Arrowtown book buyer Miranda Spary continues her regular column about her recommendations for a good read and life as she sees it . . .
Winning and losing seem to have been the main topics of conversation ALL week.
Huge bitterness and hurt feelings from my family who seemed surprisingly surprised to be described as not huge achievers in last week's column.
To remedy that, I would like to make it known that my parents' house is home to a lonely trophy - the 1949 Waitaki Girls' tennis thimble, while my brother's unnecessarily large trophy shelf features only a rather nasty plaque commemorating his 1980s achievement as an Intermediate Tariff Assessor, whatever that is.
They have all pointed out that my prize-winning career includes a measly second in the Lake Hayes A and P big egg class and a very lowly fourth in the biggest thistle.
As I may have mentioned, our DNA doesn't really hold much of the winning gene stock.
But some people do all the winning - this week has been a big one for two pairs of sisters.
The Spire Hotel sisters Lucy and Amelia Gain have managed to win three World Travel Awards (the Oscars of the hotel industry) - Australasia's leading boutique hotel, New Zealand's leading boutique hotel, and NZ's leading ski resort hotel award after owning the Spire for less than a year.
On top of all that, they have also been nominated for the world's best boutique hotel.
And the Two Sisters winery at Gibbston picked up the London International Wine Fair's prize for the top single vineyard white wine of any variety with their 2007 riesling - a sensational achievement as well, so big congratulations to the Peren and Gain girls.
Yet another local Queenstown girl is on the way up in a big way, too.
Beautiful Holly Shervey is holding an auction of her own paintings in November to help with her tuition fees.
Not content with being a pretty accomplished artist, she is going on to study stage and screen acting with such New Zealand stars as Miranda Harcourt, Michael Hurst and John Callen.
If you want to see the details for the auction, email Holly on hollyshervey@gmail.com - this is your chance to be able to show off in a few years as you point with pride to the painting you bought to help her out before she became a big name.
The Breast Cancer Awareness evening was a real winner on Friday night.
Julie Hughes and her team deserve a huge pat on the back for their premiere screening of Midnight in Paris.
Everyone had to dress up in Parisian style and was treated to Bonjour's very fabulous French hors d'oeuvres and Amisfield's very New Zealand and very sparkling Pinot Gris.
Dorothy Browns was packed to the rafters with locals all enjoying a chance to dress up and catch up.
I was sorry to have made the mistake of going as a rebellious burqa-clad Parisian - the girls in the glamorous French outfits were having way more fun.
Woody Allen's latest movie is fabulous - he's gone back to being funny and clever instead of just deep and weird.
If you think life was more fun in 1920s Paris, you will LOVE this movie.
And of course, the other big winners were the All Blacks.
Snooty as I am about rugby, even I couldn't not watch on Sunday night - soooo stressful.
Of course, I was glad NZ won, but the Australians were such gracious losers - they must have been so disappointed.
A New Zealand friend of ours who runs a very bi gSydney office gave all his Kiwi staff Monday off, but not the Australian staff - how mean was that?
It seems as if all the rugby supporters whose teams are out of the competition are in Queenstown this week and all having a fabulous time now they can relax and not worry if they are going to win or not.
Queenstown is definitely profiting from their loss at last, and it's not before time.
Everyone seems to have had a tough winter business-wise, and it is a relief to see everything filling up.
I've been being a guinea pig this week.
Thanks to Peggy Preston at Studio Sangha who has brought Lance Schuler to town to run a month-long yoga teacher training course, I have been poked and prodded into position for two hours early each morning this week.
I am a marvellous guinea pig as even the most novice yoga teacher can see things that I am doing wrongly and try to fix me.
Fat chance, guys! You will all be fantastic yoga teachers one day, but I will ALWAYS be what looks like a beginner yogini, however many years I practise.
Jay and Jewell Cassells thought they could sneak out of town and nobody would know it was their birthdays this week.
What a shame I found out - do be sure to give them a big birthday hug. And a huge birthday hug to lovely Jane George who tried to keep her big day a secret as well.
This is annoying at any time, but particularly annoying when I am finally reading Anna Funder's stunning Stasiland.
Funder became interested in the stories of East Germans who had lived that weird life under the all-seeing eye of the frightening secret police, the Stasi. She started interviewing both sides - those who worked for them and those who were persecuted by them.
The stories are extraordinary and although I thought I knew what the Stasi had been up to, this book reveals all sorts of terrible things that none else but the paranoid East German dictatorship could have dreamt up, like irradiating people who were of interest to them so they left radioactive and traceable footprints.
It's hard to remember this is non-fiction. Not only are the stories so unbelievable, but the author has done such a great job that the characters and their struggles seem too real to be true.
I haven't finished it yet - but the minute I finish typing this column up, I will be straight back into this gripping book.
