50 books you can't put down

Each year, “Books Alive” produces a handy guide booklet: “50 books you can’t put down”. It is a promotion of books and reading, and during the month of September, participating bookshops give away a specially commissioned book to anyone who buys one of the 50 books in the guide. The 50 books chosen for the guide are always an interesting mix of humour, crime, biography, history, and some children’s books. The books selected for this year’s “50 books you can’t put down” are as varied as ever; here is a taste of two of them.

The first is “How to break your own heart” by Maggie Alderson. In Australia, we probably know Maggie best from the column she has written for ten years in the Sydney Morning Herald’s “Good Weekend” magazine. She has been an award winning magazine editor and now lives in the UK. On her webpage she says that “How to break your own heart” is “the story of Amelia who is happily married to handsome, funny, loving Ed. So if she’s happy, you might ask, what’s the story? Well, Ed’s a daydream Mr Right on paper, but there’s just one rather major problem. He doesn’t want to have a baby. With her 37th birthday looming, Amelia is beginning to panic and when her dashing teenage sweetheart, Joseph, suddenly reappears in her life, and her best friend, Kiki, starts making mischief- things get very complicated, very quickly.” Maggie Alderson says this is a story close to her heart, because she was the woman “who found out at the age of 36 that your fertility goes down in a black ski run gradient at 37.”

Interestingly, this book was published in Australia 8 months before it was published in the UK; because her publishers identify Maggie Alderson as a “summer author”. In her blog, Alderson says she is very happy with this tag “because I like to think of my books as something you would reach for when you have a bit of time for yourself – such as stretching out on a pool side lounger, or settling into a flight to somewhere sandy and salty.” Sounds good to me!

On an utterly different note, “1788; the brutal truth of the first fleet” by David Hill was also selected for inclusion in the “50 books”. This book was reviewed by Cassandra Prybus on October 1, 2008 in “The Australian” newspaper (http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,24392857-25132,00.html). Prybus wrote that histories of the First Fleet have usually started in England and then jumped to Port Jackson, “as if the eight months in between were some limbo where history and life experience was suspended until the settlers touched terra firma once more”.

Prybus contrasted this to works by historians about the colonisation of America, and about the slave trade, where the voyage, with all its hardships and deprivations, is seen as a critical part of the formation of the character of the travellers, whether colonists or slaves. Prybus hoped that “1788” would remedy this, but she was very disappointed. She was scathing in her review of this book; and contrasted it with “The Commonwealth of Thieves” by Tom Keneally (2005): “as a foundation narrative for the popular market, Keneally's is as good as you would want”. Prybus also stated: “Robert Hughes's The Fatal Shore (1987) is a masterpiece, while Sian Rees's The Floating Brothel (2001) comes close to being the kind of book on early Australia that I want to read. Good popular history, like that of Hughes and Rees (both initiated overseas), is informed by the best scholarship and pushes readers beyond what they learned in school.” Ouch!

The Library has all of these books, as well as “1788”. Whether “1788” deserved to be included in this year’s “50 books” guide will make for some interesting discussion in the future! The guide is available from the Library or at www.booksalive.com.

Free help from tutors for year 4-12 students

Gilgandra school students can now receive free tutoring help online at their library or home, through an innovative new service just introduced by the Library. The service, called “yourtutor“, creates an online classroom where students are connected to qualified tutors for one- to - one help with homework, assignments, exam preparation and study questions.

English, Maths and Science subjects are included and the service is available 4pm-8pm, Monday to Friday from either library or home computers. Help is immediate, professional and secure and it’s free to library members. Students in Years 4-12, simply log on to the library’s website (http://nwls.spydus.com/), scroll down and click on the link to access the program, using their library membership card number to login.

Tutors are certified teachers, professional tutors, post graduates and advanced undergraduates from Australian universities. They can review specific homework and assignment questions with students on line, using features like controlled chat, an interactive white board and shared web browsing. This service has a lot of advantages for students. It is immediate: when they login, within moments they are in a one to one, instant messaging conversation with a tutor. It’s anonymous: students have said that it’s easy and comfortable to ask questions online, even if they think it’s something they should already know. It’s interactive: co-browsing the internet, file sharing and the interactive whiteboard allow students and the tutor to work their way through a specific question.

Students should use yourtutor if they get stuck on a maths question, want feedback on an essay before they hand it in, would like a tutor to help with a chemistry equation, or need help finding resources and researching a topic. Gilgandra Shire Library has taken a 12 month subscription to this service, which is provided by an Australian-owned company called Tutoring Australasia. We would like to know whether you think this service is worthwhile; please give it a go and tell us what you think.

Book of the Year- some of the Children's Book Council of Australia prizewinners

The winners of the Children’s Book Council of Australia prizes were announced last Friday; just in time for Book Week; this week. The Library has most of the shortlisted and prize winning books, so please call in and borrow some of these great Australian books!

