Christchurch City Libraries Blog

The most sartorially resplendent character in a work of fiction?
Several blogs have recently pondered just this question. It has also forced several library types to stop, think  and scratch their immaculately coiffed heads. C’est très difficile!

One complicating factor is the unholy number of novels which have been subjected to film or television treatment and therefore the meddling attention of a costume department. Was Holly Golightly a bonafide fashion plate? Or is she merely the cinematic creature of Edith Head and Hubert de Givenchy?

The other worrying aspect to fashion and fictional characters is that, generally, well-dressed characters are portrayed as vile and vapid; I’m thinking here of the Land of Plenty’s favourite psycho Patrick Bateman and Runway magazine editor-in-chief  Miranda Priestly in The devil wears Prada.

I shudder to imagine what subtle character traits my own modish (or not) choices would indicate if, heaven forbid, I was dropped into a novel. Would my penchant for corsages and other floral accessories reveal me as a trivial female popinjay, a mere fribble and shallow coxcomb?! But back to the well-dressed…

Some genre contenders might include:

• Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane -The fashion forward Deco sleuths showed stuffy Oxford dons just how to achieve stylish perfection in Gaudy night.
• Hercule Poirot- Perhaps fastidious rather than fashionable, Hercule’s clothes like his little grey cells are sharp and immaculate.
• Lestat-Anne Rice’s vamp is a noted snappy dresser and I am reliably informed that fangs=fashion.

Rather more authoritatively Booker short-listed novelist Linda Grant -The clothes on their backs picked three outstanding “Paper dolls”:

• Dorothea Brooke, the “finely formed” heroine of  george Eliot’s Middlemarch
• Duchesse de Guermantes from Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu
• Orlando, not the Bloom boy, but eponymous hero/heroine of Virgina Woolf’s Orlando: A biography

So all you stylistas who’d make it down the catwalk on your best-dressed literary list?

Morocco - courtesy of Walker Books

Picture books are designed to appeal to children, with their colourful illustrations and entertaining text, but every now and again a picture book comes along that fascinates adults as well as children. 

Australia - courtesy of Walker Books

Jeannie Baker is one of those authors whose work appeals equally to children and adults.  She has been creating picture books since the early 80s and nearly all of her books have won some award or another.  She uses collage for her artworks, which include scraped and salvaged material, and many of her artworks are part of public art collections and have been exhibited in galleries in London, New York and throughout Australia. 

Jeannie’s latest book is one of the most unique and creative picture books that I’ve ever seen.  Called Mirror, it takes us into the lives of two families: one in Australia and one in Morocco.   The stunning illustrations show the different lifestyles, countries, landscapes and clothing, but also highlight the similarities of the two families.  Jeannie says that the message she is portraying is that, 

We all live to be loved by family and friends and to be a part of a larger family, a community.  Inwardly we are so alike, it could be each other that we see when we look in a mirror. 

What makes Mirror even more amazing is that the book is almost completely wordless so you really have to delve into the illustrations to help tell the story.  The book is made up of two separate sections so that you can read both stories, Australia and Morocco, at the same time. Mirror is the sort of book that you want to frame and put on your wall so that you can look at the stunning illustrations every day.  Grab a copy from the library and prepare to be blown away.

How often have you looked at some household treasure such as  a vintage Barbie doll or picture  and wondered, “What’s it worth?”
Have you ever looked through a second-hand shop or stumbled across long forgotten items and tried to estimate a value?
Now there’s an easy way to find out.  Price It! Antiques & Collectibles powered by GoAntiques.com is a comprehensive antique and collectible pricing tool.

Users can find more than 125 subjects to search, from broad categories like stamps and toys to brand-specific items like Coca-Cola Collectibles. This easy online resource delivers more than 20 million realized prices on treasures people collect, buy and trade.

Features include:

• Price It! Info Centre :  advice from industry experts which cover common and unusual topics in pricing restoration and repair.
• Collecting Club :  a directory of more than 4,000 enthusiast organizations which delivers club descriptions, membership information and Web links.
• Images:  Over 10 million images and growing to aid in identification.

