Bliss in Paradise

24 Nov 2011

I flew into Wellington over the Marlborough Sounds, that maze of tree-lined waterways making up the raggedy top of the South Island of New Zealand.

“That’s what Paradise looks like!” I said to the lady beside me, her daughter gazing happily out of the window on the glory below.

And in a land that is all scenery, this is one of the best bits. All but uninhabited, the hills rise steeply from the blue water, islands and capes making a yachtie’s delight. Holiday houses or “backs” as the locals call them, sit on the shoreline here and there, a small boat or two tied up at a wooden dock. There are very few roads. The big inter island ferries pass by, decks crowded with tourists filling up memory cards with the beauty.

Wellington, where the 2011 Australia/New Zealand BookCrossing Unconvention was held this last weekend, was more delight. Reminding me of San Francisco, with the houses climbing the hillsides above a wide and sheltered harbour straddling a fault line, it is the small nation’s capital, and the galleries and museums, office towers and parliament buildings crowd the narrow belt of flat land. New Zealand’s national museum of Te Papa is one of the world’s best, and take it from someone who has seen the Smithsonians and the British Museum, I’m not hyperbolising here. I’ve never seen a museum that so perfectly holds every aspect of a nation’s heart.

Food in New Zealand is always good, but coffee is an art form here, and we unconventioneers claimed our tables in restaurants and pubs for the many dinners, shedding books as we stacked on the kilos.

And here’s Alice Bliss in Paradise. The UK and US editions side by side on the background of my well-travelled BookCrossing.com tote bag.

My paperback copy is pristine, freshly read and ready to be passed on. The other copy is the US hardcover, sent by Laura Harrington as a giftie in the Where’s Alice Bliss project to BookCrosser Wombles in Queensland – and congratulations on the safe arrival of your new daughter on Monday – and then posted to Discoverylover in Wellington, where the two books met before diverging again.

Discoverylover reckons she used up a box of tissues in the last hour of reading, which is no surprise. She’s got the same sort of romantic sentimental heart that propels me through life, except more so.

Thanks, Laura, for writing this book and sending copies around the world. It’s been a pleasure participating, and, um, is there a follow-up in the works?

— Skyring