quinoa. These are packed with healthy veges and grains and the flavours and textures are pretty good. They don’t claim to be vegan, but I couldn’t spot any non-vegan ingredients. However, I would hesitate to get them again because first, the packaging is not recyclable, and second, they were too salty for my taste.

Countdown frozen pizza

I got the supermarket’s own brand Mozzarella, tomato and pesto stonebaked pizza and shared it with two visitors. It weighed in at 445g and was recommended for 4 people, with an energy count of 928kJ per person, though the three of us had no trouble finishing it. I paid $5.50 on special and the usual price is $6.50. This was a very good pizza and we all really liked it, but you expect a pizza made in Italy to be good! I couldn’t quite get over the idea that we were eating a meal that had been made on the opposite side of the planet and shipped to us frozen. It comes in a recyclable cardboard box, and I can’t quite remember, but think it also had a plastic wrapping which had to go in the rubbish.

Coupland’s pies

Coupland’s bakery sells various chilled and frozen single-serve pies and quiches. I tried the frozen Creamy vegetarian pie (200g, $3.90) and also the fresh Feta and caramelised onion quiche (140g, $2.90). The pie contains 1910kJ and I forgot to note the energy count for the quiche. Made in New Zealand. I enjoyed both of these, especially the pie – they are tasty and filling, if not the healthiest choice thanks to their fat content! The pie has lots of veges in a rich and creamy sauce, with a vegan pastry. Coupland’s also sells a frozen vegan pie, but I haven’t tried that – it looks as though it has a brown gravy filling. These items come in cellophane-type wrapping which has to go in the rubbish.

Wattie’s tinned beans

In my small emergency food stash I discovered two cans of Wattie’s Salsa chilli beans. I have no idea what I paid for these, but they cost about $3 a tin now. Each tin contains two servings, at 965kJ per serve. Made in New Zealand. These are a mixture of beans and corn in a delicious salsa sauce and I love them hot on toast. They have a lot going for them – they’re cheap, nutritious, filling and tasty! The tin is of course recyclable. I did have an issue with these, though, as I discovered how difficult it is to open a tin with one arm and managed to cut myself! Special tin openers to help with this issue are available, but I wasn’t going to bother with that for a temporary thing, and decided to avoid further tinned foods until I recovered.

Naked Kitchen peanut satay and kumara bowl

Well, there you have it. Other ready meals are available, but I have now recovered and can cook properly again. The prepared meals I relied on for about a month definitely made life easier, and most of them were pretty good. However, I have resolved to make sure I always have a few home-cooked meals in the freezer, just in case of unexpected temporary disability!

Reading the Hugo Award winners

I recently started a new project – my goal is to read all (or at least most of) the winners of the Hugo Award for best science fiction (SF) or fantasy novel! It will take quite some time, but I have no deadline.

It all started when I was learning about solarpunk. As Wikipedia conveniently explains, “solarpunk is a literary genre and art movement that envisions how the future might look if humanity succeeded in solving major contemporary challenges with an emphasis on sustainability, human impact on the environment, and addressing climate change and pollution”. It’s a relatively new term – you may be more familiar with steampunk, which imagines a present and future where steam has continued as the chief form of energy.

The concept of solarpunk strongly appeals to me and I’m keen to read books that fit this ethos. I’m a firm believer in speculative fiction as a powerful and useful tool for imagining various futures and inspiring us to take action now to choose the best alternatives. Sometimes, though, SF can be dystopian and depressing, and I’m not always in the mood for that! When I asked on the fediverse for recommendations of solarpunk writers, a contact suggested taking a look at the Hugo winners. They are by no means all solarpunk books, but the theory is that older SF may be less grim than more recent work.

The Hugo list

The Hugo Awards are given by the World Science Fiction Convention each year for the best work in SF and fantasy. There are various categories, but I’m sticking with my favourite format, the novel. When I first looked at the list of winners, I realised I’d already read some of the books and really liked them, so being a winner seemed a good recommendation for new authors I might like! That’s when the ambitious concept of reading all the winning books began. The awards began in 1953, but there have also been some ‘retro’ Hugos, awarded for books published in earlier years, or in some gaps in the 1950s, when the award was not yet annual. To date there are 70 Hugo winners, plus 8 retro-Hugo winners. That’s a lot of reading! Furthermore, some of the winners come partway through a series, and I’m one of those people who prefers to read a series from the beginning, so there will be additional books.

I’ve already read 9 of the 70 books, and in some cases I haven’t read the winner, but other books by the same author. I thought I’d write about those books and authors now, and later I’ll let you know what I thought of new things I read! I don’t expect to like all the books. I’m not a great fan of big space battles, or anything with lots of violence, and I suspect some of the early winners may be in that line. Also, some of the earlier writers had questionable behaviour, or philosophical beliefs that definitely don’t align with mine!

Please be warned that the links below to individual books are to Wikipedia and contain SPOILERS (I refuse to link to the evil company which is the world’s dominant bookseller).

Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin is a two-time winner of the award, for The Left Hand of Darkness in 1970, and for The Dispossessed in 1975. She is perhaps the most revered writer on the list, being both popular and acclaimed by literary critics. Her works appear on university syllabuses to an extent not often seen with SF writers. It is also notable that she wrote in both SF and fantasy genres and was successful in both. I first encountered Le Guin’s writing as a child, with A Wizard of Earthsea. When Le Guin died in 2018, I was prompted to re-read the whole Earthsea fantasy series, and thoroughly enjoyed that. I was struck then by the diversity of her central characters with respect to gender, ethnicity and abilities, and that is an important feature of her SF writing as well. I’ve enjoyed and been very impressed by both of Le Guin’s Hugo-winning novels. The Dispossessed features two contrasting societies – one is anarchist and possessions are insignificant, the other capitalist. Wikipedia describes it as an “anarchist utopian science fiction novel”. SF and fantasy writers invent entire imagined societies, species, planets or futures. Philosophies and political systems are inevitably part of that – indeed, that is why I find these genres so intriguing! Some writers are more explicitly political than others, and Le Guin is one of those, with The Dispossessed the outstanding example. The Left Hand of Darkness is, like The Dispossessed, set in Le Guin’s Hainish universe, where contact is made between humans living on various planets. It famously centres on gender – one of the societies has become androgynous, and humans from elsewhere struggle to deal with these ungendered people.

Connie Willis

Connie Willis has won the Hugo three times: in 1993 for Doomsday Book, in 1999 for To Say Nothing of the Dog, and in 2011 for the two-volume work Blackout/All Clear. I first heard of Willis from a friend’s brother-in-law, an American astrophysicist and SF reader, who thought an historian would particularly enjoy her books – he was right! I mean, what historian wouldn’t want to travel back in time to do field work? That is the premise of the world Willis has created in all of these loosely-linked Hugo winners. In the mid-21st century, Oxford University has access to time travel and uses it to send historians to various eras for research. As with all good time travel fiction, there are various paradoxes and complications – in Willis’s imagined world time travelers are unable to change significant events (there’s no going back to kill Hitler). I’ve read and loved all of these books, along with some others by Willis. They have great plots and characters, but one of their most impressive features is the historical worlds they recreate. Doomsday Book is set during a medieval plague, while Blackout/All Clear are set in an embattled World War II England. To Say Nothing of the Dog is a comic novel where a time-travelling historian unexpectedly ends up in Victorian England – it’s a fond tribute to Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome. I highly recommend all of these books, especially to historians – we seldom find our kind as central characters in fiction!

Kim Stanley Robinson

Kim Stanley Robinson won in 1994 for Green Mars and in 1997 for Blue Mars – together with Red Mars they make up his Mars trilogy. KSR – as I often see his name abbreviated – is a writer who, as far as I am aware, fits pretty well into the solarpunk category. He is deeply concerned about climate change, ecology and social justice, but the futures he writes explore solutions to our problems and are more utopian than some other SF. Like Le Guin, KSR is known for being on the left of politics. He is quite a new writer to me, and it was only this year that I read him for the first time with the Science in the Capital series (conveniently rewritten in an omnibus condensed version, Green Earth), which I liked very much. I look forward to getting into the Mars trilogy.

J.K. Rowling

J.K. Rowling won in 2001 for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the fourth book in her Harry Potter series. What can I say? Like millions around the world I read and enjoyed this series, but since Rowling, a woman with huge cultural power, began speaking against the rights of trans people, I can no longer support her.

Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman is a two-time winner, for American Gods in 2002 and The Graveyard Book in 2009. Gaiman is a great fantasy storyteller and I’ve read and enjoyed several of his books, though not yet The Graveyard Book, which is now on my reading list. I loved the premise behind American Gods – old gods follow migrants from their old world to their new, and struggle to survive in that new environment, which is also influenced by new gods (for example Media, the goddess of pop culture). As well as being a ripping adventure yarn, it is a thought-provoking book about religion and migration.

Susanna Clarke

Susanna Clarke won in 2005 for her historical fantasy Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. I started reading this years ago, but abandoned it for reasons I can’t recall. Since then I’ve read her 2020 novel Piranesi, which I loved. It’s hard to describe – a beautiful, strange, slow, absorbing book unlike anything else I’ve read. A friend pointed out that not only do Susanna Clarke and I share a surname, but we also look alike! So there are various reasons for me to give Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell another go.

N.K. Jemisin

N.K. Jemisin was the first (and to date, only) writer to win for each of the three volumes of a trilogy independently – a very high accolade. The Fifth Season won in 2016, The Obelisk Gate in 2017, and The Stone Sky in 2018. Together they make up the Broken Earth series. (Coincidentally, a new Hugo Award category for best series was commenced in 2017). I’ve recently read the first two books, and I’m about to launch into The Stone Sky. Jemisin is a brilliant world-builder with a distinctive writing style and strong characters – it’s an absorbing and thought-provoking series. People’s intervention in the environment is a major theme, but so is the interaction between species (some with superhuman powers) and ethnicities, and the building of communities. Notably, Jemisin is the first black writer to win the award, although another African American woman writer I love, Octavia Butler, has won the other major SF/fantasy novel award, the Nebula, and has won in other categories of the Hugo Award.

