Costa Book Awards Book of the Year Winner 2010

The winner of the Costa Book Awards Book of the Year for 2010 is Jo Shapcott with her collection Of Mutability which was partly inspired by the author's experience of breast cancer although she denies it's autobiographical.

Chair of the judges, Andrew Neil, said of Of Mutability : “The judges thought that it was accessible, compassionate, one of them said it was a celebration of life whatever was thrown at you and they had been captivated by the poetry and for these reasons, though there were other strong challengers, they thought Of Mutability deserved to win".

Ms Shapcott is professor of creative writing at Royal Holloway College, University of London and is president of the poetry society. She and the other four Costa Book Awards Category Winners
received £5,000 each with Ms Shapcott winning another £30,000 for Book of the Year.

This is the second year in a row that a volume of poetry has won book of the year, last year's winner was A Scattering by Christopher Reid.

Art Classes @ Blaxland Library

Art Classes @ Springwood Library

Burns Day

It's Robert Burns' birthday today. All over the world Scots will be celebrating with haggis and whisky and poetry so I thought I'd assist with your menu if you are having a Burns Supper. (At our house we have an annual Burns/Australia Day where Haggis and Kangaroo go on the BBQ).

So here's Haggis with Whisky, Tatties and Neeps (from The Extraordinary Cookbook by Stefan Gates) with translation :
1kg cooked, ready to eat/re-heat haggis
1kg neeps (turnip/swede), peeled and quartered
250g butter
1 thumb-sized piece fresh root ginger, grated
ikg tatties (potatoes), peeled and quartered
handful chopped chives
1/2 tsp grated nutmeg
good whisky

Heat a large pan of water, bring to boil then turn off heat. Turn up the heat again and bring water to gentle simmer to poach haggis all the way through - about 1 and 1/4 hrs for 1kg haggis.

Meanwhile you can boil the neeps until tender. Then mash with 1/2 the butter and the ginger. The tatties are also boiled until tender then mashed with the remaining butter, chives and nutmeg.

To serve, cut open the haggis while intoning the Address to a Haggis, and serve with the champit tatties and bashed neeps. Pour a splash of whisky over the haggis.

Yummo!

Address To A Haggis

Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o' the puddin-race!
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o' a grace
As lang's my arm.

The groaning trencher there ye fill,
Your hurdies like a distant hill,
Your pin wad help to mend a mill
In time o' need,
While thro' your pores the dews distil
Like amber bead.

His knife see rustic Labour dight,
An' cut you up wi' ready sleight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
Like ony ditch;
And then, O what a glorious sight,
Warm-reekin, rich!

Then, horn for horn,
they stretch an' strive:
Deil tak the hindmost! on they drive,
Till a' their weel-swall'd kytes belyve,
Are bent lyke drums;
Then auld Guidman, maist like to rive,
"Bethankit!" 'hums.

Is there that owre his French ragout
Or olio that wad staw a sow,
Or fricassee wad mak her spew
Wi' perfect sconner,
Looks down wi' sneering, scornfu' view
On sic a dinner?

Poor devil! see him ower his trash,
As feckless as a wither'd rash,
His spindle shank, a guid whip-lash,
His nieve a nit;
Thro' bloody flood or field to dash,
O how unfit!

But mark the Rustic, haggis fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread.
Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
He'll mak it whissle;
An' legs an' arms, an' heads will sned,
Like taps o' thrissle.

Ye Pow'rs wha mak mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill o' fare,
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware
That jaups in luggies;
But, if ye wish her gratefu' prayer,
Gie her a haggis!

(It pains me to do this, but you'll find a translation to English here)

What Library staff are reading . . .

This month I asked my colleagues, What shores do you like to wash up on when you are reading?

I’ve come to realise place has big appeal for me – Scottish and Australian books have me weak at the knees. And historical fiction and non-fiction, I’m a nut for the Tudors.

