Christchurch City Libraries Blog

We are sharing some photos of our libraries, to celebrate Library Week. 
The Mobile Library connects the community with Christchurch City Libraries – here are some images of buses of the past.

View more Mobile Library images on our Flickr site

I’ve decided to throw my fishing net over the huge amount of a variety of New Titles we are receiving daily. My next pick was the memoir The Dancer from Khiva by Bibish.

I’m not a particular fan of Memoir genre, but a challenge is a challenge, so I followed Clare’s kind reference and read this one practically overnight.

Being familiar with Uzbekistan’s culture from my friends’ travelling experience and newspapers and magazines articles, I wasn’t really surprised to learn the real life story of the brave Uzbek woman who found enough courage to let the whole world know how cruel life was – and still is for a Muslim girl, born in a poor Uzbek family.

This book will be very helpful for someone studying a cultural differences topic.

Elvis Aaron Presley 1935-1977

Just a country boy that combed his hair
And put on a shirt his mother made
and went on the air
And he shook it like a chorus girl
And he shook it like a Harlem queen
He shook it like a midnight rambler,
baby,
Like you never seen

Then he died

33 years ago.

RIP Elvis

Song lyrics by Gillian Welch

Here’s this week’s  sample of the new items in the Aotearoa New Zealand Centre (ANZC).  ANZC is the library’s reference and research centre.

Kiwiana party cakes : fun cakes for fun occasions by Rob Burns and photographs by Charlie Smith has pictures you just want to eat.
The number of cooking books produced in New Zealand is stunning – another one this week is A good spread : recipes from the kitchens of Rural Women New Zealand. These are classic recipes from the pages of the 1965 Women’s Division of Federated Farmers cookbook, and full of culinary creations from your childhood (or not, depending on your age)
In Your 21st century career : new paths to personal success, Heather Carpenter talks about how workers today need to be flexible, creative and innovative to be successful. She includes special exercises, strategies and self-assessment charts for practical self-evaluation when it comes to finding the career that is just right for you. She reckons that “the acquisition of new skills has assumed critical importance”.
Silver wings : New Zealand women in aviation by Shirley Laine tells the story of the many feisty women involved in flying our skies through the years.
Kyle Mewburn, New Zealand Post Children’s Book Award winning author, produces a new story for children in his usual highly imaginative style. In A crack in the sky, nine year old Conor has woken up to find his right arm missing and horns on his head. What?
Physiotherapist Robin McKenzie has provided the best known self-help advice to back-pain sufferers for many years. In his latest volume, 7 steps to a pain-free life ; how to rapidly relieve back and neck pain, written with Craig Kubey, he looks at simple real solutions to back pain and illustrates all his ideas with case studies
And finally a book that deserves a post all to itself – Postcards from Tukums : a family detective story by Ann Gluckman ; edited by Kirsten Warner. A family history with attitude, this is illustrated with a wonderful collection of postcards which were found in the family home as it was being demolished. Fascinatingly entertaining.
More soon – there’s always more……

Someone, somewhere, mustn’t have been paying attention, because I am being allowed to go to another festival.

The Press Christchurch Writers Festival is nearly upon us, and to my delight among the team selected to go is me!  Also to my delight, we have a big bunch of people going this time, so you guys can really get a full sense of all the events, and from heaps of different perspectives.  I guess everyone will introduce themselves as the week goes on, but in the meantime, I’m going to try to earn my keep a bit by name-dropping all the authors I personally am already looking forward to seeing:  Alexa Johnston and Rosemary McLeod (with afternoon tea!), Simon Kernick, Jake Adelstein, Rachael King, David McPhail, Clive Hamilton, my old English lecturer Dr Elizabeth Gordon, Simon Winchester, Neil Cross and Dave Dobbyn.  Oh, and lots of Poetry for Lunch, and a dead exciting (hur hur) murder mystery evening, complete with dress-ups and the Court Jesters.

If any of this is making you jealous, remember this time it’s actually HERE in Christchurch, so all you have to do is grab a festival booklet from any of our libraries and get yourself some tickets!  Not only that, but there’s a lot of free stuff happening too, with book launches, readings in the libraries and heaps more.

(* “I’m Mr Lucky” – a quote from the best character in the best cartoon series of all time:  identify the character and the TV show, and win a prize!) (sort of) …

I guess it’s time to share my 5 Book Challenge experience.

Firstly, I’d like to list down the books I selected for the challenge:

• Adriana Trigiani Brava Valentine (Contemporary American Fiction/Romance)

• Wilbur Smith The Seventh Scroll (Historical Fiction/Adventure/Mystery)

• Bibish The Dancer from Khiva (Memoir) (just in case Bibish’s Memoir genre wouldn’t count towards the Popular Team choice)

• Santa Montefiore The Affair (Saga)

• Dexter Palmer  The Dream of Perpetual Motion (Science Fiction/Steampunk)

• Seth Grahame-Smith  Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (Horror)

Secondly, I’d like to contemplate on the mode I was reading these 5 (6) challenging books. Instead of picking up the one genre I’ve never read before or liked to read the least, I’ve decided to throw my fishing net over the huge amount of a variety of New Titles we are receiving daily. My efforts were not in vain and I’ve pulled out quite an impressive amount of new titles (The Affair, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter), or even new authors (!), like Dexter Palmer, or Bibish.

