Christchurch City Libraries Blog

Necrology – a list of notable people who have died recently. Now a regular feature on our blog.

• Samuel Adshead, 1932-2009
  Former University of Canterbury history professor and world-renowned authority on China

• Donald Beaven, 1924-2009
  Renowned Christchurch medical professor, authority on diabetes and a founder of the region;s wine-growing industry

• Patrick Hannan
  Journalist, broadcaster and author who surveyed the political scene in Wales

• Ludovic Kennedy, 1919-2009
  Broadcaster and author whose campaigns against miscarriages of justice speeded up the abolition of the death penalty

• Claude Levi-Strauss, 1908-2009
  Anthropologist and father of Structuralism whose influence extended far beyond his discipline

• John Ramsden, 1947-2009
  Leading historian of the Conservative Party who cast new light on the Tories’ postwar progress

• Martyn Sanderson, 1938-2009
  Gifted Kiwi actor and founder of Wellington’s Downstage Theatre

• Geoffrey Tozer, 1954-2009
  Concert pianist who weathered a political scandal in Australia and was later rude about the nation’s culture

• Ian Wallace, 1919-2009
  Distinguished opera singer and long-running Radio 4 panellist

• Helen Watts, 1927-2009
  Versatile mezzo-soprano who excelled in operatic roles while also upholding the English choral tradition

Curiosities of Literature by John Sutherland is a feast for book and fact lovers. Here’s a few Who knews? I have handpicked for you:

• Bovril was named from the word vril used by Bulwer-Lytton in his pioneer sci-fi text The Coming Race
• There is a strong connection between asthma and genius
• Ian Fleming has a gold plated Royal typewriter
• The first writer to attract publicity  for writing using a computer was Desmond Bagley in the 70s. General ignorance was such that some people thought the computer wrote the books. Too much watching of 2001 perhaps.
• The worst novelist ever might well be Amanda McKittrick Ros. Her novels were vanity published, with a bit of a alliteration fetish (novels included Delina Delaney and Helen Huddleston) and her books of poetry delightfully titled Fumes of Formation and Poems of Puncture.
• A Void (La Disparition) – Georges Perec wrote this 300 page ‘thriller’ without once using the letter ‘e’.  As Sutherland says, Well done Gorgs Prc.
• Alexandre Dumas – drank up to 40 cups of super strength coffee a day. When that wasn’t enough he would eat coffee grounds raw.
• The most popular novel in the American Civil War was Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.

After a cruel colleague alerted me to Time’s list of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present I had to look at it immediately  to see how many I had read. Initially I thought it was a  pitiful 31, but then realised I’d missed out F – T, which took me up to a slightly more respectable 42.

It’s still depressing to note how many I read not for the love of literature but because I was studying them. And how few in the last 20 years. Sigh.

Anyway it’s not too late to be well-read as the library owns all but two of the 100;  on the outs are Money, by Martin Amis (we do own lots of others ) and A Death in the family by James Agee.

We love featuring our customers on the home page of our Library web site. We’ve got all sorts of library stars, kids and babies, history lovers, lycra clad 80s loving dancers, families, and an author – all enjoying the library in their own style.

Today we received a great email and photos from Atena and here’s a summary of her story about the importance of the library to her family:

Anahita was a colic baby who was calmed down by having many books around her. Her family used to put books in front of her, she’d lookat the page for around five minutes with lots of interest. Then she would start crying which meant “turn the page for me”. We’d turn the page and she was happy looking at the next page for another five minutes.

We read so many books to her. We don’t have  or watch a TV so books are the most important educational tools in our family.  In the first photo she is just two months old and in the second one around three years. She loves books and she never gets sick of them. In the other photo, Tara, my second daughter, is fascinated – making the jelly pond from the book which we borrowed.

Thanks Atena for sharing your wonderful story.

And remember people you too can submit your photo and join our little galaxy of library stars.

It’s starting to feel like that time of year again…

Camping at Goose Bay. 1955.

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.

The Waitaha Primary Schools Kapa Haka Competitions 2009 was held Saturday 31st October at the Aurora Centre, Burnside High School, Christchurch. It was an action packed day full of primary and intermediate school-aged children, singing and performing their hearts out!

Eight schools competed; six in the competitive section and two in the entertainment section. Top honours were taken out by Te Kura Whakapūmau i te Reo Tūturu ki Waitaha, second place to Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Te Whānau Tahi and third place awarded to Shirley Intermediate School.

Find out more about the cultural phenomenon that is Kapa haka:

• Kapa haka resources in the library catalogue
• Kapa haka links in the Internet Gateway
• Interview with Christchurch City Council Māori Arts adviser Paula Rigby on kapahaka
• Interview with Tipene Cassidy about taking kapa haka to France on The Pulse

A relatively new prize for children’s writing will be awarded next week to the author and illustrator who have written the funniest  children’s book of the year.  The Roald Dahl Funny Prize (named after one of the world’s most imaginative and loved  authors for children) was founded by author Michael Rosen in 2008 to honour those books that simply make children laugh.  There are two categories, Age 6 and under, and Aged 7-14, with six finalists in each.  My favourites in the 6 and under category have to be Allan Ahlberg’s The Pencil and Nick Sharratt’s Octopus Socktopus.  I grew up with Allan Ahlberg’s stories and still love them, and Nick Sharratt has written and illustrated some great picture books recently, especially Foggy Foggy Forest.  The 7-14 category also has some really funny books, especially The Boy in the Dress by David Walliams of Little Britain fame (“Hello my name is Emily. Emily Howard and I am a Lady”), and one of my favourite reads of the year, Eating Things on Sticks by the very talented and funny Anne Fine.

