Reading after hours with the 2010 judges

Discover the reading habits of the New Zealand Post Book Awards judges.

Stephen Stratford, an author and editor, is the judging panel convenor for the first New Zealand Post Book Awards this year. His experience encompasses being a judge for the final Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Awards in1993,  and two times on the on the Montana New Zealand Book Awards panel as well as being the convenor in 2000.

This year he is joined by four others with wide ranging book industry involvement: Elizabeth Smither is a poet, short story writer and novelist; Paul Diamond is a historian and broadcaster; Charmaine Pountney is a writer and educationalist and Neville Peat a nature writer, biographer and photographer.

The Read quizzed the judges about their own reading preferences:

Stephen Stratford: It goes in phases – a bunch of fiction, a bunch of science, a bunch of music, a bunch of classics, a bunch of poetry. It’s like crop rotation in the vegetable garden.

Elizabeth Smither: My reading preferences are novels, poetry, thrillers, travel, history, essays, memoirs, biography.

Paul Diamond: I read across a range of genres, and enjoy fiction, nonfiction, history, biography, essays and creative nonfiction from New Zealand and overseas. Because of the reviewing I do for Radio New Zealand and my involvement with the New Zealand Post Writers & Readers Week, (Diamond is part of the Writers and Readers Advisory Group) I'm exposed to books and genres I wouldn't normally read. It's always exciting to discover new writers and writing.

Charmaine Pountney: Fiction – especially New Zealand and Pasifika fiction by both men and women – has been my main delight for many years, along with anything by Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, Mary Doria Russell, Kate Grenville, Chimamanda Adichie, Monica Ali, Zadie Smith. I also love philosophy and science, and keep a pile of old favourites and new ones beside the bed for browsing, especially The Phenomenon of Man, by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin; The Creative Mind, by Margaret Boden; Heart and Mind, by Mary Midgley; and now Steven Pinker’s How the Mind Works.

Since I’ve been living at Awhitu I’ve enjoyed more history, biography and environmental literature. I browse poetry – collections and on-line - and I have two favourite food books I return to again and again (for fine writing, as well as for processing tips and recipes): Jane Grigson’s generation-old Fruit Book and her Vegetable Book.

Neville Peat: I tend to read a lot of non-fiction with a bias towards geographical/environmental/natural history writing. Research for my own books steers me towards New Zealand material. I'm attracted to creative non-fiction writing in the environmental field, of which there is sadly too little from New Zealand writers. I've attempted to help fill the niche with my Lark trilogy. (High Country Lark; Coasting – The Sea Lion and the Lark; The Falcon and the Lark: a High Country Journal)

How many books do you normally get through in the course of a year?

SS: Fewer than before because I have two small children plus I work with books as an editor and also manuscript assessor, so at the end of a working day magazines have an enormous appeal. Maybe one a week, he lied.

ES: Two to three a week, so around 150.

PD: I'm really not sure, I keep meaning to keep a reading journal, scores I guess.

CP: Because of our busy lives at earthtalk@awhitu, (growing seasonal fruits and vegetables, farm stays and walking tours) most of my reading for pleasure is in the last hour at night, or during holiday breaks, so I manage – normally – somewhere between 50 and 100 books a year.

NP: I read 30 to 40 books a year.

How will you manage to add the 160 NZ Post contenders within the time frame? Will it be duty or pleasure?

SS: There will be days of the reading, the whole reading and nothing but the reading; and then there will be days of fitting it around other deadlines.
Basically it is duty – it has to be, because you have to look at each book carefully, take it seriously and evaluate it not just in accordance with the official judging criteria, but also whether it succeeds on its own terms, i.e. does it achieve what (and this can only ever be a guess) it sets out to achieve. We are absolutely not reading for pleasure. This is not a series of days at the beach. However, it is the books that give pleasure – unexpectedly sometimes, welcome always – that will register with us.

ES: I started with the illustrated non fiction, then the novels and the poetry; I'll read the seriously challenging non-fiction last. However it is very tempting to dip into the piles and not keep to schedule. It's daunting but it's definitely a pleasure.

PD: I'll just have to do my best, but it's an honour really. Having worked on a couple of books I understand a bit about what it means for authors and the whole team that make a book happen, so it's humbling to be asked to read the contenders.

CP: When I was invited to be a New Zealand Post Book Award judge, I was ecstatic – an official reason for indulging my favourite pastime! Of course I’ve had to rearrange some business activities, decline invitations, and ask my partner Tanya and visiting friends to help me with processing the summer flood of fruit (usually fifty to a hundred jars of this and that a week…) But I am deeply enjoying the wonderful range of books. New Zealand writing and book production are wonderful –I am delighted by the diversity and quality of entries.

NP: It's an honour and a pleasure to have so many new 2009 books surrounding me in my study, and I'm reading as many as I can cover to cover but there are inevitably some that I will spend less time on. The list of contenders for finalist status is challengingly long.

Outside of New Zealand books, what are the most memorable titles you read last year, ones you recommend to your friends?

SS: The Art of Noise by Alex Ross (classical music, 2009); Pictures from an Institution a 1954 novel by the poet Randall Jarrell, an oldie I re-read every few years as a palate-cleanser; The Complaints by Ian Rankin; The Biplane Houses, poetry by Les Murray and Robert Hughes’s monograph on the great English painter Frank Auerbach which I bought 20 years ago and have only now got around to reading.

ES: The most memorable titles I read last year include Lucretia Borgia by Maria Bellonci (I wanted to read about her life after seeing the Dosso Dossi portrait in the National Gallery of Victoria); Don Paterson's Rain; The Man in the Wooden Hat by Jane Gardam and Women Who Read Are Dangerous which is paintings, drawings, prints and photographs of women reading by a diverse range of artists from the Middle Ages to the present day. A beautiful and encouraging book for a judge!

PD: I enjoyed Truth, the latest book by Australian crime writer Peter Temple, a companion book to The Broken Shore. Temple's writing is terrific - literary crime stories reminiscent (particularly his Jack Irish books) of Raymond Chandler's writing.

Mark Derby, a colleague at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, put me on to Voice & Vision-A Guide to Writing History and Other Serious Non-fiction, by Stephen J.Pyne. Pyne argues that, unlike journalism and creative nonfiction, history and other serious nonfiction often gets left behind, something he seeks to remedy with this very interesting, useful book.

Early last year I read Ettie: The Intimate Life and Dauntless Spirit of Lady Desborough, by Richard Davenport-Hines, who we'd hosted at the 2007 NZ International Arts Festival. Lady Desborough was one of the great Edwardian hostesses, and her opulent and tragic world is evoked brilliantly in this engaging, absorbing book. Lorrie Moore's new novel, A Gate at the Stairs was also memorable.

Finally, I've been enjoying books by writers we are hosting at this year's New Zealand Post Writers & Readers festival, including The Outlander by Canadian writer Gil Adamson and two books by Australian Chloe Hooper: A Child's Book of True Crime and The Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island.

CP: The Audacity of Hope, by Barack Obama, because it is so rare to find a political leader with a clear philosophy, personal honesty without self-obsession, optimism without self-delusion, and a fine writing style; and Fair Play, by Tove Jansson, which is a gentle portrait of a quirky, loving and respectful relationship between two women ageing together – very appropriate for us and many of our friends!

NP: I do read fiction, some of which is referred to me by my wife from her book club readings, and one title that impressed me last year was The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak.