Back in February, we reported that our stall at Auckland University was forcibly dismantled after a certain university bookstore complained to the student union about our on-campus presence.   This news came as a shock to us, as there was essentially no justification for our ostracism other than to protect the bookstore’s lucrative monopoly over the local student market.

While we received a heartening reaction from our customers, we are displeased to report that a near flawless rerun of the Auckland Uni situation occurred late last week – this time at AUT.   Once again, the student union bowed to the wishes of the university bookstore and had our stall removed.

As saddening as this news might be, we have not been deterred by these minor setbacks. Our textbook campaign has already been a resounding success, with more and more people discovering the speed and ease which comes with buying textbooks online.  Please stay tuned for further correspondence from us in the not-too-distant future as the textbook season winds down.  In the meantime, be assured that we will persist against in our quest to provide an expensive alternative to the university bookstore, regardless of their anti-competitive practices.

To celebrate Dr. Suess’ birthday, here’s a clip of Jesse Jackson reading from Green Eggs and Ham. Did you know that the book came about due to a bit of a wager? Publisher Bennet Cerf bet the good doctor $50 that he couldn’t write an entire book using less than fifty words – and Ol’ Suessy proved him wrong!

• Editor fails to adequately edit poorly written story about needing editors.

• Abraham Lincoln. Vampire Hunter.

• The Ten Most Underrated Lesbian Books.

• Another week, another vintage comic selling for more than a million bucks. Hot damn.

• Charles Pellegrino, author of Last Train to Hiroshima, revealed to be an even bigger phoney than first anticipated.

• The Guardian interviews Sharon Osbourne about her upcoming book, smashes the world record for swear words per sentence.

• Shakespeare and Company: The second best bookshop in the world!

• “Portrayed… as Japan’s last action hero, ex-prime minister Junchiro Koizumi settles matters of international diplomacy with slavering, corrupt world leaders (from Kim Jong-Il to “Papa Bush”) over histrionic, blood-spattered sessions of the ancient game of mahjong – often while bleeding himself, and occasionally stopping to singlehandedly shoot down nuclear missiles over the Japan Sea.”

• An antique dealer wearing a $5,000 pair of sunglasses walks into a library carrying a stolen Shakespeare folio worth $6 million. And then things get weird.

• What’s the point of a dust jacket, anyway?

Jordan – TheNile.co.nz

As you might have heard, we are currently running an on-campus campaign across the nation to celebrate O-week.  And while our promotion has so far been a great success, there has been a shocking revelation over at Auckland University.

It seems our presence on campus has irked those in charge of a certain campus bookstore.  So much so that the General Manager yesterday saw fit to storm over to our stall, abuse our staff and tear up our promotional material.

Our only crime: offering an inexpensive alternative to their bookstore.

To make things perfectly clear, we followed all the necessary guidelines and received permission from all the necessary parties before setting up our stall.  Our presence was (and still is) perfectly justified.  This, however, did little to placate the General Manager.  He continued his tirade, this time directly to the representatives of the student body.  The result of which was that our staff were bluntly asked to leave and our stall quietly dismantled.

To see the campus bookstore acting in such an unprofessional and irrational manner is more than disheartening.  But what is sadder is that the university has resorted to such uncivil tactics in order to protect the cosy monopoly that their cohorts currently enjoy over the student textbook market.  You see, the on-campus bookstore is generally assumed to be the only place where students can purchase their required texts.  This, however, couldn’t be farther from the truth.  Online retailers (e.g. Yours Truly) can often offer textbooks much cheaper than our bricks’n’mortar competitors.  But the campus bookstore doesn’t want their customers to know this.

In any event, the secret is out.

Onion to recent the report rules on changes grammar

• Perfectly reasonable article gets mauled by scores of angry commenters.

• I don’t care if you wrote it. You’re still not getting an invite.

• This week’s “Martin Amis pisses someone off” article is brought to you by Anna Ford.

• The incredible true story behind Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped.

• First ever Superman comic fetches a cool million bucks at auction.

• 2010 is a good year to be a writer.

• 2010 is a good year to be a writer.  So, if you’re thinking about putting pen to paper, how about 122 tips to better your writing?

• Digested Read – Lee Child Edition.

• One of the most critically acclaimed titles of last year, The Last Train to Hiroshima, found to be riddled with shamefaced lies.

• “CHILLAX BLOGOSPHERE, THE RUMORS ARE TRUE! PETSWHOWANTTOKILLTHEMSELVES: THE BLOG WILL SOON BE PETSWHOWANTTOKILLTHEMSELVES: THE BOOK. IN A RELATED STORY, LITERATURE IS DEAD.”

