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NEWS UPDATES |
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NEW FICTION PICKS |
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What better way to start the New Year than with the anticipation of the New Zealand International Arts Festival, to be held between 26th February and 21st March 2010. The most exciting part of the festival for readers is the New Zealand Post Writers and Readers week from March 9th to the 14th. Once again the programme includes much acclaimed fiction writers, non-fiction writers and poets, both international and national. Writers and Readers Week is a wonderful opportunity to hear so many interesting and diverse writers talk about there work, and in many cases to hear our own writers in discussion. The New Zealand writers include Bill Manhire, Neil Cross and Emily Perkins. More information on this great literature event can be found on the Writers and Readers Festival website. This month we have decided to highlight the latest works by some of the international writers who will be guests of the festival. They represent vastly different genres, styles and diversity of theme, but all provide wonderful reading experiences. |
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Jeff in Venice, death in Varanasi is the most recent work of fiction by Geoff Dyer. This satirical novel tells the story of Jeff Atman, a journalist, who is in Venice to cover the opening of the Venice Art Biennale. Expecting to see a load of art, go to a lot of parties and drink too much, he doesn't expect his life to be dramatically changed, which happens after he meets the spellbinding Laura. Another city, another assignment: this time on the banks of the Ganges in Varanasi. Amid the crowds and chaos of India's holiest Hindu city a different kind of transformation lies in wait. This clever funny novel was awarded The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic fiction in May 2009. Geoff Dyer was born in 1958 and lives in London. He was awarded the Somerset Maugham Award for his novel But Beautiful; a book about Jazz published in 1991. He has written three other novels, the first The Colour of Memory was published in 1989. His writing includes work of historical non-fiction, photography, biography and short stories. He regularly contributors articles and reviews to a variety of periodicals, from the Guardian to the New York Times. |
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British writer Neil Gaiman was born in 1960 and is novelist of Science fiction, fantasy and Dark fantasy. He is particularly well known as a Graphic Novelist. His writing includes screenplays, the most recent being Beowulf, released 2008, children's books, young adult novels and biographies. His first fantasy short story was published in 1984, and the year after wrote his first biography. It wasn't until 1989 the he began his popular graphic novel series The Sandman, which concluded in 1996 after 75 issues. These have been collected into 12 volumes. In 2002 he was awarded the Hugo Award for Best Novel for American Gods that was published the previous year. His most recent work of fiction, Fragile things: short fictions and wonders was published in 2006. The stories in this collection show Neil Gaiman's storytelling brilliance as well as his terrifyingly entertaining dark sense of humour. From the story about a mysterious circus that terrifies an audience for one extraordinary performance before disappearing into the night, taking one of the spectators along with it to another about two teenage boys who crash a party and meet the girls of their dreams and nightmares, all are guaranteed to enchant and chill. |
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Me and Kaminski is the most recent novel by Daniel Kehlmann. In this witty novel we follow failure (as a journalist and as a lover) Sebastian Zollner as he searches for the break that will give him redemption. He heads off to the mountains to interview the legendary painter Manuel Kaminski. The ailing Kaminski, now nearly blind, lives in seclusion with his daughter. His artistic reputation hinges on any number of factors, but most prominently on a definitive biography. Unfortunately Zollner has no intention of writing anything remotely uncritical. He is out to dig dirt and to force Kaminski to confront the legacy of his work. But the secrets he uncovers lead Kaminski, and Zollner himself, to places that neither of them expected to go. This is Daniel Kehlmann's second novel. His first novel published in English in 2006, for which he was awarded the Heimito von Doderer prize was, Measuring the World and became the biggest selling novel in the German language since 1985. Daniel Kehlmann was born in Munich in 1975, but moved to his father's home, Vienna when he was six. At university he read philosophy and literature. Although author of five novels the first published when he was 22, only two have been translated into English. |
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American writer Susanna Moore was born in 1945 and grew up in Hawaii. She had recently been Writer-in-Residence at The University of Adelaide. Her first novel My Old Sweetheart was published in 1982, and won the Ernest Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for First Fiction and the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her novel, In the cut, published in 1995 was adapted into film by Jane Campion and stared Meg Ryan. She has also written a memoir, I myself have seen it: the Myth of Hawaii. She has published five novels all are intense and include disturbing themes; The Big Girls is the most recent. Set in a women's prison on the Hudson River, this novel chronicles the aftermath of a highly publicized murder and its impact on four intertwined lives. The story is told in the alternating voices of Helen, who has long suffered terrifying schizophrenic hallucinations and is serving a life sentence for killing her two small children; Helen's psychiatrist, a single mother who came to work at the prison out of guilt over a patient's suicide; a corrections officer who becomes involved with the psychiatrist; and an ambitious Hollywood star whom Helen believes to be her sister. This is a chilling, tense, suspenseful novel. |
