Christchurch City Libraries Blog

I know my not-so-darling 13 year old is. He seems to be at the early teen stage where he alternates between sweet child and hell child. After watching The Politically Incorrect Guide to Teenagers on TV, I decided to arm myself with some good advice. So I trundled off to the library catalogue to see what’s available and found a wealth of parenting teens books for bewildered parents just like me!

CINCH, our community directory, lists parenting groups such as Tough Love and Single Women as Parents (SWAP) to give parents support through this interesting time.

Good luck! We’ll need it.

Christopher Blake, creator of The Islands was born in Christchurch in 1949. He studied music and engineering at Canterbury University and has a post graduate degree in composition from the University of Southampton, England.

Blake has been general manager of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, manager of Concert FM and foundation chief executive of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs. He has undertaken commissions for all the major music organisations in New Zealand and a wide variety of performers. His music is heard in concerts and broadcasts,  and in recent performances in Mexico and the United States.

This album (and over 52,000 more) is available online for free from anywhere with your library card number and PIN.

For New Zealand Music Month we are featuring a daily dose of free online New Zealand music from Naxos Music Library and the Source.

• More free online New Zealand music
• Posts about New Zealand Music Month 2011
• New Zealand Music Month events
• NZ Music Month 2011 — official site

I picked up Restoration with some trepidation as the cover looks serious and historical fiction can be a bit on the sombre side. Let’s face it, no one wants gloomy at present. However, from page one this book gripped me and led me on a merry romp through the reign of King Charles II seen through the eyes of pleasure-seeking Robert Merivil. This book was made into a movie and I can see actor Robert Downey Jnr reveling in this role.

England in the 1660s was a time for seizing opportunity and moving heaven and earth to gain favour at the wealthy Royal Court. Chance and determination brought commoners into the royal circle (not unlike today if you think about the fortunes of Kate Middleton). Robert’s charm makes him a favourite of the King but his fortunes rise and fall as he battles his personal demons. Author Rose Tremain uses his trials to vividly contrast the opulence of the Court with the abject poverty of those living on the fringes of society.

The people of the time lived under constant threat of plague. The death toll from these outbreaks was often in the thousands. In 1666 the Great Fire of London destroyed the homes of 70,000 of the city’s 80,000 inhabitants. Life was unpredictable but Robert Merivil finds the courage to carry on in spite of it all. Kind of reassuring really. Have you enjoyed any historical fiction lately?

Viola Aotearoa features virtuoso presentations of modern New Zealand repertoire for viola, including three previously unrecorded works.

A New Zealander by birth, Timothy Deighton is Assistant Professor of Viola at Penn State University. He  maintains a busy performing schedule as a soloist, chamber, and orchestral musician, and is very active as a teacher and clinician.

Having long held a fascination for new music, Deighton has performed American, European, and international premieres of numerous works by contemporary composers, several of which were commissioned by or written for him.

Viola Aotearoa features

• Pacific Rock for Solo Viola by Martin Lodge
• Three Songs for Baritone and Viola by Douglas Lilburn
• Duo Capriccio for Violin and Viola by Martin Riseley
• Recitative II for Viola and Percussion by Leonie Holmes
• Sonata for Solo Viola by Anthony Watson
• Viola Concerto by Anthony Ritchie

This album (and over 52,000 more) is available online for free from anywhere with your library card number and PIN.

For New Zealand Music Month we are featuring a daily dose of free online New Zealand music from Naxos Music Library and the Source.

• More free online New Zealand music
• Posts about New Zealand Music Month 2011
• New Zealand Music Month events
• NZ Music Month 2011 — official site

I have been reading a lot of dross lately – nothing has engaged me. This may be from my poor book selection or it could be the fact that I have been walking around like one large human nerve ending!

Then I found a book that turned the tide.A book that had me staying up late even on a “school night” -  Carol Birch’s Jamrach’s menagerie.

She took me through the slums of London to the whaling ships  of old, with Jaffy, a young street urchin, sent on an expedition to catch a “dragon” on behalf of Mr Charles Jamrach, the famed importer of exotic animals.

What a great read – once this blog is complete I shall be putting holds on all her other books, as my reading drought has been broken. Have you found any surprisingly good titles recently?

Imagine an easy-to access worldwide collection of the classic works of literature, science, and technology. Add encyclopedias and other reference works in over 100 languages, and you have the World eBook Library – an ambitious e-book and e-documentation collections from the World Library Association. Available free in .PDF format, the collection includes:

• Over 750,000 e-Books– from Homer to Jack London;
• e-documents from organisations such as the United Nations and the World Bank;
• special collections for children and young adults;
• the ability to save all PDF e-Books to your computer for offline reading.

This e-book collection helps supplement our OverDrive eBook collection. Access this resource, and many others, in the Source with your library card number and PIN.