A warning – the Broken Earth series is set in a very geologically-active world and that’s an important part of the plot. There are frequent earth tremors, along with major quakes and volcanic eruptions. As a resident of the ‘Shaky Isles’ I found this disturbing at times, and I suspect the series would be best avoided by anybody who has been traumatised by quakes or eruptions.

The rest of the list

The rest of the list now beckons! I don’t plan to read them in any particular order, but just as the mood takes me. Happily almost all of the books from the 1970s onwards are available in my local library, which clearly has an enlightened policy when it comes to SF and fantasy, so this won’t be an expensive project. I’ve already picked up a few of the others in cheap second-hand versions, as you’ll see from the photo. Do let me know if you have any particular favourites among the Hugo winners!

Winter reading ideas

I often post book recommendations in January, but I have read so much already this year that I decided to write about my favourites now. Taste in books is a very personal thing, but maybe you’ll find something here that you enjoy.

I read a jumble of things I happen upon at the Lilliput library or op shops, new books in the tiny but impressive village library, books passed on by family members, books that are recommended on my favourite podcast, Backlisted, and things people recommend on Twitter. Thanks to everyone who has shared their favourites with me!

This year I also started using a reading app, StoryGraph. I have resisted using GoodReads because I try and avoid anything owned by Amazon, but when I heard about this new app I was sold (that’s a figure of speech, since it’s free)! It’s great for recording what you have read and what you want to read, setting yourself goals and looking at reading stats if you’re that sort of nerdy person (I am), and seeing what other people have thought of some book you’re considering reading. It also gives recommendations based on the preferences you enter and what you have already read. I have found it excellent – its especially good when you’re in the library or bookshop and can consult your ‘to-read pile’ on your phone.

I’ve only included books I really liked here – there’s no room for the ho-hum ones. On with the books, but just beware that some of the links to Wikipedia pages are likely to include spoilers!

Current issues

There are so many urgent problems in the world – poverty and inequality, Covid, climate change, the biodiversity crisis – that I have to start here. Can books save us? Possibly not, but they can describe the issues, suggest solutions and motivate us to act. Happily there are many people with useful ideas out there, and writers who can communicate them clearly.

I thoroughly recommend Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World by economic anthropologist Jason Hickel. The first part of this book is pretty grim, as it outlines the problems we face, but it does have solutions. It is, at heart, a critique of our current capitalist system and demonstrates that its obsession with everlasting economic growth is responsible for our ills. At the heart of the evils of capitalism is colonialism, which is a major focus of the book. Hickel does show, though, that humans can flourish in a post-capitalist (and post-colonial) world – bring it on!

Another thought-provoking recent book is The Good Ancestor: How to Think Long Term in a Short-Term World by philosopher Roman Krznaric. With admirable clarity, Krznaric describes the issues with short-term thinking which beset our age and have led to our current crises. He has gathered wisdom from cultures around the globe and throughout history to prompt us to become long-term thinkers and reshape humanity’s future. He demonstrates that Indigenous cultures lead the way, with their priorities built around multiple generations, past and future. Māori tikanga receives special mention, and he cites Nanaia Mahuta. This is another very worthwhile read.

The BWB Texts series, from New Zealand publisher Bridget Williams Books, is always good on current issues. I thoroughly recommend its Living With the Climate Crisis: Voices from Aotearoa. Edited by Tom Doig, it brings together short essays by a diverse range of authors, from teenage activists and scientists to local body politicians and journalists. Māori and Pasifika perspectives come through strongly.

History

History and current issues are intimately related, as some of my favourite recent history reads show. BWB Texts are again to the fore. The Platform: The Radical Legacy of the Polynesian Panthers by Melani Anae is a lively history of this activist organisation by one of its founding members. It is a very personal account, but also grounded in Anae’s work as a scholar in Pacific Studies. With the New Zealand Government offering an apology for the Dawn Raids – one of the events which spurred the foundation of the Panthers in the 1970s – this is a timely read and I thoroughly recommend it.

Also from BWB Texts comes Alice Te Punga Somerville’s Two Hundred and Fifty Ways to Start an Essay about Captain Cook. Written as Aotearoa marked 250 years since Cook arrived in this place, it offers a brilliant Māori perspective on that explorer and the multitude of memorials (in this country and elsewhere) to him. It is at once tragic and amusing; it is brief, brilliantly written, and hard to put down. This history is topical – only this week protesters pulled down a statue of Cook in Victoria, British Columbia, threw it into the harbour, and replaced it with red dresses, symbols of missing and murdered Indigenous women.

Another excellent history from Bridget Williams Books – a bigger book this time – is Te Hāhi Mihinare: The Māori Anglican Church by Hirini Kaa. Kaa is a priest and historian steeped in the culture of Ngāti Porou, so unsurprisingly this is a deeply informed book. It is very readable and even humorous at times; you don’t need to be Anglican or even religious in any way to enjoy this book. Perhaps its major theme is the agency of Māori in the development of the church, often in the face of opposition from English and colonial Anglican authorities. This is a deserving prize-winner.

The final history book I wish to recommend comes from the other side of the world. In The Frayed Atlantic Edge: A Historian’s Journey from Shetland to the Channel, David Gange takes an unusual approach to researching history. He kayaked around the Atlantic coast of Britain, Ireland and associated islands, stopping off to visit local libraries and archives and collect oral history. Taking a seaward view of these places, and the connections between them, makes a lot of sense: motorised travel by land and air are relatively recent developments in their history. This book was especially interesting to me because I have ancestors from Shetland, the western highlands of Scotland and the west coast of Ireland, but I think it would have a broader appeal. Historians will enjoy Gange’s novel approach to research. He also writes beautifully about the natural world.

Memoirs and personal essays

I like a good memoir. The personal essay collection seems to be having a moment at present. These can seem self-indulgent, but done well they are great. I can highly recommend Times Like These by Michelle Langstone and All Who Live on Islands by Rose Lu. Both write evocatively of their families and childhoods – Langstone grew up in Auckland, and Lu migrated here from China as a young child. The stories are frank and deeply personal and extend into their adult lives. Langstone’s writing is powered by her grief at the death of her father, and her struggles with fertility. Lu portrays vividly the varied lives of 3 generations of a migrant family, and the Wellington tech world in which she works.

Of course, personal essay collections have been around for a while. Inspired by the Backlisted podcast, I read in translation the 1970s collection The Summer Book by Finnish writer and artist Tove Jansson. It’s not precisely biographical, but closely based on her mother and niece. It portrays with masterly simplicity the lives of a child and grandmother on an island during summer. I loved it and was inspired then to read A Winter Book, a collection of various Jansson short pieces collected together in translation after her death. It is wonderful too.

One strand of memoir focuses primarily on the natural world. I’m fond of nature writing, and I loved Findings by Scottish poet Kathleen Jamie. This beautifully written collection of essays explores her personal experiences of different aspects of the natural world in various parts of Scotland. The very first book I read this year was another cracking book of nature writing: Under the Stars: A Journey Into Light by Matt Gaw. We live in a world invaded by artificial light: Gaw investigates its effects and seeks out experiences of natural darkness and light around England and Scotland.

Fantasy and science fiction

Before you skip this section because you don’t like these sorts of books, let me encourage you to give these genres a go! Some people dismiss them as escapist (not that there’s anything wrong with escapist reading), but the alternative worlds and societies invented by sci fi and fantasy writers provide powerful commentary on our own communities and world – they can be great triggers for analysis and critique of the way we live, and imagining how we might face the future. Indeed, in The Good Ancestor, discussed above, Krznaric suggests that sci fi is a great tool for turning us into long-term thinkers. And an interesting recent article in the Guardian on current ‘cli fi’, or climate fiction, attracted lots of comments pointing out that sci fi authors have been writing about this stuff for decades.

I read prize-winning sci-fi author Octavia Butler for the first time this year, and was immediately hooked. Her Earthseed series (Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents), published in the 1990s, is set in the near future (2020s and thereafter) in a post-apocalyptic USA; the main character is a young woman who founds a new religion. In the 1980s Xenogenesis or Lilith’s Brood series (Dawn, Adulthood Rites and Imago) humans have all but destroyed themselves through nuclear war, but the remnant is rescued by an alien species, which later resettles Earth with them. All of these books are exciting and peopled with great characters; they are sometimes brutally violent though. They explore many themes but with Butler’s African American identity it is not surprising that gender, race and slavery are the most significant.

A very different sort of historical sci-fi book is The Inheritors, by William Golding, best-know for Lord of the Flies. I came to this intriguing 1955 book through Backlisted. It reimagines the lives of a small band of Neanderthals, and their contacts with Homo sapiens. Although we know a lot more about early humans and related species now than we did in the 1950s, this remains a powerful read – highly recommended.

The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox was my favourite read of 2019; I read it again this year so I could more fully appreciate a session by Knox at the Dunedin Writers and Readers Festival. It was even better on a second reading! It’s a fantasy novel with a page-turning plot, but also rich in deeper themes. It was a privilege to meet the author and have her sign my copy. She was interviewed at the festival by another Wellington fantasy writer, H.G. Parry. That inspired me to read Parry’s The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep. It’s an amusing whirlwind adventure, with a great Wellington setting, featuring a mixture of literary characters who have come to life. It’s a special treat for booklovers and literary scholars – if you like Victorian literature you will particularly enjoy this book, though it’s not essential to know the featured characters already (alongside such famous Victorians as Dickens and Sherlock Holmes, there are a brilliant 1930s girl detective, multiple Mr Darcys, and Maui). The family at the centre of the story is also very well developed. Another more light-hearted and page-turning fantasy adventure with a bookish setting is The Left-Handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix. I liked it very much despite not being in the target young adult market!

