MORE REVIEWS FROM "BOOK SHOP"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 775, 28 May 1954, Page 9

MORE REVIEWS FROM "BOOK SHOP"

OOK SHOP, which has been heard from main National stations fortnightly since late in 1951, next week becomes a weekly feature and the main book review session of the NZBS. The YZ session For Your Library ends this month and ZB Book Review at the end of June, and in future few book reviews will be heard as local programmes. The new Book Shop, which will be broadcast from the YA stations and 3YZ on link at 8.20 p.m. on Wednesdays and from the other YZ stations during the same week, will change its character to some extent and review about 200 books a year-instead of only one a fortnight, as at present. The story of Book Shop and of its "voice," Arnold Wall, was told in The Listener a year ago. When the session began the aim was to review one book -an important one-and to have two short talks on topics connected with books in each fortnightly session. Mr. Wall told us, when we asked about the new session, that in the 69 editions heard at the time we went to press 50 books had been reviewed, Sessions without reviews had had special Christmas and New Year features, discussions, interviews, and so on. Of the books reviewed 17 had been on travel and world affairs, 13 were fiction, eight had dealt with poetry, music, drama and the arts, eight had been biography or autobiography, and four-all by New Zea-landers-were war books. With the reviews had gone more than 100 short talks, all by different speakers; and Mr.

Wall said he hoped all short talks heard in the new session would also be by new speakers. "Many of our short talks have come from people who were unknown to the local stations, but wrote in about one thing or another," he said. "We hope to enliven the new session by the occasional discussion or interview, and we would like to think that people who feel like contributing to it in any way will write in and say so." Up till now reviews for Book Shop have been arranged by the Head Office Talks Section of the NZBS, though Mr. Wall has commissioned short talks used in the programme. But from now on Mr. Wall will arrange reviews also and the entire programme will originate from 3YA, where he is Talks Officer. Mr. Wall said that in selecting books for review he was helped by reviews in such publications as the Times Weekly Review and Times Literary Supplement, the BBC London Calling and Listener, John o’ London's Weekly, and the London Observer. "Then the review copies come in and you have to pick your reviewers," he said. "A book like Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception gives a good example of the problem. He was a willing guinea-pig for trials of a new drug ‘mescalin,’ which produces curious mental effects. Who do you get to review the book? A chemist, who knows the history and the future of this group of drugs? A psychiatrist, who can discuss the queer effects of the drug? Or an all-rounder, who represents the ‘average’ reader or listener?" The same sort of

problem had to be faced to some extent with all books except light novels. Mr. Wall added that in supplying review copies and in other ways publishers’ representatives had been most helpful. The first edition of the weekly Book Shop will be heard from the YA stations and 3YZ at 8.20 p.m., and 4YZ at 9.15 | p.m. on June 2, and from 1YZ at 5.0 p.m. and 2YZ at 6.0 p.m. on Sunday, June 6.