Another staff member wrote, "Loved the idea of reading for setting – I am a sucker for reading stories set in places I have travelled to and loved – England, Ireland, Scotland, Europe, Turkey, Middle East and New York (even though I haven’t been to New York). They can be historical or modern so long as you get a feel for the place and love the characters . . . "

And another said "I actually gravitate towards Australian novels (like The Slap, Journey to the Stone Country, Drylands) that reflect my community back to me with imagination and truth."

What about you?

• I started One Day by David Nicholls the other day. When the first chapter was headed Rankeillor Street, Edinburgh I was in – we used to walk Rankeillor Street every day between the Halls of Residence and the lecture theatres in George Square when I was in first year at Edinburgh University. And I’m really enjoying what I’ve read so far of the other 436 pages too!
• Zeitoun by Dave Eggers – New Orleans post hurricane Katrina, 2005
• So Much for That by Lionel Shriver – New York, contemporary
• The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies – Wales, WWII
• Elizabeth’s Women : the hidden story of the Virgin Queen by Tracy Borman – England, 1533-1603 (non-fiction)
• War on the Margins by Libby Cone – Jersey, Channel Islands, WWII
• The Gruen Transfer by Jon Casimir – Australian advertising today (non-fiction)
• The Report by Jessica Francis Kane – London, WWII
• Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier - set in Victorian Lyme Regis, England
• Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami - set in Tokyo and Takamatsu, Japan
• Balthazar Jones and the Tower of London Zoo by Julia Stuart – London, contemporary
• The blind contessa’s new machine by Carey Wallace – Italy, Historical
• White tiger by Aravind Adiga – India, contemporary
• I’ve not long finished Mary Shaffer's The Guernsey literary and potato peel pie society – Channel Islands, post WWII ~ lovely book, don’t know why I haven’t read it before now
• I’ve just started Susanna Gregory's A plague on both your houses – medieaval England
• I’m contemplating re-reading Gregory David Roberts (or is it David Robert Gregory or Robert David Gergory?) Shantaram – Mumbai ~ a real page turner and just discovered by one of my customers who has inspired my idea of re-reading it
• Being of the Field by Traci Harding – Sci Fi, set on another world in the future
• Winter by John Marsden – set in country Australia ~ loved the ballsy main character
• Marrying Ameera by Roseanne Hawke – set in Adelaide, Australia and Kashmir, Pakistan ~ see my review on Readers in the Mist here
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling – England
• Paul Theroux's The Elephanta Suite – set partially in Mumbai and then country India
• I’m trying to read So Much for That by Lionel Shriver but finding the cynicism hard going, so… I’m also reading The Botticelli Secret by Marina Fioratto, - set in 15th C Italy – it’s a whodunit with a monk and a prostitute trying to solve the mystery (delightfully trashy)
• Echidna: Extraordinary Egg-laying Mammal by Michael Augee – Australia ~ fascinating (ask me for twenty Echidna facts and I’ll happily oblige). I chose this one because I saw a little echidna on my holiday down the South Coast and I was worried that it was too small to be out-and-about by itself!
• Snake by Kat Jennings - set in country Australia, post WWII
• Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok - set in the illegal sweatshops of New York, USA
• A Hand me Down Life by Lloyd Jones - begins in North Africa, after which the action moves to European countries, Spain, Germany
• S by John Updike - set in the USA
• Murder in Montparnasse by Kerry Greenwood - Melbourne (present) and Paris (past)
• Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges: he’s Argentinian.
  

Australia's Healthy Weight Week

Appropriately sandwiched between the excesses of Christmas and New Year and our Australia Day celebrations, Australia's Healthy Weight Week 2011 runs from the 23rd to the 30th of January 2011.

Australia's Healthy Weight Week is aimed at raising awareness of the importance and benefits of achieving and maintaining a healthy weight and a healthy lifestyle for diabetes, cardiovascular disease, mental health and wellbeing and increasing longevity. The week is part of the Dietitians Association of Australia's obesity strategy.

Have a look at the Australia's Healthy Weight Week website for Events in your area, the truth about diet myths and facts, health facts and take the 10 Week Challenge.





