Joan's Picks: Tom Lake and From the Pilot’s Seat

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett  - always exciting to have a new one from her. Lara, Joe and their three daughters come together during a COVID lockdown when there are no workers to help them pick their cherry crop, so the family is mobilised to help. As they work, the girls egg their mother on to tell them about her own youth, during a time when she was part of a theatre company called Tom Lake and had a relationship with an actor known as Duke who became very famous – while Joe sits patiently to the side, letting this history unfold. Looking back at her younger self and telling her girls some of what went on - but not everything – Ann Patchett brings the past alive and marries it beautifully into the present day. This is a book about family, love and growing up and it’s wonderful. 

From the Pilot’s Seat by Fletcher McKenzie- A keen and highly experienced pilot himself, Fletcher McKenzie has interviewed 23 other Kiwi pilots about their love of flying, their experiences across a wide range of aircraft - planes, helicopters and gliders - about their near misses, greatest thrills and sudden terrors -and how they survived those - what comes across consistently is the huge passion for being in the air, the opportunities it’s given them all and how they wouldn’t have lived their lives any other way.  

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