Best and Worst Books of 2009

Like every other year, 2009 has had its fair share of literary highs and lows. We’d like YOU shrewd book  buffs to share the sublime and ridiculous from your reading lists this year.

In the spirit of  Christmas giving, if your favourite author let you down then this is the perfect opportunity to put the boot in. Alternatively, if you’ve made a fab new discovery, please get enthused and rave away. Devoted or disaffected it’s time to dish the dirt, and we’ve got four $50 book vouchers for lucky customers. So don’t pull any punches tell us what you really think. The competition closes on 16 December.

To get the ball rolling, my most memorable read of 2009 is  This is how by M.J. Hyland. Published this year it  tells the story of Patrick, a lonely and confused young man whose short-lived engagement has abruptly ended casting him adrift. He lands up in a seaside B&B where, inexplicably he commits a life changing act of violence. Known for the claustrophobic quality of  her work, Hyland creates a disconnected and damaged character, who longs for acceptance and love but has no talent for achieving it.

Published last year Life’s too f***ing short : a guide to getting what you want out of life without wasting time, effort or money by Janet Street-Porter is a feisty sounding  title that promises much but  delivers very little. Street-Porter,  journalist and broadcaster, is a legend but this is a very shallow take on the values that drove her to succeed in the media, survive four marriages and be the thinking man’s crumpet despite her frankly unusual looks. Outspoken and ballsy she may be but this book is hypocritical and gimmicky trash. But guess what? A  follow-up is soon to be with us Don’t let the b*****ds get you down, eek!

So what’s your best or worst this year? Fire away, then enter the draw.

 

What happened to pop stars that can actually sing?

While watching the Top 40 music show on C4 last night I got increasingly annoyed seeing the junk that makes up our top music in New Zealand at the moment.  Out of the top five I don’t think there was one artist who could actually sing in their own right without their voice being altered digitally.  Maybe I’m just getting old but I don’t actually like it at all and I wonder whether it would be cheaper for record companies to ‘build’ their own pop star on a computer.  Take Britney Spears for example.  She was booed off the stage at several of her recent Australian concerts because she was quite clearly lip-syncing to pre-recorded music.  It seems to be mainly R&B artists who use it and you’ve got to wonder if they’re actually just a pretty face with no musical talent.

I saw an interesting piece on 3 News last week that was talking about the software that pop artists use to alter their voices, called Aut0-Tune.  It’s a computer programme that can perfect your pitch and smooth over any off-notes, similar to the Photoshop programme that can perfect images.  According to this article there are three brothers in Brooklyn who have created songs out of news items.  They call it Auto-Tune the News and take particular news reports and use the Auto-Tune programme to alter voices and make it into a song, adding themselves into the news as well.

I’m pretty sure most of my favourite artists/groups such as James Taylor, The Killers, James Morrison, and Dave Dobbyn don’t use the technology.  Who are your favourite, naturally talented musicians?

 

Baaaaad sex time again!

2009 has been a year of cringingly cheesy and often physically implausible coitus, in books of course, and to celebrate the Literary Review has posted its annual shortlist for the bad sex in fiction award.  Auberon Waugh instituted the prize back in 1993 with the aim of naming, shaming and ultimately discouraging authors from excessive literary romping.  Melvin Bragg won the inaugural award with A time to dance  and Rachel Johnson last year gained the dubious distinction of being only the second female winner with her novel Shire Hell.

The bad sex award has for many authors become a bit of a badge of honour, 2009 short-listee Richard Milward said “I’ve been there before and I’ll be there again .. There’s so much bad sex in my book that this is a nice accolade…Sex is exciting stuff – it can be vey dirty and smelly, but you’ve just got to get stuck in, and I’m not afraid of doing that.” Indeed Mr “manky” Milward!

The short-list contains some unlikely names including Booker prize winner John Banville. Banville is better known for the lyrical descriptive qualities of his novels rather than louche or lurid love scenes, but he also writes noir mysteries under the name Benjamin Black so perhaps he is gearing up for a third career as a scribe of bonktastic bodice-rippers. Esteemed American novelist  Philip Roth also makes it onto the list but having read Roth’s Sabbath’s theater several years ago and still carrying the mental scars this comes as no surprise to me. The winner/fiction filth-meister is announced on November 30th, we’ll keep you posted!

The full uncensored, X-Rated short list is:

• Paul Theroux for A Dead Hand
• Nick Cave for The Death of Bunny Munro
• Philip Roth for The Humbling
• Jonathan Littell for The Kindly Ones
• Amos Oz for Rhyming Life and Death
• John Banville for The Infinities
• Anthony Quinn for The Rescue Man
• Simon Van Booy for Love Begins in Winter
• Sanjida O’Connell for The Naked Name of Love
• Richard Milward for Ten Storey Love Song

 

Image of the week

The spire, north transept & choir of the Cathedral under construction, looking at the east arch from Worcester Street, Christchurch. 1880.

Like what you see? Complete this form to order an image. If you have any further information on any of the images, or if you would like to donate images to our collection please contact us. Want to see more? You can browse our collection here.

 

Once upon a time…

It’s always nice to see new interpretations of fairytales, particularly an illustrator’s interpretations of favourite characters.  There have recently been several outstanding new additions to our collection of fairytales for you to feast your eyes on.

Lucy Cousins’ Yummy is one of my favourite books of the year because of her bright, bold illustrations and her uncensored versions of some of the best fairytales for young children.  The appeal of this book is the graphic nature of the illustrations, such as in Little Red Riding Hood we see Red and Granny being swallowed by the wolf and the wolf’s head flying across the page after being chopped off by the Woodsman.  In The Three Little Pigs the wolf is boiled in the pot and eaten by the pigs.  I particularly like the horrible looking troll in The Three Billy Goats Gruff.  This is a great fairytale collection particularly for boys as there are no princesses in sight.