The winner of Older Reader’s Book of the Year was “Tales from outer suburbia” by Shaun Tan. Teacher Fran Knight reviewed this book on the Allen and Unwin website “A story and picture book for adults and children alike, Shaun Tan draws a mirror to the face of Australia, with lonely people, houses where constant bickering between parents causes the boy to sleep on the lawn, communities where people use the missiles in their yards for practical purposes and an exchange student who lives in a house where little exchange takes place. Each story provokes thought about how we live and entreats the reader to give more serious consideration to our lives and the lives of those around us”.

The winner of the Younger Readers Book of the Year was “Perry Angel’s suitcase” by Glenda Millard, illustrated by Stephen Michael King. This the third book in the Kingdom of Silk series, which began with “The naming of Tishkin Silk”. In the story, Perry arrives at the Kingdom of Silk one day on the 10.30 express, carrying only a small and shabby suitcase embossed with five golden letters. What do those letters mean? And why won t Perry let go of his case? This book has been described on the Allen and Unwin website as a gentle and moving story about finding your place in the world.

The prize for Early Childhood Book of the Year was won by Bob Graham, with his delightful book “How to heal a broken wing”. A pigeon flies into a skyscraper window, and in the busy grey city only one little child, with red jacket and golden hair, notices. He and his mother wrap the pigeon carefully in her scarf and carry it home, where with ‘rest, time and a little hope’ slowly, it heals. Bookseller + Publisher wrote about this book that "Children from as young as three will empathise with Will, while older children and adults can sharpen their visual literacy skills, noting the filmic techniques that inform and move readers of this perfectly designed and heart-warming book" (as cited by Walker Books website).

Picture Book of the Year was won by Kylie Dunstan, with “Collecting Colour” This is the story of best friends Rose and Olive, and the day they spend in the bush in the Top End, collecting pandanus leaves and “colour”; roots and berries to dye the pandanus. Later they see how the leaves are woven into beautiful baskets, and make their own mats. The author worked as an Arts project officer at a community in the Northern Territory. This book is illustrated in vibrant colour and is a pleasure to hold and read.

Happy Book Week!

We love Corduroy!

This week, the Library has received a copy of “Corduroy Mansions” by Alexander McCall Smith. You may remember that we wrote about this book late last year, because McCall Smith was publishing this book in daily bites on the Telegraph UK website. People could read all of the chapters to date, or listen to Andrew Sachs, best known as Manuel in Fawlty Towers , reading the latest chapter. Readers could also make plot suggestions to McCall Smith, and he responded to these suggestions on the website. One of the people who posted a plot suggestion called this online novel ”Dickens for the digital age”.

“Corduroy Mansions” was published in this manner in 100 instalments, over 20 weeks from September 2008 to February 2009, and now the hard back copy of the book has been published. I’ve been reading it over the weekend, and have thoroughly enjoyed it so far. It has all the delightful whimsy and wry observation that people enjoy so much in McCall Smith’s writing. My favourite bit so far is the airport sniffer dog, Freddie, who is retrenched in an affirmative action move when they discover that all of the sniffer dogs are male! The collaborative method of writing this book seems to have been a successful experiment.

McCall Smith posted an online letter to his many readers when the series finished. He said
“We are now coming to the end of this novel. This is a sad moment for me, as I have enjoyed the writing of this greatly. And I have also very much enjoyed the comments that you have made – you will see, I hope, that I have taken many of them to heart and tried to embody them in the plot as I developed it. Thank you so much for your support and suggestions.”

Telegraph Media won a media award for this project. The judges called it a “cross-media literary first. " The serial attracted 90,000 readers a week!

We hope you are enjoying whatever you are reading this week.

New books- "The Secret of Play" & "Sustainable Gardens"

The Library regularly receives new books. This week we have received “The Secret of Play: how to raise bright, healthy, caring children from birth to age 12.” by Ann Pleshette Murphy. Drawing on the latest research on brain development, social-emotional growth, and learning, “The Secret of Play” lays out a blueprint for play, from the first months of life through to the pre-teen years. “The Secret of Play” provides information about the value of play at each age and stage. It aims to show readers which ideas, toys, and games are developmentally appropriate.

Published by Dorling Kindersley (DK), it has their trademark book design; clear, concise and colourful. This is the kind of book you’ll enjoy dipping into and browsing, and it is positive and inspirational. DK have a video of the author talking about "The Secret of Play" on their website.

We have also received “Sustainable Gardens” by Rob Cross and Roger Spencer, published by CSIRO Publishing. The authors are botanists from the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne, and this book is like a textbook on how to develop sustainable gardens. Did you know that Australians have the sixth largest individual Ecological Footprint (6.6 gha/person), three times the global average of 2.2 gha/person.

