THE BEST SELECTION OF NEW ZEALAND'S WEST COAST BOOKS IN THE WORLD!
Thank you for visiting West Coast Books
West Coast Books is a site we have been thinking about for
several years and we're finally building it. Our aim is to provide a
complete list of all the in-print books about and from the South
Island's West Coast, Te Tai Poutini. A complete list is a fair
challenge as there seem to be more West Coast books than books on
pretty well any other region of New Zealand. If you think there are
other books we should list here we are keen to know. Just use the
Enquiries page.
We are pretty relaxed about where the West Coast might start and
finish from a book's point of view. We start with a hard core of
Buller, Grey, Westland and South Westland, from the Kahurangi north
of Karamea, down to Martins Bay, and across to the Main Divide. When
it suits us we sneak up to Farewell Spit, down to Milford Sound, and
into the Murchison area. And when we get to the Alps we are quite
happy to include books about the passes and parks, railway and
roads, that straddle the Divide.
There is also another dimension to this site: we include books
written by West Coast authors that aren't necessarily about the West
Coast. As long as an author regards themselves as a Coaster we don't
worry too much about where they live now. One day they might come
back home.
Books listed cover a huge range of styles and subjects: from Keri
Hulme's literary Booker Prize winner The Bone People to R. Suggate's
and T. E Waight's Geology of the Kumara-Moana Area; and
from John Breen's River of Blood: Tales of the Waiatoto to Jeffrey
Paparoa Holman's The Late Great Blackball Bridge Sonnets.
We have listed West Coast books in a number of categories, some of
course included in more than one:
Non Fiction: history, Westland, Buller, Grey District, South
Westland, Maori, gold, greenstone/jade/pounamu, coal, timber,
natural history, mountaineering/exploration, hunting, guide books,
road and rail, aviation, photography, scenic, and books by West
Coasters about somewhere else.
Fiction & Literary: novels, poetry, & children's' books set on the
West Coast or by West Coast authors
As well as books, we list the best DVDs on the West Coast. And while
we don't list them individually we supply all the 1:50,000 and
1:250,000 topo maps. Just let us know what area you want using the
Enquiries page and we'll soon sort out the right map for you.
With all this you can see it might take us a while to finish listing
all West Coast books. In fact, as we have up to 20 new books
published each year, it may well be we that will never quite
complete the job.
But we will have a great time trying. We look forward to helping you
find that special West Coast books.
The West Coast Books Team