We have plenty of healthy lifestyle books and DVDs in the library - come in and check them out.

Australia Day

Read It 2011

Fancy joining a book group? Do you tweet?

Booklovers can join Read It 2011, a monthly reading group that will challenge you to have (at least) 12 Reading Experiences in 12 months.

Each month in 2011 Librarians and Library customers will be reading books around a particular theme. As well as discussing what they are reading in the library, some readers will also be tweeting about their reading.



The 2011 monthy themes are :

• January #suagb – Scare up a good book - this ties in with the national summer reading theme. Why should children be the only ones who can’t sleep? In January read scary titles, they could be true (scary takes of disaster, and scary tales of people’s lives) or stories of fiction (including horror)
• February #heartreads Romance
• March #specfic Fantasy
• April #oznzreads – ANZAC and writers from both countries
• May #grrlpower – Women
• June #goreads – Travel
• July #whodoneit - Crime
• August #geekreads - Science
• September #bookbites – Food
• October #egoreads – Biography
• November #moreads – Men with mustaches
• December #summerreads – What to read when it’s hot . . . or hot-reading
  

To be involved in this reading group, you don’t have to tweet – you can just read along each month if you like. You can follow things on the Read It 2011 blog. But if you tweet about what you are reading and tag your posts with each month’s hashtag, other people will see what you are reading too, and might start conversations with you.

This as a really exciting way to take conversations about reading outside of the library and into a more public space where a reading community can share and collaborate.

LibraryThing's iPhone app

Another iPhone app - this time from LibraryThing. Called Local Books this new app can be used to locate book shops, libraries and bookish events wherever you are or plan to be.

The app is available from the iTunes store as a free download.

All NSW public libraries are included.

You can read more about the app on the LibraryThing blog.

Now that's really exciting!

Alison's Picks - January 2011

Maggie O’Farrell : The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

Jean Kwok : Girl in Translation

John Updike : S

Diana Appleyard : Too Beautiful to Dance

John Grisham : Theodore Boone

Happy Birthday Wikipedia

Wikipedia, "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit", is 10 years old today.

The online organization relies on donations rather than advertising for its income and runs on a comparatively low annual budget of around $20 million. Currently the organisation has about 50 employees with plans to hire more in 2011.

Wikipedia is a "community driven" resource with anyone is able to edit the 3,526,628 entries — even anonymously. A few thousand people are "extremely active" as contributors or editors, he says. Then, there are about 100,000 who contribute occasionally. The typical contributor is aged about 26 and 85% are male.

There are actually 278 Wikipedias in a range of languages, the most successful of which are European languages, Japanese and Chinese. But with the aim of creating a "free encyclopedia for every single person on the planet, in their own language," there are many lesser known (eg. Finnish, Esperanto, Scottish Gaelic, Basque) and obscure (eg. Luxembourgish, Ido) languages with their own Wikipedia's. To my delight I discovered there is even a Scots Wikipedia.

Information on Wikipedia is probably some of the most used in the world. Most searches on Google for instance, will return a Wikipedia entry first so the reliability of information is crucial and many studies have been done to test the accuracy of Wikipedia - there are some links to studies here.

The accuracy of articles in Wikipedia relies heavily on how quickly false or misleading information is removed. A study by IBM researchers in 2003 found that "vandalism is usually repaired extremely quickly — so quickly that most users will never see its effects." And one in the journal Nature suggested that in 2005, Wikipedia scientific articles came close to the level of accuracy in Encyclopædia Britannica and had a similar rate of "serious errors". This study was disputed by Encyclopædia Britannica.

Last year reviewers in medical and scientific fields such as toxicology, cancer research and drug information reviewing Wikipedia against professional and peer-reviewed sources found that Wikipedia's depth and coverage were of a very high standard, often comparable in coverage to physician databases and considerably better than well known reputable national media outlets. Wikipedia articles were cited as references in journals (614 cites in 2009) and as evidence in trademark and higher court rulings. However, omissions and readability sometimes remained an issue – the former at times due to public relations removal of adverse product information and a considerable concern for fields such as medicine.