General fiction

I’ve been struck by how many brilliant New Zealand fiction writers there are just now. Kudos to them, and to the publishers pumping out all these fabulous books in a small market – though some are also getting the international releases they deserve. There are two novels by New Zealanders that have particularly gripped me so far this year. Nothing to See by Pip Adam is a beautifully written and unexpectedly strange book about addiction, technology and various other things – although the book touches on big issues, she is especially good at capturing the minutiae of everyday life. Remote Sympathy by Catherine Chidgey really is brilliant. Set in – and adjacent to – a Nazi concentration camp, it captures in a gripping, sensitive and chilling way the horrors of that place and the infection of evil. The way she handles a complex plot told from multiple points of view is masterly.

Speaking of masterly writers, recently I read Ali Smith for the first time. Wow! She is both highly literary and a teller of page-turning tales. I loved How To Be Both, and immediately started her Seasonal Quartet series – I’ve just finished the first of them, Autumn. I love her use of language – it’s literally poetic at times – and her characters are wonderful. The books move seamlessly between present and past. So good.

HAPPY READING!

Gluten-free bread recipe

I love making bread and have been baking it weekly for years now. However, I’ve been trying a low-FODMAP diet recently and really struggled to find a good gluten-free (GF) bread recipe. Eventually I found a half-decent one in a library book ( Bette Hagman, The Gluten-Free Gourmet Bakes Bread, published 1999) and did some playing around with the ingredients and method in that. I’ve made quite a few successful loaves now, so I’m sharing the recipe to help anyone else who wants to make their own GF and FODMAP-friendly bread. I reckon it’s as good as the GF bread sold at the supermarket, if not better! Of course, it’s not as good as regular bread, but it’s pretty tasty when it’s warm, and delicious toasted for several days after baking.

I can get all the ingredients except one at the local supermarket. The exception is xanthan gum, which is often used in GF baking to help bind the ingredients. You can find it at health food stores, but mine was out of stock so I bought it online. It comes as a powder – try not to spill it, as it can make a gluey mess if it gets wet!

This recipe makes one medium-sized loaf. It takes less time than regular bread to be ready as it has one rise rather than two.

INGREDIENTS

1 ¼ cups warm water

2 ¼ tsp active yeast

1 whole egg plus 1 large egg white

70ml oil

¾ tsp vinegar

1 tbsp maple syrup

1 cup rice flour

1 cup tapioca flour (sometimes called arrowroot)

1 cup cornflour or cornmeal

1/3 cup almond meal

2 ¼ tsp xanthan gum

1 ½ tsp salt

1 tbsp sesame seeds (optional)

2 tbsp poppy seeds (optional)

2 tbsp pumpkin seeds (optional)

METHOD

  1. Put the warm water in a small bowl and sprinkle the yeast on top. Set aside to start activating while you complete the next step.
  2. Put the egg, egg white, oil, vinegar and maple syrup in a large bowl and beat together well. I use a handheld electric beater, but if you have a flash cake mixer you could use that.
  3. Add the water/yeast mixture to the egg mixture and mix a little more.
  4. Add all of the remaining ingredients, including seeds if you are using them, to your wet mixture. It will create a dough that is too wet to knead by hand – it looks like a thick cake batter. Beat together for 3 minutes using an electric beater or cake mixer.
  5. Pour the mixture into a lined loaf tin – I use a scraper to spread it evenly. Cover it with a clean tea towel.
  6. Put the tin in a warm place to rise for 60 minutes. I set my timer for 45 minutes to remind me to turn the oven on to heat!
  7. Bake at 200ºC fanbake for 10 minutes, place some foil loosely over the top of the tin, and bake another 40-45 minutes.
  8. The loaf can be removed from the tin as soon as it comes out of the oven. Put it on a rack to cool for at least 20 minutes before cutting. Once I’ve cut into it, I wrap the remainder of the loaf firmly in a clean tea towel to stop it drying out. Once it’s completely cool you can store it, still wrapped in the towel, in an airtight container.
  9. If you’re wondering what to do with the leftover egg yolk, my favourite thing is to add it to another whole egg plus a little milk and make scrambled eggs for lunch!
A loaf after rising, ready to go into the oven.
The finished product – this loaf doesn’t have the optional seeds.
A finished loaf with seeds included.

The 2020 reading corner

We’ve made it through 2020! I did well in the birthplace lottery and I’m very fortunate to live in Aotearoa New Zealand, which has been less severely hit by the pandemic than most other places. My heart goes out to those who have lost loved ones or had major health issues, been on the frontline of healthcare, lost jobs or otherwise struggled in 2020.

It has been a strange year for reading. We had an early and very strict lockdown. For some people that meant more reading, but I was one of another group – pretty big, I think – who found it difficult to read in 2020. In the first half of the year I had very little spare time, as I worked (from home during lockdown) and cared for an ill family member. Because this was all a bit overwhelming, and because of some ongoing chronic health concerns, I took early retirement in June. That gave me more free time, but I still struggled to read. Undoubtedly doomscrolling (voted word of the year in New Zealand by Public Address) had much to do with that: between the pandemic, climate change, US elections and New Zealand elections, there was a lot of news to follow. It was very easy to get distracted by Twitter or news websites or online scrabble (an addiction started during lockdown!). I lost the ability to concentrate.

I wanted to be able to read again, so I created a new reading corner. After a big clearout of my home office I was able to get rid of one filing cabinet, which made space for a comfortable old armchair I picked up in a junk store. I declared this a device-free zone, so I could sit and read there without distraction – it worked!

These, then, were my favourite reads in 2020 – some fresh off the shelves, and some from the underground stacks of the library. Taste is a very personal thing, of course, but maybe you will enjoy some of these too.

Memoirs

My favourite book of 2020 in all categories – indeed, my favourite book of many years – was Diary of a Young Naturalist by Northern Irish writer Dara McAnulty. The ‘young’ of the title is no exaggeration, for this book is the diary he kept when he was 14 years old. Dara is many things: he is a schoolboy, environmental activist, autistic, and a great lover of nature (especially raptors), but he is above all a brilliant writer. He writes of his personal struggles, of his wonderful loving family (all nature lovers, and his mother and siblings are also autistic) and most beautifully his observations of the natural world. Like all really good writing, it is a book to read slowly and savour.

Another book I read slowly, since I kept wanting to reread bits, was The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane. It’s a 2007 memoir by one of the great masters of nature writing, set in a variety of wild landscapes around Britain and Ireland. If you, like me, love nature writing, I can also recommend a couple of great podcasts by English nature writers: The Stubborn Light of Things by Melissa Harrison, and Birth of a Naturalist by Jonathan Tulloch. Both happen to be very good novelists as well: last year I devoured all of Harrison’s novels, and this year I enjoyed Give Us This Day by Jonathan Tulloch.

A different sort of memoir about walking in Britain is The Salt Path by Raynor Winn. She and her husband lost their farm and business and became homeless at the same time as he received a terminal diagnosis. This is a beautifully written and very moving description of the big journey they took, walking the English South West Coast Path and free camping.

Crossing the Atlantic, I enjoyed a couple of very good memoirs by African American women. Like millions around the world, I read Becoming, Michelle Obama’s well-written and interesting account of her life, from childhood to her years in the White House. I also appreciated A Burst of Light and Other Essays by poet Audre Lorde, first published in 1988. She writes about her struggles and activism as a Black lesbian woman, with connections all over the world. The book includes diaries she kept as she lived with breast cancer.

Closer to home, I read the memoirs of two remarkable people who now live in New Zealand. Green MP Golriz Ghahraman is still in her thirties, but she has had an eventful life. She and her parents fled Iran when she was aged nine and they claimed asylum in New Zealand. In Know Your Place she writes of her early childhood in Iran, settling to a new life here, her career as a human rights lawyer and politician, and her recent experience of adjusting to disability due to multiple sclerosis. This is a well-written book by a significant and boundary-breaking woman.

Like Ghahraman, journalist Behrouz Boochani is in his thirties, Kurdish and a refugee from Iran, but he fled his homeland later, in 2013, and had the great misfortune to encounter the barbarity of the Australian refugee detention system. No Friend but the Mountains is a very moving and disturbing book, in which he writes of his perilous journey from Indonesia by boat and imprisonment on Manus Island. Boochani is a deep thinker and philosopher and his writing is poetic; the book is in a mixture of poetry and prose. The tale of the book itself is extraordinary. He wrote it in prison, through messages sent to friends on his phone. Friend Omid Togifhian translated it from Persian to English (and wrote a longish introduction). No Friend but the Mountains won several major literary prizes in Australia, no doubt greatly annoying the government it criticised so heavily. It became his key to a new life, as he obtained a visa to attend a literary festival in New Zealand, where he was subsequently granted refugee status. He remains a strong advocate for his fellow detainees.

Novels

First, a word of warning – some of the links are to Wikipedia entries and may include plot spoilers!

I’ve read some cracking fiction this year. Four very different books topped my list. I loved Bernadine Evaristo’s 2019 Booker Prize winner, Girl, Woman, Other, an originally-styled tale of the lives of many black women, all linked in some way. Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell is a wonderful imagining of the lives of Shakespeare’s wife and children; it’s a moving tale of love and of grief for a child. The Bees by Laline Paull has an unusual narrator – a bee. It can be interpreted as a fable about society and hierarchies, but is also just a compelling story about bees and their hives. A recent standout read was Ursula Le Guin’s 1974 sci-fi classic, The Dispossessed. It features two contrasting societies – one is anarchist and possessions are insignificant; the other capitalist. I was especially struck by some comments about the decline of Earth, which are thrown in at one point rather than featured throughout – they seem highly prophetic.

