THE BOOKSHELF.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 278, 23 November 1929, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE BOOKSHELF.

NEWS AND REVIEWS.

PRINCIPLES OF MAORI ART.

ALFRED NOYES AS NOVELIST.

A memoir of C. E. Montague, journalist, essayist and novelist, is reviewed on page one.

Mervyn Skipper's fairy story of Borneo, "The Meeting Pool" (Robertson and Mullens, Melbourne; Elkin Matthews and Marrot, London) contains some quaint and original drawings by R. D. Coulter, and is a suitable gift book for the Christmas season. It includes some strange natural history, and its "Eastern" atmosphere is wholly charming to adults as well as to children.

| Mr. Rodney Gilbert, who is already the 'author of three books upon China and the Chinese, has written the supposed autobiography of a Chinese from his earliest years to manhood. This has given him an opportunity of relating in detail manners and customs iiot generally known to travellers. "The Indiscretions of Lin Mang" (John Murray) is a history of queer customs and beliefs (as related by the Chinese boy), some amusing, some horrible, and many of political and legal interest. For either the student or the general reader there is a mass of information told in the style of one writing in a diary.

The death of Mr. Harold Begbie, the well-known author and journalist, at the age of fifty-eight, removes a very engaging personality, says the "Spectator." He had many friends of widely differing interests, and his enthusiasm for good causes infected them all. We have often wondered why he was not a greater figure in his generation than he was, for his sincerity was deeply rooted r.ud his powers of expression were of a high order. Perhaps the reason of Mr. Begbie's failure to make a deeper mark was his versatility and a certain verbal excess. The average Englishman somehow does not regaYd seriously a writer who does not always write of sober subjects with sobriety.