Breaking horses, hard drinking, changing lightbulbs and shooting things - such archetypally masculine pursuits are set to go shoulder to shoulder with reading, it seems. Or they will do if the organisers of New Zealand Book Week have their way.
As part of this year's festival, Auckland Town Hall is hosting a dedicated evening for fathers and sons. The plan is for reading - "extreme" or otherwise - to be promoted as a great occasion for male bonding, just as "manly" as hewing logs and yelling at referees. There's free beer, if anyone doubts it. I haven't been able to find details for what the evening's proceedings will comprise online, but one hopes there will be competitions to wrestle meaning from Finnegans Wake, as well as bouts of bare-knuckle lit crit where participants review each other's aesthetic, and lift the longer novels of Norman Mailer.
