Best of 2016 – Staff Pickles

Our team of Staff Pickles pick their faves of the year:

Alina

• Best of 2016

Alison

• The Best of 2016.

Dan

• Fiction highlights of 2016

Donna

• Best NZ book covers of 2016
• Best reads of 2016
• Sound and vision faves of 2016

Joyce

• Best (and worst) bookies of 2016

Katherine

• 2016 top books

Moata

• Fave DVDs of 2016

Roberta

• Best reads

Memoir, biography and non-fiction

The Villa at the Edge of the Empire. One Hundred Ways to Read a City by Fiona Farrell (Bronwyn’s pick)
100 tiny pieces of perfect writing about the city we live in.

The Bad-ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts Joshua Harmer (Donna’s pick)
This is the true story of manuscripts gathered in Timbuktu, Mali & how they are threatened when jihadis take over the city. This is an utterly brilliantly told story about brave and bold librarians and citizens. Better than any thriller.

The Seven Good Years Etgar Keret (Dan’s pick)
The best autobiography I’ve ever and am ever likely to read!

Lab Girl: A Story of Trees, Science and Love Hope Jaren (Alison’s pick)
It is an awesome biography about a woman who loves trees, and her science-soulmate assistant Bill who used to live in a hole. They’re both incredible stranger-than-fiction characters, both passionate about science, both with a few tips about how to be very, very poor and still manage to run a lab. Stories of plants echo events in her own life – growth and roots, pollination and sex, endurance and survival. This one’s inspiring, fascinating and very well written.

• Five Presidents Clint Hill (Glenn’s pick)
• Farrow and Ball: How to decorate Joa Studholm and Charlotte Cosby (Joyce’s pick)
• First Day of the Somme Andrew Macdonald (Katherine’s pick)
• Porcelain Moby (Glenn’s pick)
• Fingers in the Sparkle Jar: Lessons in Life and Death Chris Packham (Katherine’s pick)
• The Beauty in the Beast: Britain’s favourite creatures and the people who love them Hugh Warwick (Alina’s pick)
• First Bite: How we learn to eat Bee Wilson (Alina’s pick)
• Don’t Suck, Don’t Die: Giving up Vic Chesnutt Kristin Hersh (Donna’s pick)

Watching and listening

Black Lotus Shogun Orchestra (Music) (Dan’s pick)
Such groove & feel, almost reminiscent of Mulatu Astatke.

45 Years (Film) (Robyn’s pick)
Ultra-jumbo sized box of tissues required but worth the pain.

Orange is the New Black (TV series) (Robyn’s pick)
Came late to it but love it – highly addictive. Great performances, great stories, Piper is mad annoying but perhaps that’s quite accurate. And she’s in the background more as the series progresses.

Fortitude (TV series) (Dan’s pick)
Cool Scandi-Crime drama.

• Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief (Documentary) (Moata’s pick)
• Orphan Black Season 4 (TV series) (Moata’s pick)
• Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (TV series) (Dan’s pick)
• Mr Robot (TV series) (Joyce’s pick)
• Wolf Hall (TV series) (Joyce’s pick)
• Endeavour (TV series) (Alina’s pick)
• Hunt for the Wilderpeople (Film) (Moata’s pick)
  
• Steven Universe (TV series) (Donna’s pick)

Fiction

The Vet’s daughter Barbara Comyns (Joyce’s pick)
Written in the 1950s this slim volume is domestic, sinister and soaked in sadness. Alice is the vet’s daughter and a very unhappy creature. As her life takes turn after turn for the worst she literally starts to untether. Weird but wonderful.

My struggle Book Three: Boyhood Karl Ove Knausgaard (Robyn’s pick)
This is my best book of the year so far, just as Book One, A death in the Family, and Book Two, A Man in Love were my best books of the year I read them in. I have to be on holiday to read them because once you start you cannot stop. I am not a man and I am not Norwegian and I am not a genius (and I think I’m a lot nicer person than Karl) but I have felt every emotion he describes, I just wouldn’t be able to express my feelings with such incredible skill.

American Gods Neil Gaiman (Bronwyn’s pick)
Re-re-reading this fabulous tale in preparation for the upcoming TV miniseries (so I can be all showy-offy when it’s on …)

Speak Louisa Hall (Joyce’s pick)
Humanity’s relationship with technology is told through a variety of narrators in this complex but gripping novel. Alan Turing, a Seventeenth century pilgrim girl, a robot and a variety of imagined scientists narrate their hopes and dreams of connection to the past, present and each other. Poetic and profound I so much wanted Mary Bradford travelling across the waves to her new life in the Americas to be real. Beautiful.

