Whitcoulls Recommends: Joan's top non-fiction books of 2025

Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy. This is by the author of the Booker Prize winning The God of Small Things - about her life growing up in India, the forces that shaped her, and particularly her very difficult relationship with her mother, Mary, who is always referred to in the book as Mrs Roy. Mrs Roy was a formidable force of nature and in trying to make sense of the dynamic between them, and to find her own way in the world, Arundhati has written a deeply moving, entertaining and profound memoir. How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair. The author grew up in Jamaica where her father was a radical Rastafarian and was paranoid about keeping his daughters away from the secular world which they referred to as Babylon. Safiya’s childhood was often brutal, peripatetic and poor but she had the soul of a poet and the dream to eventually become one. It’s an extraordinary and deeply moving memoir – how one young woman eventually found the courage to stand up to her father and became the woman she never thought she could be. Anyone who read Educated and loved it will love this. The Breath of the Gods by Simon Winchester: A remarkable exploration of our atmosphere, and the role played in our lives by wind – which can be both benign and malevolent.  It’s a fascinating story told through history, literature, science, poetry and engineering – and includes a piece on our own Wahine disaster. Simon Winchester has an ability to make the everyday and apparently mundane, extraordinary. The Hollows Boys by Peta Carey. The story of the three Hollows brothers Gary, Mark and Kim, who were pivotal in the helicopter deer recovery era in Fjordland in the 1970s which was a dangerous and unregulated time. Gary Hollows died (as did many others) and the pain of that is still felt keenly today, more than 40 years on. The work they did against the backdrop of such a beautiful part of the country is jaw dropping, with high deer tallies helping keep that population down (and thereby protecting the environment), lots of money sloshing around and amazing stories of real derring do by a group of extraordinarily brave and reckless men who lived by their own rules. Mana by Tame Iti. The deeply personal account of the life of one of our greatest rebels and radicals who grew up being forbidden to speak te reo and became one of its biggest advocates (amongst many other causes). He’s lived much of his life in the public eye, going from bad boy status to that of a national treasure and the journey is well documented in this beautiful and thoughtful book. It’s a lovely production and includes lots of photographs, including some of his own artwork.  LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.