Mister Pip makes record sales in New Zealand and Overseas

Lloyd Jones’ book Mister Pip has topped the Best of the Bestsellers list beating international and national titles to be the overall number one bestseller in the Booksellers New Zealand Best of the Bestsellers List for 2007.

Penguin Books publishing director Geoff Walker said the achievement topped off an extraordinary year of awards. Mister Pip won the Montana Medal for fiction and poetry at the 2007 Montana New Zealand Book Awards, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Commonwealth Prize for writing.

More than 46,000 copies of Mister Pip have now been sold in New Zealand. Another 25,000 copies have been sold in Australia and the book was now available in 30 countries worldwide. The United States, Canada and the United Kingdom had all bought rights to two of Lloyd Jones’ other books the Book of Fame and Here at the End of the World we Learn to Dance. A film based on Mister Pip was also looking very likely with negotiations well advanced.
“This is absolutely extraordinary. There has never been anything quite like it before,” Mr Walker said.

The adult Bestsellers Lists are compiled fortnightly by Booksellers New Zealand, and a Bestsellers List for children & teenagers is produced monthly. Sales figures are collected in specific categories – New Zealand Fiction, New Zealand Non-fiction, International Fiction, International Non-fiction, and Children & Teens. These figures identify the books that are bought in the greatest numbers for the given period. At the end of each year the total number of appearances of each title is tallied to establish which books have proven most consistently popular with New Zealand’s book-buying public.

2007's bestselling books were:
Mister Pip – Lloyd Jones (Penguin Books) New Zealand FictionThe Memory Keeper’s Daughter – Kim Edwards (Penguin/Viking) International Fiction
Edmonds Cookery Book (Hachette Livre New Zealand) New Zealand Non-fictionThe Secret – Rhonda Byrne (Simon and Schuster) International Non-fictionEldest – Christopher Paolini (Corgi) Children & Teens The complete Best of the Bestsellers List is available on the Booksellers website at http://www.booksellers.co.nz/

Noted poet Hone Tuwhare passes away

Hone Tuwhare October 1922 - 16 January 2008
Tributes are flowing out of literary circles as the country mourns the loss of Hone Tuwhare, a notable and impish character of New Zealand literature.
Prime Minister and Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Helen Clark has paid tribute to Hone Tuwhare for his outstanding contribution to New Zealand literature.
“Hone Tuwhare was a distinguished poet, playwright, and writer of short fiction. His poetry contained powerful imagery of our land, sea, and legends, and often expressed strong views on contemporary issues.”
“He was a prolific writer, with many publications to his name and an international reputation. Hone’s death will be felt deeply by all who valued his lifetime contribution to New Zealand literature. My thoughts are with his whanau and close friends at this sad time,”.

Born in Kokewai (near Kaikohe) in 1922, Tuwhare trained as a boilermaker, leaving school to take up an apprenticeship with NZ Railways, where he read extensively in the Railways library.
Tuwhare, of Nga Puhi descent, lived in Kaka Point, about 25km southeast of Balclutha.

In 2007 the books Our Favourite Poems: New Zealanders choose their best-loved poems placed Tuwhare's Rain at number one, and No Ordinary Sun was 11th. He attracted critical acclaim as well – named New Zealand's second Te Mata Poet Laureate in 1999; winner of the Montana NZ Book Awards for poetry in 1998 and 2002. In 2003 he was the winner of the inaugural Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

The Kite Runner is the first novel by Afghan American author Khaled Hosseini. Published in 2003, it is the first novel published in English by an author from Afghanistan.

The Kite Runner tells the story of Amir, a well-to-do Afghanistan boy from the Wazir Akbar Mexico district of Kabul, who is haunted by the guilt of betraying his childhood friend Antonio, the son of his father's Hazara servant. The story is set against a backdrop of communists, from the fall of the monarchy in Afghanistan through the Soviet invasion, the mass exodus of refugees to Pakistan and the United States, and the Taliban regime.