I don’t know that Juliet Marillier can be counted as a local writer, since she has lived in Australia for many years. Still, she grew up in Dunedin and she’s an Otago graduate! She is one of my favourites, writing wonderful sensitive historical fantasy. I loved The Harp of Kings, the first in her latest series, Warrior Bards. Another Dunedin writer I really like is Laurence Fearnley: I especially enjoy her descriptions of the natural world. Scented, which I read in 2020, isn’t my favourite of hers but I still liked it. It is unusual in being a novel that is very much about smell. Speaking of the natural world, another great read this year was Richard Power’s Pulitzer Prize-winner, The Overstory. It’s a story about trees and a group of people, all deeply developed, involved in protecting them.

I happened upon Canadian Ann-Marie MacDonald’s books this year, and read Fall on Your Knees, an extraordinary historical family saga set on Cape Breton Island. She is a wonderful writer, but a word of warning: this book includes child abuse (including sex abuse). After reading this and a couple of other very grim books, which shall remain nameless, I decided I needed to read more cheerful things in this stressful year! Crime fiction is one category I’ve gone off. I’ve never been a fan of violent movies, though I used to watch some of the innumerable TV crime series. But now I find it hard to stomach as a mode of entertainment, especially when it involves violence against women. Also, I served on a jury in a horrible case in 2020, and that experience made me pretty cynical about our justice system.

I asked on Twitter for good ‘uplit’ recommendations, and people kindly gave lots of suggestions. The ones I’ve read so far are very good. The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa (translated from Japanese) is a lovely tale of a woman and her son, caring for an aging mathematician whose memory lasts just 80 minutes due to a head injury. My friend Jason recommended Salley Vickers and I found The Librarian unputdownable. It’s the tale of a young children’s librarian and her influence in an English village in the 1950s, with wonderful characters. I love a good book about books, and I also like well-written child characters in adult novels – they are a big feature in this one. I also read The Boy Who Could See Death, a collection of Vickers’ short stories. They are interesting tales of people, some with a supernatural edge, but mostly about very human things.

Book podcasts are a good source of recommendations. There are a couple I’ve followed for ages, but it was in 2020 that I first encountered the brilliant Backlisted, which includes wonderful rambling and witty conversations about older books. I recommend especially the 2020 Christmas Day programme, about The Dark is Rising, a Susan Cooper book I read and loved in 2019, as part of my binge of 1960s and 70s children’s novels. The Backlisted podcast features novels of all genres, literary and popular, and it was thanks to it that I read the hugely enjoyable Miss Buncle’s Book by D.E. Stevenson, published in the 1930s. I vaguely recall reading some of her books way back when, but had forgotten how good they are. This is a charming and hilarious tale about a naïve woman who writes a book based on the residents of her English village. Published under a pseudonym, it becomes a bestseller and chaos ensues as the villagers try to identify the dastardly writer.

History

I only read one New Zealand history book in 2020, but it was a significant one: Not in Narrow Seas: The Economic History of Aotearoa New Zealand by Brian Easton. It’s a long book – the distillation of a lifetime’s work as an economist – but happily very readable and low in jargon. Economic history has been rather neglected in this country, so it’s good to have this comprehensive study. More expert friends tell me that Easton’s inclusion of environmental aspects in this book is novel, but I guess I’m more radical, since it doesn’t go quite far enough for me! I was disappointed that, despite a disclaimer, it focuses on economic growth, with no consideration of newer theories like doughnut economics. I may be too harsh a critic on economics, though.

My favourite history read of the year was Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit. Everything Solnit writes is good, and this 2000 book is, as ever, full of quotable bits. It covers a huge range of time and geography and philosophy about walking. I also liked Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, which seemed appropriate reading for a plague year; Simon Garfield’s Mauve: How One Man Invented a Colour That Changed the World, a nice piece of science and cultural history; and Rutger Bregman’s Humankind: A Hopeful History, a great read about some of the more positive sides of humanity.

Society

Rounding off the list are some miscellaneous works of non-fiction that I liked. I’m certainly not the first to say that Imagining Decolonisation is a must-read for New Zealanders. It’s a multi-authored book, very readable, about the issues and practicalities of decolonisation. The Black Lives Matter movement moved me to read Biased by Jennifer Eberhardt. She is an American social scientist with expertise in racial bias, especially as it relates to the police, but this book is of broader relevance too – highly recommended. Finally, I was inspired by two books I read by Rob Hopkins, The Transition Handbook and The Power of Just Doing Stuff: How Local Action Can Change the World. Hopkins is the founder of the Transition Towns movement, encouraging grassroot groups who work to make communities more self-sufficient to increase resilience in the face of climate change and economic instability. If you are interested in local action these are a good read.

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Well, those are my best reads of 2020. A big thank you to all the writers, publishers and podcasters who provided me with sustenance in a difficult year!

Going car-free

Action on climate change has been in the news recently: the New Zealand government has declared a climate emergency, and there has been much discussion of what needs to be done to reduce our carbon and other emissions. It seems a good time to reflect on my experience of being happily car-free for two years!

Why do it?

Like many other people, I am deeply concerned about climate change and its increasingly evident impact on planet Earth and its inhabitants, both human and non-human. I am committed to doing what I can to reduce my emissions and environmental impact. Some argue that what one person does has little effect, but I have other ideas! We need both high-level AND individual action. If everyone does nothing, then nothing will change. One person influences others around them by modelling a different way of living: I have been influenced by people I know, both in real life or through reading and online. And I know other people have been influenced by my actions. There are mental health considerations, too: climate anxiety is a feature of our times, and I find I am much more content living in a simpler lower impact way.

Transport is a big player in greenhouse gas emissions, and it is one of the most effective things we can act on. New Zealand has a very bad record when it comes to transport emissions. We have more motor vehicles per capita than just about every other country, including the notoriously car-dependent USA: check out the table on Wikipedia. The Ministry of Transport has just released our fleet statistics for 2019, and the report makes for a depressing read.

Over the past 20 years, we might have hoped that some effort would be made to reduce our transport emissions. However, the number of vehicles in this country has increased (per capita as well as in real numbers) and the size of vehicles has increased. From the report: “In 2010 light vehicles with engines between 2000-2999cc became, and continue to be, the most common light vehicle. Prior to 2010 light vehicles with engines between 1600-1999cc were the most common.” This is obvious to any observer. In my part of the country, every second vehicle seems to be an SUV and double-cab utes are increasingly common too. There are very few electric vehicles and 98% of the light vehicle fleet runs fully on petrol or diesel. The only glimmers of hope in the report are that vehicles entering the fleet have lower reported CO2 emissions per kilometre (New Zealand vehicles are, on average, older than in comparable countries), and that annual kilometres travelled per capita have decreased a little for the first time in many years. The distance travelled by heavy vehicles (trucks and buses with a gross mass over 3.5 tonnes) is on the rise, but still light vehicles were responsible for 92% of the total distance travelled by the New Zealand fleet in 2019.

Shame on us. Keeping this huge fossil-fuelled fleet going contributes significantly to climate change, but it has other issues also. Vehicle crashes kill and injure people, and there is increasing evidence of the serious harms caused by vehicle pollution on human health. While switching to electric cars reduces some of that pollution, a fair bit of it comes from tires, brakes and road surface wear, so they are not the perfect solution. The increasing time spent in cars has another health impact: New Zealanders have become less physically active and that is very bad for us. It is presumably no coincidence that we rank very highly internationally for car ownership, and very low for physical exercise.

Another issue is the cost of buying and running a car, and providing infrastructure for all those vehicles. There are obvious individual costs: one American source suggests the lifetime opportunity cost of owning cars is $2 million for one person! Then there are the direct costs to society of providing roads for that ever-growing fleet of vehicles, and places for them to park. Thankfully the political party whose solution to everything is “more roads” is currently in opposition, but we are still spending a lot on roads. Not enough, some will say, as congestion keeps increasing. The obvious solution is fewer cars, not more roads.

Life without a car

Like many New Zealanders of my generation I got my driver’s licence when I was 15 years old, and from my twenties onwards owned a succession of cars. A few years ago, as my concerns about climate change grew, I decided my next car should be an electric one, but then I started to wonder if I needed a car at all. I had been using it less and less, and I tried doing without it as much as possible before taking the final plunge. It remains an eccentric thing to do, but I had friends who inspired me.

In December 2018 I sold my car and I have never regretted it. I felt that a burden had lifted from me when its new owner drove it away! I could not have taken this step without access to suitable infrastructure for active and public transport. Unless you live in the middle of town and can walk everywhere, you need some other way of getting about (incidentally, that is why increasing density of housing in well-serviced urban areas is the ideal for the environment when it comes to housing development).

I live on the Otago Peninsula, 11km from central Dunedin. There’s an hourly bus service to and from town 7 days a week. Until a few years ago there were only 2 or 3 buses on Sundays, which was much more limiting. More frequent buses would be more convenient – we do have a couple of extras in rush hours! – but I can work around the hourly timetable. The buses stop overnight. The last bus home leaves town at 11.38pm on Friday and Saturday, but at 10.38pm on other weeknights and just 8.38pm on Sunday. That means the occasional taxi is called for, but I’ve only needed one a few times as I’m not a late bird. Getting to other suburbs sometimes requires transferring buses, with a wait between. The Dunedin bus hub makes that straight forward. I regularly travel to a friend’s place in Waikouaiti (40km north of Dunedin), transferring buses in town.

I like the bus, and often used it to commute even before I gave up the car. I’m lucky because I can read, despite it being a winding road (many people I know feel sick if they do that). But often I spend the journey chatting to friends. I’ve met many people in my community over the years at the bus stop or on the bus. It’s so much more relaxing than driving yourself, and you can enjoy the view much more! Since the Dunedin City Council added more subsidies to buses, it has become a really cheap way to travel – just $2 for an adult fare across the whole network (free for over 65s). That includes transfers, so I can get from home to Palmerston or Brighton or Mosgiel for just $2.