My choice of: “Let it be one book from each particular genre” was really paying off during my reading hours and this is why: if I found some authors to be extremely challenging, like Dexter Palmer, for instance, to the point when I wanted to return the book back unfinished (sounds like a real blasphemy for the librarian!), I would simply switch onto reading a book from a more pleasant genre to me, like Adriana Trigiani’s Brava Valentine, which is considered by many literary critics, including me:), “the tiramisu for the soul”. After  having a slice of a ”tiramisu for soul”, I’d return back to the least favourite author. This method worked very well for me, saving me from committing a real crime of throwing the least favourite reading back into Returns boxes before actually finishing with them!

Brava Valentine is the second in the series of  Valentine  books. What I really enjoyed about this book is that one can find everything (or almost everything) in it: family, drama, love story, adventure, contemporary American fiction in its best embodiment! If you are a big fan of Jane Austen translated into today’s environment plus  a bit of  You’ve Got Mail  movie type of person, then, Valentine is your next stop.

All in all, I’ve greatly enjoyed myself during the 5 Book challenge, practically, because you turn your attention to the writers, titles or genres you’ll never think of reading first place and, when you are finished with these readings, you cannot help the feeling of complete satisfaction with yourself, similar to the Olympic champion’s feeling when he finishes his marathon. Bouquet to Bronwyn – now I am not feeling uncomfortable when I hear the mysterious word Steampunk any more!   I would gladly take part in the next 5 Book Challenge. Would you?

Read more of Victoria’s Challenges.

So far I have never been tempted to read anything to do with the suckers. Why did I change my mind then? A colleague recommended Sunshine by Robin McKinley as the best in literary terms.

The book is heaven for readers with a sweet tooth. Rae, also known as Sunshine, is an expert baker and dessert maker in the family’s restaurant, and the names of her sweet creations all sound similar to ’death by chocolate’. The world is populated by humans, demons, weres, and by night, vampires.

Vampires are nasties who want to take over the world but there is always the odd one who is different. Constantine is not a knight in shining armour but still he is the good one. Pity though his looks…his eyes have the colour of stagnant bog water and his skin’s colour is that of old mushrooms. I don’t want to spoil it for other newcomers so will not give anything further away.

The study of a world so small, we can’t see it – even with a light microscope. That world is the field of nanotechnology, the realm of atoms and nanostructures. (How stuff works)

Christchurch is playing host to a Nanotechnology Festival. It includes a range of interesting events. The University of Canterbury website has full details, and bookings for the Don Eigler and Kim Hill events (they are free to attend, but require booking).

Events include:

• Don Eigler, IBM, USA, “Playing with atoms” – Wednesday 1 September
  Don is a pioneer of nanotechnology and the winner of the 2010 Kavli Prize in Nanoscience.
• Kim Hill hosts “A big discussion about small things” – Wednesday 8 September
  Views on nanotechnology from across the spectrum of scientists, Maori, government regulators, and more.
• The Art of Nanotechnology – Wednesday 11 August to Friday 10 September
  An exhibition at Our City O-Tautahi featuring intriguing nanotechnology images, and art inspired by nanotechnology.
• Nanotechnology at Science Alive – from 28 August
  The science behind nanotechnology, with a Christchurch flavour.

If you want to know more about nanotechnology, there’s a range of Nanotechnology material (non-fiction and fiction) at Christchurch City Libraries.  How Stuff Works has a useful explanation on what nanotechnology is all about.

A recent addition to the graphic novel collection is a variation of the Spiderman series.

Spiderman Noir is set in the prohibition era of the USA. Interestingly, there are new slants on the same old characters. For instance, Peter Parker is still bitten by a spider, but it is a venomous spider from South America. His web-spinning fluid is actually now secreted from glands within his wrist.

Parker is taken under the wing of one of the best reporters for the Daily Bugle, Ben Ulrich. Avid graphic novel readers will recognise Ulrich as a great friend of Matt Murdoch (aka Daredevil) in the current editions of the series.

The artwork is a crucial component here; the drawings are edgy and gritty, not colourful and detailed as in the traditional version. This is important as it draws the reader into this new environment more easily.

All in all, it is good to see that time honoured characters can still be given a new lease of life, and hopefully this trend will continue.

Wesleyan Methodist Church, Durham Street, Christchurch. Circa 1921.

Durham Street church is a Victorian Gothic building which was opened on Christmas Day 1864, the first stone church built on the Canterbury Plains. The church was built from local stone, in a mixture of Halswell and Port Hills basalt. The lighter facings are Charteris Bay sandstone.

Do you have photos of Christchurch? We love donations.

Also contact us if you have any further information on any of the images. Want to see more? You can browse our collection.