Bookmarks: Reviews in brief

Our reviews of the latest books from home and abroad.

• The late Geoff Moon's last book is now out: New Zealand Forest Birds and their World (New Holland, pbk, $40).

A former vet, ornithologist, photographer and author of many books, especially on birds, Moon died about a year ago at the age of 94.

He is perhaps best known for his remarkable bird photographs, as this book clearly demonstrates.

Many are of birds feeding, arriving with prey or in their nests feeding their young and his notes explain in more detail some of the birds' habits, and of his own photographic techniques.

This little book will spark the interest of young naturalists as well as charm older ones.

• Until land and air cargo became dominant in the past couple of decades, ships crowded our harbours and steamed up and down the coast and further afield carrying goods and passengers.

Gavin McLean's A voice for shipping (New Zealand Shipping Federation, hbk, $35) tells the story of a particular angle of this history, that of the New Zealand Shipping Federation.

Founded in 1906 by shipowners, for much of its life it was occupied with industrial negotiations with various trade unions, but McLean brings to life what might be otherwise a tedious tale.

• Len lye (1901-1980) was one of the most original artists to have emerged from New Zealand, although he spent much of his working life overseas.

His strangely evocative moving sculptures are exhibited in museums and public spaces around the country- a wind wand in New Plymouth, a water whirler in Wellington - but his hand-painted films are also remarkable.

Art that moves: The work of Len Lye (Auckland University Press, pbk, $59.95) by Roger Horrocks, who was Lye's assistant in New York in the last year of his life, is a companion to his biography of the artist, published in 2001.

He discusses not only Lye's work, but the notion that movement or motion can be composed as art.

A DVD of his films and sculptures is included.