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Burnt shadows, the fifth and most recent novel published by the author Kamila Shamsie. It tells the story of Hiroko Tanaka, twenty-one and in love with the man she is to marry, Konrad Weiss. One morning as she steps onto her veranda, wrapped in a kimono with three black cranes swooping across the back, her world is suddenly and irrevocably altered. In the numbing aftermath of the atomic bomb that obliterates everything she has known, all that remains are the bird-shaped burns on her back, an indelible reminder of the world she has lost. In search of new beginnings, two years later, Hiroko travels to Delhi. It is there that her life will become intertwined with that of Konrad's half sister, Elizabeth, her husband, James Burton, and their employee Sajjad Ashraf, from whom she starts to learn Urdu. With the partition of India, and the creation of Pakistan, Hiroko will find herself displaced once again and not for the last time. The shadows of history, personal and political, are always cast over the interrelated worlds of the Burtons, the Ashrafs, and the Tanakas. This novel was shortlisted for the 2009 Muslim Writers Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction the same year. Kamila Shamsie was born in 1973 in Pakistan and did her university study in America. Her first novel, In the city by the sea was published in 1998 and received the Prime Minister's Award for Literature in Pakistan in 1999. Her novels have been translated into many languages. She and also works as a reviewer and columnist, mainly for the Guardian newspaper and lives in London. |
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Sarah Waters was born in 1966 in Wales. She earned degrees in English Literature at the University of Kent and Lancaster University. She received her PHD from Queen Mary, University of London. She began her first novel, Tipping the Velvet published in 1998 after finishing her thesis, using much of her research material for the novel. For this novel she was awarded the 1999 Betty Trask Award and it was later dramatised for television by the BBC. Four other novels have followed, all historical fiction. Affinity published in 1999 won the Stonewall Book award and the Somerset Maugham Award. It was adapted to film and premiered in 2008. Fingersmith published in 2002 won the Crime Writers' Association Ellis Peters Historical Dagger award and was also adapted for television by the BBC. The Night Watch published in 2006 won the Lambada Literary Award 2007. Her most recent novel The Little Stranger was short listed for the Mann Booker Prize for Fiction, 2009 and is a spine tingling thriller set during a dusty post-war summer in rural Warwickshire. A local doctor is called to a patient at lonely Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, its owners(or are they) a mother, son and daughter, are struggling to keep pace. But this family is haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life. Little does Dr Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become entwined with his. |
Click here for previous new fiction picks |
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NEW BOOKS |
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Recent additions to the Fiction collection | Booklists | MyLibrary Booklists MyLibrary |
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BOOK AWARDS |
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Adult Book Awards The Crime Writer's Association IMPAC Dublin Award. The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes LAMBDA Literary Awards Man Booker Prize "Everything about the Booker Prize" site New Zealand Awards, Grants and Competitions Montana New Zealand Book Awards Nobel Prize for Literature The Orange Prize for Fiction Pulitzer Prize Whitbread Book Awards |
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BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS |
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Librarian's Choice | New York Times Best Sellers | Publishers Weekly Best Sellers Librarian's Choice |
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The brothers Boswell : a novel / Philip Baruth. (c2009) "In 1763 London, John Boswell, the resentful younger brother of Samuel Johnson's future biographer, is stalking Boswell and Johnson, who have recently become friends. John bribes the boatmen who ferry his quarry on the Thames for the smallest details of their conversations. As he remembers the past, John reveals a personal link with the great lexicographer, with whom he once shared a brief, close relationship." (Book cover) |
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Drop city / T.C. Boyle. (2003) "Set in the seventies, at the height of flower power. Star has just joined Drop City, a hippie commune in sunny California living the simple, natural life. But underneath the drugs, music and transcendent bliss, she slowly discovers tensions and sexual rivalries that threaten to split the community apart. A world away in Boynton, a tiny town in the interior of Alaska, Sess Harder, a pioneer who actually does live off the land, hunting, trapping and fishing, yearns for someone to share the harsh winters with him. When the authorities threaten to close down Drop City, the hippies abandon camp and head up north to Alaska, the last frontier. But neither they nor the inhabitants of Boynton are completely prepared for each other." (Amazon) |
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The signal / Ron Carlson. (2009) "In the dense Wind River Mountains of western Wyoming, Mack, son of a long time rancher, has made many missteps in life, culminating in a recent stint in jail. While he was in jail, his recently ex-wife Vonnie agreed on his release to join him for one last time on their annual ritual of backpacking through the Wyoming wilderness to fish, camp and rediscover each other. Mack, though, has a hidden motive: a friend/technical genius has hired him to retrieve a valuable drone that's crash-landed in the forest." (Amazon) |