The book says this high figure can be attributed to the fact that we live in large houses with few occupants, use a large number of goods and services and travel long distances, depending heavily on fossil fuels (52% of the footprint) for our energy needs.

“Sustainable Gardens” looks at our consumption of resources and the effect this has on our environment. It shows how we can use sustainable gardening to bring a balance between humans and the environment we depend on. The chapter on designing low impact gardens is useful and interesting. It examines all kinds of materials used in landscaping and weighs up which ones are best in terms of protecting the environment. To find out more, you can listen to a recent interview of the authors of this book by Greg Muller, ABC radio Bush Telegraph reporter, at the website .
We hope you enjoy whatever you are reading this week.

"Still Alice" and "A letter to Sophie"

The library regularly receives new books. This week, we received “Still Alice” by Lisa Genova. This novel is the story of Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children, who is a celebrated Harvard professor at the height of her career when she notices a forgetfulness creeping into her life. As confusion starts to cloud her thinking and her memory begins to fail her, she receives a devastating diagnosis: early onset Alzheimer's disease. Fiercely independent, Alice struggles to maintain her lifestyle and live in the moment, even as her sense of self is being stripped away.

The author, Lisa Genova, has an interesting background. She holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience and has done research on the molecular etiology of depression, Parkinson's Disease, drug addiction, and memory loss following stroke. She is an online columnist for the National Alzheimer’s Association in the US. She also spends a considerable amount of time acting on stage in Boston and in local independent films. Lisa Genova has said about her novel "I received lots of email from people who thanked me for writing the book…For someone with Alzheimer's or a caregiver of a loved one with this, to tell me that I got it right, that it’s uncanny how true it all was, that they saw themselves all over the book, well that's the highest compliment I can get."

Another recent arrival is “A letter to Sophie: from her mum and dad’s private diaries” by Carolyn Martin, Ron Delizio and Sally Collings. This book is a day-by-day account of what Sophie Delizio and her family experienced as a result of her two terrible accidents; first when a car crashed into her Sydney childcare centre in 2003, leaving Sophie with horrific burns, and again in 2006 when she was hit by a car on a pedestrian crossing, resulting in broken ribs, punctured lungs, a broken jaw and collarbone, brain injuries and spinal fractures. In the preface to this book, Sophie’s mother, Carolyn Martin, says “We have written this book to give an insight into the roller coaster of emotions experienced by both patients and their families, to put a very real face on a picture that for many is hard to imagine, and to say thanks again to the teams that helped to get us in and out of the front doors of two hospitals.” You can listen to a moving interview Sophie’s parents did with ABC Radio 666 Canberra breakfast presenter Ross Solly via the ABC website.

Finding family history- some handy sites for beginners

There is an increasing expectation that family history resources will be available free online. There are some useful free sites to begin from; mainly indexes, with the full records available either from pay for view sites or by physically searching microfilm and other hard copy resources. I have only just begun to learn what is available free online, so I thought I'd pass it on here, on case there are some other beginners out there! Lots of other people know a lot more about this than I do- so please forgive me if I'm stating the bleeding obvious!



When searching for people born in NSW, a good place to begin is with the Historical Indexes of the NSW Registry of Births Deaths and Marriages. Here you can check the indexes to find the most basic details, and also the registration number you need to be able to request a copy of a certificate. The online index to marriage records covers 1788-1958, births records cover 1788-1908, and death records cover 1788-1978.


Another useful site is the online index of the NSW State Records Authority. Here you can do a simple keyname search. I searched a name from my family and found that State Records have a record of an assisted immigrant of that name arriving in 1853, aged 8, with his family on a ship called the Talavera. The dates seem about right, so the next step would be for me to further investigate by looking at the actual record which is on a microfilm reel that I could view at one of the two records centres in Sydney, at The Rocks and at Kingswood.


Some, but not all, of these types of records are also available at the 40 designated NSW State Records community access points. These are mostly public libraries, which State Records have made repositories of the Archives Resources Kit; a collection of books and microfilms of records valued at about $20,000. Our nearest community access point is Macquarie Regional Library in Dubbo. I would jot down the details of the microfilm reel number from the State Records website, and then check the Macquarie Regional Library website to see whether they hold this reel. To do this, go to http://www.mrl.nsw.gov.au/ and in the search box at the top of the page, type in “Archives Resources Kit”. This takes me to a listing of the State Records items which can be viewed in Dubbo Library.



Alternatively, if I was certain this record would be useful to me, I could order a photocopy of it on the State Records website. This costs $25 for the first record, although up to 9 extra records can be added to the same order for $6 each.

So you can see that an internet search can start you off on a fascinating journey to find your family history. This is just a tiny taste of the experience, but people tell me it is highly addictive.