On this morning’s Loose Reads, Nate reviewed Valeria Luiselli's latest novel Beginning Middle End a gorgeously drawn story of a mother and daughter travelling through Sicily. It's a novel that celebrates the middle; exploring the limitations of breaking life into simple narratives and celebrating our constant periods of change. Wise, thought provoking and stylistically inventive.
Listen to his chat with Rosetta and Milly, coming from the new studio, below:
Long Wave is the new novel from English author Daisy Johnson - who was Booker shortlisted for her novel, Everything Under in 2018.
Following three generations of mothers. These women - plus a cast surrounding characters, twist around each other - moving in time, creating connections and reflecting experiences.
If you love rich writing and hypnotic descriptions of the English landscape and water - this is is the book for you. This book was on many 2026 Booker predictions for the longlist (it sadly didn’t make it) and The Guardian says this may be her best novel yet.
Jenna phoned into the studio to chat with Rosetta and Milly, listen below!
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Nate reviews Christian Kracht’s unique and stylish latest novel Air. A jigsaw of a novel, it alternates between a designer desperately searching for authenticity in our contemporary period and a daring fantasy adventure of two people fleeing from an evil duke. The stories, seemingly utterly disparate, start to converge, as Kracht pulls off something daring and enduringly hopeful.
Listen to his chat with Milly below!
Today, Jenna reviewed Ben Lerner’s Transcription . Opening with an unnamed narrator, who is left without his phone as a recording device for the final interview of his 90 year-old muse - we are transported through a slim and considered musing on technology, memory, art & science.
Listen to Jenna’s chat with Milly & Rosetta below.
Nate visited the temporary 95bFM studio to talk about this year’s 2026 International Booker winner, Taiwan Travelogue. This was translated by Lin King.
A romance of longing between two women that captures a bond brought together by colonialism and imperialism - and food.
Disguised as a translation of a rediscovered text by a Japanese writer, this novel was a sensation on its first publication in Mandarin Chinese in 2020 and won Taiwan's highest literary honour, the Golden Tripod Award.
Listen to Nate’s chat below with Rosetta and Milly.
Gwendoline Riley, a recent recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize, is known for her considered and spare writing about London life featuring expressive dialogue between characters.
In her new novel, The Palm House, Laura & Putnam are old friends trundling towards middle age. As Putnam’s work in publishing ends and his father dies, Laura listens to his troubles.
Listen to Jenna’s chat with Milly & Rosetta below.
A Real Piece of Work follows Nola McConkey, an author gaining great success after the publication of her memoir, Animal Oracle, which depicts her grief after the sudden death of her sister, Darina.
The problem is, her family isn’t happy with the book and one of them has put an annoymous complaint to her publisher. On a family trip for the fifth anniversary of Darina’s death, Freya plans to find out who the culprit is.
A novel filled wih genuinely comedic dialogue, vunerablility and big family feelings.
Listen to Jenna with Kathryn Ryan below.
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On this morning’s Loose Reads review, Nate talks about Saleem Haddad’s Floodlines, which he declares is his favourite book of 2026 so far.
An illuminating Iraqi-British family saga that captures art, journalism, diaspora and politics that moves skillfully between past and present.
Listen to Nate’s chat below with Rosetta and Milly.
On this morning’s 95bFM Loose Reads, Jenna declared that this newly minted Pulitzer winner may be a modern masterpiece.
Set in the Great War and written as one (easy to read) sentence. Kraus’ prose is rich and rhythmic, viscerally describing the horrors of the trenches, but it’s also funny, magical and a warning for the future to come.
Listen to Jenna’s chat with Milly & Rosetta below.
Nate reviewed The Shadow of the Object on bFM this week, the latest by Mexican American author Chloe Aridjis. It's an eerie, moody novel that confronts various fragmentations of reality, very much in the spirit of Kafka.
Listen to his chat with Rosetta below:
Jenna chatted to Jesse Mulligan to chat exciting upcoming titles that are due later this year.
Kluge by Pip Adam (mid August)
American Hagwon by Min Jin Lee (end of September)
The Starving Bride by Catherine Chidgey (8th October)
On the Calculation of Volume V by Solvej Balle (mid November)
Listen below:
95bFM alumni Noelle McCarthy has published her second memoir. After the success of Grand, we now have Stakes: Dracula and the secret to happiness.: a book of vampires, family and booze, and a search for desire within the gothic. Set between Ireland and Aotearoa, this is a sensory, nostalgic read.
Listen to Jenna’s chat with Milly below.
Nate visited the bFM studio to talk about author, actress and director Pirkko Saisio’s Lowest Common Denomonator and Backlight, with The Red Book of Farewells due in August.
Translated by Mia Spangenberg, this auto-fiction trilogy was orgiinally published in Finnish between 1998-2003.
For fans of Elena Ferrante, these books are Finnish classics.
Listen below!
Jenna called from boarding the Waiheke Island ferry for a fill-in review of Douglas Stuart’s John of John. Listen below for boat toots & a chat with Nine to Noon’s Kathryn Ryan.
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Jenna phoned into the RNZ studio today to speak with Susie Ferguson about Josh Silver’s Fruit Fly.
Anyone can write a bestseller. Go gay. Go Dark. Go Sad.
Josh’s first novel for adults follows Mallory, an author with severe writer’s block, begins to use the life of a young, drug addicted man as inspiration for her next novel. Silver says this book is about the appropriation of pain, but also questions authenticity and who can tell the story of a life that’s not their own. For fans of Yellowface, this this both fun and dark and completely compelling.
A recent visitor to the Auckland Writers Festival (and to Time Out) we have very limited signed stock on the shelf now. Listen below!
22 year old Cal has returned to the Isle of Harris, after studying on the mainland to live with his father and grandmother. A Scottish tale of returning home, painful secrets and living a truthful life from the author of 2020 Booker winning, Shuggie Bain.
Filled with artfully drawn characters and pure heart, Douglas Stuart’s John of John is sure to be a 2026 favourite.
Listen to Jenna’s chat with Rosetta & Milly below.
Nate debriefs the week that was - including the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards & Auckland Writers Festival events such as Patrick Radden Keefe, Elizabeth Knox, Maria Reva & more.
Listen below!