Price It! Antiques & Collectibles is the ultimate identification, research and pricing tool for collectors, dealers, appraisers, Trade me addicts and anyone in between.

Access this and many other useful databases from you home with your library card number and PIN, or you can alternatively access this resource at our community libraries.

Every so often a list of  new library titles or library recommended reads pops into my email box courtesy of the Libraries Email Newsletters.  This is a fantastic feature which results in me placing a flurry of holds on what usually turn out to be great reads.  Currently I’m reading this one:

T.S. Spivet’s fans at the Smithsonian Institution consider him a cartography genius–in fact, they’ve awarded him a prestigious prize they’d like him to accept in person, complete with a keynote speech for the celebration. What they don’t know is that he’s only 12 years old. But he’s nevertheless determined to get from his parents’ Montana ranch to D.C., and so he hops a train to begin his crossing of America. Along the way this precocious boy muses on everything from his impending fame to the garbage found on city streets and comes across some equally wide-ranging travellers. Cleverly illustrated, annotated, and printed, this debut is one of a kind.

The Selected works of T.S, Spivet is a book with everything; a humorous coming-of-age novel featuring a child prodigy with definite leanings towards Aspergers, a mysterious family, trains, science, insects, adventure and within its margins delightful little maps, diagrams, anecdotes and explanations.  It also has a rather bizarre and enchanting website.

It’s a book I currently adore (and I haven’t finished it yet – the ending could be dreadful – don’t tell me!).  Yet, for 3 weeks the book languished on my bookshelf – un-opened and unappreciated. Why?  Well, because, it’s not the cover exactly… it’s the shape – it’s the wrong shape!  It has the shape and feel of a text-book – it has the squarish weight of a history text-book whose tedium has not yet  enabled passage beyond the Tudors and you remain trapped in a dreary struggle to remember the exact order of luckless royal wives.

Why should the shape of my reading material matter so much? But it does (and it’s a pain to lug around on the bus).  This – and the title  - conjuring images of dull, 18th century poetry by someone you are probably supposed to have heard of but haven’t – must make it a booksellers nightmare.  Indeed, I saw a huge pile of them for sale in the remainders book shop.  Which is why Libraries Email Newsletters offer a brilliant way to discover the joys of the uglies you’d never choose to pick up in the library but could become your own true (book) loves.

P.S. What books have you reluctantly read – only to find a true gem?

Three books have been short-listed for the Ngaio Marsh Award, New Zealand’s first ever crime novel award. A panel of seven local and international judges has selected the shortlist from crime, mystery and thriller novels written by a New Zealand citizen and published in New Zealand in 2009. The winner will be announced on Friday night of the Christchurch Writers Festival during the Setting the Stage for Murder evening (10 September 2010).

Two of the short listed authors, Neil Cross and Vanda Symon will be on stage, along with Australian based Michael Robotham and English writer Simon Kernick.

The three finalists are:

• Cut and Run by Alix Bosco
• Burial by Neil Cross
• Containment by Vanda Symon

We are sharing some photos of our libraries, to celebrate Library Week.
Here are some of library displays, because we love to show our wares.

View more photos of library displays on our Flickr site.

If  you’re working on a research paper, trying to win trivia games, complete that annoying cross word puzzle or just curious, Credo Reference has something for you! Our Credo Reference collection contains over 100 searchable and browsable full text online reference books from some of the world’s leading publishers, including Bloomsbury, Collins, Penguin and Thames and Hudson. For example:

• Encyclopedias: The Faber Companion to 20th Century Popular Music,  Miller’s antiques encyclopedia …
• Dictionaries: Black’s Medical Dictionary, Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Art and Artists…
• Biographies: Who’s who in Christianity , Marquis Who’s who in the world…
• Quotations: Biographical dictionary of quotations , Rawson’s dictionary of American quotations …
• Bilingual Dictionaries: The Browser’s Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases, Harper Collins French Dictionary Plus Grammar…

Bonus attributes

• Crossword Solver – Enter the letters you do have and question marks for those you don’t and see what Credo can do!
• Measurement Conversions – covers area, weight, fuel consumption, speed volume etc.
• Credo concept map –  enables you to quickly find information when you don’t know exactly what you are looking for and want to expand your knowledge of a given area.
• Image search - pictures of everything you have in mind!