• Read a list of collections [290Kb. PDF]
• Download the World eBook Library guide [2.29Mb. PDF]

Tea Obreht bounced on stage at the 2011 Auckland Writers and Readers Festival, looking for all the world like a stereotypical cheerleader – thick long blonde hair, shiny white teeth in a large smile, standard American TV accent. But hang on, hasn’t she written a world famous novel? Yes, it’s called The Tiger’s Wife, she began it at 19 and finished it at  22.

She spoke with Paula Morris about her Balkan heritage and how she comes from a tradition of rich storytelling, where even a trip to the shop is retold as an epic event. She is a fan of grand layered narrative and wrote this novel out of sequence – choosing to write sections at separate times, then wove them together later to make a seamless whole, that is virtually three dimensional in its complexity.

Her inspiration for the novel came from a National Geographic documentary she watched one snowy winter about Siberian tigers,  then combined that with traditional stories she’d grown up with, and she’d also loved reading The Jungle Book and Just So stories as a child. She is a zoo fanatic, has visited Auckland Zoo whilst here, and proclaimed it one of the best she’d seen.

Before starting this novel, she was commissioned by Harpers magazine to go to remote Serbo-Croatian villages to gain information for an article on vampires (this being the start of the Twilight era). She knocked on many doors, had a few slammed in her face, but at others was invited in and she listened to nonagenarians talk about their first hand experiences with these bloodsuckers. Not the average temporary job for a teen, and you can only admire her level-headedness at such a young age.

Tea has a second novel under way, but is making slow progress on it. The Tiger’s Wife was written as her grandfather was dying (Obreht is his Slovenian surname – he made a deathbed request that she dedicate her book to him, and she has, as well as taking on his name), and the novel was cathartic for her. Consequently it has taken her a while to come up with another idea that will be equally as meaningful to her. I wish her all the best for it because, let’s face it, she’s certainly got time on her side.

… or so it seemed for a lazy hour at South Library last Saturday. The sun streamed in through tall windows and it was easy to forget that winter is just around the corner as local duo Hugh Campbell and Jon Hooker treated book browsers and music lovers to the gentle sound of fingerpicking, slide and blues guitar.

It was great to see people hunting for books while tapping their feet to the rhythm of the blues. And one elderly couple was spotted jiving in a stately fashion as the Cannonball Rag twinkled over the non-fiction shelves.

I’d like to think that one or two young people were inspired to pick up a copy of Guitar for Beginners by Minna Lacey or to grab The Devil’s Music: A History of the Blues by Giles Oakley. I borrowed a CD called Ragtime Memories and I’m almost sure I saw that elderly couple leaving with a copy of Peggy Spencer’s The Joy Of Dancing tucked under an arm.

Hugh and Jon are playing at New Brighton Library at 2pm tomorrow and at Shirley Library at 2pm Wednesday, 25 May. Head on down, grab a sofa and enjoy a slice of summer.

• More free, live, local music at your library this month

Find out more about OverDrive at your library

OverDrive is a free and popular digital media platform which now allows library customers to download audio books and e-books – and it’s available right now!

There’s fiction and non-fiction items for adults, young adults and children, with regular additions of new material to inspire you. By downloading and installing the free OverDrive software, customers can use their library card and PIN to:

• Download fiction and non-fiction titles from home at any time using an “online shopping-like” experience;
• Transfer audio and e-book titles to your computer or portable devices such  as an MP3 player or e-book  reader;
• Avoid late fees — the items self expire. You can also check e-books in early if you have  finished with them.

Over 2,000 best-selling and classic titles form our current e-book and audio book collection. Half of these are now e-books in Adobe EPUB and Adobe PDF formats – the main formats supported by most portable devices.

At this point the service can only be offered remotely to library members – it is not available for use in libraries. Help pages on how to use this resource are available on our website. OverDrive is just one of many  amazing electronic resources that library customers can access through the Source.

Only a hard heart could resist the  infectious charm of Touch Wood. It is infused with a colourful mix of generic and cultural influences and an undeniable musical passion.

The core-group of Gitbox Rebellion, Nigel, Kim, Jonathan and Russell, are joined by a number of friends on a variety of instruments.

The second Gitbox album is chock full of jaunty, delicate, heartfelt and twisted tunes. This time round, a selection of new instruments are added, including cello, violin, tablas, bass and sheng. Pop, funk, jazz, African, classical, Indian ragas, folk and blues mesh into the group’s sound. Touch Wood is a revolution.
- Suzanne Court, Music in NZ

This album (and over 52,000 more) is available online for free from anywhere with your library card number and PIN.

For New Zealand Music Month we are featuring a daily dose of free online New Zealand music from Naxos Music Library and the Source.

• More free online New Zealand music
• Posts about New Zealand Music Month 2011
• New Zealand Music Month events
• NZ Music Month 2011 — official site