Fairy Tales by Berlie Doherty and Jane Ray is a reprint of their popular classic originally published in 2000.  Walker Books is one of my favourite publishers as they always publish great books that are beautifully designed.  Classic Fairy Tales is one of the titles that Walker have re-released in stunning paperback editions that are easier to hold and read. This collection includes a wonderful selection of popular fairytales, such as Cinderella, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, and Rumpelstiltskin, retold by Berlie Doherty with magical illustrations by Jane Ray.  One of the things I like most about this book is that every page is decorated with colourful borders that match the story. This collection is perfect for older children, especially those girls that love princesses.

 

Boys of the High Country

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live on a farm, miles away from any town with only your family for company?  For some people this may be your worst nightmare, but for Ben and Mark Smith this is a life they love.  Ben and Mark: Boys of the High Country is a great new book from Random House New Zealand, written by Christine Fernyhough and John Bougen that gives an interesting insight into life at Mount White Station in the Canterbury High Country which is managed by Ben and Mark’s parents, Richard and Sheri.  The book illustrates what life is like for the boys who have grown up helping out on the farm.  It is filled with information on farming life, such as the animals they look after, their daily routines and what they do for fun. 

The easy to read text and stunning photos make this a great book for children and adults, and would be a wonderful educational resource for teachers.

 

Best and Worst Books of 2009 tonight at Upper Riccarton

The Best and Worst Children’s Books of the Year event is being held at Upper Riccarton Library from 7:30-9pm tonight.  Come along to find out what the best and worst books were for children and young adults in 2009.  Guest speakers include author and ex-children’s librarian Bill Nagelkerke, children’s literature specialist from the National Library, Bob Docherty, and Sheila Sinclair from The Children’s Bookshop.  Refreshments will be available and someone will walk away with a Jenny Cooper original illustration which is being auctioned.  Come and join us for a fun and entertaining night.  You might even spot some christmas present ideas.

 

Ballantynes’ Fire November 18 1947

Today is the 62nd anniversary of the fire at the Ballantynes Department store in Christchurch. It was the worst fire in New Zealand’s history. Forty one people died and the resulting Royal Commission recommended urgent changes to the building regulations and fire prevention and firefighting throughout the country.

If you want to find out more about this tragic event, Christchurch City Libraries has a resource that features transcripts of articles from newspapers and other sources about the fire. It includes contemporary news reports.

The fire has also resonated with New Zealand fiction writers.  Deborah Challinor’s novel Fire is a historical romance based on the Ballantynes Fire, but set instead in Auckland 1953.

Christchurch writer Stevan Eldred-Grigg’s 1993 book Gardens of Fire is based on historical research and:

looks at the very ordinary lives of very conventional shop workers and customers, yet lifts those lives into tragedy and mystery.

The victims of the fire are buried in the Ruru Lawn Cemetery in Bromley.

 

7 habits and other habits

As the buyer for the self development etc titles (something bad I did in a past life has led to this), I was alerted to the fact that we needed to buy more of that old chestnut The seven habits of highly effective people by Stephen Covey, a gentleman who has not so much laughed all the way to the bank but shrieked uncontrollably.

Coincidentally I had been reading a column in that excellent weekly, The Economist, which adopted a less than reverent attitude to the granddaddy of the business meets self development  book industry (irrelevant I know but Covey is actually a grandfather – of 51 grandchildren. Talk about self development!) According to The Economist, he was shrewd enough to mix the language of management science with the sort of moral messages that have been around from the days of Norman Vincent Peale and the 12 Steps programme of AA. He’s made the sort of money that might have made even Bernie Madoff salivate but how good is he at and is he just one more in that group of knowalls who divide everything into easily memorable lists, preferably numeric.

The Economist said Covey has three habits worth noting: presenting stale ideas as breathtaking breakthroughs (as The secret did), naming model firms (rather unfortunately some of them fell over and someone from the University of Texas found that luck had as much to do with success as anything else) and making numbered lists or “facile principles”. Following the lists or principles may help you and your business but it ain’t necessarily so: we hear so much that firms should learn from their customers but Henry Ford once pointed out that if he’d listened to his customers he’d have built a better horse and buggy!

So why do people follow them so religiously? It may be that success in business or in life itself comes from a whole lot of factors but there is still an almost primal need for a one stop shop to learn about it and that is where Mr Covey and all his imitators count in. Perhaps it’s also an addiction as those who lap up self development books rarely seem to develop out of needing them and the people who succeed most from them are the people who write them. I really wouldn’t know but I’m just a librarian and we can only watch as it all sweeps past us and seems so familiar.

 

Music legend James Taylor is coming to New Zealand

When I read on James Taylor’s fan site that the great man himself was coming to Auckland on April 10, 2010  along with Carole King, I was ecstatic! Their Troubadour Reunion concert was advertised yesterday in the Sunday Star Times, along with an interview with Taylor and his long-time friend and collaborator Carole King.   I have been a fan of James Taylor for years now after my dad introduced me to his music and his albums take up a significant space in my CD collection.  He’s one of those artists that whenever I listen to his music my soul glows because it just makes me so happy.  He has an amazing voice, which I think has aged like a fine wine, and has written some amazing songs, such as Fire and Rain, Carolina in my mind, Line ‘em up, and My travelling star.

I’ll definitely be lining up for tickets when they go on sale on Monday 23 November.

If you’re also a fan, we have some of his albums in the library including my favourites October Road, You’ve got a friend: the best of James Taylor, and One Man Band.