The Rodney Libraries two summer reading programmes, Dive into Books and Library Monopoly, are both proving really popular with children this summer. Some libraries are full with people on waiting lists.
A reminder that the second checkins at your local library should be done before Christmas (unless you have contacted us to make other arrangements). So only a couple of days left to do this. We know it is a busy time of the year, so give us a call if you want to keep your place.
With the first check-ins for Library Monopoly, we are starting to receive our first reviews. Here are a couple that we have received at Warkworth.
Summer thought Nancy Drew - Sleepover Sleuths was awesome and gave it five stars. Summer says it is an "exciting, fantastic, fun mystery book about friendship, helping people, sleepovers and owning up to friends".
Miles called Zac Power - Volcanic Panic "energizing" which I thought was a stunning word to use in a book review. His favourite bit was when Zac saw a glowing rock outside his classroom window and he went to look at it. The rock cracked open to reveal a mission disc. The disc told him details of his next mission. Miles likes how the story was set out, particularly the ending and fave it four stars.
Tuesday, 22 December 2009
Monday, 21 December 2009
Santa News from Auckland Readers & Writer's Festival
The latest Auckland Readers & Writers Festival newsletter is out announcing lots of fantastic guests for the May event. And tickets don't go on sale until April so there is plenty of time for your budget to recover from the festive season. However, if you want to buy a subscription as a gift there is still just enough time for Santa to get it under the tree.
Here's an excerpt from the bulletin announcing the lineup to date:
The Auckland Writers & Readers Festival is proud to announce that the following international guests will appear at the 2010 festival:
Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the bestselling memoir Eat, Pray, Love. The sequel, Committed, is a meditation on the history, culture, politics, trials and tribulations of marriage.
John Carey is a distinguished critic, reviewer, broadcaster, Man Booker judge, and biographer of the Nobel Prize-winning novelist William Golding.
Rick Gekoski, bestselling author of Tolkien’s Gown, takes us on a literary journey in his bibliomemoir Outside of a Dog.
The prolific and much-loved Thomas Keneally’s most recent novel is The People’s Train. He has just published the first in a three-volume history of the Australian people, Australians: Origins to Eureka.
In Seven Days in the Art World sociologist Sarah Thornton looks at all aspects of buying, selling, and creating serious art.
Jill Dawson’s sixth novel, The Great Lover, is a fictional life of Rupert Brooke.
Yiyun Li’s A Thousand Years of Good Prayers was shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and won the Guardian First Book Award. Her new novel, The Vagrants, is based on the true story of a young woman sentenced to death in 1979 China for her loss of faith in Communism.
Su Tong won the 2009 Man Asia Literary Prize for The Boat to Redemption. A major figure in China’s literary scene, his best-known work is Wives and Concubines, which was made into the film Raise the Red Lantern.
Independent journalist and blogger Antony Loewenstein writes about the internet in The Blogging Revolution and the Israel/Palestine conflict in his bestselling My Israel Question.
Ben Naparstek, the 23-year-old editor of Australia’s influential magazine, The Monthly, recently published In Conversation, a collection of interviews with 39 of the world’s best writers.
John Freeman, the new editor of Granta, explores the history of communication in Shrinking the World: The 4,000-year story of how email came to rule our lives.
Adrian Wooldridge, management editor of The Economist, joins us to talk about his latest book (co-authored with John Micklethwait, The Economist’s editor-in-chief), God is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith is Changing the World.
More guests, including New Zealand writers, will be announced in February 2010. Final programme details will be released in March and tickets go on sale through The Edge Ticketing Service in April.
Here's an excerpt from the bulletin announcing the lineup to date:
The Auckland Writers & Readers Festival is proud to announce that the following international guests will appear at the 2010 festival:
Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the bestselling memoir Eat, Pray, Love. The sequel, Committed, is a meditation on the history, culture, politics, trials and tribulations of marriage.
John Carey is a distinguished critic, reviewer, broadcaster, Man Booker judge, and biographer of the Nobel Prize-winning novelist William Golding.
Rick Gekoski, bestselling author of Tolkien’s Gown, takes us on a literary journey in his bibliomemoir Outside of a Dog.
The prolific and much-loved Thomas Keneally’s most recent novel is The People’s Train. He has just published the first in a three-volume history of the Australian people, Australians: Origins to Eureka.
In Seven Days in the Art World sociologist Sarah Thornton looks at all aspects of buying, selling, and creating serious art.
Jill Dawson’s sixth novel, The Great Lover, is a fictional life of Rupert Brooke.
Yiyun Li’s A Thousand Years of Good Prayers was shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and won the Guardian First Book Award. Her new novel, The Vagrants, is based on the true story of a young woman sentenced to death in 1979 China for her loss of faith in Communism.
Su Tong won the 2009 Man Asia Literary Prize for The Boat to Redemption. A major figure in China’s literary scene, his best-known work is Wives and Concubines, which was made into the film Raise the Red Lantern.
Independent journalist and blogger Antony Loewenstein writes about the internet in The Blogging Revolution and the Israel/Palestine conflict in his bestselling My Israel Question.
Ben Naparstek, the 23-year-old editor of Australia’s influential magazine, The Monthly, recently published In Conversation, a collection of interviews with 39 of the world’s best writers.
