Topic: Library notes by Kiri Nga-Rita 18/01/2012

Topic type:
General

Journey

On December the 5th 2001 Peter Blake was lost to the World. 10 years on Pippa has put her thoughts and feelings to paper and shared with us an extremely personal insight into their life together and her way of recovering after his death. Journey by Pippa Blake had me hooked from the first page. To me Peter was a national hero a great sailor who went out and conquered for New Zealand. But of course he was also a husband and father and it appears a reserved quiet man. Pippa shares the journey from when she first met Peter, their marriage and their many adventures around the world, and of course the most difficult part for her- that of after his death. Pippa writes with great honesty and as I read through the book I gradually got a sense of what an amazing woman she is in her own right. It feels like you have been invited into the family as she takes you on adventure after adventure. I felt quite humbled to enter and share her very personal journey.

Top to bottom by Marc Ellis is a rollicking four wheel drive adventure. Toyota has come up with some memorable ad campaigns over the years and when they wanted to advertise the new FJ Cruiser they approached Mark to see if he would be interested in driving one from the top to the bottom of New Zealand. There was however one hitch Marc and the team had to drive the distance off road. This was a high risk campaign. The public would be involved the whole way as many would guide Marc through the back country. There were many things that could go wrong and the vehicle’s performance would be under close scrutiny. Throughout the journey Marc met many wonderful and colourful characters and these iconic Kiwis are included in this story. A great read.

BP once portrayed their company as promising a world beyond petroleum, of promising green alternatives to fuel the World. In Poisoned Legacy by Mike Magner this myth is well and truly dispelled. Mike looks at some of the shocking disasters that have happened because of BP’s cost cutting practices. On April 20^th 2010 the deep-water Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico killing eleven workers and creating the largest oil spill in the history of U.S. off shore drilling. Over 200 million gallons of heavy crude turned the rich and productive fishing industry into a desolate disaster area. It seems though that the sins that BP committed in the Gulf were not the only ones. In 2005 an explosion at a refinery in Texas killed 15 workers and injured 180 others, this was blamed on cost cutting and negligence of safety standards. In 2006 there was a leak from a BP pipeline in Alaska which caused the largest oil spill on land in Alaska’s history. Once again this was found to the company’s fault in not maintaining the pipeline in the harsh Arctic environment. There are many other incidents that Mike covers in the book that may change our perception of BP from being of an environmental leader to real villains in the corporate world.