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers, 2009

Abdulraman Zeitoun is a Syrian-born American living with his wife, Kathy, and their 4 children in New Orleans, running their painting business, quietly living the American dream. The first part of the book gives Zeitoun and Kathy's story, telling you what ordinary, law-abiding, hard-working, patriotic people they are.

When Hurricane Katrina arrives on the doorstep, Zeitoun stays to keep an eye on their home and their other properties while Kathy leaves with the children for the safety of her sister's home in Baton Rouge.

After the hurricane, using a canoe he bought some time previously, Zeitoun travels through his neighbourhood, and later further afield, seeing if he can assist people - with his noiseless canoe he can hear people calling for help which the authorities in their noisy fan-powered boats can't. He keeps in contact with Kathy via a phone in one of his properties which has not been inundated and despite her urgings to leave town, he is enjoying being useful and stays on. He links up with a few other men, Todd who is the tenant of the apartment with the phone, his friend Nasser and another man who has been using the phone too.

The one day when all four men happen to be at the apartment at the same time they are raided by the police and national guard and taken to the main train station in New Orleans, arrested for looting. Things soon look very much more ominous as the men are interrogated, internally searched and incarcerated in a chain link fence prison (similar to that at Guantanamo Bay) that has been set up behind the train station - the authorities haven't organised food, water or shelter for civilians properly but have managed to build a prison!

With no presumption of innocence, the men are treated horrifically - sprayed with capsicum spray and blasted with bean bags, shouted at. It dawns on Zeitoun that he and Nasser at least are suspected of terrorism. After several days the men are moved to a high security prison. All this time and for almost a month, Zeitoun is denied a phone call to let his wife know what has happened, eventually managing to persuade the prison chaplain to make the call for him.

This part of the book was really difficult to read. By then you have a sense of how honourable a man Zeitoun is; he just wants to do what's best for himself and his family and his neighbours and gets caught up in a nightmare where all human rights are stripped from him under the Homeland Security laws. Sobering, very sobering. Horrifying. Fuirious-making.

And don't think it can't happen in Australia - witness Dr Haneef.

The Extraordinary Cookbook by Stefan Gates

The extraordinary cookbook by Stefan Gates; photographs by Georgia Glynn Smith

London Kyle Cathie Ltd 2010

This is one cook book that seems to live up to it's name.

Some of the dishes are extraordinary because of their ingredients . . .

(Insects p.34, Bone Marrow on Toast p.55, Frogs Legs p.90 - naturally, my one experience of frogs legs was in a Chinese restaurant in Edinburgh! - and Chocolate-roasted Spare Ribs p.166),

. . . some because of their method of cooking . . .

(Kebabs Cooked on a Car Engine p.114, Chocolate-tin Smoked Salmon p.143, Lunch Cooked in the Dishwasher p.144, Beer Can Chicken p.153)

. . . and some just look extraordinary

(Radish mice p.14, Golden Chicken - covered in gold leaf - p.154 or the simply stunning Flourescent Jellies p.194).

'Treasures' mobile app

The British Library has announced the launch of Treasures, a smart phone app.

What’s in it?

• Over 100 unique or rare items incliding the original version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the world’s oldest bible, priceless hand-painted medieval books, Nelson’s battle plan for Trafalgar, sketches by Leonardo, a 1664 plan of New York, ‘The Tyger’ in William Blake’s hand


• Easy-to-browse sections: Science, History, Music, Literature, Faith and Religions, Maps and Views, Illuminated Manuscripts


• Highlights from the current Evolving English exhibition


• Audio excerpts and nearly 50 WiFi-served videos from our expert curators


• Plus explorer Ben Fogle talking about Captain Scott’s diary and linguist David Crystal discussing Beowulf.
  
  Take a look at it in this video :
  
  
  

Flooded Libraries

It's been awful watching the news coverage of the flooding in Queensland, Victoria and NSW.