My favourite way of getting into town, though, is on my bike. When I first tried commuting by bike I had to share the winding 70kph road with motor vehicles, which could be hairy at times, but now there is a wonderful new separate shared path all the way into town. This is a huge improvement and has led to many more people cycling. It’s a beautiful ride beside the harbour, and I love looking at the water and birds. As well as the benefit of the physical exercise, I really feel the benefit on my mental health of being outside in the weather beside the water – it’s almost meditative. In winter, when the days are shorter, commuting brings the bonus of beautiful sunrises.

When I sold the car I bought myself a new bike, since my old one had some faults that were beyond repair. I thought about getting an e-bike, but decided to stick with a push bike and have no regrets so far. My rides are almost all on the flat, but if I had more hills I would definitely go for an e-bike. If a big headwind gets up before I ride home (a regular thing, unfortunately), I can put my bike on the rack on the bus – this is a brilliant service on the Dunedin buses. I’m happy to ride in the rain, thanks to a good rain jacket and pants, but I’m not fond of a headwind! My bike is vintage-style and not the fastest one out, but it has some practical features I highly recommend: a chain guard, mud guards, a kick stand and a sturdy bike rack. Running a bike is a whole lot cheaper than running a car, and I am much better off financially, even with the occasional taxi fare and lots of bus fares added in.

I’m not commuting any more, but I still bike into town for various things. I take some delight in quaxing! For those who don’t know this term, it means shopping and carrying stuff by bike or public transport. The term originates from the late Auckland councillor Dick Quax, who didn’t believe people did regular shopping without a car. It is now in use well beyond Aotearoa!  My best efforts so far involve tomato plants and large boxes of fruit, but other people take much bigger loads, especially if they have specialist cargo bikes.

Resorting to vehicles

Not owning your own car doesn’t mean you can’t use one. Although it’s a last resort, I have borrowed one, though only on a handful of occasions (and if I couldn’t borrow one, I could rent one). I can get most items I need home by bike or bus, or have them delivered. Taking two cats to the vet definitely requires a car though! Other things I have used a car for are an urgent doctor’s visit, and transporting a spinning wheel, an armchair, and compost (though I could probably have had the latter two delivered). Occasionally I get a ride with somebody going to the same event. There are some places I can’t get to without a car, but I’ve simply chosen to go to other places instead.

I’ve done some long-distance trips on public transport. They include weekends in Central Otago and a lovely trip by bus, train and ferry to Christchurch, Wellington and the Wairarapa. Obviously renting a car is another option, but I much prefer being driven by a professional than doing my own driving. My mother was very ill for quite a few months this year, and I became her chauffeur as well as her caregiver, driving her car to the hospital and other health-related appointments. Once she started getting better I also drove her to a few gatherings, until she improved enough to get the bus and eventually was able to drive herself again. These days I really dislike driving. I find it stressful and parking is such a hassle. Cycling or catching the bus is much easier!

Go for it

In conclusion, I now live very happily without owning a car. If you have the infrastructure you need to get around by active or public transport for most things in your part of the world, I highly recommend this way of life!

Something good to read

Looking for a good book? I have recommendations! Last January I posted about my favourite fiction reads of 2017 and 2018. This time around I have recommendations from novels I read in 2019, and non-fiction I’ve read over the past couple of years. There’s nothing mediocre here – I only recommend things I really enjoyed or found important.

Saving our world

The year 2020 opened here in Dunedin with an eerie orange sky and visible brown haze – smoke from the massive fires in Australia had travelled some 2000 km across the Tasman Sea. It seemed a frightening portent for the new decade – climate change is here and now; we must act urgently. So, let there be no pussyfooting around – my top book recommendation is Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution by Peter Kalmus. He is a Californian climate scientist – he is also an activist who has been moved by his scientific knowledge to change his life and campaign for action. Kalmus writes engagingly about his own family’s experience as they reduce their impact on the environment. The book also serves as a primer on climate change. The changes Kalmus makes are achievable for many of us, and also bring happiness – as the blurb states, ‘Life on 1/10th the fossil fuels turns out to be awesome’. It’s a great read and, even better, now available free online on Peter Kalmus’s website.

Another climate scientist writing engagingly about living a lower impact life is New Zealand’s own Shaun Hendy. In #NoFly: Walking the Talk on Climate Change (2019), he recounts his year without flying – a tricky challenge for academics, who are generally big travellers. Like Kalmus, he provides a brief overview of the latest science on climate along with his own personal experience of travel by land and sea.

Since our economic systems have a huge influence on the planet, revising them is an important part of dealing with environmental problems. Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics: 7 Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist, is a very readable book by a ‘renegade’ economist. She investigates necessary reforms to the way we organise our world so it might fit into the ‘safe and just space for humanity’, with an economy lying between the limits of a just social foundation and ecological ceiling.

Short books on big subjects

The BWB Text series, from excellent New Zealand publisher Bridget Williams Books, has the tagline ‘Short books on big subjects from great New Zealand writers’. I love this series. It covers a range of historic and contemporary topics. The books are small enough to fit into your pocket or handbag – great for commuting. I’ve already mentioned one outstanding book from this series, Shaun Hendy’s #NoFly. Other recent reads I particularly liked were: The Health of the People by David Skegg; Māui Street by Morgan Godfery; Still counting: wellbeing, women’s work and policy-making by Marilyn Waring; Ko Taranaki Te Maunga by Rachel Buchanan; and A Matter of Fact: Talking Truth in a Post-Truth World by Jess Berentson-Shaw.

History

I’ve read surprisingly little history over the past couple of years, but there’s one history book I can thoroughly recommend – indeed, it should be compulsory reading for all thinking New Zealanders, plus anyone from further afield who wants to understand this place! Vincent O’Malley has followed up his brilliant study of the Waikato War (The Great War for New Zealand ) with a broader overview of the wars: The New Zealand Wars: Ngā Pakanga o Aotearoa. In contrast with the hefty – literally – tome on Waikato, this is a concise book; it is written in O’Malley’s trademark clear and readable style. It is also very well illustrated. It has been great to see this book on bestseller lists; it has an important role to play in increasing New Zealanders’ understanding of events which have an ongoing influence on our society.

Another great history is The Face of Nature: An Environmental History of the Otago Peninsula by Jonathan West. I took a special interest in this book since I live on the Otago Peninsula, but I think it would be of much wider interest: indeed, it won the New Zealand Historical Association’s prize for best history book. It provides a fascinating history of the land and water of this stunning place, and the impact of the people who have lived here.

Memoir and biography

There have been some outstanding memoirs published in New Zealand in recent years. Of those I read, four stood out. We already knew that musician Shayne Carter was a gifted wordsmith thanks to his song-writing. His memoir, with the excellent title Dead People I Have Known, reveals him as a brilliant proponent of longer-form writing also. I found his account of his Dunedin childhood especially powerful. Another powerful memoir of childhood and beyond comes from Helene Wong: Being Chinese: A New Zealander’s Story. Although my own childhood was very different from those of Carter and Wong, both referred to people and places I knew (including the fruit shop in Rata Street, Naenae!), which added to the interest for me.

A very different sort of memoir is Marilyn Waring’s account of her years as a member of parliament, 1975 to 1984: Marilyn Waring: The Political Years. During one term she was the only woman in the National caucus. Being not just a young woman, but a feminist, she was very different from most of her colleagues, and it was a difficult place to work. Waring is famous for her anti-nuclear stance, which brought down the National Government; the book provides interesting insights into that as well as many other activities of her parliamentary career.

I found Robert Webster’s account of his life in science fascinating. Flu Hunter: Unlocking the Secrets of a Virus reads a bit like a thriller, as he and colleagues travel the world tracking down the origins of new influenza strains. I suspect this book hasn’t had the reach it deserves  – it’s a really good read on an important topic.

Moving beyond New Zealand, like many people I was fascinated by Tara Westover’s memoir of her extraordinary childhood in a rural Idaho family preparing for the end times. Educated is quite some read, beautifully written. Another extraordinary life is that of Irish writer Mark Boyle. For some years he lived without money, and in his recent memoir The Way Home: Tales From a Life Without Technology he writes about living in rural Ireland without the conveniences of modern life, including electricity.

When it comes to biography, I recommend Diana Brown’s book The Unconventional Career of Dr Muriel Bell. As the blurb states, ‘Whether or not you have heard of pioneering nutritionist Muriel Bell, she has had a profound effect on your health.’ Bell, who was one of the first women academics at the Otago Medical School, was an important nutrition researcher and public servant who influenced several significant public health schemes.

Writing for the young

In 2018 I enjoyed reading Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea series, so in 2019 I read some more vintage children’s fantasy books. Like all good fantasy books, they take the reader to another world and thereby illuminate our own. Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising sequence and Alan Garner‘s Weirdstone of Brisingamen and sequels were good reads; I also enjoyed Garner’s standalone book The Owl Service.

I was reflecting on my own shaping as an historian, which prompted me to re-read a big favourite from my childhood, The Runaway Settlers by Elsie Locke. First published in 1965, this book has stood the test of time. It is based on the true story of a family who escape their violent husband and father, moving from New South Wales to Canterbury, New Zealand. It gives a vivid portrayal of settler life in Aotearoa in the 1860s and does not shirk the difficult topics: domestic violence, poverty, tensions between Māori and Pākehā, worker exploitation and troubles on the goldfields. That may sound bleak, but the book is also a celebration of the determination of its working-class characters, in particular the staunch Mary Small.

Other childhood favourites for me were Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books, based on her own life in a geographically mobile family on the American western frontier. I didn’t read Wilder’s books again, but I did read a recent biography, Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser. This book won the Pulitzer Prize for biography – it is a long but absorbing story of a woman whose books have been enormously influential in the USA and beyond. Laura Ingalls Wilder’s daughter, writer and editor Rose Wilder Lane, also features strongly in the biography. I highly recommend this to anyone who wants to know more about the ‘real’ Laura of book and television series fame. Lane, who edited her mother’s books, was significant in the founding of the libertarian movement in US politics, and Wilder largely agreed with her politics. It is interesting to reflect on the contrast between their beliefs and those of left-wing activist Elsie Locke. It seems that the books I loved most in childhood came from opposite ends of the political spectrum!