John Freeman, the new editor of Granta, explores the history of communication in Shrinking the World: The 4,000-year story of how email came to rule our lives.
Adrian Wooldridge, management editor of The Economist, joins us to talk about his latest book (co-authored with John Micklethwait, The Economist’s editor-in-chief), God is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith is Changing the World.
More guests, including New Zealand writers, will be announced in February 2010. Final programme details will be released in March and tickets go on sale through The Edge Ticketing Service in April.
Christmas storytimes this week
Christmas storytime sessions on this week...Monday 21 December Kumeu Library 10.30am
Tuesday 22 December Mahurangi East Library 10.30am
Wednesday 23 December Wellsford Library 10.30am
Wednesday 23 December Helensville Library 3pm
Sessions involve storytelling, rhymes and Christmas carols. Children are being encouraged to dress up in festive themed costumes for the sessions.
Friday, 18 December 2009
Anne's Top 5 for the year
Kris (rodneylibraries) beat me to print on this but I couldn't leave the week, with my list unpublished so I have forced myself to make the choices and here they are. They are not necessarily new books, just new to me. Books I have read during the year that made an impact, left me satisfied, and that I could and even would, read again.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society / Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows. Sometimes I read the latest craze and sometimes I hold out just... because. However I am glad I eventually joined the queue and read this delightful book. It was wonderfully charming, offsetting the angst and blood of the vampire craze that was happening at the same time. And if you liked that then you will probably also like The school of essential ingredients / Erica Bauermeister. which I read later in the year and was on my Top 5 short list.
No time for goodbye / Linwood Barclay. For the first time this year, I delved more into the crime and thriller genre. This was one of the best. A 14 year old girl wakes one morning to find that her entire family has disappeared. 25 years later she is no closer to the truth - but it is just around the corner if she wants to find it.
Honourable Mentions should go to The host : a novel / Stephenie Meyer. (which in some ways I rate above Twilight as being a more adult book), The magician's elephant / Kate DiCamillo ; illustrated by Yoko Tanaka. (magical children's fiction), An echo in the bone : a novel / Diana Gabaldon. (got me back into the Outlander series and wanting to know what happens next) and The tomorrow code / Brian Falkner. (quite a novelty reading a young adult fiction book and being able to recognise the places as the action travels through Rodney)
The b
lue notebook : a novel / James A. Levine. I heard about this one from Vince Ford (NZ young adult author) who mentioned it at a conference I was at. It is probably the book that made the most impact on me this year. I called it "beautiful but brutal" in my blog review earlier this year and parts of it were very hard to read. The story of a child prostitute in India doesn't pull any punches, but the escape she finds in her imagination is inspiring.
lue notebook : a novel / James A. Levine. I heard about this one from Vince Ford (NZ young adult author) who mentioned it at a conference I was at. It is probably the book that made the most impact on me this year. I called it "beautiful but brutal" in my blog review earlier this year and parts of it were very hard to read. The story of a child prostitute in India doesn't pull any punches, but the escape she finds in her imagination is inspiring.The 
Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. I wasn't that taken with Coraline earlier this year, although I loved Stardust which I read last year. However this one is right up there and is probably what inspired me to suggest Kris and I do these lists when I said it was one of my books of the year.
Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. I wasn't that taken with Coraline earlier this year, although I loved Stardust which I read last year. However this one is right up there and is probably what inspired me to suggest Kris and I do these lists when I said it was one of my books of the year. Two Cats and a Dog come in next, although that is probably cheating a little because they are actually three books. The cats are Dewey : the small-town library-cat who touched the world / Vicki Myron, with Bret Witter. and A cat called Norton : the true story of an extraordinary cat and his imperfect human / Peter Gethers. If a book can make you cry on a train travelling through the National Park, then it has to be good (that was Dewey) and if one kitten can turn a cat hater into a feline fan, then all the better for Norton. Enzo is the mutt of this trio and the story of his family is told from his point of view in an intriguing but ultimately satisfying way in The art of racing in the rain : a novel / Garth Stein.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society / Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows. Sometimes I read the latest craze and sometimes I hold out just... because. However I am glad I eventually joined the queue and read this delightful book. It was wonderfully charming, offsetting the angst and blood of the vampire craze that was happening at the same time. And if you liked that then you will probably also like The school of essential ingredients / Erica Bauermeister. which I read later in the year and was on my Top 5 short list.
No time for goodbye / Linwood Barclay. For the first time this year, I delved more into the crime and thriller genre. This was one of the best. A 14 year old girl wakes one morning to find that her entire family has disappeared. 25 years later she is no closer to the truth - but it is just around the corner if she wants to find it.Honourable Mentions should go to The host : a novel / Stephenie Meyer. (which in some ways I rate above Twilight as being a more adult book), The magician's elephant / Kate DiCamillo ; illustrated by Yoko Tanaka. (magical children's fiction), An echo in the bone : a novel / Diana Gabaldon. (got me back into the Outlander series and wanting to know what happens next) and The tomorrow code / Brian Falkner. (quite a novelty reading a young adult fiction book and being able to recognise the places as the action travels through Rodney)
In my defence of having actually mentioned 12 books in this list - rather than my top 5 - I must let you know that being a Libran, any decision is difficult. And I am just doing you the service of giving you plenty of ideas for holiday reading.
Ka kite
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