I myself was part of an RFS task force sent to the Dubbo, NSW area to assist with the flood relief in December. We ended up not being too busy which was good news because it meant the local residents were doing alright. We were reminded during our de-brief, however, that rural communities have done it really tough these last 10 years with the drought and were looking forward to a good year, a year in which they could catch up a litte, pay off some debts, enjoy a good standard of living. All washed away.

And these poor people still have to face the sheer physical hard work of a clean up in mud that stinks to high heaven, mosquitoes and untreated effluent.

As far as libraries go, the State Library of Queensland, on the banks of the river in Brisbane, was evacuated on Tuesday and is closed until Friday at least, as will be the the Queensland Writers Centre. Brisbane City Council closed the main library in Brisbane Square and Corinda, New Farm, Toowong and West End public libraries were also closed. And with schools still on the long summer holidays it's as yet uncertain how many school libraries have been affected.

If you wish to assist you can make donations to the Premier's Flood Relief Appeal online, by phone on 1800 219 028 (6am-11pm daily) or via internet banking to the following account:

• Account Name: Premiers Disaster Relief Appeal


• BSB: 064 013


• Account number: 1000 6800


• SWIFT code for international donations: CTBAAU2S
  

New to the Library's delicious account

Explore the Blue Mountains City Library delicious bookmarks featuring website suggestions from the Library Reference desk.

Here are some recent additions:

Academic Earth - Video lectures from the world's top scholars

Academic Earth provides online access to video recording of university lectures on a range of subjects.

The Koori History Website
Indigenous history archive and education resource site

Twelve Canoes

This is a most beautiful site, do check it out!!! The Yolngu people share their history and present, their culture, art, music, ceremony through artwork, photos, songs videos and stories in Yolngu or English.

Your Room
Online drug and alcohol information. Up-to-date, appropriate for all ages, including school-aged children. Maintained by NSW Health and St Vincent Alcohol and Drug Information Service.

Book Review - Marrying Ameera - for better...or for worse

AUTHOR: Roseanne Hawke

PUBLICATION DATE: 2010

No. PAGES: 292

CATEGORY: Australian fiction

GEOGRAPHICAL SETTING: Adelaide, Australia and Kashmir, Pakistan

TIME PERIOD: Contemporary

PLOT SUMMARY: Seventeen year old Ameera has just finished high school in Adelaide and is looking forward to attending University to become a teacher. While her mother is Australian, Ameera's father is from Pakistan and a very strict Muslim. He believes the family should adhere to certain standards. When Ameera's father hears of her friendship with Tariq, her best friends older brother, he sends Ameera to stay with his family in Kashmir, Pakistan, supposedly to be the family representative at her cousin Jamila's wedding. It is only when Ameera arrives in Kashmir that she find the intended marriage is actually for her - arranged by her father.

COMMENTS: This Young Adult novel was a great read from start to finish. I identified strongly with Ameera and lived her journey. While I knew arranged marriages did occur, I was shocked at how easy it was for Ameera to quickly lose her freedom and identity once the family embraced her in Pakistan. This was actually a story that made me cry. Yes, I know its not a real story - it is Fiction - but to actually think about girls in this situation in 2010 made me frustrated and teary. A must-read for all wayward teenagers - be thankful that you don't have Ameera's father in your family.

NAME OF REVIEWER: Vicki

To read Roseannes journal of her experiences in Pakistan click here

The Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation Walls of Hands

For every 5 kids living in remote Indigenous communities, only one will be able to read at the minimum standard.

The Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation (ALNF) works with Indigenous communities and schools around Australia with the aim that 5 out of 5 kids will learn to read - the vital first step to a satisfying and successful life.