The Broken Earth series N K Jemisin (Alison’s pick)
The Obelisk Gate because it was a stunning sequel to The Fifth Season, delving deeper into the way this fantasy world works (or doesn’t work, as the case may be, as this world is intrinsically broken) full of tragedy, hidden histories, desperate grasps at survival, and utterly fantastic powerful women.

• Britt Marie was here Fredrik Backman (Roberta’s pick)
• His bloody project Graeme Macrae Burnet (Dan and Joyce’s pick)
• One Sarah Crossan (YA) (Masha’s pick)
• The course of Love Alain de Botton (Roberta’s pick)
• Our souls at night Kent Haruf (Roberta’s pick)
• To the Bright Edge of the World Eowyn Ivey (Dan’s pick)
• My Sister Rosa Justine Larbalestier (YA) (Alison’s pick)
• Swimming home Deborah Levy (Joyce’s pick)
• Glorious Heresies Lisa McInerney (Roberta’s pick)
• The portable Veblen Elizabeth McKenzie (Joyce’s pick)
• Eileen Ottessa Moshfegh (Moata’s pick)
• The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Ryan North and Erica Henderson (Moata’s pick)
• This must be the place Maggie O’Farrell (Roberta’s pick)
• Early warning Jane Smiley (Roberta’s pick)
• Golden Hill Francis Spufford (Joyce’s pick)
• Girl waits with gun Amy Stewart (Joyce’s pick)

More of the best

• More best reads of 2016
• Best book covers of 2016

Best Reads 2016

What books have you loved this year? The following lists bring together the cream of the crop of 2016’s books – from the picks of our staff and customers, to the lists published by magazines, newspapers and booksellers. Have your say!

Best books for kids and teens

Holiday reading
Librarians select the best books of the year for kids and teens. See also the picks from the Best and worst books event.

Christchurch City Libraries staff and customer picks

Staff Pickles

• Our team of staff pickers pick their faves of the year.
• Donna’s Best NZ book covers of 2016

Best of 2016 booklists

• ShadyNZ’s Best reads of 2016
• Dan’s Fiction highlights of 2016
• Katherine’s 2016 top books
• Rachaelistic’s 2016 Best books
• Alina’s Best of 2016
• Fiona’s Best reads
• Roberta’s Best reads
• Brian’s Best reads / listens / watches in 2016
• Moata’s Fave DVDs of 2016
• Donna’s Best reads of 2016
• Donna’s Sound and vision faves of 2016
• Joyce’s Best (and worst) bookies of 2016
• Alison’s The Best of 2016

Philip Tew’s picks (Fiction selector)

Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh.

The others I thought were standouts were:

• The gun room Georgina Harding
• The place that didn’t exist Mark Watson
• Mothering Sunday Graham Swift
• The allegations Mark Lawson
• Heroes of the frontier Dave Eggers
• The swans of Fifth Avenue Melanie Benjamin
• Tuesday nights in 1980 Molly Prentiss
• Once again assembled here Sean O’Brien
• The mother Yvvette Edwards

All of these were highly readable with characterisation and sense of time and place uppermost. I know we are doing “best of the year” so we don’t want negativity but I’d love to see these domestic unease thrillers that dominate the mystery genre now start to fade away. That Girl on the train is responsible for huge numbers of imitations.

Joy’s picks

There are several books which were my favourites of the year. In no particular order they are:

Rivers Of London Ben Aaronovitch
It turned me from being a rigid non-fantasy reader into a fan of Mr Aaronovitch at least. I like the British humour permeating and ridiculously he makes all the magic seem quite natural.

Bone Clocks David Mitchell
Again fantasy! Very clever writing that hung together well and kept me to the end.

The Invoice Jonas Karlsson
I loved the quirkiness but the slight hint of “is this our new reality”.

Shades of Grey Jasper Fforde
Futuristic with delightful humour and a great storyline. Mr Fforde has kept fans of this book waiting for several years but is promising the sequel in 2017. I do hope he delivers.

Belinda’s pick

The Raven Boy Trilogy Maggie Stiefvater
Because Maggie is just amazing!

