Arrowtown book buyer Miranda Spary continues her regular column about her recommendations for a good read, and life as she sees it ...
I am going to tell you about former British cricketer Ed Smith's book Luck this week.
He argues that luck plays a huge part in our lives, despite what all the writers of self-help books would have us believe.
I know I am lucky - living in the Wakatipu is a dream for even the luckiest people in the world and having a healthy, happy family and loads of friends is the greatest luck of all.
I have also got a job writing this column each week and more very funny and fabulous emails than I can always reply to (sorry about that).
In three or so years of writing it, I have had just three negative comments.
This week, several of you said you had heard someone on national radio (apparently some young and angry commentator) making very cross noises about my column describing a lot of rich old Queenstowners swanning around in Turkey having fun - how dare they!
Sorry, angry, young person, but when you get a bit higher up the ladder agewise, you will feel how wobbly it gets up at this level as friends start falling off.
You will probably feel like wasting some of the time and money you have got left, doing some of the endless wonderful things this world has to offer.
And if you do not like reading about it for now, there is a very simple solution ... I have not been swanning about in the Med this week, but in Berlin instead.
The last time I was there, the wall did not know how little time it had left - we were chipping bits off it (on the safe side, of course) with the East German guards giving the odd token bark at us to stop.
It is extraordinary to go back and the biggest change I noticed was the colour.
East Berlin was all grey then, the buildings, people, even the weather and trees.
Berlin is still a grizzled, gritty city - it is one huge building site - but it is so very vibrant.
Germans are fantastic at mocking themselves - one guide said of the shiny gold victory column "we think it's important to be reminded of our rare military victories".
The political science student who showed us round the Reichstag was delighted to show us the Russian graffiti that has been retained in the fantastic Norman Foster makeover - it was put there by very excited young soldiers as they took over Germany and its parliament.
Our history is so bland and bloodless in comparison, lucky, lucky us.
I also got the chance to meet clever Sarah Quigley who wrote The Conductor.
I know many of you have loved it and it was launched last week in the UK to great acclaim.
Creative New Zealand sent her to Berlin on a scholarship 12 years ago and she has never looked back, or come back.
I can see why.
The hotel we stayed in was in former East Berlin - one review said it was perfect for people who loved Goodbye Lenin (terrific - one of my favourite movies) kind of kitsch and totally German - helpful, friendly, immaculately clean and a gigantic breakfast every morning - bad luck if you were vegan - I have never seen so much protein in one place.
Luckily no lift and a fifth floor room burnt a bit of it off.
I am planning to write all the details of where we have been staying and travelling into one big email so I can just forward it on to readers who ask.
My huge apologies for not replying to you all and thank you so much for your own suggestions and stories.
Emails like Cleome Bloomfield's put me to shame as she had obviously carefully written up her fascinating travel journal every day, instead of copying my way of stuffing it all into the great wastepaper basket otherwise known as my brain.
And Luck?
Two readers had read about it and suggested it for a review - it is pretty interesting about luck, but there is an awful lot about sport, especially about cricket ... zzzz ... I do not know anyone who has actually read it but I am betting lots of chaps will love it.
I am not a chap.
