Children's Author of the Month

Our Children's author of the month for this month is Anthony Browne. Click here to see his titles on our Library catalogue:

What Library staff are reading . . .

So, because it’s the end of the year, I thought we could do something slightly different . . .

Holiday To-Be-Read List

• Zeitoun by Dave Eggers ~ the true story of one man’s experience of Hurricane Catriona
• So Much for That by Lionel Shriver ~ just arrived on my desk
• How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu ~ who can resist a title like that?
• Marianne in Autumn by Armistead Maupin – for those of you who remember the Tales of the City series – this is revisiting Marianne 20 years later – I was addicted then, so am really looking forward to this one - See http://www.armisteadmaupin.com/
• Frankie magazine – art, craft, fashion
• Runway magazine – Australian contemporary art
• Speaking Volumes: conversations with remarkable writers by Ramona Koval. I love Koval’s Book Show on ABC radio, and this is an extension of that
• I explain a few things: poetry of Pablo Neruda. There’s text in English AND Spanish, a nice way to learn a little of that language
• The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson. It won the Man Booker Prize this year, and I’m interested in the exploration of the Jewish nature/culture
• Best Australian Short Stories 2010 edited by Cate Kennedy. I’m curious to see what this writer has put together as Australia’s best-of, always a subjective decision but informed by Cate’s incisive mind
• What’s their story? A history of Australian words by Bruce Moore. Yes, one for a word freak
• Hale & Hardy : Tales and recollections from a country practice by Paul Carter
• The Girl who kicked the hornet’s nest by Stieg Larsson (to finish this)
• Morgan’s run by Colleen McCullough
• Three seconds by Anders Roslund
• The colony : a history of early Sydney by Grace Karskens
• I’m taking The Life and Times of Mexico by Earl Shorris to Byron Bay with me but I might be too busy swimming, eating, sleeping . . .
  

Best Reads in 2010

• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee ~ absolute perfection 5/5
• Lunch in Paris by Elizabeth Bard ~ a delicious love story – with recipes – can't wait to try the Quick and Dirty Chocolate soufflé. Captures an American living in Paris beautifully. See http://www.elizabethbard.com/
• Popeye never told you by Rodney Hall
• Balthazar Jones and the Tower of London Zoo by Julia Stuart
• Maestro by Peter Goldsworthy
• Perfume: the Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind
• Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger
• Less than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
• Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
• Born Standing Up by Steve Martin
• Sexually I’m more of a Switzerland by David Rose
• Solar by Ian McEwan
• Hollywood moon / Joseph Wambaugh
• Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson
• The hand that first held mine by Maggie O’Farrell
• The Guernsey literary & potato peel pie society by Mary Ann Shaffer
• Epilogue : a memoir by Anne Roiphe
• A Scattering by Christopher Reid
• Gift Songs by John Burnside
• At Home : a short history of Private Life by Bill Bryson
• Lovesong by Alex Miller who remains one of my favourite Australian writers, for his humanity and democratic explorations of the human heart
• Three Dog Night by Peter Goldsworthy - Strong characters, unflinching perspectives. Set partly in central Australia
• The Butterfly Man by Heather Rose - Set in Tasmania. Simply beautiful
• Piano Lessons by Anna Goldsworthy - a finely-tuned memoir about learning piano with a remarkable teacher
• The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas - a rambunctious, in your face; great portrait of the parents of the slapped child, and that whole inter-parental culture
• S by John Updike - A satirical look at loony religious movements, told in letters.
  

Worst Reads in 2010

• The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver ~ should be great, all the ingredients are there but . . .
• The Pages by Murray Bail
• My Booky Wook by Russell Brand ~ I wanted to see what the talented singer, Katie Perry, saw in him (she is engaged to him) – I am still not seeing it. There is 3 nights of reading I will never get back. http://www.bethinking.org/culture-worldview/my-booky-wook.pdf
• The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
• Disco Boy by Dominic Knight (a bit too ‘lad-lit’ for my tastes)
• People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
• Her Fearful symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger - I loved her first book The Time Traveller’s Wife but this was nowhere near as good
• The many conditions of love by Farahad Zama - Again, her first book was charming, this lacked interest for me
• Timoleon Vieta Come Home by Dan Rhodes - Slightly sleazy mindset here
• Leaving home with Henry by Phillip Edmonds -An imagined road trip with Henry Lawson. I don’t think the writer’s imagination was up to it, and not a patch on the quixotic mind of Lawson himself. The idea is good, the execution disappointing
• Mr Rosenblum’s list by Natasha Solomons
• I tried to read a Peter Temple book – not my usual thing but I thought I’d give it a go – and I didn’t get very far (can’t even remember what it was called!).
  
