Kia ora koutou,

 

Happy new year! We're popping in to share what the team have enjoyed reading so far this summer. 

 

Firstly, we must make a farewell. After ten years at Time Out, our Suri is heading off to work in the world of law. 

Suri has been an incredibly passionate bookseller and delightful, hardworking colleague. She is well loved by our team and customers, but has also been recognised in the wider book industry including being a long time bFM reviewer, receiving the award for 2019 NZ Young Bookseller of the Year and a 2020 Baltimore Winter Institute scholarship. We will greatly miss having her on the shop floor, but know she will be coming in regularly to chat books on the other side of the counter.

Here's what flew out the door in December.

Finally, Nate has written about some of the 2026 titles that he's looking forward to, you can read that below. 

 

We will be back next month with our regular staff picks and new release highlights.

 

Love, 

 

The Time Out team x

One book I loved from the end of 2025 was Rabih Alameddine's The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother), the close, hilarious and accepting relationship between Raja and is mother is great to read.

I couldn't put down Julian Barnes' Departure(s), it's very compelling. Ariel Lawhon's The Wife, the Maid and the Mistress, was an easy and light-hearted read. Perfect for after the busy Christmas period!

Next, I'm picking up John Lanchester and Maggie O'Farrell.

I've had a lovely summer of reading. My favourite so far has been Tony Tulathimutte's Rejection. Deeply engrained in internet culture, this satirical read is outrageously funny. I just loved it!

Not pictured is Helen Garner's How to End a Story Collected Diaries 1978-1988, which is a weighty tome. Completely quotable & searingly honest, it's been a joy to have settle into her words every day.  

My summer reading was a bit like the weather: all over the place.  I went from deep, affecting and hard hitting with Whidbey, to cynical and darkly funny in the middle with Workhorse and Half His Age, and ended with SenYenLu's Alchemised for some romantasy. It's hard to pick a favourite since they were all so different, but there was not a dud amongst them. 

It's been a great summer of catching up on my backlist, mixed with some early 2026 releases. A highlight was reading Pip Adam's The New Animals in a campsite that was slowly turning into a pond (if you know you know). I finished my read-through of Ali Smith with the final novel to check off my list There but for The, in anticipation to her new book Gylph out in February. It was as delightfully inventive and profound as all her previous. Jon Fosse’s latest novel Vaim, which spotlights passive men who love their boats, was both befuddling and powerful in equal measure, while Claire-Louise Bennett’s Big Kiss, Bye-Bye may have suckered me back into caring about autofiction. I think Paradiso 17 by Hannah Lillith Assadi, centred on the life of a Palestinian man, could be one of the big books of 2026. Her prose is astonishing and the way the novel bends in and out of time, life and death, each moment cycling back to something before it, makes for an absorbing and unique reading experience.

This summer, I’ve visited a broke livestreamer in a cramped NYC apartment (Just Watch Me by Lior Torenberg); two young brothers trying to stay together as the war breaks out in Ukraine (The Sunflower Boys by Sam Wachman’) ; a rambling old house in the Philippine jungle (House of Monstrous Women by Daphne Fama); and in the post-WWI UK countryside, a small town touched by magic (Thistlemarsh by Moorea Corrigan). It’s been a rollercoaster of emotions and literary experiences, to say the least! Just Watch Me was an intense and feverish read, which I zoomed through - so it was a relief to finish with Thistlemarsh, a gentle, wholesome and surprisingly clever magical tale. The Sunflower Boys will stay with me forever (I had a big cathartic sob at the end); and House of Monstrous Women was a twisty, dark queer horror that kept me guessing.

It's been a mixed bag of summer reading for me! I started off with a reread of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine so that I feel ready to venture into heavier sci-fi texts this year. I've also just finished Bob Mortimer's The Long Shoe which I really enjoyed. His natural wit and characterisation always makes for perfect light, laugh-out-loud reading. Dipping in and out of Dr Hinemoa Elder's Ara has been beautiful and reflective. I'm about to head off on holiday, so I'm taking some little Penguin Classics with me as they won't add too much weight to my bag! It's been a great summer of reading and I'm reallllyy looking forward to a bookish year ahead.

The taut, cool prose and spare plot of Ultramarine by Mariette Navarro (2025) —an interior dive into the minds of a container ship's sea captain and her crew— calls to mind the films of Claire Denis as well as Tarkovsky's Solaris. 

Joyelle McSweeney's Death Styles (2024) offers a stream of daily poems written in the wake of her daughter's death. It thrums with liveliness in its daily insistence on the present.

For those back at work— with a page-turning narrative voice and a sly wit, Claire Baglin's On the Clock is a quick and sharp interrogation into the alienation of labour under late capitalism. 

Playing catch up here— the widely lauded Chinese Fish by Grace Yee (2023) easily surpasses high expectations in its tangle of personal and social narratives. Expansive, affecting and exquisitely knitted together.

This summer was a great one for exploring many genres and stories. What Does Isreal Fear from Palestine? by Raja Shehadeh explored the history and future of the Palestine/Israel conflict, a perfectly written summary of events and a great introduction to the topic. Bell Hook's All About Love was the great way to start my journey with the author and was an easy read, while still discussing critical theory. Twilight was my entertaining summer read and feels like a rite of passage for teenage girls. Kurangaituku by Whiti Hereaka followed the journey of Bird Woman, in a non linear tale about her adventures in the human and underworld. Tim Curry's memoir Vagabond followed the stories of the iconic actors life. My First Book by Honor Levy was a collection of short stories about internet culture and what it is a to be a young person online. Natalia Ginzburg's Sagittarius was a beautifully written novel about family and a misplacement of trust.

Nate explores some upcoming releases he's excited for.