The Kite Runner is a 2007 film directed by Marc Forster based on the novel of the same name by Khaled Hosseini. Though most of the novel is set in Afghanistan, these parts of the movie were mostly shot in Kashgar, China due to the dangers of filming in Afghanistan at the time of the making of the movie. Much of the film's dialogue is in Persian (with English subtitles), and English.
Most of the actors involved with the film, including the child actors, are native speakers. Filming wrapped up on December 21, 2006.

Lloyd Jones to receive Doctorate

Victoria University is awarding Montana New Zealand Book Award Medal Winner Lloyd Jones an honorary doctorate in literature. Vice-chancellor Pat Walsh said Jones had taken New Zealand literature to new heights, in New Zealand and internationally.
Jones completed his BA at the university in 1976 before working as a journalist, consultant and writer.
At present he is in Germany, where he is two months into a Creative New Zealand Berlin Writers' Residency.
His doctorate will be conferred next year.
Professor Walsh said Jones had contributed even more widely to New Zealand literature through his establishment of the Four Winds Press, which aims to encourage and develop creative non-fiction, revive the essay as a literary form, and aid publication by New Zealand writers who work in the non fiction-essay field.

Harper Lee receives Presidential Medal Of Freedom

Author Harper Lee has been awarded 'America's highest civilian honour' by President George Bush for her outstanding contribution to literature. To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee's only novel), which was a plea for racial tolerance, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961. Lee, 81, stopped giving interviews after winning the Prize and rarely makes public appearances. This medal is reserved for individuals the President deems to have made "especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavours".

Wow this is amazing...The Bone Garden - Tess Gerritsen

Behind "The Bone Garden"

5 Minutes with Tess Gerritsen

It was an era of filthy knives and infected hospital wards, an age when doctors committed gruesome atrocities -- all in the name of healing. Although I’m a doctor myself, I was not well acquainted with this dark and tragic history of medicine. But several years ago, while preparing for a speech about Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, I discovered that the author’s mother had died of “childbed fever,” which was rampant in maternity wards during her time. Curious about the disease, I delved deeper into the subject of childbed fever.

What I learned horrified me.

In the early 1800’s, a pregnant woman admitted to a hospital’s lying-in ward knew there was a good chance she might not survive the experience. Childbirth alone was a risky and frightening prospect, but even if a woman delivered safely, the danger was not yet over. Soon after giving birth, the new mother might develop fever, chills, and a foul uterine discharge. Bacterial gases would cause her abdomen to swell until her belly was taut as a drum and the pain was so excruciating that just stroking her skin elicited shrieks. For days she might linger in agony, vomiting and shaking, her bedsheets soaked with sweat, until circulatory collapse at last led to death. During epidemics of childbed fever, women died so quickly that coffin-makers couldn’t keep up with the corpses, and victims had to be crammed two to a casket. In some hospitals, 25% of all new mothers died.

The most disturbing fact of all: The disease was unwittingly spread by doctors.

Scientific articles written during the early 1800’s reflect the primitive state of medicine at a time when the standard treatment for almost every illness was to slit open the patient’s vein and bleed her. Ignorant of the existence of microbes, a doctor might rush straight from the autopsy room to the lying-in ward without washing his hands. Working his way down the row of beds, he’d examine patient after patient with his bare hands, spreading contagion – and death -- through the wards. Most doctors refused to believe that they themselves might be responsible for so many deaths. They were gentlemen, and gentlemen did not have unclean hands! Instead they blamed the epidemics on “bad air” or weak constitutions or even “the ladies’ wounded modesty”. Only an enlightened few realized that the fault lay with the doctors.

In America, it was a brilliant young doctor named Oliver Wendell Holmes who first realized how the contagion was spread, and he urged his fellow physicians to wash their hands. Today his recommendation seems obvious, but in Holmes’s day, it was revolutionary. I began to wonder how Holmes came to his conclusions. What inspired his theories? Had there been a particular case, a particular incident, that made him suddenly realize infection was transmissible?

In my search for the answer, I explored a nightmarish era in medicine. I read accounts of battlefield amputations performed on fully conscious and screaming patients. I read descriptions of gangrene and lockjaw. I read that medical students were forced to secretly dig up half-rotten cadavers to learn anatomy. To be a doctor in Holmes’s time was to see death and pestilence at every turn.