  
  
  
  
• 
  
  Merry Christmas to all our borrowers and readers
  
  
  
  

What gingerbread men say about you

No, they don't gossip behind your back. This research, from The Garbing Reed Institute in Bern, tells us that when faced with eating a gingerbread man, 76% of consumers feel some degree of guilt.

Question: Once you’ve got past your unease, how do you eat a gingerbread man?

1. Snapping off a limb (leg): Indicates a tentative nature, a desire to be liked and an unwillingness to be confrontational. Extremely insecure, often puts the needs of others before themselves.
   
2. Snapping off a limb (arm): Confident and inclusive. An achiever who is prepared to act even if those actions might incur some risk. A leader who is comfortable making decisions.


3. Biting off a limb (arm/leg): Biting off a limb from a whole gingerbread man suggests that the more negative traits indicated above can be more prevalent. Tentativeness leans towards sloth – decisiveness can tend to manifest itself as bossiness.


4. Snapping off the head: Forthright, somewhat aggressive with narcissistic tendencies. Little regard for the views of others. Generally unaware of the effect ones actions are having on others.


5. Biting off the head: Downright nasty bit of work (paraphrasing here). Self-centred despot with no time for the weak or those who do not conform. Destined for board level positions and early retirement on a fat pension.


6. Breaking in half/random destruction: One of life’s dreamers. Happy to go with the flow and rub along. Can be prone to introspection, which might be interpreted as selfishness. Never knowingly upsets anyone – but never the first to volunteer.


7. All in one go: Dr Baring didn’t actually address this one. But it’s not hard to interpret. Your just damn greedy!” - This was our beloved and dearly missed Border Collie, Derek Dog's technique. We baked and decorated Gingerbread trees one Christmas, put a ribbon through a hole on each and hung them on the Christmas tree. We heard an odd noise as we went, then realised it was crunching - Derek was munching as we hung!!! He'd polished off quite a few by the time we cottoned on.
   
8. I'd make an educated guess and say the same or similar would apply to the eating of Jelly Babies.
   
   Via Stephen's Lighthouse blog.

The Englishman who Posted Himself and Other Curious Objects

The Englishman who Posted Himself and Other Curious Objects by John Tingley

At a stamp auction in Oxfordshire in 2001, stamp collector John Tingley bought a small group of strangely addressed postcards that travelled through the British post between 1898 and 1899, sent by Will Reginald Bray. From this initial purchase, John Tingley embarked on an obsessive investigation into the life of the man who decided to challenge the British postal services rule that "all letters, [etc.], must be delivered as addressed." Studying the Post Office Guide, W. Reginald Bray had also found that the smallest article that can be sent by post is a bee, and the largest is an elephant and he goes on to post all manner of goods - onions, turnips, shirt collars and even himself - complete with bicycle!

The British love their eccentrics and this guy is right up there with the best of them. W. Reginald Bray was an inveterate collector:

All in all his upbringing was fairly ordinary for a middle-class boy in the late nineteenth century. But during his formative years, he had already developed a passion for collecting postage stams and postmarks - the nascent beginnings of his fascination with the postal system. he also collected train tickets (and girlfriends).

He aquired some notice and notoriety during his own lifetime, becoming in the 1930s the subject of an episode of the BBC radio programme, In Town Tonight. He also seems to be well-known in the philately and autograph collecting communities. (He would send a postcard to various celebreties asking them to return the postcard with their autograph - very few, it seems, did not comply with this request.

This is a lovely book, lavishly illustrated with examples of W. Reginald Bray's handiwork. I found that I got most of the information I needed just from reading the captions to the illustrations so it didn't take long. It's a bit of quirky fun.

If you want to find out more there is a website dedicated to W. Reginald Bray.

Just a few Christmas websites

For the children in our community . . .

