Kelly Ana Morey’s latest book is not a novel, but the eighth instalment in Awa Press’ Ginger series. It’s called How To Read A Book but the title is something of a misnomer, because this more of a mini-autobiography, and all the better for it.

The book most frequently referenced by Morey is the ‘horse novel’ My Friend Flicka by Mary O’Hara. Flicka is one of those children’s classics that, when read by an adult, proves to have depths its target audience never perceives.

And that sets the tone for this enjoyable troll through Morey’s world of books. Morey is refreshingly honest about the books she likes and doesn’t like, books she simply can’t be bothered to read, and the travails of attempting to write a book. Witi Ihimaera describes her as ‘a literary Holly Golightly, hauling her arse through her life’ and that sums it up well.

Awa’s other new release is How To Look At A Painting by Justin Paton, and I opened this with some trepidation. One of my all-time favourite reads is John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, a hugely influential book (and 1972 BBC television series) on art, and I couldn’t see how Paton could possibly top that.

Paton, curator at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, fortunately takes a different slant. Like Morey, he offers a more ‘personal’ view; early in the book, he analyses a painting of his great-great-grandfather, created a century ago, and painted the day after the good man died.

We get Paton’s views on exhibition design, how to handle the tourist-in-a-famous-foreign-gallery experience, why the Venice Biennale is important, why Caravaggio rocks, and what Colin McCahon’s Victory Over Death 2 really means. It’s a good, fast read, bereft of pretension and packed with common sense. If you’ve ever gone to an exhibition and felt intimidated, underwhelmed or just plain confused – and haven’t we all - this is the book for you.