Jordan – TheNile.co.nz

Universities around the nation are celebrating their annual orientation weeks.  And to help spread the good word of TheNile.co.nz, we are pleased to announce that we’ve launched a huge on-campus promotional campaign.  Over the next few weeks, we’ll have staff at five universities across New Zealand introducing students to the benefits of buying their texts online.  So if you see us, make sure you come over and say ‘hi’!

Tired of long lines and high prices at the university bookstore?

Jump the queue and buy your textbooks online!

With a huge range, great prices and fast shipping, it’s easy to see why more students are turning to TheNile.co.nz for their tertiary texts.

But did you know that we’ve recently implemented some innovative improvements to make your buying experience quicker, easier and all-round better? If not, we have some news…

Our Textbook Centre has been revamped! You can now navigate through our many millions of listings via category, popularity or keyword – making it simpler to find and buy your titles than ever before.

But that’s not all!

If you’ve got used textbooks lying around, you’ll be delighted to hear that TheNile.co.nz is offering you yet another way to save. Our new Textbook Buyback program means that you can convert last semester’s books into either store credit or cold, hard cash. If this interests you, please head on over to our official Buyback page for further information and details.

So, if you or anyone you know is struggling under the weight of textbooks this season, make sure to remember that your favourite online bookstore is here to fulfill your broader learning needs.

Save yourself time, effort and money this semester. Buy online with TheNile.co.nz!

The Well and the Mine
Gin Phillips
Year: 2009
Pages: 288

In 1930s America, everyone is suffering through the effects of The Great Depression.  Coal mining towns like Carbon Hill, Alabama are no exception.  And from this bleak and austere setting comes a surprisingly gentle story about poverty and racism in Gin Phillips’ debut novel The Well and the Mine.

The Moore family are surviving the Depression a little better than most, with a small area of farmland and livestock to subsidise the harsh living Albert ekes out in the coal mines.  They are a well respected family, known for their generosity even in the toughest of times, never turning away a neighbour or friend needing assistance.

So it is with great surprise and a certain amount of disbelief that nine year old Tess Moore witnesses a woman steal through the darkness, pull the cover off her family’s well and drop a bundled up baby in.  At first no one believes her.  How could a mother do such a reprehensible thing?  And why did she choose the Moore’s well?

Plagued by nightmares of the baby in the well, Tess along with older sister Vergie, set out to find the woman responsible.

Suffusing the main story are the trials the family individually faces.  For Albert it’s a growing challenge to his sense of justice as he labours alongside Black men in the mines every day but above ground faces a world divided along race lines.  For Leta, it’s the daily grind of maintaining a home and providing for her family, often at her own expense. Vergie experiences an emerging sense of wanting more from her life than simply marrying and having babies as is expected.  And for Jack, the youngest child, he just wants to emulate the strength and pride of his father.

The story is told through the five alternating voices of the Moore family, each with distinctive tones.  It’s not a fast paced novel but is instead a tender and quiet sort of read, one that stays in your thoughts even after you have put the book down.  I found myself often in the days since I finished it thinking back on Carbon Hill and wondering how Tess and the tireless Leta in particular were fairing.  It’s fair to say I adored The Well and the Mine by Gin Phillips, and its temperate approach to some very gritty and unrelenting themes.

-    Kelly

Hunter S. Thompson just bought a new AV system. And he’s not happy. Really… not… happy…

• “Literary biopics usually cater to the fantasy that writers are drunk, mad, sex-obsessed geniuses inspired by the holy spirit (50% proof)…. (But) the problem is, writers’ lives don’t always make for great cinema. If writers are any good, it’s usually because they spend weeks alone, in a room…”

• The top ten unreliable narrators… OF ALL TIME!

• Q: How much literary merit is there in your garden variety Mills & Boon novel? A: …

• George R.R. Martin has got his fans salivating with news that he’s part-way through the fourth novel in his epic Song of Ice and Fire series. BONUS: It’s over 1200 pages.

• Salinger fans, too, are foaming at the mouth after letters reveal the late author was likely in possession of two completed manuscripts.

• The first big plagiarism row of 2010 has begun! A seventeen year-old German author has recently been generating both critical claim and immense commercial success off the back of her debut novel. Unfortunately, large passages of the book are directly lifted from the blog of a different Berliner – albeit in a pseudo-reverential fashion. Is it plagiarism? Is it homage? Is it legal? Who knows? Not me! BONUS: The novel is called ‘Axolotl Roadkill’.