You can access Credo Reference and many other useful electronic resources from home with your library card number and PIN, or at our community libraries.

We’ve got some movie tickets that get you two movie entries for the price of one  (courtesy of Allen and Unwin)  to see the movie adaptation of part two of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy.

Sadly Stieg died so there are no more “Girl” titles to come …

So make your suggestion for the imaginary next title in the comments and we’ll pick our favourites and send you off to the flicks.

Here’s a couple of offerings to ‘fire’ you up:

• The girl with a nose-ring, burnt fingers and a bee in her bonnet
• The girl with a killer bob who worked at the Stockholm Public Library

PS If you are a fan of Nordic crime, try our brand spanking new Scandinavian Crime booklist.

Conditions of entry: You’ll need to be over 16 to use the movie tickets, and staff of Christchurch City Libraries aren’t eligible to enter. Competition closes 23 August 2010.

The LIANZA Book Awards are a chance for librarians across New Zealand to pick their favourite New Zealand books of the year.  The winners have just been announced and they are:

• The Billionaire’s Curse by Richard Newsome – Junior Fiction (Esther Glen Award)
• Banquo’s Son by Tania Roxborogh – Young Adult Fiction
• There Was a Crooked Man by Gavin Bishop – Illustration (Russell Clarke Award)
• Dear Alison by Simon Pollard - Non-fiction (Elsie Locke Award)
• Old Hu-Hu by Kyle Mewburn, illustrated by Rachel Driscoll - Te Reo Maori (Te Kura Pounamu)

Congratulations to all the winners!  We are lucky enough to have the winner of the Esther Glen Award, Richard Newsome, coming to Central Library for the launch of the Christchurch Kids Blog on Wednesday 8 September, from 7-8pm.  We will also have an interview with Richard on the blog after the launch.  To find out more about Richard Newsome’s visit, check out the What’s On page on the library website.

Have you read any of the winning books?

Time is racing on. We’re half way through August, the daffodils are coming out, the trees are producing buds in defiance of the winter weather and there’s only a week and a half to go until the  NZ Society of Authors’ One-Day Short Story Competition kicks off. I’m already sharpening my pencils in anticipation.

The One-Day Short Story Competition was run for the first time last year and you can check out some examples of work created on the Christchurch City Libraries‘ website. The event proved to be so popular, it is happening again and it’s quickly becoming a highlight on every Canterbury writer’s calendar. This year literary types, myself included, are invited to meet at the Christchurch Art Gallery at 10am on Sunday 29th August. Once registered, we will each receive a pack with everything needed to get started and have until 5pm to complete a 1,500 word short story. The event is open to everyone and there are Youth and Adult categories.

Sounds easy? Uh, uh. To make things interesting the clever folk who organise the competition insist that authors use various pre-selected places or phrases in their stories. These details are only disclosed on the day so it makes it totally impossible to write anything beforehand. You never know what will turn up. Your characters might have to have some connection to the door on the Law Courts and the Scarborough Clock Tower for example. Not easy, but then there’s nothing writers like more than the chance to get the cognitive thought processes firing. The fun is discovering how your mind will link these things together and time pressure forces you make creative decisions quickly.

Some people jump out of aeroplanes for kicks. I enter the One-Day Short Story Competition. It’s great fun and you’ll feel like you’ve run the Coast to Coast by the end of it. There are prizes for the winners and deserved recognition at an award presentation in the Conference Room at the Town Hall, but it is the challenge that appeals to me most. A big thanks to the team who ensure this event happens. The competition is open to everyone and costs $5 to enter. Maybe I’ll see you down there?