NORAD Santa Tracker uses state of the art technology including global positioning systems (GPS) and Google Earth to track Santa Claus as he sets out to deliver presents on Christmas Eve ~ The tradition of NORAD's Santa Tracker began over 50 years ago when a child dialed a Santa hotline phone number listed in a newspaper. The number was a misprint and was really the number to CONAD (Continental Air Defense). Instead of hanging up on the children, the good-hearted Colonel Harry Shoup instructed the staff to track Santa using their high-tech equipment. The tradition continued when NORAD replaced CONAD in 1958 and continues today. It's now a tradition at our house too.

Santa's Net - Traditions around the world - How do children in different countries of the world spend Christmas?


Northpole.com - lots of activities for children



For the next time you have a project to do on the subject, here is Today's Snowman : the Official site for the History of the Snowman : From the Ice Age to the Flea Market.

Blackheath Library Bookworms

The Guardian Best Books of 2010

The Guardian asked writers, critics and readers to nominate their choice for this year's best books and the results have been published in a novel way. Books that had three recommendations or more were included and the cover of each title is represented in a size proportionate to the number of votes it got. You just need to click on the cover of each title to find out more about it and to see how many votes it got.

Go and take a look over here.

We've been reading other Best of Lists recently too and have put them in the Best of Lists page (one of the tabs at the top of this blog).

London Review of Books to get seriously serious

Earlier in the year I blogged about a book I particularly enjoyed called Sexually I'm More of a Switzerland. It consists of personal ads from the London Review of Books. They are very clever, as you would expect from a high-brow publication and very very funny which is perhaps more of a surprise. Take a peek in the latest edition (at Katoomba and Springwood Libraries) and see for yourselves.

Sadly the fun is coming to an end. John Sutherland reports in The Guardian books blog that the LRB is going to drop its personal ads and is taking the whole thing very personally:

The LRB personals will be sorely missed. I think fondly of those days, in 2002, when I was stalked personally in the personals by such ads as: "Mr Loverman. Shabba Ranks of the English concourse. Terry Eagleton is my gold tooth – John Sutherland is my Spandex pants. Come join me in my Essex ghetto for hot nights of suburban lurve . . . Bitchin." Blissful times for "sixtysomethingpointyheadedprof".

Alison's Picks - December 2010

Sarah Banerji : Writing on Skin

Marianne Fredericksson : Hanna’s Daughters

Ian McEwan : Solar

Christos Tsiolkas : The Slap

Nicholas Shakespeare : Inheritance

Good S*x in Fiction

Earlier this month we discussed the Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction Award when the 2010 gong was won by Rowan Somerville and we posted his reaction.

On Wendesday Rowan Somerville posted her Top 10 of Good Sex in Fiction. Take a peek at the list and see what you think.

December / January gr now online

The December/January issue of goodreading magazine is now online here - all you have to do is enter your library card number.

• This issue has an interview with thriller king Dean Koontz who tells Tim Graham about his illustrious writing career.
• Sonia Bellhouse looks at the growing phenomenon of book clubs and shares some tips on how to create a good one.
• Lachlan Jobbins takes us on a literary tour of St Petersburg.
• Be sure to check out the extract from Australians of the Year by Wendy Lewis - Professor Fred Hollows is the inspiring focus.
• Chris Bray introduces readers to his new book The 1000 Hour Day and what it's like to recount the amazing expedition to an isolated island in largely uncharted territory.
• Juliet Marillier, popular author of the 'Sevenwaters' series, talks about her fifth installment in the phenomenon, Seer of Sevenwaters. Juliet chats to goodreading about the inspirations and challenges behind writing her popular series.
• This month there are several first chapters for you to sample: Across the Universe by Beth Revis, The Kingdom of Ohio by Matthew Flaming, The Salt Road by Jane Johnson, Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada , The Marriage Club by Kate Legge and To Love, Honour & Betray by Kathy Lette
• There are also useful tips to cure your sore peepers after a long day of reading.
• Don't forget to check out the best books of 2010, which you can give as wonderful presents this Christmas!
• Enter the December competitions. This month you could win tickets to a production by Belvoir Theatre in Sydney, a VIP package to the Somerset Celebration of Literature or copies of Oliver Sacks' The Mind's Eye and Rescue by Anita Shreve.

