Arrowtown book buyer Miranda Spary continues her regular column about her recommendations for a good read and life as she sees it . . .
I my-skyed the NZPGA for my darling and started watching it a bit myself.
It's fantastic! If you fast-forward the golf, there is some brilliant footage of Queenstown looking its most sensational self.
Watch Don Cheadle and his gorgeous family walking the Milford Track and Ziptrekking - it's no wonder Wakatipu is getting more and more visitors.
My friend Jenny posted a very annoying photo of her iPhone's weather forecast for Queenstown over Easter - sun, sun, sun and more sun.
Those North Islanders took one look and they have been swarming in ever since.
Even locals have been gasping at the autumn deliciousness. I can't remember it being this good for years.
It's been exhausting having everyone arriving at once. When friends are only here for a few days, it's important to make the most of their time here and catch up a lot.
The trouble is that with so many visitors coming, it's easy to miss catching up with friends who are here all the time. There doesn't seem to be the same urgency about seeing them, and there should be.
All the trees are flaunting their gorgeous selves in their fiery colours, apart from those sad natives that never do much more than struggle with survival in the Wakatipu's native-unfriendly climate.
And those poor darlings that have been attacked by the council-appointed Asplundh.
Honestly, do their staff hate trees?
Surely they could prune them without making them look like the victims of a violent and vicious madman.
All around the district is evidence of their loathing of our leafy friends. Please will someone from the council ask them to stop before the basin is fall of dismembered, mutilated willows, poplars and chestnuts? Ugly work.
Enough ugly autumn talk, start thinking about the Arrowtown Autumn Festival.
In fact, it's a bit late for thinking. The smart people got their tickets weeks ago and many events are sold out. Look up the festival online and see what's still available.
And if you want tickets for Sir Ian McKellen's performances in Wanaka, quickly contact the Festival of Colour and make yourself a patron so you can get priority booking, not just for this show, but for the other great events.
All the money from the Hobbit star's shows is going to rebuild the Isaac Theatre Royal, in Christchurch.
Jane Cockburn is trying to organise a fundraiser to help poor Fiji. It's a terrible mess there, so if you have ever had a fun holiday there and want to help the world's smiliest, happiest people get their smiley happiness back, do contact janey.cockburn@hotmail.com However sad Fiji is at the moment, nothing can compare with the constant sadness of North Koreans.
Several people had recommended reading The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson. It's fabulous in both senses of the word.
Jun Do's life rockets and roars through every layer of mad leader Kim Jong-Il's absurd world, where the only reality is what the Dear Leader says it is on any given day.
It can be a little confusing, as there are a lot of different voices speaking from the hysterically funny propaganda that is broadcast direct into each household each day, to private, thoughtful musings by the various characters.
It's not possible to read it without wondering about how you could survive in a world where the truth is recreated to suit the whims of one person.
One of the funniest bits has to be when the North Korean delegation visits Texas and then plans how to host the Americans back on North Korean soil.
It's a novel, but the author has visited North Korea and commentators knowledgeable about this locked-up nation say the story is not as far-fetched as people like us in free and lovely New Zealand might imagine.
Now I'm hooked on Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy, the BBC Samuel Johnson Nonfiction winner, trying to learn more about this sinister place where citizens can tune into only the Government's radio station.
I hope you all had a wonderful Easter.
