Copyright thespinoff
Welcome to The Spinoff Books Confessional, in which we get to know the reading habits of Aotearoa writers, and guests. This week: Laura Vincent (Ngāti Māhanga, Ngāpuhi), author of the just-released novel Hoods Landing. The book I wish I’d written My own life is enough. I couldn’t face absorbing someone else’s in order to also achieve their story. It’s more the circumstances I envy – I’d love something to coast on, you know? So I could spend all my time just writing and living. I wish I’d been at the eye of a 90s zeitgeist, before the looming threat of relevancy-via-Tiktok-dances hovered over everyone with something to promote; or that I’d got the jump on hazy drifting insouciance before Eve Babitz; or maybe that I’d written some pinched, clammy novel in the 1950s that’s since become beloved of lesbians forevermore. I occasionally wish I’d come up with Schrödinger’s Cat. There are always more things to come up with, but does the world have the space to notice and remember their names anymore? Everyone should read The dictionary. It’s fun and educational. Re-read anything you wrote as a kid. Read Māori writers of all genres, forms, times and styles. We’re cool. The book I want to be buried with The book I already am buried with every night: How to Eat by Nigella Lawson. By which I mean, I listen to her audiobook as I sleep and all realms briefly overlap, one way or another. The first book I remember reading by myself Mum says I had Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes memorised at a very young age after having it read to me a few times. Whatever happened to those brain cells? I was obsessive, reading about sodium laureth sulphate on the back of the shampoo bottle in the shower – and moved to novels quickly – Enid Blyton, Agatha Christie. Then The Baby-Sitters Club – I vowed I could get through this without mentioning them but here we are. I’d speed-read them on the floor at the Waiuku Paper Plus because I was eight years old with no disposable income. Mum gave me Chaucer and Renée to slow me down – she taught me that I could drop my patriarchal surname like Renée did. The book I pretend I’ve read I read War and Peace in a single day just to say I did, which is not a good reason to pick up a book; nor is it good for comprehension or retention. I recollect the impression that the book was about rampant queer love, but man, that titular war really does set in for the long haul. I suppose I’ve technically read it, but it’s the equivalent of getting a stamp on your passport during a connecting flight in a country where you’re at the airport for two hours. Fiction or nonfiction Fiction! But I love nonfiction written with the same level of flourish and intensity. Anthony Bourdain. Richard Hell. David Niven. Laurie Colwin. Paris Lees. Every summer I like to read a fat nonfiction book where I learn about a human-made atrocity: the opioid crisis, that sort of thing. It’s a crime against language to Use generative AI, which is degrading art and processes and facts and and waterways and neural pathways – but it’s also embarrassing. I know you can’t bring ethics and integrity to this knife fight but at least our collective and objectively correct rejection can shrink its presence until AI fades away to mortifying insignificance. Love your imperfect brain. Become AI-hostile. Also – since I’m here, and running out of new people to complain about this to – writing for SEO has ruined food blogging. Bury me with that. The book that haunts me Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. And Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder. And, I invoke three fresh hauntings: Poorhara by Michelle Rahurahu – this novel makes you feel what the characters feel down to their temperature and the texture of their clothes and I still find myself hoping they’re OK. Audition by Pip Adam – her writing gives me this sense that I’m stuck under fluorescent lights outside of time and place and that I’ve just swallowed ants (this is complimentary obviously). And Sloane Hong’s Marrow and Other Stories – sinewy and stressful and stunning and thrilling. The book I never admit I’ve read I have nothing to hide, but for anyone who does, my friend the excellent poet Hebe Kearney introduced me to the singular found art of blackout poetry. You and your pen can reclaim or reshape existing words into something profound or humorous or cathartic – or simply an improvement. The book I wish would be adapted for film or TV Since I’ve already acquiesced to excruciating millennial touchstones, I know there’s a world in which an arch and garish adaptation of the Sweet Valley High Evil Twin miniseries could be made; I’m thinking Gregg Araki to make it happen. The most overrated book I’m not really at a vantage point here to be churlish, but people, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo has vile stabs in the direction of plot twists, a flat incuriosity, and the overwhelming aura of existing solely to be turned into a screenplay. And frankly, it does a disservice to hot redheads. Encounter with an author After orbiting Nigella Lawson like a distant and enthusiastic planet since 2001, I finally met her in 2019 when she came to Wellington for one of those ticketed events where a celebrated author sits on stage and answers banal audience questions. I lined up afterwards for an hour. I say this with all sincerity: she was lit from within, genuinely celestial. Glowing. Upon locking eyes with her, I panicked: “You’ll never know what you mean to me,” I murmured, fervently. I guess she must get this a lot. Serenity was restored when Nigella commented on my food-stained, note-scribbled copy of How to Eat (most other people in line having new books purchased that evening). I swear I heard harps. Best place to read Under the leaf-dispersed shade of the trees that grew taller as I grew taller each year at [redacted] campground (there’s already too many people going there); later that same night by torchlight, interrupted only by the distant sound of tent zippers, ruru, and the smell of canvas and citronella oil. What I’m reading right now Being demonically possessed by your own novel coming to buzzy fruition is ironically terrible for being able to read anything else; nonetheless I’m working through a pile of mid-flight books that I snatch pages of on the bus or at 1am when I should be doing other things like sleeping or berating myself for not sleeping. Out of Syllabus, an exceptionally adult poetry collection by Sumana Roy; Eros the Bittersweet by Anne Carson, it’s inspiring me to make a new ice cream flavour; Whaea Blue by Talia Marshall which hurts to put down; People Like Us by Dominick Dunne because I find a particular type of Hollywood legacy baggage fascinating; Checkerboard Hill by Jade Kake which I have just started but feel I will love; a Raymond Chandler collection for research; the already food-stained Boustany: A Celebration of Vegetables from My Palestine by Sami Tamimi, and I’m whipping through The Uninvited by Dorothy Macardie to see if the rollicking subtext in the 1944 film is borne out in the novel on which it’s based. Hoods Landing by Laura Vincent ($35, Āporo Press) is available to purchase by Unity Books.
