Arrowtown book buyer Miranda Spary continues her regular column about her recommendations for a good read, and life as she sees it ...
I've been away in Sydney for four days and can tell I had too much fun.
I have come back having lost my voice but picked up a few spare kilos instead.
Our 20-year-old daughter has been living and working there over the university holidays, along with almost every other young New Zealander I know.
I thought she was desperate to see her mummy, but really what she wanted was a mule to come over and bring back the whole extra suitcase of clothes she had bought, now that the airlines charge so much for carrying luggage.
She has been staying with friends of ours who live in an apartment block in central Sydney.
For a country mouse like me, this is really exciting - using the lift, having coffee bars right outside the door, taxis whizzing past ready to pick you up anytime and SO many neighbours.
It only takes a day to get to know them, like the once-elegant department store buyer, who now has dementia.
She greets everyone at the door as if they were long-lost friends and follows them to their apartment.
And the fabulous old gay guy whose door is right opposite the lift and who pops his head out whenever he hears anyone coming and going, and offers his opinion on how you are dressed and what movie star you look like.
You can get involved in a conversation or not, and it's really nice to have the choice.
City life isn't all coffee and glamour, though.
In Queenstown, while you might see someone sleeping on the street (usually someone who has partied a little hard) or busking (often the offspring of perfectly well-off locals), we just don't have the down-and-outs or the junkies.
It's pretty depressing, watching someone running up and down the street yelling for a non-existent friend and crying, then seeing them still doing it an hour later, or having some angry guy off his face on who knows what swearing at every passerby.
When you come from here, you are used to seeing the streets full of pretty happy, healthy, fit people and it is always a shock to get the city version.
As ever, I checked out all the bookshops and found they are all saying the same thing.
Their customers are coming in and looking at all the books, then whizzing home and buying them online.
It's no wonder as it is so much cheaper.
But it's no good for the bookshops, and it is important to remember that if people don't buy books in a physical shop, soon there won't be any bookshops to browse in and the world will be much the poorer for it.
The same is happening with clothing - some shops around the world are now charging a trying-on fee.
People come in and try clothes on to get the right size and style, then go and get them on the internet.
Australian retailers are really hurting because of this as the Aussie dollar is so strong that buying from European or American websites is giving them amazing discounts.
Every time I have driven through Gibbston lately, I have seen the sign for the new pub.
I've finally been as we were invited to a dinner there for the PGA sponsors last week.
It's been built on the site of the original Gibbston pub, which burnt down in 1912. But the old outbuildings are still there.
It's got big open fires and a terrific atmosphere.
And still on the subject of Gibbston, have a look at Fat Tyre's new "Tour de Vigne" - they give you a bike and a picnic and take you cycling all through our great and glorious vineyards for a wine-tasting tour.
It's no wonder the Sydney event organiser I was talking to at a party was waxing so lyrical about Queenstown's allure for incentive tours.
I was very nervous about the book I finally read this week.
Daniel Kahnemann won the Nobel Prize for economics and has written what everyone is calling a masterpiece Thinking Fast and Slow.
Books by economists generally don't hold one scrap of interest for me, but my super-bright nephew (not one I share any genes with, quite obviously), who is doing his doctorate at Oxford, reviewed this book and gave it such high praise that I determined to have a bash at it.
It's about the way we make decisions, using two systems in our brain - system 1 is the main one and it does all the fast work.
System 2 is the one where you need to frown and dilate your eyes and raise your pulse and actually THINK.
This is hard work, so whenever we can, we use system 1.
The examples and exercises he gives to show you how it works are brilliant, and it is a very slow read as you keep needing to try them out for yourself.
He shows how even the smartest people still jump to the same wrong conclusions as all the rest of us and, after you have read it, it is impossible not to keep analysing the decisions you have made and wondering which system was making them for you.
Don't forget it's Farm Jam down near Winton next weekend.
Your children will think you are unspeakably cool just for knowing about it, let alone taking them to it.
Look online or keep an eye out for the posters.
