Christchurch City Libraries Blog

The temperature has been rising in the Learning Centre.

Everyone has been rooting around on their children’s book shelves and dusting off old treasures. So when John Marsden arrived he was deluged by staff with sweaty palms thrusting their copies of Tomorrow when the War Began at him for an autograph. He is probably used to it…

John was here in recognition of Christchurch’s recent tough times. He had a very tight two day schedule of school talks and visits. It began with a helicopter tour of the CBD on Wednesday, a workshop with Avonside and Burnside High Schools, and a public session in the evening. 

On Thursday, he was teleconferencing with five local schools, then visiting Cashmere and Linwood. He made high schools that are site sharing the priority.

He was calm and warm to all and revealed his secret weakness – Diet Coke. And he needed the caffeine to keep up the whirlwind pace of his tour.

• Look for John Marsden’s books in our catalogue

Julianne, Learning advisor

What does this mean? For Kiwi crime writing fans it means the elusive author Alix Bosco, who won last year’s Ngaio Marsh Award, will appear on stage at the 2011 awards where he/she is also a finalist with her book Slaughter Falls .  Last year’s no show sparked wild conjecture as to who Alix Bosco is. Suspects include Greg McGee, Rosie Scott, television writer Maxine Fleming, and former Prime Minister Helen Clark !

Other finalists for the award for best crime, mystery, or thriller novel written by a New Zealand citizen or resident, published in New Zealand during the previous year:

• Blood men by Paul Cleave (Random House)
• Captured by Neil Cross (Simon & Schuster)
• Hunting Blind by Paddy Richardson (Penguin)

As well as the Boo Radley moment in New Zealand crime publishing, the awards evening will feature international authors Tess Gerritsen and John Hart. It should be an great event in the TelstraClear Club at Hagley Park on Sunday 21 August. Get your tickets now.

Much like this post, Rod Rees’ Winter is the first in a series.  I found it, literally, in a box of new books I was unpacking. It looks delicious – shiny,  with an old-fashioned globe on the front.  It also has a killer series title – The Demi-Monde.  Further inspection reveals it lives up to its promise.

The premise is that the United States military has developed a virtual reality training programme that fully immerses soldiers in a created world.  Locked in a kind of Victorian steampunk era, the Demi-Monde is populated with historical figures, and not nice ones.

In order to replicate the reality of today’s ‘asymmetric warfare’, with its unholy mix of terrorism, warlords, drug cartels and factions, the world is divided into four quarters, each with a particular social or religious profile, then stacked with despots and megalomaniacs, from Crowley to Heydrich, Robespierre to Beria, and more.

It sounds complicated, but it isn’t, once you get the hang of it.  The sympathetic lead is a young woman called Ella who (for various reasons) is the only one who can enter the world and save the President’s kidnapped daughter. From this angle, it’s a simple thriller adventure plot.

I have to say the characters aren’t as easy to bond with as I’d have liked, but the story and the audacious concept make up for this.  It’s an incredibly detailed and beautifully realised world, and I’m hanging out for number two already.  Oh, and as an ‘extra for experts’ kind of bonus, the website for the books is a thing of true beauty.

One out of the box is a regular series of new  material available at your library.

• Find more titles like this
• More posts in the One out of the box series
• Find award-winning books at your library
• Browse our new titles

I talked last week about attending The Larnachs, a Christchurch Writers Festival event with Owen Marshall, author of the recently released and well reviewed book of the same name. And on Sunday I frocked up and rocked up to the Cashmere Club – a fittingly posh-sounding place for a posh-sounding event. A sell-out crowd was in attendance, which was nice – some previous events have been down a little in numbers, which is such a shame, and it’s YOUR LOSS! Make it up to yourself, and make sure you get tickets for some of the events still to come …

Right, grump over, and back to Larnach Castle, or “the Camp”, as the family used to call it. Owen Marshall is one of New Zealand’s best-known and best-loved writers, and has once again put his talents to great use, bringing this story vividly to life. In conversation with the always wonderful Ruth Todd, Owen talked about the book, the family, the history and the scandal – the love triangle between William Larnach, patriarch; his second and best-loved son Dougie; and his third wife Connie, herself a member of another illustrious and political New Zealand family.

Much of the session focused on how Owen actually wrote the book: whether he talked to the family beforehand (he didn’t); if he’s had any feedback from the family afterwards (he has, and all positive); how he decided the balance between historically accurate fact-telling, and fictional made-up story-telling (he aimed for “… an imaginative re-creation of a situation experienced by real people …”); and how he chose whose story to tell (three stories, two voices: Connie and Dougie each tell their story in the first person, while William, whose character Owen describes as ‘Shakespearean’ in nature, is seen through their eyes).