Sarah M’s pick

We are the ants Shaun David Hutchinson
It’s raw, emotional, harrowing, and very funny. Henry Denton has been given the power to stop the end of the world by aliens who casually and randomly abduct him. But is the world worth saving? His boyfriend committed suicide last year, his dad left with no reason, his brother has dropped out of college after knocking up his girlfriend, and his grandmother is losing her mind to Alzheimer’s. The he meets Diego, but is 144 days long enough to decide if the world deserves to be saved? Perfect for fans of Andrew Smith’s Grasshopper Jungle. Henry’s voice is real and relatable and very in your face from the start; and there’s just the right amount of weird for entertainment.

Buzz D’s pick

The Peculiar life of a lonely postman Denis Theriault
Book written almost entirely in haiku, both the modern shorter version and the ancient 7 line format. A beautiful translation from the French, easy to read and inspired me to write a few haiku of my own.

Wendy’s picks

My favourite books were anything written by Elena Ferrante.

• Days of Abandonment
• My Brilliant Friend
• The Story of a New Name
• Story of the Lost Child

I loved all her books I have read so far – I couldn’t put any of them down. My Brilliant Friend, the first in the Neapolitan trilogy, weaves the stories of two women, best friends but with very different destinies. Her voice is so direct and compelling, often violent, making her stories strange but insightful. I’m totally obsessed by Elena Ferrante.

Julie’s picks

An impossible decision – so I simply have to nominate two titles as they both warrant being my absolute favourites of the year so far.

Best selling author, Elizabeth Strout is an old favourite – who couldn’t adore Olive Kitteridge – so I took My Name Is Lucy Barton out with some trepidation and a slight expectancy of being disappointed. But I wasn’t. Her latest novel is what I call ‘one of those little big books.’ it’s A5 size and only 191 pages long, but boy, does it ever pack a punch.

Lucy’s very ill in hospital and her estranged, no-nonsense, mother comes to visit … in the hushed room of the hospital the family’s past comes tumbling out. Little by little, we discover how the past has affected the whole family and particularly Lucy – who is now married and a mother of two daughters.

As a reader, I felt I should have been somewhat distressed by some of the revelations but, quite amazingly, I wasn’t. Somehow this wonderful author draws everything together with compassion, empathy and understanding.

And right at the other end of the scale – a huge rollicking rollercoaster of a read. Mount! by Jilly Cooper sees this author totally back on form. This latest novel is equal to the hilarious delight of the very first title in the series – Riders – with all the old favourites back between the pages. The dialogue is supremely funny and the plot rollicks along.

It’s totally audacious, raucous and quite simply a hugely great read about the upper crust horsey world in England. This is a book that you can totally wallow in. Five Stars for sure (and I defy any woman not to instantly fall in lust with Rupert Campbell Black).

Dianne’s pick

The Black Widow Daniel Silva
I enjoyed this book because although it is a fiction it really hits the mark on what has happened recently in Paris and other parts of Europe. Israel comes into the picture with the wonderful mysterious character Gabriel Allon. This book is an easy read, clips along at a good pace I couldn’t put it down. Thoroughly recommend.

Helen’s picks

Helen from Linwood Library has a top ten list that includes a mix of poetry, novels and non-fiction. Read According to Helen: Best Reads 2016.

2016 best book lists

International

• Largehearted Boy’s List of online 2016 book lists
• Amazon best books of 2016 Editors’ picks
• Best books of 2016 Amazon, Celebrity picks
• Best books of 2016 part one The Guardian
• Best books of 2016 part two The Guardian
• Best children’s books of 2016 Amazon
• Best books of 2016 Goodreads’ Choice Awards
• 100 Notable books of 2016 New York Times Book Review
• Best books of 2016 Publishers Weekly

See also

• Best reads of previous years
• Literary prizes for the award winning books of the year

Best book covers of 2016 – My pick of New Zealand’s finest

2016 has seen the publication of a bunch of great and interesting New Zealand books, with plenty of strikingly attractive covers. Here are my picks for New Zealand’s best book covers of the year:

Number one is Mansfield and me: A graphic memoir by Sarah Laing, published by Victoria University Press. The cover, as drawn by Sarah, is a thing of beauty. It also draws you into the compelling counterpointing of Sarah and Katherine Mansfield – the very heart of the book.

