Kiran Dass has a shelf of excellent books for the long weekend, from an intriguing book to take on long walks to new memoir from Harry Ricketts and Ngāhuia Te Awekōtuku. Read on for book-inspiratation!

Foraging New Zealand
Peter Langlands (Penguin Random House New Zealand)

If you enjoyed Liv Sisson’s excellent Fungi of Aotearoa: A Curious Forager’s Field Guide then you’ll love Foraging New Zealand by Peter Langlands. It’s a beautiful photographic field guide for identifying and respectfully foraging more than 250 of Aotearoa’s wild (and tastiest) plants. Earlier this year I went on a foraging walk with Langlands in Governors Bay and it was such a thrilling revelation. A mindful and illuminating way of looking at and engaging with the natural world around us. This long weekend I’m looking forward to rugging up and heading out for a wander with this book in hand. What will I find? Celery pine for gin botanicals? Pikopiko fern to cook like asparagus and serve with a squeeze of lemon? Or perhaps some Shepherd’s purse to pop into a salad. Langlands says that foraging is a good way for people to get an idea of the quality of the environment around us, making us acutely aware of our surroundings.

Great books and the Ōtautahi scenery

Hine Toa: A Story of Bravery
Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku
(HarperCollins New Zealand)

The iconic scholar and activist Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku (Te Arawa, Tūhoe, Ngāpuhi, Waikato) has had a rich and trailblazing life. An Emeritus Professor, she has worked as a curator, lecturer, critic, researcher and governor in the heritage and university sectors. A founding member of Auckland University activist group Ngā Tamatoa and the Women’s and Gay Liberation movements, Awekōtuki has helped achieve so much including the Māori language legislation and the Waitangi Tribunal and Office of Treaty Settlement. Her memoir Hine Toa: A Story of Bravery is a timely inspiration to fire us all up.


First Things: A Memoir
Harry Ricketts
(Te Herenga Waka University Press)

I’m lucky enough to currently be doing Harry Ricketts’ Creative Nonfiction workshop through the International Institute of Modern Letters at Te Herenga Waka University. Excelling in poetry, literary criticism and even a book about cricket, Harry is a bit of a renaissance man and has been such a generous, wise, insightful and sharp writing mentor, helping and inspiring us to be better writers. I picked up his memoir First Things last night to have a quick flick through, but was immediately and utterly absorbed. He smartly chronicles his life through a series of “firsts”. People, places, encounters, writers, and obsessions. With chronicles of dropping acid for the first time, the first film he saw (Davy Crockett and the River Pirates), to the first book that made him cry (read the memoir to find out!), like the man himself, First Things is generous in its candour, and wise in its insights.