In this week’s Listener, Books editor Steve Braunias offers smart, potted appraisals of new NZ releases. So, succinctly, these are the tomes Braunias likes:

The Flamingo Anthology of NZ Short Stories, edited by Michael Morrissey, “is a safe and well-mannered anthology, and is warmly recommended.”

In Salting The Gravy is a memoir by Robin Lee-Robinson, Barry Crump’s fourth wife: “It's artlessly written and hideously proofed. But this is an absorbing, sad and often painful read.”

In Pursuit of Plants: Experiences of nineteenth and twentieth century plant collectors is by Philip Short. It’s also a “marvellous addition to botanical literature, with profiles of over 50 collectors around the world, including William Colenso, who goes orchid hunting in the Ruahines, in 1845 …”

On Display: New essays in cultural studies is edited by Anna Smith and Lydia Wevers, a “collection of Cult Studs Lite”.

Wild Words by Teresa O'Connor is “a lively collection of columns from the Nelson Mail … there is an especially gentle piece of writing about basketball coach Trevor Wright.”

Nelson's Historic Country Churches is by Annette Wells and is a “splendidly illustrated guide to churches in Takaka, Murchison, Motueka, Mapua, Upper Moutere and other places in paradise.”

Wairarapa Buildings: Two centuries of NZ architecture by David Kernohan is a guided tour of over 500 buildings and “superbly researched, telling a history of architecture from de Clere to Gardyne.”

A Short History Of New Zealand by Gordon McLauchlan is “told briskly and pithily, for the possible benefit of college students, and is over and done with in less than 200 pages.”

Unfurling is by Judith Dell Panny: “Poems by a Massey University academic and Janet Frame scholar”.

More poems are in Words From A Journey by Doug McPhail: "Waiting for the old man/To stagger home to the good wife/The missus waiting to feel again/The beery breath mixed with new perfume/Smelling like a blocked drain."