Fiction favourites

There can be no doubt about my overall favourite read of 2019 – the prize goes to The Absolute Book by the fabulous Elizabeth Knox. It’s one of those books you regret finishing and want to read again immediately – I do expect to read it again soon. It manages to combine a rip-roaring yarn with much deeper themes. Even if fantasy is not your usual choice of reading, I recommend giving this one a go. Simply brilliant.

It was a joy to discover several authors who were new to me this year. I happened upon a Melissa Harrison novel in a library display and liked it so much that I immediately read the rest of her books! Harrison writes lyrically about the English countryside, but she also writes brilliantly about people. I thoroughly enjoyed her books ClayAt Hawthorn Time, and All Among the Barley.

Another author new to me was Scottish crime writer Val McDermid, the ‘queen of crime’. When I heard she was coming to Dunedin as a visiting professor I thought I should try one of her books! As with Harrison, I immediately wanted to read more after the first one. She has a big back catalogue that will take a long time to get through, but I’ve started with her Karen Pirie books. These are based in a cold cases unit and incorporate intriguing settings in past times. Great reading.

When @nzdodo recommended When the Floods Came by Clare Morrall on Twitter, I was immediately intrigued because of the reference to bicycles as the main form of transport in a post-apocalyptic world! It’s a gripping and tense novel set in a future England, 20 years after a virus killed most of the population; the climate has also changed. It’s quite a thriller and a good read if you don’t find post-apocalyptic fiction a little too depressing.

More familiar writers whose books I enjoyed this year included Fiona Kidman; her This Mortal Boy is an excellent novel set in the 1950s, based on the case of one of the last people to be judicially hanged in New Zealand. And the funniest book I read in 2019 was Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s fantasy set in the end times. I haven’t seen the TV series based on this yet, but the book is fabulous.

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I enjoy getting book recommendations myself, even if I could never keep up with everything that sounds intriguing! I hope you find something good through this post – happy reading.

Beauty amidst the engines: railway station gardening competitions in New Zealand

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Alan Clarke (1900-1960), railwayman and gardener. From Clarke family collection.

This is a paper I presented at the New Zealand Historical Association Conference, Wellington, November 2019.

Railway stations have romance attached to them: they are places of meetings and partings and beginnings of adventures. But they can also be bleak and utilitarian, especially in rural or suburban locations. They are industrial, with huge engines roaring through and sheds for goods and rolling stock; every country station once had its animal yards. With all of that comes dirt and noise and odour; the grime was worse in the days of steam engines.

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A postcard of Feilding Railway Station, c.1910, conveys the contrast between the industrial space of the railway station and the garden next to it. Ruth McIntyre Collection, Feilding Public Library.

Some men working for the New Zealand railways in the early and mid-1900s made valiant efforts to transform stations into attractive environments, for their own sakes and for the benefit of the travelling public. These endeavours were promoted by railway station garden competitions.

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Alan Clarke and friend at Makarewa. From Clarke family collection.

My interest in this ‘brilliantly niche’ topic, as a colleague calls it, began with curiosity about my grandfather. Alan Clarke’s entire working life was with the railways as a clerk and eventually a stationmaster. These photographs show the garden he made in the gap between two single men’s huts at Makarewa, a few miles north of Invercargill, where he worked in the late 1920s. This extraordinary garden was located right next to the railway line and beside utilitarian buildings. The surroundings of railway huts were often scruffy. What prompted the creation of the Makarewa garden? Aesthetics probably played some part. Alan was quite a snappy dresser: if he had to live in a hut, he would make it a stylish one. More importantly, he grew up in a culture of working-class gardening. The Caversham project, which studied life in the working-class suburbs of southern Dunedin, revealed the huge extent of home gardening there – even renters with small sections cultivated substantial vegetable gardens.[1] A photo of Alan with his son outside their Ohakune railway house in the 1930s provides a glimpse of a productive back section.

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Alan Clarke with son Ross (b.1936) in the garden of their railway house, Ohakune. Clarke family collection.

Home gardening was frequently gendered, as some Caversham study authors write: ‘Fathers often produced impressive vegetables to feed the family, while mothers grew flowers and ornamental shrubs’.[2] But there was another tradition, too: working-class men were big participants in flower shows. Alan’s grandfather, bootmaker Walter Anderson, was a stalwart of the Tuapeka Horticultural Society. He won prizes for turnips and carrots and raspberries, but most of all for his flowers.[3] Alan spent his first few years in Lawrence, near this flower-growing grandfather, before the family moved to Christchurch. There the children were also encouraged in gardening at school. In 1911 Alan’s brother Erl, aged 8, won a prize for the floral buttonhole he exhibited at the Richmond School break up.[4] A photo from Alan’s album shows Erl standing proudly with vases of flowers, presumably prepared for a show.

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Walter Anderson (1850-1938) in his Lawrence garden. Clarke family collection.

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Erl Clarke (1904-1987) with flower display, Christchurch. Clarke family collection.

The immediate prompt for the Makarewa garden may have been the competition held by the Southland Women’s Club Garden Circle for the beautifying of Southland country railway stations. Makarewa took third place in 1929; the judges found its efforts ‘very pleasing’.[5] Why, though, did the Southland women run this competition?

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Otago Women’s Club dinner, 14 August 1924. Otago Women’s Club records, AG-682-01/12/001, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hākena, University of Otago.

Women’s clubs were very active in the 1920s: in 1926 the Southland Women’s Club had 287 members and the Otago one 800; there were clubs in many towns, including three in Wellington.[6] Although those numbers suggest they can’t have been extremely exclusive, their members certainly came from the more elite end of society. The judges of the 1929 Southland garden competition, for instance, were the wives or widows of a pharmacist, a land and insurance agent, and a doctor. The clubs held social events, raised funds for philanthropic causes and hosted talks; they entertained distinguished visitors, such as the wives of governors general. They had various interest groups: for instance, the Otago Women’s Club had literary, gardening, arts and crafts, civic and motor circles, among others.[7]

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Lady Ferguson and Sir Lindo Ferguson, 1925. Otago Women’s Club records, AG-682-01/12/002, Hocken Collections, Uare Taoka o Hākena, University of Otago.

It was the Otago Women’s Club that inspired the Southland club to take an interest in railway station gardens: the Otago gardening circle launched New Zealand’s first railway station gardening competition in 1925. The idea came from Mary Ferguson, the club’s long-serving president. Lady Ferguson was a woman of standing in Dunedin. She was the daughter of a merchant, educated privately in Dunedin and then in London. She married ophthalmologist Lindo Ferguson, who subsequently became dean of the Otago Medical School and thus an important figure in New Zealand. The Fergusons were involved in many organisations; both were charming and renowned for their hospitality.[8]

Ferguson had perhaps seen or read about railway station gardens in other countries; New Zealand came late to this practice. In Britain and in Canada, for instance, station gardens became popular from the 1860s. Railway companies encouraged gardening and rewarded their gardening employees through competitions. Gardens beautified railway property and provided wholesome recreation for railway workers, but there was more to it than that. The Canadian Pacific Railway Company used gardens to promote development: they demonstrated the fertility of the prairie, encouraging immigration and greater use of the railways.[9] In New Zealand, too, railways played a role in colonisation, promoting the development of agriculture, industry and mining. Most striking was the construction of the North Island main trunk line, which opened up the central North Island to Pākehā settlement; it provided a route into the Māori stronghold of Te Rohe Pōtae, the King Country.[10]

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Gore Railway Station, 1900s. Joseph Crisp, the inspector of the permanent way, led the development of a garden there in the 1890s. Photographed by Muir & Moodie, C.014832, Te Papa.

However, it was in the south that station gardening competitions took place. Unlike many other countries, where railways were owned by private companies, in New Zealand they were government-run. The Railway Department paid some attention to publicity but it was subject to scrutiny over its use of taxpayer funds: some viewed gardens as an extravagance. When railway workers created a garden at Gore in the 1890s, it provoked grumbles. One local complained that surfacemen were distracted from their usual duties to load and unload wagons of soil; garden maintenance would take up the time of ‘an already hard-worked set of Officials’. It seemed, he wrote, ‘as if the Government placed more value upon the existence of macrocarpas, violets and pansies, than the safe conveyance of their patrons who have occasion to use the railway’.[11] Other community members were more supportive. On Arbor Day 1895 they turned out for the formal inauguration of the garden and helped plant 600 trees and numerous flowers.[12]

In a climate of taxpayer suspicion, the Railway Department didn’t devote significant funds to station gardens, but it was happy for others to contribute and offered support behind the scenes. Railway workers who wanted to develop new gardens received fencing materials, soil and manure (conveniently available from stock wagons) and the department offered free transport for plants and competition judges. It paid the Otago Women’s Club £10 each year in compensation for their provision of plants[13], and later supplied plants directly to station gardeners. It still had to defend itself over the gardens, though: in response to one enquiry in 1939 the Otago Daily Times noted that the railway gardens were ‘laid out and are maintained by the voluntary effort of employees at the particular station. There is no payment for the work done in the plots, and the only reward is the appreciation of the travelling public and a chance of winning one of the annual awards made by the Gardening Circle of the Otago Women’s Club.’[14] It was a labour of love for the gardeners.

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Auckland Railway Station, 1930s. 1/2-071820-F, Alexander Turnbull Library.