 | Sacred hearts / Sarah Dunant.(2009) "The year is 1570, and in the convent of Santa Caterina, in the Italian city of Ferrara, noblewomen find space to pursue their lives under God's protection. But any community, however smoothly run, suffers tremors when it takes in someone by force. The arrival of Santa Caterina's new novice sets in motion a chain of events that will shake the convent to its core." (Amazon) |
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The water's edge / Karin Fossum ; translated from the Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund. (2009) "Walking through the woods one warm September day, Reinhardt and Kristine Ris pass a man who is in a state of agitation. Unusually in a small town, he does not return Kristine's smile and drives off in a hurry. Near the end of their walk they make a terrible discovery: lying in a cluster of trees is the lifeless body of a young boy. It is a moment that will change their lives for ever." (Amazon) |
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The last time I was me / Cathy Lamb. (2008) "When Jeanne Stewart stops at The Opera Man's Cafe in Weltana, Oregon, to eat pancakes for the first time in twelve years, she has no idea she's also about to order up a whole new future. It's been barely a week since she succumbed to a spectacularly public nervous breakdown in front of hundreds of the nation's most important advertising and PR people. Jeanne certainly had her reasons, her mother's recent death, discovering that her boyfriend had been sleeping with a dozen other women and the assault charges that resulted when Jeanne retaliated against him. Staying at a B&B run by the eccentric, endearing Rosvita, she meets a circle of quirky new friends at her court-ordered Anger Management classes. Like Jeanne, all of them are trying to become better, braver versions of themselves." (Amazon) |
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New York Times Best Seller Publishers Weekly Best Sellers Radio New Zealand Books Page Top 100 Novels The BBC Big Read Top 100 The Modern Library 100 Best Novels Radcliffe Publishing Course: the century's top 100 novels Guardian Unlimited top 100 books of all time Time Magazine-All time 100 Novels Whitcoulls List - Top 100 books in New Zealand We are always interested in the opinions of our readers, and so provide opinion forms with new debut novels, and new fiction as they are received. We also have these forms available on the Reader's Choice display, along with forms for favourite novels. Readers can also submit reviews online or email us with any questions. The response to Reader's Choice had been amazing, and each novel that receives good readers reviews is displayed with a light blue Reader's Choice sticker. All completed opinion forms, with either good or bad comments are displayed in a folder, on the display stand. This display has proved extremely popular, as a guaranteed good read can be found there. We also have a new webpage devoted to archived customer reviews. Here are a few recent ones: |
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Book of clouds / Chloe Aridjis. (c2009) Reader's comment: "A superbly crafted book that reads like a time capsule with the past and the present intricately linked, more a novella than a novel but immensely satisfying in its completeness. We learn that anyone who lives in a city must realise that their present will happen in the context of a past of which they had no part." |
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Martyr / Rory Clements. (2009) Reader's comment: "I thought this book was very enjoyable, a worthwhile addition to the thriller genre. Buy the next on in the series." |
 | Never look back / Dan Latus. (2008) Reader's comment: "I found this book easy reading with enough twists and terns to keep it interesting until the last page." |
 | Daisychain / by G.J. Moffat. (2009) Reader's comment: "I thought this book was well written and nicely paced, a little predictable but ultimately satisfying." |
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The gathering storm / Peter Smalley. (2009) Reader's comment: "An excellent read. Latest in Hayter series following the great seas book tradition of Alexander Kent, Patrick O'Brian etc." |
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The leisure seeker / Michael Zadoorian. (2009) Reader's comment: "I thought this book was easy to read, enjoyable, sad and very sweet. It was a nice love story." |
BOOK REVIEWS | |
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Allreaders. com Book Browser Complete Review Guardian Books Unlimited What do I read next? and Literature Resource Centre | |
BOOK CLUBS | |
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Book Clubs or Reading groups have become a popular way to read more, understand and discuss what you have read, make new friends and socialise.They can be small and informal, with a different work read each month from a list decided on by the group, or they can be formally structured, with a memberproviding author profiles each month and discussion taking more academic forms. They can also now be joined through the Internet, with several reading group sites available. At Wellington City Libraries we endeavour to assist and encourage Book Club /Reading groups where we can, providing author information, reviews etc. Informal book groups also meet once a month at Cummings Park (Ngaio), Island Bay, Karori, and Miramar libraries. Come along, they are open to all! If you were thinking of setting up a reading group, the information given by Penguin Books Australia, on their web site would be invaluable. They cover all aspects, from starting out, membership, meetings, and points for discussion.
