National Year of Reading 2012

Next Tuesday, 14th February, the National Year of Reading will be launched all over Australia. Well, these days we seem to have a “Year-of” something every year, and often we have several at once. So why does the National Year of Reading matter?
The simple answer is that in the reading stakes, Australians don’t always do well. Here are the facts, from the National Year of Reading website (http://www.love2read.org.au ).
The literacy issue in Australia
According to the 2006 Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey, nearly half of all Australians (46%) don’t have the literacy skills they need to cope with the complex demands of everyday life and work in the emerging knowledge-based economy. (http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/4228.0 )
A survey by the Australian Industry Group in May 2010 of major employers found that more than 75% felt their businesses were affected by low levels of literacy and numeracy in the workforce. (http://www.aigroup.com.au/portal/site/aig/education/workforceliteracy/ )
Families who read give their children the best start
The most active period of brain growth and development is from birth to three and it is widely recognised that sharing books with young children before they go to school greatly improves their chances of developing good literacy skills. http://www.bookstart.org.uk/professionals/aboutbookstart-and-the-packs/research/reviews-and-resources/sharies-stories/
Fixing the problem
The National Year of Reading is about turning Australia into a nation of readers. There are three goals:

• For all Australians to understand the benefits of reading as a life skill and a catalyst for well-being
  


• To promote a reading culture in every home


• To establish an aspirational goal for families, of parents and caregivers sharing books with their children every day

There will be lots of reading events this year, at a National level, and also here in Gilgandra. On Tuesday 14th February (aka Library Lovers Day), the major Launch will take place at the National Library in Canberra. Here in Gilgandra, we’ll have copies of “Good Reading” magazine to give away to the first 30 library customers, free tea and coffee, lots of great reading material, and chocolate! We’ll also be asking customers to nominate their most loved books and authors, and we’ll be using this information to create a list of Gilgandra’s top reads.

What would you like to read this week? To see what books the Library has, call in and browse the shelves, or check out the library catalogue at http://nwls.spydus.com .

Sea Eagles read!

Next Tuesday 7th February at 2pm, come to the Library to hear about what Sea Eagles read! Young players from Manly-Warringah are coming to the Library to meet people and promote reading.

The Sea Eagles have a great program called 'Sea Eagles Reads' http://www.seaeagles.com.au/default.aspx?s=community-sea-eagles-read where First Grade Rugby League players act as mentors and tutors in weekly reading sessions in primary Schools. Players are identified as Reading Captains and are matched to one class of students for a term where they bring a new surprise player each week and participate in reading sessions, reading activities, promote reading, set challenges and answer questions about their own reading habits.

We are very grateful for this wonderful opportunity to hear the Sea Eagles talk about the importance of reading. These young men are great role models for our community.

Summer Reading Club winds up!

A proud Summer Reading Club participant receives her goody bag; a reward for completing her challenge of reading 10 books over the holidays!

If you have been participating in the Library’s Summer Reading Club, now is the time to ensure that you have filled in your reading log form, and returned it to the Library. The Summer Reading Club for children and young people, which challenged them to read 10 books over the school holidays, finishes on Monday 6th February.

We encourage everyone to bring their completed reading records back to the Library, so that they can collect their small gift and also go into the draw to win an iPod touch. Reading record sheets will be accepted up until Friday 24th February, with the draw to take place after that.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the Summer Reading Club this year. We have had over 105 registrations, which is a wonderful effort. We hope you all enjoyed your reading.

Download an audiobook from the Library webpage

Happy New Year! Here is a little new year surprise from the Library...

Audiobooks, or “talking books” are very popular. We currently have 157 CD audiobooks at the Library, which can be borrowed by any library member. Now we are very pleased to announce the addition of downloadable audiobooks, available from our library website. 250 titles are available, including books for adults and for children, fiction and some nonfiction. To see what is available, visit our website http://nwls.spydus.com and click on the green box on the right hand side of the page “Click and Listen”.

These audiobooks are provided via Bolinda digital, and consist mostly of books by Australian authors, including Tim Winton, Di Morrissey, Matthew Reilly, Geraldine Brooks, Robert G. Barrett, Kerry Greenwood, Peter Fitzsimons, and many more.

