After something of a hiatus over the festive season, the book pages of the Listener are back online for the January 17-23 issue.

Historian Michael King reviews Chris Maclean’s John Pascoe, a biography of the former Chief Archivist. By the time he died in 1972, Pascoe had been Secretary of the Historic Places Trust, controller of wildlife for the Department of Internal Affairs, a mountaineer, a non-fiction writer and, King notes, "an execrable poet and failed novelist." However, "He trained himself to be an outstandingly good documentary photographer while working for the government during World War II." Pascoe makes a good subject for a book, it seems:

Do these achievements, all (barring his photography) modest ones, merit a full biography of the man and his times? The answer has to be a resounding yes. Because Pascoe accomplished the things he did with a passion that was contagious and life-enhancing; and because he left, in a tin trunk, a full set of personal and professional papers that has enabled his biographer to track the subject's life in considerable and revealing detail. In the process, Chris Maclean has written, in effect, the biography of a close family that experienced the social and cultural upheavals of New Zealand life in the 20th century.

On a more international note, Russell Brown reviews The Baghdad Blog, a compilation of weblog entries from 'Baghdad blogger' Salam Pax:

This book is a quickie. It is literally a cut-and-paste from the Internet. But there are circumstances under which a quickie can be a great book, and this is one … It's unthinkable to begrudge Salam his break. In so bountifully expressing his humanity through those inhuman few months, he made more of a mark on history than any of us will.

The Meaning Of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester was reviewed by Peter Calder in the Herald, about a month ago. He described it as an "excellently readable book about one of the enduring monuments of English culture". Terry Snow likes it too:

Winchester's book fills out the OED story in an account that is rich in lightly worn erudition and measured entertainment, and chock-a-block (orig. Naut, with reference to tackle) with facts and lively characters ...

Meanwhile, Sarah Treadwell looks at Frederick H Newman: Lectures on architecture by Andrew Leach, a retrospective of the man known best for his power stations at Maraetai, Whakamaru and Roxburgh.

Tony Simpson, like many before him, dismisses The Boy by Germaine Greer:

Journalists, like cobblers, should stick to their last, or they are liable to come up with – well, cobblers, really.

Finally, Hedley Mortlock reviews a batch of thrillers: Avenger by Frederick Forsyth ("Dated"), Want To Play? by the mysterious P J Tracy ("Sassy"), He Who Fears The Wolf by Karin Fossum ("Beautiful") and Missing by Karin Alvtegen ("Highly original").