BOOK-LOVERS’ NOTES

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 4 November 1933, Page 12

BOOK-LOVERS’ NOTES

AUTHORS AND REVIEWS RETURN OF A TRAVELLER. MISS REES’ NEW ZEALAND HOLIDAY When Rosemary Rees decided to visit New Zealand after a seven years’ absence her pun Ushers suggested a. book about it. They gave liar the title, ‘•New Zealand Holiday,” and all that was needed was that she should travel the Dominion thoroughly and set down .what -she isaav. MiSs Rees confesses she was not as sanguine regarding the result as her publishers. “New Zealand Holiday,” while naturally it does not (or should not) add anything to the knowledge of New Zealanders of their ■country, will bring before readers elsewhere an attractive and informative picture -of the farthest Dominion. Miss Rees makes no attempt to conceal her own love for her country. She does not “rave” about- New Zealand scenery, because she is an experienced novelist, who has travelled far, and not j -an impressionable little islander. She does’, however, find New Zealand deserving o-f the superlatives of which Otago receives a generous share for “scenery unrivalled in magnificence and beauty” and “the most marvellous” of lakes. It may toe said that Miss Rees found in the Governor-General another experienced traveller who is unstinted in his admiration of the scenery the Dominion has to offer. ■** * * *

Miss Rlees is a novelist with a good public -at Home, and one that is more likely to be reached by a book bearing (her name than by many tons of leaflets 'issued by the Publicity Department. * * * * *

Janet Beith, aged 2d, authoress of .the 20,000 dollar prize novel “No Sec-1 ond Spring,” is a daughter of the managing director of the Midland and ■County Bank and a niece of Major j “lan Hav” Beith. She was educated privately and at Girton College, <C'am-| midge. whence she graduated with honours in English literature. She afterwards for -some yeans held a teaching pout in Kent, but has lately been living with her parents in Derbyshire. Her family were not aware of hen determination td become a writer until the award was announced. Miss Beith says she | took up writing “to take my mind off j more boring subjects.” * ! Every year old trans-Atlantic friends call upon us and ask us: j “What new guod writers (or poets) are there since I called on you last?” (writes Sir John Squire in the London “Mercury”). The usual answer is: “None whose future can bo guaranteed, but one or two who show promise.” Disappointment invariably clouds- their faces; what they’ really want us to do is to pound our fists upon our desks and say that Mr So-and-So and Miss Such-and-Such, who have just broken their way out of the egg, are as good as Shakespeare or Edna St. Vincent Millay. People cannot bear the thought of 10 years passing and no writer of importance appearing ; as may happen at any time. They see the past telescopically. They do not realise that there never was an age when a crop of good new poets and prose writers appeared every year; and that in most ages they were very scarce indeed. Great writers are not the only interesting writers; some men’s memories have been kept green for centuries by single quatrains. But if the great, the future great, the great whom posterity will admire (and For whose works posterity will pay prices which will -show a handsome profit) are being looked for, it really ought to be recognised that they are scarce. And they are normal. They are, since they live in a different age, different, to some extent, in thought, and in cadence of voice, from their predecessors. But they don’t try to be different; they may endeavour new musics, but they do not think of new “stunts” in technique, or join “movements” whose gospel is that the whole tribe of mankind in the past has been misguided, and that some particular mode of painting, composing, or writing, is the only right one—emotion and thought fading clear out of sight, whilst attention is concentrated upon some eccentric mechanism of exDression. Poets will continue to arise as long a 6 people feel and respond to the music of words: but good poets will come seldom, and most of the speculators in modern verse will find their investments worthless, unless they “get out” quickly to -investors even less sagacious than themselves. | .«***! “Whv Nazi?” is the title of a firsthand account of the present regime in Germany. The nut>:or is an anonymous German Jew. who despite the Nazi persecutions describes the whole situation with considerable sympathy. * * * * * \ By order of the Nanking Government punctuation marks are to be used. In "I Chinese official documents for the first time in historv. Official documents in China never have been punctuated or divided into paragraphs. Recently punctuation has been used In 7 newspapers and in popular, writings, hut not in the classics. The new order, requires the use of the comma, period, single and double ouo- j tations. asterisks, brackets. and a mark for proper names. Chinese has I no capital letters. ’ I

DISCOVERERS OP FIJI. When Tasman, Cook, Bligh, Wilson, Bellingshausen, and other early navigators sailed the Pacific in .search of i new lands, the difficulties and dangers ) which they encountered were many and j great. They were without charts and | were in ships that were entirely dependent upon wind and sail. Reefs were not the only danger' to naviga- • tion, for there were terrifying hurriI canes and no barometers oj- wireless to I give warning of their approach. Calms were, .sometimes nearly as dangerous owing to the strong currents encountered, a drifting ship being helpless without wind. What these and other intrepid explorers of the Pacific accomplished is amajdng and its full significance is likely to be under-estimated, in the present days of steam naviga- j tion and charts and wireless.

Professor G. C. Henderson, of Adelaide University, in “The Discoverers of the Fiji Islands” has produced a book of extraordinary fascination, more j thrilling than any fiction or modem; travel book, and it is a. book which is 1 obviously destined to be accepted as authoritative in every detail. Not the i least interesting section is that which ! deals with the first map ever made I of the coastline of New Zealand. There j i is no need to have an acquaintance I with the Fiji Island's to appreciate to I the full Professor Henderson’s book, i I which is a. model of its kind and worthy . of a place in every private library. Its ' pjace in public libraries is assured. 1