Summer Times

Selecting a greatest New Zealand test XI is a curly exercise, made even harder when you restrict its members to a maximum of just five tests. Cricket writer Adrian Seconi picks a team from players, who for whatever reason, were cut off in their prime.

You can't choose your family, but you can choose whether to go into business with them, although sometimes getting out of business with them can be messy. Brent Weatherall talks to Debbie Porteous about how sharing a business philosophy with your family does not necessarily mean you can share a business.

Continuing last year's Summer Times quest to find out what was the best day of people's lives (except the birth of their children or the day they met or married their partners), another eight Otago residents tell their stories.

Dunedin woman Shona Somerville travelled 14,000km to satisfy a long-held wish to do voluntary work overseas. She tells of her volunteer holiday in Ethiopia.

Profiling investors who profited from the sub-prime mortgage crash might sound like a catalogue of avarice, but Lewis's 2010 book depicts them as endearing eccentrics challenging the group-think that caused the crisis.

For Shingle Creek pram collector Lesley McGregor (60), the first piece in her collection was a necessity - she was pregnant with son Duncan. That was in 1980, she was living in Invercargill and the second-hand Pedigree Airstream was only $5.

Josh Emett Rata Queenstown

Sports editor Hayden Meikle has suggested 12 must-read sports books, and a bonus 12 to fill those quiet summer days. He also asked some others for their favourite sports reads.

They do it for love, not money, and readers of the Otago Daily Times sports pages over the past few decades should be thankful for that. They are the long-serving ''stringers'', or contributing writers. In the final of three profiles, sports editor Hayden Meikle talks to tennis identity Dennis Radford.

They are the men who pilot teams around the field. New Zealand has had plenty of quality servants at first five-eighth. Rugby writer Steve Hepburn ranks the top 10 of the pivots.