There were three readings, a heap of audience questions, and so so much more discussed than I can possibly do justice to here. I must confess I’d have liked it to be a bit more on the gossipy side – it wasn’t till right at the end that one lady said, “I’m going to be brave and ask about the scandal”, and I wanted to hug her … But the session was great: warm, inclusive and a fascinating insight into not only one of our best-known families and landmarks, but also the writing process itself.

Coming up soon for the Writers Festival, Setting the Stage for Murder, with Tess Gerritsen and John Hart, and What’s for Pudding, an afternoon tea discussion with Alexa Johnston and Kate Fraser.  Go now. Buy tickets.  Enjoy.

Raw food. Unadulterated food. Food that has no heat applied to it. Could you go totally raw?

There’s been a flurry of new books on raw food diets which could help you on your way, including :

• Ani’s raw food essentials
• Raw family signature dishes
• Raw garden
• Raw basics
• Raw Energy
• Liquid raw

Two key subject terms are : raw foods and raw food diet.

And for the dogs in your life : Raw and natural nutrition for dogs.

And there’s even one for those who crave the sweet side of life:  Jessica’s raw chocolate recipes.

It’s not everyone’s cup of tea (which I don’t think you can have anyway on a raw diet since there’s heat involved),  but why not try a raw meal once a week and see how energised you feel afterwards. Ripe Recipes has a delicious beetroot & carrot raw salad that is the bee’s knees.

While I imagine it might be easier to be a raw food advocate in summer, or perhaps in a warmer climate, there are folks in Christchurch who eat a raw food diet throughout the year, so it can be done.

If you are interested in meeting other raw foodies, then you could make contact with the Raw Vegan group via the Christchurch Vegetarian Centre.

Necrology – a list of notable people who have died recently

• Ralph Barker, 1917-2011
  Air gunner who flew perilous wartime missions and wrote authoritative books on aviation and cricket
• Harry Bernstein, 1910-2011
  Film script scout whose ‘misery memoir’ of life in an English slum made him a literary lion at 96
• Emma Blair, 1942-2011
  Burly Glaswegian who won success as an author of bodice-rippers only after adopting a more dainty persona
• Joan De Hamel, 1924-2011
  New Zealand children’s writer
• Peter Falk, 1927-2011
  Actor who won television fame for his role as the dishevelled, cigar-smoking detective Columbo
• Patrick Leigh Fermor, 1915-2011
  Writer and SOE hero whose combination of action and learning marked him as a latter-day Byron
• Lucian Freud, 1922-2011
  Uncompromising realist painter whose fleshy, unflattering portraits ranked him among the great artists of the 20th century
• George Lascelles Harewood, 1923-2011
  Grandson of George V who was defined not by royalty but his achievements in the opera world
• Glyn Hughes, 1935-2011
  Poet and novelist who won great acclaim for his work about the Brontë sisters
• Francis King, 1923-2011
  One of the most distinguished and highly-regarded novelists of our time
• Vincenzo La Scola, 1958-2011
  Italian tenor once compared to Pavarotti who dismayed opera critics by singing along with Cliff Richard
• Anna Massey, 1937-2011
  Subtle and intelligent actress who excelled on both stage and screen despite fighting a lifelong battle with stage fright and depression
• Christopher Neame, 1942-2011
  Producer on Hammer horror films who went on to form a creative partnership with Graham Greene (more…)

This news will be of interest to Christchurch genealogists and family history researchers:

A message from Jan Slater of the Canterbury Branch of the New Zealand Society of Geneaologists:

We are all missing the genealogical resources in the ANZC. Canterbury Branch of NZSG is also homeless as a result of the quakes but we were able to get our resources out before our building was red stickered and they are stored in members homes but we can offer you a chance to search some of these resources: Parish registers, cemetery transcripts, School indexes, the CDs, NZ BDM microfiche and NZ cemetery microfiche:

Saturday 20 August 2011
10am to 4pm
St Ninian’s Church Hall
9 Puriri Street
Riccarton

View Larger Map

email canterburynz@genealogy.org.nz

Christopher Walken, y'all

Remember the olden days, when a 50cent pick ‘n’ mix lolly bag involved more than two choices, and they still sold Snifters (sob) and those coloured round ones that break your teeth? And there was a real intermission?  Yeah, me too.