This month goodreading has also released the second edition of their new online publication, SpineOut, a magazine especially for young adults. SpineOut aims to encourage and showcase the creative talents of young adults throughout Australia - take a look for more information or to submit a little creativity.

There are competitions, reviews by students, tips and advice on serious issues as well as pages with random, entertaining information that young adults will enjoy.

The Report

The Report : a novel by Jessica Francis Kane

This is fiction based on a true event.

On the night of 3rd March 1943 a crowd is hurrying down the stairs into the air raid shelter in the Bethnal Green tube station when something goes wrong and in the deadly crush which ensues 173 people (27 men, 84 women and 62 children) died. Ironically this was the one night in a long, long time when the Germans did not bomb London.

What happened that night? Local magistrate Laurence Dunne is tasked with conducting an inquiry. Was a woman pushed, or did she fall? Was it racially motivated (the 'Jewish problem')? Was it due to a new weapon being used by the Germans - some people reported a different kind of bang and while the dead people had bruises, there was only one person with broken bones and she walked away from the incident?

The story flicks between 1943 and 1973, the 30th anniversary of the incident. The story of some of the people involved in the incident is told; Ada and Tilly Barber who lose their daughter and little sister Emily in the crush; Chief Air Raid Warden James Low who is overcome by guilt and ultimately takes his own life; Reverend McNeely who is overwhelmed; the nurse, Claire and her boyfriend, Bertram who has been deemed unfit for the Front :

p. 21 : It seemed impossible to Bertram that his feet would be the reason he was home watching sparrows instead of fighting. He'd heard of others who'd been refused for bad teeth, bad eyesight, lower-back pain. The decisions of high command were inscrutable. How could any of these conditions be grave enough to keep him at home? He'd volunteered for every bit of civil-defence training - gas, fire, rescue - and heard that his youth and strenghth would be valuable on the home front. When the Home Guard formed, he joined a company. In his group of twenty-five men, one had a withered arm, one was mentall deficient, one had a glass eye that fell out when he leaned over, and two were in the advanced and most obvious stages of venereal disease.

In 1973 Paul Barber, adopted son of Ada, interviews Laurence Dunne. He learns that there is more left out than is said and even that was suppressed by the authorities in 1943.

It's hard for us who have never experienced war to imagine what it might be like:

p. 139 : But talking to him was like talking to any young person about the war years: they spoke from a background of black-and-white pictures, while your memories were very much in colour. They asked about the rationing, while you saw coupons. They spoke about the public morale, when what you remembered was the faces. Try as they might, they only heard a chord or two, while the whole symphony roared in your head.

This book gives us a good taste of life in the Blitz and humorous little details certainly add to the realism and brings home the humanity:

p. 23 : Low had been chief warden since the Bethnal Green shelter opened. Before that he'd been an air-raid warden, volunteering as early as the summer of 1938. That autumn he'd worked almost every night with several other wardens in the Bethnal Green Gardens, their exercises accompanied by loud gramophone recordings of exploding bombs, except on those nights when the lady wardens attended. Then they turned the records down so that the bombs sounded like gentle pops, a precaution that made little sense to him or anyone else, but before the war it had felt civilized to indulge these niceties. The enemy, they thought, didn't have such refinement.

WWII history is not my strong suit and the thought that Britain were anticipating war, and practicing for it just blows me away.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, read it in just a couple of sessions and I heartily recommend it.

You can read more about the disaster on this BBC webpage - click here. And there is another report here. They make for fascinating reading.

A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

A reliable wife

Plot Summary : Rural Wisconsin, 1909. In the bitter cold, Ralph Truitt, a successful businessman, stands alone on a train platform waiting for the woman who answered his newspaper advertisement for "a reliable wife." But when Catherine Land steps off the train from Chicago, she's not the "simple, honest woman" that Ralph is expecting. She is both complex and devious, haunted by a terrible past and motivated by greed. Her plan is simple: she will win this man's devotion, and then, ever so slowly, she will poison him and leave Wisconsin a wealthy widow. What she has not counted on, though, is that Truitt - a passionate man with his own dark secrets - has plans of his own for his new wife (Fantastic Fiction)

Review : Goolrick's fiction debut gets off to a slow, stylized start, but eventually generates some real suspense. Isolated on a remote estate and imprisoned by relentless snow, the story of Ralph and Catherine unfolds in unimaginable ways. This dark psychological tale builds to a strong and satisfying close.

