Last month we noted the changing borrowing patterns happening at our Tauranga Libraries – less hard copies and more downloads. The Library is also developing and expanding its informational and educational role. On the 6th of August I attended an excellently run and informative workshop led by Librarian Harley Couper on aspects of digitisation.
I’ve seen flyers to local business advising of the huge resources and skills available through the libraries and there’s a mid-September workshop on developing social media skills and resources. The Library also has an area set aside for genealogy research and a computer learning centre. All of this is on top of the traditional social, informational and educational roles.
One of the suggestions I made to assist with on-going Tauranga City Library funding was to transform the present magazine and newspaper reading section into a small cafe. Walked in the other day and there sitting comfortably in one of the armchairs was a young traveller quietly eating a pie!! Someone heard me!
BOOKS, BOOKS, BOOKS:
It may be Spring but we’ve had some real penetrating cold snaps and Southerlies and it’s been great to huddle inside, snuggled up with book!
THE KILLING David Hewson based on the original screenplay by Soren Sveistrup
Macmillan UK 2012
Thoroughly absorbing, tortuous crime story. Not a nice read but a gripping read. Scandinavian setting. Dedicated/obsessive female detective. The balancing of relationship and family loyalties and responsibilities against the need to know, resolve and bring to justice. An excellent crime read.
PRIME CUT Alan Carter
Fremantle Press 2011 and
GETTING WARMER Alan Carter
Fremantle Press 2013
Western Australian setting for absorbing and believable crime/police stories. DSC Cato Kwong – piano playing “cop” and the good and the bad woven around him. Believability enhanced by the familiarity of ANZAC colloquial speech and lifestyles You should read both of these one after the other.
THE GLASS FACTORY A Filomena Buscarsela Mystery Kenneth Wishnia
PM Press, Oakland, 2013.
This is not an easy read because of the less than usual writing style of Wishnia. There are strong environmental crime themes running in tandem with the personal stresses and traumas of “Ex-NYPD Cop, Filomena Buscarsela ..a Latina heroine”
ON A SATURDAY NIGHT Community Halls of Small-Town New Zealand Michelle Frey and Sara Newman with Photographs by John Maillard and John O’Malley,
Canterbury University Press, 2012
Before our rural playcentre was built weekly sessions were held in the district’s cavernous memorial hall. Carol services, school productions and prize givings, funerals, “21sts”, Women’s Division of Federated Farmers and hideously contentious public meetings. I loved this book – a trip around New Zealand.
TOWARDS A PROMISED LAND On the life and art of Colin McCahon Gordon H Brown
Auckland University Press, Auckland 2010
I never liked, perhaps never understood the work of McCahon and maybe I still don’t. Ironically I love the May 1950 A Southern Landscape, Plate 53 from a private collection. I didn’t find this book as easy to read as other works about recent and contemporary New Zealand artists and perhaps from other readings and information, I didn’t find out too much more about McCahon. It was good however to be able to see images of works in private collections.
TAURANGA CITY LIBRARIES BOOK CLUBS:
Tauranga City Library meets:
3rd Wednesday of every month of 2014 at the Tauranga City Library
10.30am to 11.30am and 5.30pm to 6.30pm
Papamoa Library Book Club meets:
3rd Wednesday of every month of 2014 at Papamoa Library
10.00am
17th September, AUSTRALIA – Novels, food, travel, history, memoir or DVDs.
FRIENDS OF THE TAURANGA CITY LIBRARIES
Any one can join the Friends. Annual membership is $10. and members receive six issues of Bookline, the Friends newsletter. Monthly meetings with guest speakers. Friends are volunteers who link the general public and library management; support library initiatives and raise money for special library projects.
Contact: President Barbara Murray barianre@enternet.co.nz Phone 07 579 5378 Secretary Barbara Moore barbara.m@xtra.co.nz Phone 07 575 6823