Nowadays, it’s all about Blu-ray and home theatre, and when you do go out, the popcorn costs more than a small country, and no-one seems to know what they are about to see.  How many times have I sat behind tiny traumatised children at an animated movie, whose parents didn’t realise that not all ‘cartoon films’ are created equal?  Or equally G-rated?

Not only that (she whinged), but often, and especially in poor old ChCh right now, there’s just not the range of films to choose from.  What’s a girl to do?

Get to a library, that’s what.  Like a girl scout (although in no other way), I really like to be prepared for my movie viewing.

So here’s a few resources I’ve found handy, and you might like too.  Don’t tell everyone, though, otherwise we won’t be able to show off any more …

Magazines

Empire mag is a particular favourite of mine, with heaps of pics, gossipy film info, snidely hilarious footnotes and photo tags, and a really great range of titles covered each month, in all sorts of formats from DVD to BluRay to classics from the vault.  The library subscribes to the British edition, but you can also find the Australian edition round town, and the Empire website is well worth checking out.

"Fwee Woger"

Books

The Rough Guide series in particular is great for showing off!  It’s in a handy format, lists all the things you need to know, and doesn’t take itself too seriously.

And of course, the movies themselves – check the shelves at your local library, or search online for old favourites or new treats.

• Film and movie websites from our internet gateway
• Find more magazine titles
• Find more books about movies here
• More posts in the Pick ‘n’ mix series
• Find award-winning movies at your library
• Browse our new DVD titles

New Zealand Fashion Week is on its way, and things ‘fashion’ are to the fore. But despite my best intentions I have never been ‘on trend’ or even remotely fashionable. Do stonewash jeans count? Perhaps my fashion experiences would have been different if I had access to Berg Fashion Library online. This electronic resource  provides content and images on fashion and dress studies.

Key content includes:

• The Berg Encyclopaedia of World Dress and Fashion;
• Berg fashion e-books and e-journals with regular updates;
• An extensive library of colour images;
• Search functionality which allows you to refine by place, period, themes and textiles.

Berg Fashion Library is updated three times a year and covers all regions of the world, with in-depth content from pre-history to the present day.

New Zealand fashion

If you want to explore New Zealand fashion, there is some good stuff in here:

• Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion: Volume 7 is all about Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands
• Māori and European Dress: Cultural Exchanges in New Zealand
• Pacific Street Styles in Auckland

Access this resource at the Source from home with your library card number and PIN, or at our community libraries.

Books - they're waiting for you on the shelf ...

Sorting through a pile of papers the other day I came across a list that one of my children made, back in the day.  It was written in green and purple crayon, and decorated beautifully and intensively, and went a bit like this:

Things I like:  cats.  foxes.  my new bed.  singing.  drawing.  the sky.

And so on (it was quite a long list).  Seems listing is a bit of a family habit, and there’s so much to be said for sitting down with a blank piece of paper and pen, or a blank screen and keyboard.

With this in mind, I’ve got a bit of a challenge for you (and a treat, really).  Our new catalogue (oh, so shiny!) has a few features that make it truly a joy to play with, and one of the top treats is the list-making facility.  I’ve been having a blast creating lists online – it’s dead easy, and I can put whatever I want on them:

• Books I have read,
• Books I want to read,
• Books the library owns,
• or ones I’d like the library to own.

I can make my lists private, just for me, or public, so everyone can see and share my weird and wonderful finds.  I can name them, claim them, rearrange them …  I can think of all my favourite things (and not just books, but movies, music, websites too), and create one mega-list – say, Bronnypop’s Ultimate Reading and Viewing Wishlist.

Some days my Ultimate Wishlist could be called:
Books I want to read, with zombies and weird stuff, but not too much sexytimes, where the authors are cool and not pretentious, but still use quite big words.
Other days my Ultimate Wishlist might be:  True books about food critics who live in big European cities and eat delicious food.  And write about it.
Or even:  Books about librarians who have strange things happen to them, and solve mysterious mysteries, but not in a naff and cliche-d way, even though they have three cats.  And wear cardies.

So this is my challenge to you (two challenges, really):

• Go have a look at BiblioCommons and find some lists you like (here’s some of the ones we’ve been working on for the library, and some for teens), and even have a go at making one yourself;
• Tell us what your ultimate Booklist Wishlist title would be – comment below, and you never know, if it tickles our fancy enough, we may even have a go at creating it ourselves …