So if you want something funny to read you should check these out.  We also have plenty of other hilariously funny books in the library.  One of my favourite characters is Jeremy James.  David Henry Wilson has written lots of books about him and his hilarious antics and they never fail to make me laugh.

The National Oral History Association of New Zealand (NOHANZ) held their biennial conference in Wellington last weekend and I was fortunate to attend. The conference drew professional and amateur oral historians working in the most amazing range of areas –  from interviewing train drivers in Picton,  to former gang girls, to Quakers and to well known artists.

The theme was “Using Oral History in Communities” and apart from the stimulating opportunity to learn and network (for people who do a lot of listening they sure can talk!) some fascinating speakers provided great inspiration.

Gaylene Preston was one. Her War Stories our Mothers Never Told Us project produced a book and a powerful film based on the original interviews. Now she is producing a companion piece – a film called Home Before Christmas which will be out next year. It is a dramatisation of the interviews she recorded with her elderly father about his war experiences.  She writes, directs, produces and even has as small appearance and judging by the sneak preview she showed us it will be well worth seeing. Gaylene is a real Kiwi treasure and her work is well worth following up.

Pip Desmond shared the process of developing the book Trust: a true story of women and gangs. In the 1970s Pip lived and worked with a group of young women who had connections with the Black Power gang. She helped them to find work and some degree of shelter with the Aroha Trust and thirty years later she recorded their stories and worked with them while producing the book.

Jack Perkins talked about his experiences with the Spectrum documentaries on Radio New Zealand and Jacqui Foley talked about her work recording oral histories for the North Otago Museum in Oamaru. Judith Fyfe and Tony Hiles talked about working with the artist Michael Smither. Judith Fyfe recorded him in the 1980s talking about the many notebooks he kept for recording ideas. Tony Hiles is a documentary film maker who has made films with Smither before  and has now embarked on a ten year, 20 part documentary project chronicling the artist  at work. The first film, Shared Harmonics, was released in September 2009. An earlier film Flight of Fancy can be viewed on the NZ on Screen website.

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This library’s recent promotion involving that great Kiwi icon, the Edmonds Cookery Book, has provided a fascinating insight into social and family history, but there is another iconic guidebook that has been far more important to me personally. Let me sing the praises of Yates Garden Guide.

Like Edmonds Cookery Book, Yates Garden Guide sprang from a commercial imperative, to create a demand for the company’s product,  and like Edmonds transcended mere commerce to become a basic reference guide found in many homes.  My own old, battered copy of the Guide was bought in 1965 by my dad, when we moved from a mostly tarmacked backyard in Lyttelton to a quarter-acre section in Spreydon (there were houses on these properties but I always felt that the gardens were more important). Mum and Dad had migrated from London in 1958, and knew very little about gardening,  so a straightforward guide to New Zealand conditions was needed. 

Step back in time to 1965. The gardening world was different then.  The Guide sang the praises of DDT and artificial fertilisers. DDT and its component dieldrin wiped out everything, in a hygienic, efficient and cost-effective way, especially when applied via “convenient plastic squeeze dispersing bottles”.  And why use smelly, bulky natural manures when you could apply a clean, white powder and get better results?

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I have to confess I am not really a “who dunnit” reader.  I  blame watching one to many mind numbing crime programmes on television. I now pretty much don’t care  about these imaginary victims with their corpses displayed for my viewing pleasure (they are getting more and more graphic have you noticed?)  nor can I be  bothered waiting to see who did what to whom and why (their mother was too clingy, they are greedy or just plain psychopaths ). But I do have to confess that Gillian Flynn’s “Dark Places” has managed to change that.

None of the main players in this book are likable. There is no truely innocent victim nor some hardened but likable local cop.  The main protagonists in this book is the greasy haired angry and depressed Libby Day, who lives off the proceeds of her dwindling trust fund, set up for her when as a child her mother and two sisters were slaughtered in the family’s Kansas farmhouse.  It was a seven-year-old Libby’s testimony that sent her then 15-year-old brother, Ben, to prison for life for the murders. Ben, who we also get to know well in the book as an awkward and angry manchild, yearning for a father-figure while being raised in a poverty-stricken household by a single overwhelmed mother.

We meet Libby twenty odd years latter after the murders, when desperate for cash she reluctantly agrees to meet members of the Kill Club, true crime enthusiasts who bicker over famous cases. She’s shocked to learn most of them believe Ben is innocent and the real killer is still on the loose. Though initially interested only in making a quick buck Libby  soon begins to question what exactly she saw—or didn’t see—the night of the tragedy.

The book is told in an interesting flashback format, with Libby, tough and damaged  narrating the present-day chapters in first-person, while the flashback chapters, told in third-person, describe the actions of several key characters including Ben on one winter’s day in 1985.

Trust me – you will never guess what happened in that farmhouse in 1985  and I challenge you not to have your mouth agape at the end when you find out!