Reviewed by : Carolyn

Christmas gift suggestions

How about a poster like these on your living room / bedroom / library wall?



These posters are created by Postertext. Postertext creates these elegant posters using the full text of the book in question.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes one depicted above on the left for instance has been created from a collection of twelve stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, featuring his famous detective.

If you have a favourite book and they haven't already made a poster of it, you can email them and put in a suggestion. I'm guessing they mostly work with out of copyright works though.


Also, the New Yorker's blog, The Book Bench, had some Christmas gift suggestions the other day that were quite good too. I particularly fancy the goldfish bowl book ends.


Anyone feeling generous?

Get more @ your library

From today our usual borrowing period of 3 weeks has been extended to 6 weeks for most items so you can get more out of your reading holiday while we have ours.

All our library branches will be closed over the Christmas and New Year period from 5pm on Christmas Eve (note that is 30 minutes early for Blaxland, Springwood and Katoomba branches) until we open again at 10am on Tuesday 4th January 2011.

The extended loan period will continue until Monday 10th January 2011 when the loan period will return to 3 weeks. The number of loans will remain at 20 items per membership.

Not included in the Extended Loan Period ~ TOYS, DVDs and COMICS will not have any extension to the loan period, or increase in the number of items allowed.

Holds/Reserves ~ The Hold period for reserves also remains at 2 weeks.

Reach Out and Read

Here is an excellent program that I came across when I was reading about something else.

Bellevue Hospital in New York has a program called ROR - Reach Out and Read where ROR volunteers read aloud to children while they wait for the doctor. Then each child gets a book at the end of their visit. By doing this ROR hopes that parents who might not feel comfortable reading aloud to their children become more comfortable doing so as the program touches them, repeatedly perhaps.

The ROR website says "the 3.9 million families served annually by Reach Out and Read read together more often, and their children enter kindergarten better prepared to succeed, with larger vocabularies, stronger language skills, and a six-month developmental edge over their peers."

Dylan Thomas Prize for Young Writers Winner

This year's £30,000 Dylan Thomas Prize for Young Writers has been won by Elyse Fenton for her collection of 21st century war poetry. The poems in Clamor were partly written while her husband was deployed in Baghdad. The collection has earned praise in the US critics for its interweaving of the brutality of warfare with a love story which is what commended it to the Dylan Thomas prize judges also.

Chair of the judges Peter Florence called Fenton's book "an astonishing, fully accomplished book of huge ambition and spectacular delivery".

Sponsored by the University of Wales, the Dylan Thomas Prize is is awarded to the best eligible published or produced literary work in the English language, written by an author under 30.

The shortlisted included :

• Caroline Bird - Watering Can


• Nadifa Mohamed - Black Mamba Boy


• Eleanor Catton -The Rehearsal


• Karan Mahajan - Family Planning


• Elyse Fenton - Clamor


• Emily Mackie - And This is True
  

Carolyn's Books of the Month - December 2010

Best read : A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

Thriller : The Dying Hour by Rick Mofina

General Fiction : The Book of Fires by Jane Borodale

Saga/Romance : Rainwater by Sandra Brown

Australian Author : Kirsty's Vineyard by Anna Jacobs

Crime : Severed by Simon Kernick and Among Thieves by David Hosp

Condolence Books : Pike River Mine Tragedy, New Zealand

Blue Mountains City Council extends its sympathy to the families of the victims of the Pike River Mine tragedy in New Zealand, particularly the relatives of the two Australian victims, William Joynson and Joshua Ufer.

A condolence book is available to residents at Council’s Katoomba and Springwood offices and at each branch of the Blue Mountains City Library until 5pm Friday 17 December. The condolences of the Blue Mountains community will be sent to the Grey District Council, West Coast, New Zealand.

Tributes can also be made at www.pikeriverdonations.org.nz/tributes

Rowan Somerville on winning the Bad Sex Award

"I can't say I was thrilled to get this travesty of a literary award . . . "

Rowan Somerville writes in the Guardian about the dubious honour of winning the Literary Reveiw's Bad Sex in Fiction Award. Read it here.

Summer Reading Challenge 2010 - 2011