Things were different in some large cities – at its grand stations in Auckland and Wellington, opened in the 1930s, the Railway Department employed gardeners. As the Railway Magazine pointed out, the new stations ‘gave the Department an opportunity for expressing the value it places on aesthetic considerations not only in the design of the buildings but also in their setting.’[15] The Auckland station had a plant nursery on its roof, where head gardener Roy Thornton raised flowering annuals from seed and nurtured native plants, including kauri, manuka, and ferns. Princess Te Puea Herangi took a great interest and brought him tree ferns for conservation.[16] The station also featured an experimental garden for testing New Zealand-raised dahlia seedlings.[17] Dunedin had the glitziest station, opened in 1906; it is now alleged to be one of the most photographed buildings in the Southern Hemisphere. For many years, though, its frontage could ‘not reasonably be termed picturesque’, as the stationmaster noted with considerable understatement in 1927. He asked if a lawn and flower beds could be developed but his request was denied; its manicured gardens were a later development, cared for by the city council.[18] In Auckland, the council took over care of the gardens from the Railways Department in 1948.[19]

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The environs of Dunedin Railway Station, c.1910, were utilitarian by contrast with the grand building. Photograph by Muir & Moodie, C.012183, Te Papa.

Entries in the garden competitions for smaller stations depended entirely on the interests of the local staff, and since railways staff were a mobile group, the involvement of stations fluctuated. In 1932 the Otautau Standard reported just two entrants in the Southland competition: “This was due no doubt largely to the frequent changes in staff made recently since in past years as many as ten entries have been received.” The paper heaped praise on “the local staff for their painstaking work in creating a beauty spot in a flower garden and lawn out of what was a hole many feet deep. Mr Kelly has done hours of good work and promises better results for next year if privileged to be still stationed here.”[20] Kelly was the stationmaster, perhaps the person most likely to be interested in the station surrounds, but those who made station gardens came from a range of railway occupations. Ganger William Pickering was responsible for the Fairlie Station’s prizewinning garden of 1928, and bus driver M.A. Jackson for the Palmerston Station garden in 1947. George Johnson, an engine driver on the Southland line, created a prize-winning garden at Lumsden Station in 1929.[21] It was the signalman at Wingatui who produced a daffodil design which displayed the station’s name, the letters outlined with whitewashed stones.[22] In Waikouaiti the stationmaster’s father, James Rendel, tended the garden; in 1937 the department supplied  Rendel, who was about 80, with some piping and a tap for a watering system so he wouldn’t have to carry buckets of water to the garden.[23] Not all stations had a good water supply, making a big challenge for gardeners in drier districts.[24] At the smallest staffed stations, there was just the porter to create and tend a garden; the Otago competition had a special category for ‘very small’ gardens.

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Wingatui won second prize in the Otago railway station garden competition in 1928; this sign was visible all year around, but filled with daffodils in spring. New Zealand Railways Magazine, 1 June 1928.

Competition was a motive to create a garden, but it was not the only one. Charles Pope, a clerk, started a garden at Balclutha Station in 1918, before any competition; he had returned as stationmaster by the time Balclutha won first prize for its garden in 1930.[25] In Rakaia, stationmaster Hugh McDougall planted around 150 varieties of roses in the 1920s; he had retired by the time a Canterbury competition commenced, but others kept the garden going and Rakaia was the inaugural winner in 1930.[26]

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Porter M. Chapman with his garden at Horopito Railway Station. New Zealand Railways Magazine, 1 February 1931.

In the North Island, a few enthusiasts built gardens despite a lack of competitions. Some earned publicity in the Railways Magazine. A 1931 edition featured the station at Horopito, a small settlement on the main trunk line between Ohakune and National Park. The porter, M. Chapman, made a garden ‘under considerable difficulty, due to the presence of gravel’.[27] The Hawera Railway Station garden also featured in the magazine a number of times. A Wellington woman who described herself as ‘an old lady, very fond of flowers’, was moved to write to the stationmaster, Robert Allwright, after passing through Hawera on the train in the mid-1930s. ‘The bed of pansies and violas was wonderful and showed that even last summer’s heat had not killed them all, as in so many places. The hasty glance one had of other flowers made one realise that a real lover of God’s beauties must be trying to make one corner of His vineyard a place of joy and happiness.’[28] James Campbell, the Hawera mayor, was another fan: ‘Our citizens are as proud of the gardens as your own Department is’, he wrote.[29]

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Extensive gardens at Hawera Railway Station. New Zealand Railways Magazine, 1 March 1937.

Local pride was significant in the development of the station gardens. It was probably the chief motive behind the involvement of the Women’s Clubs, and was undoubtedly the chief motive in Canterbury, where station garden competitions were run by the Horticultural Society. The Society had already been running competitions for home gardens for some years when it started offering prizes for station gardens in 1929; factory gardens were also added to the schedule.[30] Under the guidance of this thriving society, the railway garden competitions survived the longest in Canterbury, continuing until the late 1960s. Roses remained a popular feature of station gardens in the region. When Papanui stationmaster Norm Chapple departed in 1970 he earned a headline in the local paper: ‘Pruned roses before leaving’. He was known for his success in the garden competitions.[31]

The Otago competitions ended in 1948: when there were no entries, the Women’s Club withdrew its cup and it does not seem to have made any effort to revive the competition.[32] If railway workers were losing interest in gardening for their employer, the removal of the competition exacerbated that. I can only speculate about why workers lost interest in station gardens. In the post-war period, many New Zealanders turned their attention to home life; presumably railwaymen were among them. Gardening in their own patch may have held more appeal than gardening at work. The growth of the union movement, together with the industrial tensions of the 1950s, perhaps made voluntary work for an employer less acceptable. A growing range of new pastimes also competed for people’s leisure hours. One of the most time-consuming, television, arrived in New Zealand in the 1960s.

Gardens had always been at risk of falling into neglect due to changing personnel; with the end of the competitions, reports came in of former prize-winning gardens in a sorry state. In 1953 the Port Chalmers Borough Council complained that a station garden which ‘for many years was a place of beauty and afforded much pleasure to residents and visitors’ had fallen back; neither railway staff nor council were willing or able to commit staff time to its maintenance.[33] Middle-class voluntary organisations picked up some of the slack: beautifying societies, amenities societies and service clubs were among those who leased land from the Railway Department at peppercorn rentals and tidied it up. In 1970, the Minister of Railways announced a new scheme to dedicate the increasing income from outdoor commercial advertising panels towards beautifying areas around stations and on other prominent railway land, preferably in joint arrangements with local bodies. ‘Modern society … had become increasingly sensitive to the need for the preservation of natural environment’, noted the press release, and the department ‘intended to play their part to this end.’[34]

The railway station gardening competitions provide a glimpse into a largely forgotten part of the world of working-class men. The railwaymen who participated loved flowers and used them to transform parts of their grimy workplaces into oases of beauty. Gardening is a science and an art, and they demonstrated both aspects. They turned some unlikely places into flourishing gardens by building up soils and carefully feeding and caring for plants. Their creative talents were revealed in the designs of their gardens, from the selection of colours to the layouts of paths. The element of competition was highly significant, and huge pride associated with winning. When that incentive disappeared, railway gardeners presumably turned their energies to their home gardens, and perhaps to local horticultural societies, which provided, as they still do, a different venue for competitive gardening.

As I briefly mentioned after I presented this paper, the staff of New Zealand’s various railway workshops were also keen gardeners. In the 1930s and 1940s all of the workshops established horticultural societies and held regular competitions for vegetable and flower growing. Reports showed tinsmiths winning prizes for violas, fitters for sweet peas and boilermakers for gladioli. 

[1] Barbara Brookes, Erik Olssen and Emma Beer, ‘Spare Time? Leisure, Gender and Modernity’, in Barbara Brookes, Annabel Cooper and Robin Law, eds, Sites of Gender: Women, Men and Modernity in Southern Dunedin, 1890-1939 (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2003), 172-173.

[2] Sites of Gender, 173.

[3] ‘The Gardens of Lawrence’, Tuapeka Times, 28 April 1897.

[4] Lyttelton Times, 22 December 1911, p.9.

[5] ‘Otago Station Gardens’, New Zealand Railways Magazine, 4: 2 (June 1929), 50. http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-Gov04_02Rail-t1-body-d21.html The women were named with their husbands’ initials – names and occupations traced through various genealogical sources.

[6] ‘Women’s Clubs: Growth in New Zealand’, New Zealand Herald, 8 October 1926, 7.

[7] Otago Women’s Club reports, in their archives, Hocken Collections.

[8] ‘Mary Ferguson’, NZ History, https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/mary-ferguson; Rex Wright-St Clair, ‘Ferguson, Henry Lindo’, from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, Te Ara, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/3f3/ferguson-henry-lindo.

[9] Edwinna von Baeyer, ‘Rise and fall of the Manitoba railway garden’, Manitoba History, 31, 1996.

[10] Matthew Wright, Rails Across New Zealand: A History of Rail Travel, (Auckland: Whitcoulls, 2003); Kerryn Pollock, ‘King Country region – Te Rohe Pōtae’, Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/king-country-region; Nancy Swarbrick, ‘Rural services – Railways’, Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/rural-services/page-3.

[11] Bluegum, letter to the editor, Mataura Ensign, 13 August 1895, 2.

[12] ‘Arbor Day, 1895’, Mataura Ensign, 8 August 1895, 3.

[13] For instance, see Rona Allen, Hon Sec. Gardening Branch of Otago Women’s Club, to District Traffic Manager, Dunedin, 9 April 1937, Station Gardens – General File, R21984788, Archives New Zealand Dunedin Office.

[14] ‘Answers to Correspondents’, ODT, 27 March 1939, 8.

[15] ‘Beautifying on the Railways’, New Zealand Railways Magazine, June 1937.

[16] Auckland Star, 30 July 1937, 6; 9 September 1937, 6.

[17] ‘Beautifying on the Railways’, New Zealand Railways Magazine, June 1937; ‘Gardening Circle’, New Zealand Herald, 5 March 1937, 3.

[18] Stationmaster, Dunedin to District Traffic Manager, Dunedin, 6 October 1927 and District Traffic Manager, Dunedin to Stationmaster, Dunedin, 11 October 1927, Dunedin – Station Garden file, R21983938, Archives New Zealand Dunedin Office.

