A book review. "A Land of Two Halves"-by Joe Bennett

One major difference between life in Opunake and Wilmington? TIME! I have time. There are many reasons for this turn of events but let us save that topic for later. Suffice it to say, I have it and I have done what many say they will do if they get it...I read. Back home I can never muster the energy to read...and I. Love. To. Read. 


First I read "The Wave" an entertaining book about killer waves and tsunamis interwoven with surfing's quest to ride a hundred foot wave. 

The next book is one I have just finished today, "A Land of Two Halves". A book by Joe Bennett, an Englishman who accidentally emigrated to Christchurch fifteen years ago and ended up staying. He is considering a move and decides to explore New Zealand to see if he ought to stay or not. He was a teacher and then a newspaper columnist and now he writes full time. Anyways, he decided to hitchhike his adopted country in order to gain appreciation of it. 


I offer this to you because it is not a travel guide, it is not a coffee table book. It is a point of view of New Zealand which is off the beaten path. It is insight about life in any country, since we humans share many of the same foibles and frailties.  At the same time it is about New Zealand. Now I cannot claim that it is the real New Zealand since I have only been here a wee while but I found it entertaining, irreverent, and containing some nuggets of opinion which I may or may not end up agreeing with over the next eleven months. 


So, if you are at all interested in a land, far, far away and only know they have a lot of sheep, they do a lot of bungy jumping and the Lord of the Rings trilogy was filmed here, this may be one way to explore this land.