The Spirit of Cardrona: Where Dreams are Hatched by Desiree Reid-Whitaker (HarperCollins, $65)
Nestled between Wanaka and Queenstown, Cardrona is a town as natural to stop in as it is to buy books as Christmas presents. Desiree Reid-Whitaker is an entrepreneur, one with bold ideas and an awe inspiring ability to turn dreams into reality. She dreamt of producing a single-malt whiskey to stand on the international stage, so she sold her farming business and made it happen. Using locally foraged ingredients and pure Alpine water from the heart of Mount Cardrona, the first drop from the world-class distillery born from her imagination was poured. This book’s not just for the whiskey connoisseurs but for anyone in want of inspiration and expert knowledge to build their own business.
Antarctic Atlas: New Maps and Graphics that tell the Story of a Continent by Peter Fretwell (Particular Books, $70)
There’s always someone in the family with a penchant for cartography and for them, I imagine, there’s nothing more captivating than looking at the maps and data that reveal the beating heart of Antarctica. A continent with an unforgiving environment, a leading cartographer with the British Antarctic Survey shares what it’s like surviving life in its harsh conditions while delivering unparalleled research and imagery on the volcanic lakes, mountain ranges and gorges hidden beneath the water. Even without an interest in cartography this book’s one for the coffee table. I see it taking the Christmas conversation with the family at dinner to the next level. Climate change and emperor penguins, anyone?
Living the Dream: Life by the Water in New Zealand by Derek Morrison (Penguin Random House, $55)
Walking at dusk with wafts of dinner in the air, lights on in people’s houses, and the blinds yet to be shut, is how Living the Dream feels to read. Whether it’s in Matapouri Bay or Big Bay, in opulence or simplicity, the passion of the baches and cribs built along New Zealand’s coastlines and waterways are places that for their occupants capture the essence of family, friendship and community. As the stories show, some have made sacrifices that have taken their children out of school to live on a wild beach, given up careers to kayak every day, and made admirable renovations to buildings passed through generations. Live out other people’s fantasies and see inside their unique dwellings.
A Farewell to Gabo and Mercedes by Rodrigo Garcia (HarperVia, $35)
It’s not usually one’s first choice to read about death, but Rodrigo Garcia’s portrait of his Dad, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, during the final days of his battle with dementia is beautiful. There’s the quotidian encounters and movements that would seem unremarkable if they weren’t happening in the bedroom of one of South America’s greatest literary marvels. The interactions he has with his nurses will make you laugh, how he remembers his wife might make you cry. The way in which he describes living with the disease in brief moments of normality are words as profound as those in the books that won him the Nobel prize. This book is a gift to all of us.
Nina Simone’s Gum by Warren Ellis (Faber & Faber, $45)
You couldn’t predict the eccentricities within this unassuming book. Classically trained violinist, gifted multi-instrumentalist, and Bad Seeds band member, Warren Ellis, peeled Nina Simone’s gum from under the piano at Meltdown festival, and kept it. 21 years on he bestowed it to Nick Cave for his Stranger Than Kindness exhibition where it sits on a marble pedestal in a velvet-lined, temperature controlled viewing box. Nina Simone’s Gum is an artistic, colour illustrated, exceptionally weird ode to the iconic singer of Feeling Good cum Warren Ellis’ memoir. It brings nothing but joy, even in the creaks of the books sturdy binding.
Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love by Ottolenghi Test Kitchen and Noor Murad (Ebury Press, $55)
A collaboration between Ottolenghi Test Kitchen and Bahraini chef Noor Murad, Shelf Love is the ideal companion for the cook who wants to feel the benefits of having made something spectacular without the stress of the complexity. With a hybrid of food cultures and their immeasurable knowledge you get a concoction of meals where each ingredient shines, your heartbeat is calm, and your family and tastebuds thank you. Stop gawping at the surplus tins in your pantry accumulated en masse during lockdown and put them to creative culinary use as a hummus like no other, a one-pan confit chickpea tandoori, or a humble tomato salad.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, $50)
The novelisation of Tarantino’s film of the same name is not a straight forward spin-off. There are lengthy scenes and new characters as this devilishly imaginative director cum author grasps the opportunity to make a huge onion of the film’s original plot. The layers are thick, peeling back colourful details left out of the film, with even a rewriting of the ending. What’s more, at Unity Books you can buy the hardback - unlike the paperback, it features pictures of scenes left out of the production, posters and pictures of Leonardo Di Caprio's character Rick Dalton, and an exclusive script for an episode of the fictitious Bounty Law. In true Tarantino style, he’s subverted a genre of novelisation that disrupts the status quo, and it’s for the better. Watch the film first.
Silverview by John le Carré (Viking, $35)
33 year old Julian cashes in his city life to open a bookshop in an East Anglian seaside town, only to become embroiled in an espionage leak. Steered by an overly interested Polish émigré and Julian’s deceased father the mystery travels through London, the Cold War and an Eastern Bloc under Soviet socialism, putting a host of traitors at the forefront and the smug incompetence of the British intelligence. In considering what happens when public duty and private life clash, it seems le Carré’s sending a personal note to the modern Secret Intelligence Service (prior to becoming an author he was Daniel Cornwall, intelligence officer). Released the week he would have turned 90, this is the posthumous spy thriller his agent said “feels like a gift,” left behind by a world-class author.
The Magician by Colm Tóibín (Picador, $38)
Tóibín’s undertaken the triumphant task of immortalising the life of Death in Venice author and Nobel winner, Thomas Mann, in this fictionalised biography. Famously complex, Mann diarised his marriage to his wife Katia along with his sexual interest in men and locked his words away before being exiled from Germany to the US at the start of the war. With vivid depictions of a turbulent 20th century Europe, the German culture scene that hovers around Mann like an annoying bee, and the behemoth cast of characters that surround him (like Erika Mann and W H Auden who marry for a passport and bring Virginia Woolf into the fold with their bitchiness), makes for an intimate portrait of a family man and an immersive read.
The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman (Penguin Random House, $37)
Osman’s first novel The Thursday Murder Club had a world of readers enthralled by four comic septuagenarians on the hunt for a killer in their retirement village. Here the foursome return, carrying on from where they left off with the indomitably witty Elizabeth, ex-secret service, confronted by a man who she thought was dead. (Of course it’s retired nurse Joyce who, while observing a headless corpse, will notice nothing but the pretty colour of their blouse and have you chuckling aloud). It’s made it on to The New York Times Best Mystery Novels of 2021 sighting its sparkling humour, and it’s the perfect suntanning read that comes without an ounce of misery. Just what 2022 ordered.