Unfortunately, regular schooling isn't always enough for Indigenous children in remote communities. Many have hearing difficulties and for many English is a second language.
ALNF has specialised programs needed to overcome these hurdles:

• ALNF programs deliver complex language concepts in small, organised units that build upon each other.
• ANLF teaching methods are multi-sensory so that all learning pathways are stimulated - especially for children with hearing difficulties.
• ALNF partners with local communities to incorporate Indigenous First Languages into ANLF programs - a vital bridge to English literacy.
• ANLF engages whole communities from elders to educators, mentors and children so that the learning environment is supported and the skills to teach literacy are shared and passed on.

For the past few years, instead of doing Kris Kringle and buying another member of staff a gift at Christmas time, Blue Mountains City Library staff have made a donation to a charity, usually literacy-based, instead.

This past Christmas we chose to support The ANLF and raised $250. With this donation we have created ourselves a space on the Wall of Hands to raise funds for the ANLF. And by visiting our Wall of Hands webpage you can make a contribution too.

• For as little as $5 you can help provide learning materials to kids in need.
• $55 could help with the development of First Language reading materials and ALNF literacy programs.
• $85 could assist with training for an Indigenous high school student mentor to assist Indigenous primary school children.
• $500 could help us provide teaching to a child in a remote community such as Groote Eylandt for six months.
• $1,000 could provide an entire remote community with a Share-A-Book library.

The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies

The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies is another story set in WWII Britain. I've read a few lately, all by Americans which I find curious (Also recently read are The Report by Jessica Francis Kane, War on the Margins by Libby Cone and Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis)


Plot : Rotheram is working as an interpreter for the British army. His father was a German sailor, his mother English. When we first meet him he has been sent to interrogate Rudolf Hess who claims to have no memory of his part in the Third Reich. Rotheram shows him a film of him at Hitler's shoulder during one of those massive rallies.

The Welsh Girl is Esther who lives with her father and a young English evacuee, Jim, on a farm in a village in Wales. Nearby some sappers are building an encampment and the village is agog to find out what it's to be used for. One night, the soldier she's going out with takes things a bit far and rapes Esther, leaving her pregnant.

Meanwhile Karsten, a young German soldier with a smattering of English, surrenders to the British and is shipped to England from France. He and his comrades end up in the new prison camp in Wales.

A source of much curiosity, the locals watch the camp and its inmates from afar - or from not so far in the case of Jim and the local boys he wants to get 'in' with. Karsten makes tentative friends with Jim and asks about Esther who has caught his eye. When he later escapes, it is to their farm he heads and manages to hide out there for a while.

Review : This is a thoroughly engrossing read although telling the story out loud to another it might not seem like it. While the characters lives intersect they are not connected the way you anticipate and nothing ends up the way you think it will which certainly makes it unpredictable but is it more satisfying?

Reviewed by : Alba

Buy a Library

There's lots of doom and gloom in the libary world, with libraries under threat of closure, reduced opening hours and staff cuts. On Google maps you can see where libraries are under threat in the UK - click on this link and look up somewhere you know.


But then I read a good news article about how you can build a library in India for just £1,250 - that's AUD$1960!
But wait, there’s more (don’t tell management because they might get ideas). For your £1,250 (AUD$1960) you not only get the library building but also the furniture, books and the Librarian’s salary for 2 years! Eeeeek. You can also buy 100 books for £125 (AUD$196).

Elsewhere, for just AUD$156 you can buy a mobile library for Africa. It’s donkey powered but hey, what do you expect? (There’s a novel about a mobile library in Africa – The Camel Bookmobile (OK, so it’s a camel not a donkey).

These can all be purchased at GoodGifts.org. If you can't afford the full price of the library you can go to this page on the wikiman blog you can read all about these GoodGifts.org purchases and make a contibution to a library in India now. There is also a Build a Library FAQ section.

Why Men are Necessary

Why Men are Necessary and More News from Nowhere by Richard Glover

Witty observations on daily life in a middle-class household from ABC Sydney radio presenter Richard Glover. Quite good fun, even if I can’t stand Glover on the radio.

My ten year old was listening to Richard Glover spruiking this book on ABC radio one morning. Richard Glover and radio listeners were trying to list the things men were useful for. As I came in from hanging out some washing she said to me, “You know Mum, if you have a dog you don’t need a husband.”