• Russian writers: “…They’re profound and all that. But they’re also incredibly hard. I mean, there’s Pushkin: died in a duel. Lermontov: died in a duel. Tolstoy: fought in the Caucasus. Dostoevsky: sentenced to death, exiled to a Siberian prison camp. Solzhenitsyn: fought in the second world war, sent to the Gulag, survived cancer, defied the USSR …”

• The sinister truth about Calvin and Hobbes. (Actually there is nothing sinister about it - I just thought that sentence was lacking panache.)

• E-Readers Cause iStrain!

• Think people screwing with intellectual property is a new thing? Think again!

Jordan – TheNile.co.nz

Ricky Gervais suspects ‘Flanimal Rights’ movement of stealing thousands of copies of his latest book – thankfully leading to this hilarious interview!

• The nominees for the 1970 Booker Prize have been announced. No, that isn’t a typo.

• “Abandon all hope ye who enter the secret code to Level 9.” Dante’s Inferno is now a video game.

• Unicorns vs. Zombies. You know who my money’s on.

• Vapid reality TV star and sometime author Lauren Conrad has released a list of her all time favourite books. Gawker provides commentary.

• “The group’s passion for Salinger was achingly sincere. They loved his books and claimed to have been saved by his stories. They signed their plea “the young people”. But instead of accepting Salinger’s published works as gifts, they sought his unpublished writings as their due, like ungrateful children. Surely art is not an obligation. It must always be a choice.”

• Just about every man and his dog has had a go at poor Elizabeth Gilbert and her maddeningly popular pseudo-intellectual essays. Isn’t it time someone stood up against the backlash?

• Nick Hornby might get an Oscar! But then again, he might not.

• Jurgen Habermas is not on Twitter! Jurgen Habermas is not on Twitter! Jurgen Habermas is not on Twitter!

• Just because you’ve written a masterpiece doesn’t mean anyone is going to remember you. Sad, but true.

• And finally, a list of literature’s greatest fictional drugs. Enjoy!

Jordan – TheNile.co.nz

Billy T: The Life and Times of Billy T. James

Matt Elliott

Year: 2009

Pages: 256

He was born William James Te Wehi Taitoko, but we knew and loved him as comedian and entertainer Billy T. James.  For the first time since his death in 1991, comes a biography on the man famed for his cheeky giggle, black singlet and yellow towel: Billy T: The Life and Times of Billy T. James by Matt Elliott.

Starting life in Cambridge before moving to Whangarei, the young Billy (or Te Wehi as he was originally known) was not obviously a comedic talent in the making.  Musically however, he was clearly gifted and was never far from a guitar.  It was through music he first began performing, eventually touring the globe with the Maori Volcanics cabaret act where he began honing his on stage skills and his unique sense of humour and timing began to emerge.

The book explores his career as it flourished. Billy toured extensively throughout New Zealand with his stand up comedy routine fused with music and singing (the later a career many believed he could have successfully pursued professionally also) before creating a string of popular television shows and appearing in an award winning, film stealing cameo in the film “Came A Hot Friday.”

But Elliot’s book also shows the lesser known, darker side of the funny man’s life; bad financial dealings, tax investigations, a sinister series of threats on his life (including gun shots fired through his living room window) and the health problems that claimed him at just 42 years of age.  The events around his death and the subsequent “body snatching” to lie in state on Waahi Marae in Huntley – an event which polarised opinions - are also covered.

It’s a comprehensive and deep delving biography, with not just the chronology of Billy T’s life covered, but lots of background information about the man who almost single handedly developed a New Zealand stand up comedy scene.  It is the first time many of Billy’s close friends, including his wife Lynn, have spoken about our greatest comedian and with their help the book reveals the man behind the laughter and accolades as someone who, while always ready with a joke, was almost shy in nature and never seeking of the limelight and praise which naturally flowed to him.  I particularly enjoyed the insights into the creations of some of his best known skits including Marae Network News, Turangi Vice and the Captain Cook landings.

However, the book does suffer at times from a deluge of over information, particularly about other people connected to Billy.  Sections ranging in length from paragraphs to at times, whole pages are devoted to the back story of people Billy met or comedians that influenced him.  These at times bogged the story down and I found myself beginning to skim over these unnecessary detours.

But don’t let that one niggle put you off.  Billy T: The Life and Times of Billy T. James by Matt Elliott, the first ever biography on Billy, is a great read about the man who taught us to laugh not only at each other but at ourselves.   Thorough and detailed and liberally sprinkled with Billy’s trademark jokes, it’s a must read for all Kiwis.

- Kelly