[19] Southern Cross, 14 October 1948, clipping in Beautification of Railway stations also Railway gardens file, R21512449, Archives New Zealand, Wellington; Auckland Star, 30 September 1941, 8.

[20] ‘Railway Gardens’, Otautau Standard, 5 April 1932, 2.

[21] ‘Lumsden Station Garden: A Visitor’s Impressions, New Zealand Railways Magazine, 1 July 1930.

[22] ‘Otago’s Station Gardens’, New Zealand Railways Magazine, 1 June 1928, 13.

[23] District Traffic Manager to District Engineer, 16 February 1937, Station Gardens – General File, R21984788, Archives New Zealand Dunedin Office.

[24] For example, see Tablet Porter, Goodwood, to Traffic Manager, 20 February 1941, Station Gardens – General File, R21984788, Archives New Zealand Dunedin Office.

[25] ‘Railway Garden Cup Presentation’, ODT, 20 March 1930, 16.

[26] ‘A prize-winner among New Zealand station gardens’, New Zealand Railways Magazine, June 1930; on McDougall’s appointment and retirement, see Ashburton Guardian, 11 March 1920, 4 and 19 January 1926, 20.

[27] ‘An example of station beautifying on the N.Z.R.’, New Zealand Railways Magazine, February 1931, 57.

[28] ‘Railway Station Gardens’, New Zealand Railways Magazine, December 1935.

[29] ‘Beautifying on the Railways’, New Zealand Railways Magazine, June 1937.

[30] Colin Amodeo, ed., Wilderness to Garden City: A celebration of 150 years of horticultural endeavour in Canterbury (Christchurch: Canterbury Horticultural Society, 2001), 155.

[31] ‘Pruned roses before leaving’, Herald, 14 July 1970, clipping in Beautification of Railway stations also Railway gardens file, R21512449, Archives New Zealand, Wellington.

[32] District Traffic Manager, Dunedin, Memorandum No.1948/111, 28 October 1948, Station Gardens – General File, R21984788, Archives New Zealand Dunedin Office; Otago Women’s Club Annual Report, 1948.

[33] District Traffic Manager, Dunedin to Town Clerk, Port Chalmers, 20 November 1953, and to Stationmaster, Port Chalmers, 28 January 1954, Beautification of Stations file, R20397636, Archives New Zealand Dunedin Regional Office.

[34] Draft statement, 30 June 1970, and various newspaper clippings, Beautification of Railway stations also Railway gardens file, R21512449, Archives New Zealand, Wellington.

Two years of reading novels

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Wondering what to read? I have a few recommendations! I’ve neglected this blog over the past two years, since I’ve been preoccupied with finishing my own book, which has just been published. There’s always time for reading, though! Indeed, I think it’s an essential part of the writing process, not to mention a fantastic way of relaxing. In 2017 and 2018 I read exactly 100 books – that may sound a lot, but it averages just one a week, and some of them were short (thanks, BWB Texts). Just under half of those books were novels. I’m not going to mention them all here – these were my favourites. A word of warning – some of the links I’ve included are to Wikipedia pages which may include plot spoilers.

Classic fiction

As ever, my fiction reading has covered a range of the old and the new from various genres. I enjoyed several classic novels. I read Emma (published 1815) for the umpteenth time, in honour of the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen’s death. I also discovered, for the first time, ‘the Scottish Jane Austen’, Susan Ferrier. Scottish writer Val McDermid ran a campaign to revive the memory of this once popular author. Her 1818 novel Marriage, which I called up from library storage, is a family saga, long but interesting, with some great comic characters.

The death of Ursula Le Guin prompted me to read the entire Earthsea series. I read A wizard of Earthsea (1968) as a child, but I can’t recall reading the others previously – I wasn’t a big fan of science fiction or fantasy then, as I am now! I especially liked The tombs of Atuan (1971) and Tehanu (1990). Immersing myself in Le Guin’s imagined world over all five of the books was a great experience. The writing, characters and stories are all excellent, while, like all imagined worlds, Earthsea and its people prompt reflection on the state of our ‘real’ world. A striking feature of the series is the diversity of the central characters with respect to gender, ethnicity and abilities – undoubtedly that adds to its broad appeal.

Like many other people, I was prompted by the current state of our world to read some classic dystopian fiction – Nineteen eighty-four (1949) and Animal farm (1945) by George Orwell, and The handmaid’s tale (1985) by Margaret Atwood. I first read The handmaid’s tale soon after it was published, so describing it as a classic makes me feel old, but I think it fits that category. It was chilling when I read it in the 1980s and has remained with me since; it was just as chilling when I read it in 2017. I haven’t seen the recent TV adaptation, but the power of the book’s imagery is clear in the way that the costume of the handmaids has since become an internet meme!

More recent fiction

In a previous post of book recommendations I noted that Life after life by Kate Atkinson was my favourite read of 2016. Last year I read the ‘companion’ to that, A god in ruins (2015). It is equally brilliant – I don’t want to include any spoilers, so I’ll just say that it’s a creative and compelling story about the long afterlife of war. Another creative and compelling novel about war, and other things besides, is The wish child (2016) by Catherine Chidgey. I’ve read Chidgey’s three previous novels and all are excellent. Their settings vary widely – this one is a tale of children living in wartime Germany.

Although there is no indication of it in the setting of The wish child, Chidgey is a New Zealander, and it’s been great to discover some other excellent writers from New Zealand over the past couple of years – from Dunedin, even! New to me was Laurence Fearnley. I read The hut builder (2010) and The quiet spectacular (2016) and loved her settings, characters and subtle humour – these are quiet books with lots of descriptions of the natural world. There’s something special about reading a book set in your own environment, and that’s one of the reasons I liked Billy bird (2016) by Emma Neale. It’s an imaginatively written novel about a family recovering from a trauma. A final recommendation in the ‘locals’ category is by transplanted Scot Liam McIlvanney. I don’t read much crime fiction these days, but make an exception when I know the author in person! The quaker (2018) is a beautifully written novel set in 1960s Glasgow, inspired by the unsolved Bible John case. I was privileged to attend the launch, where Liam read from the beginning of the book. I read another chapter on the bus home and was completely hooked, finishing it in a couple of days. The plot is interesting, with its fair share of twists, but it’s the little details and evocation of a time and place that makes it really special.

Tales of the imagination

A recent reading highlight was Station eleven (2014) by Emily St John Mandel. My friend André commented on Twitter that it was “Absolutely one of my very favourite books of all time. The funny part is how almost any description of it makes it sound kinda shit really.” I agree! If your taste runs to the post-apocalyptic, you should definitely read this one, set in a world where most people have died in a pandemic. It has all sorts of interesting threads running through it – travel, theatre, and religion being prominent. A different sort of imagined world is that evoked in The power (2016) by Naomi Alderman. It is a world where gender hierarchies are reversed after women gain new physical powers, and the consequent tensions are explosive. I found it disturbing, but it sparked lots of interesting ideas.

I’ve also read further books by two of my favourite creators of imagined worlds. Neil Gaiman is a master storyteller, and I found American gods (2001) fascinating – it’s based on the premise that old gods follow migrants from their old world to the new, and struggle to survive in their new environment, which is also influenced by new gods (such as the media). A related book I thoroughly recommend is Gaiman’s masterly retelling of old legends, Norse mythology (2017). Juliet Marillier writes a different sort of fantasy, set in an imagined past with elements of magic. She, too, is a master storyteller. Her characters often struggle with disabilities or past traumas; they are very empathetic tales. She also has a big heart for animals, which feature in most of her books. I know because I’ve read all of them! Over the past couple of years I enjoyed completing her Blackthorn and Grim series, which includes Dreamer’s pool (2014), Tower of thorns (2015) and Den of wolves (2016).

There is a little magic or fantasy or imagination – call it what you will – in two other powerful books I read last year – Lincoln in the bardo (2017) by George Saunders and The underground railroad (2016) by Colson Whitehead. Lincoln in the bardo, which won the Man Booker Prize, is a wildly imaginative book set in a space between death and an afterlife, with many different narrators. It takes place in 1862 and has its basis in the true story of US President Abraham Lincoln’s great grief on the death of his son. The underground railroad is also set in 19th century America, where the underground railroad was a metaphor for the secret routes taken by slaves escaping from the southern states to the north. In Whitehead’s novel, the escape route becomes an actual railway in underground tunnels. This imaginative device mixes with the all too realistic history of slavery in a highly effective and moving novel.

Uplit

Sometimes, when life is tough, you don’t want to read a gloomy book. Of course, there is plenty of escapist fiction with a happy ending out there, and I’ve read a few romcoms of varying quality! But a friend introduced me to the concept of ‘uplit’, more literary stories designed to lift your mood ‘up’. The two she recommended were excellent. The unlikely pilgrimage of Harold Fry (2012), by Rachel Joyce, is a moving, thoughtful and well written novel about a man who takes an unexpected walk. The trouble with goats and sheep (2016), by Joanna Cannon, is a study of a community in 1960s/70s England, partly from the perspective of a child. “Suspense, nostalgia, the making of outsiders” is how I summarised it after reading.

Storypast

I’ve found Twitter a good place for book recommendations, often alerting me to things I wouldn’t have read otherwise. I’ve discovered some interesting books through the #storypast hashtag, used by historians/historical fiction writers interested in creative ways of writing about the past. I haven’t joined in their Twitter reading group, largely because the dates or times didn’t suit me, but I have read some of the books they discussed. A highlight for me was Ulverton (1992) by Adam Thorpe. It’s a novel which explores a fictional English village in different periods, making good use of varied writing formats. There’s an interesting interview with Thorpe in the Guardian, published when Ulverton became a Vintage Classic in 2012. I must read some more of his ‘uncategorisable’ opus!

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Happy 2019 everyone – I hope the year brings you lots of interesting reading. If I get the chance, I will write another post with my recommendations for some good non-fiction reads – the photograph provides clues to some of my favourites!