Book discussion, reviews, first chapters, author information and much more can be found on the Guardian Reading Group pages. It is a useful site for an individual or groups of readers. Also the New York Times provides assistance and information for Book Clubs, and also run their own reading group, or forum. Although similar to The Guardian site, this gives a more American approach and covers a large non-fiction subject range. Author profiles are provided each month and the book discussions can be quiet academic. They can also now be joined through the Internet, with several reading group sites available. Another interesting site is the Good Reads at Southern Adirondack Library System. This site mainly deals with readers advisory for Reading groups and Librarians, but has the main genres for example Mystery and Romance well covered and includes Award Winners, Online discussions, First chapters, and links to Authors websites. A new web site for book clubs with discussion, reviews, author information and interviews is Bibliofemme, an Irish Book Club. This site is continually up dated with the latest literary news, and provides an interesting forum for book discussion. | |
FINDING A PARTICULAR BOOK | |
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Finding fiction in our catalogue What's next (Books in Series) Which book | |
MYSTERY FICTION | |
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Mystery Fiction is another very popular genre with fiction readers. Our Mystery collection is the largest sub-genre within the Fiction collection and is distinguished for the readers by the use of red spine labels. Mystery readers are a diverse group from those who prefer classic English detective stories to the hard-boiled crime fans, so this selection of web sites will help to inform, entertain and lead readers to other great novels in their favourite genre. The Rap Sheet Mystery File January Magazine The Thrilling Detective |
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SHORT STORIES | |
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Wellington City Libraries has an extensive collection of short stories. At Branch libraries, short stories are interfiled with the general fiction collection; look out for 'short story' stickers on book spines. At Central Library they are found in two places in the Fiction collection. Books of short stories by multiple authors are kept in the main Short Story collection, on the ground floor between the adult video collection and the adult books on CD and Cassette, opposite the Issues desks. These are edited, collected stories by different authors. They are usually organised around a particular theme/subject, nationality, or era, and are shelved under the title of the volume. Books of short stories written by one author are held with the author's other works in the main Fiction Collection, under the author's surname. Short Story Indexes are held at the Fiction desk at Central and these can be used to find a short story on a particular theme or subject. This can also be done on the catalogue using a Keyword Search option and entering the theme/subject required with the word fiction. Finding a short story on a particular theme/subject can be difficult and staff are always available to assist. There are many short story web sites; unfortunately these do not always include theme/subject indexes, although many have full text short stories. Here are a few that may be of interest. Readbookonline.net has over 100 short story titles to choose from and all are full text. Although many American, all are classics and do include some Anthony Trollop, Rudyard Kipling and Leo Tolstoy. Classic Short Stories again contains full text classic short stories with a very international flavour. The most interesting aspect of this site is the related links pages. From here there are links to Mystery short stories, Jewish short stories, to name a few, also links to many author collections, such as Jack London and the complete works of William Shakespeare. East of the Web Short Stories provides a different short story experience. This site is interactive, and writers can post their own short stories and discuss others work. There are also short guides to other short stories, such as Katherine Mansfield, Fables, Vampires etc. | |
ROMANCE FICTION | |
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Romantic novels are a popular genre with fiction readers. These can vary from the simple romance, to the complicated suspense thriller type novel with romantic sub plots. Locating the different types of romantic novels on Wellington City Libraries catalogue is very easy. Try these searches for Romance, Romantic Suspense, or Historical Romance - you will get a list of the latest titles. There are also many web sites for Romance readers. Here are a few that are helpful and interesting. Top 100 romance novels All About Romance Dangerously Curvy Novels The Romance Reader | |
SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY FICTION | |
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Science Fiction and fantasy is another very popular genre with fiction readers. Although our collection is slightly smaller than the Murder mystery collection it is distinguished for the readers by the use of blue spine labels. Science Fiction and Fantasy readers are the most dedicated group of readers in our Library, so this selection of web sites and catalogue quicksearch will help to inform, entertain and lead the reader to other great reads in their favourite genre. Catalogue Quicksearch:Websites:Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Database Science Fiction Resource Guide The Best in Science Fiction and Fantasy
ASFA : Association of Science Fiction & Fantasy Artists | |
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Last updated 3 February 2010 | |
Reader's Choice
Extensive information is given on the 