A good, thick Landfall 219 ($29.95, pbk) will be available on Monday from the Otago University Press, and it is a cracker.
Edited by Bill Direen, this issue is dedicated to music, celebrating the end of New Zealand Music Month.
Much of it is devoted to what my generation would (quite inaccurately) call New Zealand "pop" music, and a very entertaining sequence of contributions it is.
But there's a nod to "classical" music, too, with an essay by the indefatigable William Dart on Ross Harris and Douglas Lilburn's symphonies, and the usual end section of reviews, together with photographs, poetry and stories - all connected in one way or another (some very tenuously) to music.
A superb short story, Maxine, by Siobhan Harvey is worth the price alone, but there's a lot of other excellent reading here, too.
• Local and district museums constitute an essential part of that group of institutions dedicated to locating, conserving and preserving important facets of this country's rich heritage.
Jamie Bell's Our Central story: 50 years of the Alexandra District Museum Association 1959-2009 is a modest but colourful and informative booklet describing the formation of the Alexandra District Museum Association, the challenges it has faced, the travails it has had to endure and the successes it has enjoyed.
It is a fitting tribute to the association and the foresight and dedication of its members, and to the staff of the museum: the fruits of their labours are for all to see in that fine new building - Central Stories - in Alexandra.