Here’s what Sarah had to say about her cover design:

It’s quite a different proposition designing your own book cover as opposed to designing for others. I had a couple of other options but it was pretty easy to settle on the one I liked the most. I took Mansfield’s profile from a famous 1915 photograph, and tried to draw my own to match it. I wanted to echo the vase/profile illusion, and also to have us facing each other, when, in so much of the book, our stories run in parallel. Later in the book, Katherine and I share a cup of coffee, and I used to print from my coffee cup as a motif in the background.

Katherine Mansfield. Ref: 1/2-003106-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. http://natlib.govt.nz/records/23065921

A close runner up is Can You Tolerate This? Personal Essays by Ashleigh Young. It’s also published by Victoria University Press. The difficult second cover on Ashleigh’s blog Eyelash Roaming explains how the cover came to be:

Well, for my second book, I asked Elliot Elam to draw me a picture, though I didn’t know what the picture should be … Maybe more importantly, a stranger is picked out of the anonymous crowd and made knowable. Without getting too lofty… in a way that’s what I wanted to do with this book of essays: attempt an impression of things that otherwise would have rushed by.

Bronze medal goes to Hera Lindsay Bird’s eponymous book of poetry. An interview with Hera by Ellen Falconer in The Wireless has a bit about how that distinctive cover came to be:

Ashleigh Young [my editor] has a friend called Russell Kleyn who is a really great photographer and she set me up with him. I had quite a different idea; I have quite a funny portrait of myself and I wanted a really Dorian Gray thing, where there was a portrait of me holding a dorky portrait of myself, but it actually didn’t turn out that well.

He saw this yellow raincoat in this weird attic I was living in and he just wanted to take a few photos of that, so it was kind of a random shot. But I really like the way it turned out and that it obscures my face. What I told him was that I kind of wanted [it to have] an Yvonne Todd vibe about it – feminine but also a bit creepy and off.

Fergus Barrowman, VUP publishers comments on the triple victory:

The books make the covers (that is, if the books weren’t great and successful no one would be noticing the covers); all three were ferociously art-directed by the authors with only gentle pressure from the publisher.

So my three picks for best book covers also happen to be books I loved inside and out. They also are all published by Victoria University Press. So I think I can officially say it – VUP gives good cover. They have cannily produced postcards to show off them fine looking jackets. Next stop, VUP badges and tshirts??

Just added a touch of @VUPBooks class to my digs. pic.twitter.com/jg1P5kL9gY

— Donna R (@kebabette) November 9, 2016

More standout covers from 2016

Cool covers for kids

Special mentions

Let’s take a walk

Artwork from Let’s take a walk

A Christchurch book that deserves a special mention is a picture book produced by C1Espresso, and edited by owners Sam and Fleur Crofskey. Let’s take a walk looks at Christchurch places before and after the earthquakes. It was written by Nicole Phillipson, and the exquisite illustrations are by Hannah Beehre. The design and layout – with all its fascinating fold outs – is by Alec Bathgate & Tahlia Briggs.

Have a read of Moata’s interview with Sam Crofskey about this poignant pop-up book.

Gecko Annual

The cover of the Gecko annual is a zingy orange red with a dash of gold on the cover. But it’s the contents that are a symphony of beaut design work. Have a look at Kim’s blog post for some pics from inside the annual. It’s a stunner.

Best book covers of previous years

• Best book covers of 2015 – My pick of New Zealand’s finest
• Best book covers of 2014 – My pick of New Zealand’s finest
• Best book covers of 2013 – My pick of New Zealand’s finest
• The colourful book covers of 2012
• Best book covers of 2012 – New Zealand’s finest

For more book cover and design, see the PANZ Book Design Awards.

eResource Spotlight – Academic Search Premier

I’ve decided to give everyone a little run through of the eResources we have on offer at Christchurch City Libraries to let you know about some of the great databases we have access to.

Academic Search Premier allows access to one of the world’s largest scholarly full text database, covering every area of academic study. Extremely useful for essay writing and university level research. The collection boasts:

• More than 14,000 abstracted and indexed journals;
• More than 4,700 full text journals;
• Over 12,000 peer reviewed, abstracted and indexed journals;
• More than 4,000 peer reviewed, full-text journals.

You can also save, print and email results. By creating your own account using an email address and password you can also:

• Save preferences;
• Organize your research with folders;
• Create email alerts and/or RSS

Ben
The Library at Te Hāpua: Halswell Centre