Category: Library News

We were closed for the first day of Delta Level 2, Wednesday 8th September, but that didn’t mean we had the day off. We were kept busy with so many items being returned and over 600 items on our request list. We found almost all of them – only 45 left on the list at the end of the day!😁

Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi has won the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Piranesi is a mind-boggling book, a philosophical work that might just make you question your own reality. It’s quite different from her earlier work Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell but no less… shall we say dreamlike? Piranesi is about a man trapped in a crumbling labyrinth, but then again, maybe it isn’t about that at all. Personally I think it’s about how our minds work, and how we can be persuaded to think things. Congratulations to Susanna!

You can watch the acceptance speech here.

And you can reserve the book from the Palmerston North City Library here.

I love looking through recipe books and the food magazines. In our library I can not seem to walk past the trolley of food books without stopping to have a ‘quick’ look through. Who doesn’t like food? Sadly with our library closed at the moment I don’t have access to the great book selection on our food shelves. One solution is looking at the great selection of magazines on Pressreader.

Pressreader is one of our digital resources available for free using your library card. You can find a link for it here Magazines & Newspapers • Palmerston North City Library (pncc.govt.nz)

Another idea is to dig out my well used recipe books. Check out my Edmonds cookbook. I can proudly say all pages are there and are in order, they just don’t look very pretty anymore. Though it makes it easy to find what recipes are good: they are the dirty pages!

This event is online – It will take place at any alert level.

• Thursday, 9 September 2021, 7:00pm – 8:00pm
• Zoom meeting Online

Accessible with Zoom or a web browser.

Local writers come together for the “Versions” project. A single prompt and a wide array of versions from that.

As part of the Palmerston North City Library’s focus on Kupu, and aligned with the submissions call for writers and other creatives for the library’s upcoming publication Versions Tuarua, we’re running online sessions with a focus on the writing craft.

Setting: how setting can make your writing rich and immersive. An interactive session with time for questions and answers.

Email sean.monaghan@pncc.govt.nz for the Zoom meeting link. You’ll be able to use the app, or just go through a web browser.

After the Tampa by Abbas Nazari is an inspiring story about Afghanistan and how the author managed to escape from the Taliban and arrive in New Zealand.

Check out the listings for this book on our catalogue here:

https://ent.kotui.org.nz/client/en_AU/pn/search/results?qu=After+the+Tampa+nazari&te=

Check out the interview by John Campbell on Breakfast Watch | Facebook

Kia ora koutou, hi everyone.

All City Library locations including Blueprint and Youth Space are closed under Level 3.

Please note under Level 3:

• There are no overdue fees or fines – please hold onto your Library materials until we are open.
• All programmes and activities are cancelled.
• The mobile bus is off the road.
• Home service is suspended.
• All book bins and book return slots are closed.

We encourage you to get the Government’s NZ Tracer app to record your movement.

Thank you for all your assistance and patience helping us keep you, your whānau, our communities and our team safe.

For more information please see: https://citylibrary.pncc.govt.nz/covid19-information

Lockdown Reads  – John Grisham – Camino Island

I wish I’d had a moment to race around the library, in those moments before lockdown, and scoop dozens of books from the shelves. I would have been like one of those people who win the supermarket or hardware store “Ten Minute Trolley Grab” or whatever they call those things. Manic and desperate.

Fortunately, I do have a “to-read” shelf of books here at home, so I have some reading material. There are too many books on that shelf.

As a side note, two or three years back, I made a conscious decision to read through those books. Years of having thirty or so books waiting to be read seems like something therapists might consider worthy of long conversations about my missing pieces.

Despite that intention (to read through them) the number of books on the shelf has not shrunk. As I’ve read the books and put them aside, new volumes have taken their place.

I suppose the therapist might call this “magpie behaviour”. I have a friend who lumps it in with the “Ooooh, shiny!” category (which I guess amount to the same thing).

I am told that is something many people share.

Lockdown, however, is keeping me from purchasing replacement shelf-filler, and having me read some of these books.

One that sat for a while was John Grisham’s Camino Island. This came out in 2017, though I’m pretty sure I only bought it last year. Maybe the year before.

Grisham is known for his legal thrillers. You know the kind of thing, a junior lawyer finds herself confronted by the borderline policies of the firm and takes on a case that challenges plenty of moral scruples and she ends up going in to bat for the underdog.

Camino Island is something different. It’s about rare books and theft and double-crossing and a fabulous island, with barely a lawyer, courtroom or judge in sight.

On the back it has the text; “Just when you think you know Grisham, he surprises you”. I guess that’s meant as a warning for those expecting a legal thriller.

The writing is pacey, the story engaging and the characters lively, complex and likeable. Likeable for the most part.

The City Library does have copies, in regular print, in large print and as an audiobook.

There’s a sequel too, Camino Winds, set in the same location, with some of the same characters. The library also has copies of that.

There are numerous other Grisham books which steer away from the legal thriller too, Skipping Christmas, Playing for Pizza, Bleachers, and available through the library (those last two as ebooks, so, assuming they’re not out on loan, they’re available during lockdown).

By Sean Monaghan

‘Scrublands’ by Chris Hammer is the book for the next Together We Read book club. This book will be added to Libby as an eBook and eAudiobook for you to borrow by the end of the day on August 31st. It will be available for all who want it so no need to place a hold on it. If you want to join in the discussion for this book check out AUNZ – OverDrive’s Together We Read. This will be available from September 1st-15th.

Like everyone else, I was not prepared with a mountain of library books for the latest lockdown. I have enjoyed the great selection of books on Libby and Borrow Box, but I have also dug into my own collection of books and read some old favourites.

‘The Bronze Horseman’ by Paullina Simons, is one of my all time favourite books. It starts in Leningrad on the day Russia enters World War 2. As it is based during the war, there is no surprise (and not a spoiler!) that I always end up reaching for the tissues each time I read it.

I like historical fiction books. I call them ‘Titanic books’ as they are books based on a real life situations but with fictional characters. I have learnt a lot about history this way – some facts have been very useful for quiz nights or random bits of trivia on road trips. 😊

‘The Bronze Horseman’ is available in our library, but if you can’t wait for us to open at Level 2 you can get a copy from Libby.