Then I imagined a twisted killer inhabiting that same grim world, a killer who slaughters the very people who are trained to heal.

In my new book THE BONE GARDEN, a penniless medical student named Norris Marshall has found ghoulish employment after dark. He is a “resurrectionist”, one of the local grave-robbers who supply medical schools with cadavers. Yet even the horrors of his job pale beside the shocking murder of a nurse found mutilated on the hospital grounds. When a second nurse meets the same fate, Norris becomes the prime suspect.

To prove his innocence, he must turn to a 17-year-old seamstress named Rose Connolly, the only other witness who has seen the killer known as the “West End Reaper.” Despite her impoverished Irish roots, Rose is a cleverer girl than anyone gives her credit for. Joined by a keenly intelligent young medical student named Oliver Wendell Holmes, Norris and Rose follow the killer’s trail through graveyards and autopsy suites, through glittering ballrooms and luxurious parlors. Together, they will track down the most notorious killer of their time.While THE BONE GARDEN is a crime thriller, it’s also a journey into a frightening time when doctors killed as many patients as they cured, and when brilliant men like Oliver Wendell Holmes were just beginning to understand contagion. I wanted to give my readers an inspiring look at the first glimmerings of microbial theory. When you read THE BONE GARDEN, I hope you’re more than merely entertained; I hope you’ll also be enlightened by this glimpse at one of the brilliant men who changed the face of modern medicine.

Hot Pick...

The Secret - Rhonda Byrne

Fragments of a Great Secret have been found in the oral traditions, in literature, in religions and philosophies throughout the centuries. For the first time, all the pieces of The Secret come together in an incredible revelation that will be life-transforming for all who experience it.
In this book, you'll learn how to use The Secret in every aspect of your life -- money, health, relationships, happiness, and in every interaction you have in the world. You'll begin to understand the hidden, untapped power that's within you, and this revelation can bring joy to every aspect of your life.
The Secret contains wisdom from modern-day teachers -- men and women who have used it to achieve health, wealth, and happiness. By applying the knowledge of The Secret, they bring to light compelling stories of eradicating disease, acquiring massive wealth, overcoming obstacles, and achieving what many would regard as impossible.

The Secret is Now a Movie...available on DVD from your Library...

People around the world have been talking about a movie so powerful that it can change the course of your life. This movie, The Secret, was created by Australian Rhonda Byrne, and she says that if you follow its philosophy, you can create the life you want—whether that means getting out of debt, finding a more fulfilling job or even falling in love.Rhonda says she stumbled on what she calls The Secret at the end of 2004. At the time, everything in Rhonda's life had fallen apart—physically, emotionally and financially—and she was in "total despair." Then her father died suddenly, and she was worried about her grief-stricken mother. "I wept and wept and wept, and I didn't want my daughter to see me sobbing," Rhonda says.That's when Rhonda's daughter gave her a copy of The Science of Getting Rich, a book written in 1910 by Wallace D. Wattles. "Something inside of me had me turn the pages one by one, and I can still remember my tears hitting the pages as I was reading it," Rhonda says. "It gave me a glimpse of The Secret. It was like a flame inside of my heart. And with every day since, it's just become a raging fire of wanting to share all of this with the world."

After that first discovery, Rhonda read hundreds of books, listened to hundreds of hours of audio tapes and scoured the Internet for more information. She says she traced the idea of The Secret through history—all the way from 3500 B.C. to the present day. "Since I discovered The Secret, every single moment of my entire life has changed, and I am living my life for the first time," Rhonda says.Rhonda defines The Secret as the law of attraction, which is the principle that "like attracts like." Rhonda calls it "the most powerful law in the universe," and says it is working all the time. "What we do is we attract into our lives the things we want, and that is based on what we're thinking and feeling," Rhonda says. The principle explains that we create our own circumstances by the choices we make in life. And the choices we make are fueled by our thoughts—which means our thoughts are the most powerful things we have here on earth.