Iain Sharp, books editor of the Sunday Star Times, has penned an interesting piece for readers who are "stuck in a rut". Sharp offers good suggestions for new reading across the whole gamut of literature and on the local oeuvre, he comments:

… I do think there are many local books that deserve to be better known.

One of them is Aucklander Sheridan Keith's novel Zoology. Though it won the fiction prize at the 1996 Montana Book Awards, I keep running into otherwise well-read people who haven't heard of it. I can't think of a wiser book about the differences between men and women and how these change over time.

Zoology was Keith’s debut novel. Her first collection of short stories, Shallow Are the Smiles at the Supermarket (1991), was shortlisted in the Best First Book category of the Commonwealth Writers Prize. Her second story collection was Animal Passions (1992).

Sharp’s second local recommendation is Nigel Cox's novel Skylark Lounge (2000):

… another overlooked New Zealand gem. Some reviewers were put off by the fact it's a sort of alien abduction story, but the science fiction element is just a starting point. Skylark Lounge isn't about outer space. Instead, it's a marvellous - yet unsentimental - appreciation of everyday earthly wonders.

Incidentally, Cox left New Zealand in 2000 to become Head of Communication and Interpretation at the Jewish Museum, Berlin. He joined fellow NZer Ken Gorbey, one of Te Papa’s developers, in a controversial dual appointment.