2011 January School Holidays "TravelBugs"

2011 January School Holidays "Backyard Bugs"

War on the Margins by Libby Cone

War on the Margins by Libby Cone

London – Duckworth Overlook – 2010

Occupied Jersey during WWII. The Germans bring in the same restrictions on Jews as they have in mainland Europe and Marlene Zimmer, her father a Jewish man, should register herself as a Jew at the Aliens Office – which is where she happens to work.

Marlene is eventually forced to hide with Lucille and Suzanne, step-sisters and lovers who print subversive letters to the increasingly demoralized German troops under the name of the Soldiers Without Names. They are imprisoned and face execution while Marlene goes into hiding elsewhere with Peter, a Polish prisoner of war who has escaped the Organisation Todt work camp.

Other hiders, collaborators and resistance workers are also described and the whole gives us a taste of how difficult life was in the Channel Islands during WWII – not just the occupation by a foreign power and the feelings of abandonment by the British government, the fear of the Jewish population, the hunger of both occupied and occupiers. An interesting read.

Costa Book Awards Category Winners 2010

The category winners for the 2010 Costa Book Awards were announced overnight.

To be eligible for the Costa Book Awards, the author must have been resident in the UK or Ireland for over six months of each of the previous three years and the books, which are submitted by the publisher not the author, must have been first published in the UK or Ireland between 1 November of the previous year and 31 October of the current year. Books previously published elsewhere are not eligible.

The links will take you to a summary of each book and comments from the judges on why each was chosen. An asterisk beside the author's name indicates that Blue Mountains City Library has a copy of a book (or has it on order at least) :

Costa First Novel Award

Witness the Night by Kishwar Desai*

Shortlisted First Novel Award books:

• Coconut Unlimited by Nikesh Shukla*
• The Temple-Goers by Aatish Taseer*
• Not Quite White by Simon Thirsk

Costa Novel Award

The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell*

Shortlisted Costa Novel Award books :

• Whatever You Love by Louise Doughty*
• The Blasphemer by Nigel Farndale*
• Skippy Dies by Paul Murray*

Costa Biography Award

The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal*

Shortlisted Costa Biography Award books:

• How to Live : A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell*
• My Father's Fortune by Michael Frayn

Costa Poetry Award

Of Mutability by Jo Shapcott


Shortlisted Costa Poetry Award books:

• Standard Midland by Roy Fisher
• The Wrecking Light by Robin Robertson
• New Light for the Old Dark by Sam Willetts*

Costa Children's Book Award

Out of Shadows by Jason Wallace

Shortlisted Costa Children's Book Award books:

• Flyaway by Lucy Christopher
• Annexed by Sharon Dogar
• Bartimaeus: The Ring of Solomon by Jonathan Stroud

The winner in each category receives £5,000. The overall Costa Book of the Year winner will be announced on January 25th 2011, for which the author receives a further £30,000.

A pdf file of previous Costa/Whitbread Book Award winners can be downloaded from this page.

2011 January School Holidays "Under the Sea"

2011 January School Holidays

Do you have a Holden ute in your museum or at home?

The hardworking Holden utility is 60 in 2011 and the National Motor Museum in Birdwood, SA is looking for Holden ute owners with an interesting story about their vehicle to help celebrate this major milestone. The cars, their owners and stories will be central to a short film that the museum is making for Holden to accompany a traveling display entitled Ute-opia.

So whether you are a farmer or city slicker, have a modern V8 or an old FJ; and whether your ute is still roadworthy or just rusting in the shed or back paddock, we want to hear from you.

Tell us your beaut ute story and be part of Australian motoring history.

If you can help or know someone who might be able to help, please contact Allison Russell at the National Motor Museum on 08 8568 4000 or email her at arussell@history.sa.gov.au

Please note that stories are being sought from all over the country and not just in South Australia.

Blackheath Library Bookworms