Always.
Category Archives: Fun Stuff
Silly things and lols.
Just because, really…
TL:LOL*
This is long(ish) but funny.
Somewhere on the floor there’s a cat wandering around with a BookieMonster label, looking superior and being easily distracted. Then falling asleep.
*Too long: I laughed.
Darlings! I am returned!
BookieMonster’s Picks of 2012
2012, we hardly knew ye. As the year draws to a close, I confess I’m looking forward rather than backward. 2012 is a year I’m more than happy to consign to history.
2013, you will be mine!
However, it seems obligatory to do some sort of year wrap-up, so here’s a few of my favourite things (apart from whiskers on kittens):
My Favourite New Books of 2012
Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
Bloody brilliant. Mantel is SUCH a good writer particularly with voices and small details. She doesn’t drown you in historical guff, she just adds flavour here and there so you BELIEVE.

Mansfield with Monsters by Katherine Mansfield, Debbie and Matt Cowens
I’ve told everyone I can that Steampress are the kiwi publishers to watch now. They’re putting out fiction that is better and more original than anything the big boys are doing. Mansfield with Monsters was a perfectly done literary mash-up. One did not know where Mansfield ended and Monsters began, and one loved it.
The Dinosaur That Pooped Christmas by Tom Fletcher and Dougie Poynter
I mean, really.

The Prince of Soul and the Lighthouse by Fredrik Brouneus
Steampress again, those sneaks. This title was up there with the best in YA fiction, one that I hope gets a wider audience this year because it was SO GOOD.
Best New New Zealand Publishers
Clearly, the aforementioned Steampress. But also Book Island, a lovely little Kapiti Coast publisher bringing gorgeous European children’s books to NZ (in english translation). In both cases it’s wonderful to see innovative and creative people taking a punt and doing it so well. Publishing is not easy work, so please do support them when you can.
Most Fun Review to Write
Well, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, of course. I hope you all enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
So, there’s a few thoughts from yours truly. Of course I’d like to hear your thoughts too – comment away! Or go outside and enjoy the sunshine, your choice.
Like BookieMonster on Facebook and win a copy of The Laughterhouse by Paul Cleave!
It’s Christmas, a time for giving. So I’m doing the giving! And what a gift…
Just like BookieMonster on Facebook and enter the draw to win your very own copy of The Laughterhouse by Paul Cleave!

From the author of the international best-selling thrillers The Cleaner, The Killing Hour, Cemetery Lake, Blood Men and Collecting Cooper.
A gripping new thriller from crime writing sensation Paul Cleave.
Theodore Tate never forgot his first crime scene – ten-year-old Jessica found dead in the ‘Laughterhouse’, an old abandoned slaughterhouse with the ‘S’ spray-painted over. The killer was found and arrested. Justice was served. Or was it?
Fifteen years later, there’s a new killer on the loose and he has a list of people who were involved in Jessica’s murder case, among them Doctor Stanton, a man with three young daughters.
If Tate is going to help them, he has to find the connection between the killer, the ‘Laughterhouse’ and a growing list of murder victims. And he needs to figure it out fast, because Stanton and his daughters have been kidnapped, and Stanton is being forced to make an impossible decision: which one of his daughters is to die first.
Prize courtesy of Penguin NZ.