To download these audiobooks, you will need to have a current library membership card. Library membership is available to all residents of Gilgandra Shire, and is free of charge. To find out how to join the Library, phone 68178877, or call in at the Library, bringing some form of ID with you. For children (under 18yrs), a parent or guardian will need to sign a permission form.

In addition to your membership card, you will need a PIN. If you don’t already have one, please call the library, and we will create one for you. You will need to log in to the library website, using your library card number (your ID) and your PIN. When you first borrow an audiobook download, you will be asked to give an email address. This email address will be used to notify you when your 2 week audiobook loan has expired, and you will be asked to delete the file from your computer, mp3 player or iPod.

e-Audiobook loans are free, as are all other loans from the Library. As audiobook files are large (250 MB or more), audiobook downloads can take a long time; at least one hour. For this reason, you can choose to download the book in several parts. We have a handy information sheet to help you download the file, unzip it and load it onto your portable media device.

We hope you enjoy whatever you are reading this week, especially if it’s an audiobook!

Inheritance and Foal's Bread

‘Inheritance’, the long awaited final book in Christopher Paolini’s wonderful series, is now on the shelf at the Library. Yvonne Zipp reviewed ‘Inheritance’ for The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books), and this is part of what she had to say: “Paolini began writing the first book, “Eragon,” when he was 15, and his parents, who owned a press, published it. He traveled to schools and Renaissance fairs, hand-selling his opus, until Carl Hiassen picked up a copy for his son on a fly-fishing vacation and put in a good word at Knopf. The rest is publishing history. Eragon and his blue dragon, Saphira, were an endearing duo, but critics, including this one, noted the novel’s debt to everyone from J.R.R. Tolkien and Anne McCaffrey to George Lucas. (I caught a David Eddings reference or two in the new one.) But Paolini had readers at “dragon.” "

"This final volume offers sieges, duels, traps, secret tunnels, evil priests, more sieges, vision quests, sea monsters and man-eating snails. Aside from a sadly underused Orik, now king of the dwarves, most of our favorite characters get their moment of derring-do. Eragon’s cousin Roran, who relies on wits and sheer cussedness, has risen in the rebel ranks — despite his lack of noble birth. He’s the U.S. Grant of the Varden. The quixotic Angela, who’s never mentioned without her title “the herbalist,” demonstrates heretofore unsuspected fighting skills, like Yoda in “Attack of the Clones” Eragon’s ally and crush, the elf Arya, and the female leader of the rebels, Nasuada, remain as formidable as ever.”

We have also received ‘Foal’s Bread’, the new book from Australian author Gillian Mears.Set in hardscrabble farming country and around the country show high-jumping circuit that prevailed in rural New South Wales prior to the Second World War, ‘Foal’s Bread’ tells the story of two generations of the Nancarrow family and their fortunes as dictated by the vicissitudes of the land. It is a love story of impossible beauty and sadness, a chronicle of dreams 'turned inside out', and miracles that never last, framed against a world both tender and unspeakably hard.

‘Foal’s Bread’ was reviewed by Owen Richardson for The Sydney Morning Herald (http://m.smh.com.au/entertainment/books ) on 6th November, 2011. He wrote of it: “Gillian Mears was never merely promising: the short stories she published and the Vogel-award-winning ‘The Mint Lawn’, all written when she was still in her 20s, showed a talent already working at a high level. In all these books, there was the vitality of a young writer but it was managed by the intelligence and control of a fully mature artist. It's been 16 years since that last novel. Time and energy have been given over to the battle with illness recounted in her matchless personal essays published in ‘Heat’. With ‘Foal’s Bread’, it's good to see one of our best writers is back in the game…….The prose of ‘Foal’s Bread’ doesn't always have the compressed energy and taut rhythms of Mears' earlier work. Yet, like all her writing, it is full of crystal-sharp observations, things seen with rapt attention."

The Library will be closed from 12noon on Saturday 24th December, re-opening at 10am on Tuesday 3rd January. We wish you a very happy Christmas, and hope you have the opportunity to enjoy a great book over the holidays.

New audiobooks at the Library

We have recently received the new audiobook “Lazarus Rising” by former Prime Minister John Howard. John Howard spent decades under media scrutiny, and while he is well known as a political leader, family man and sports tragic, in this biography he reveals much more about himself. He traces his political and personal journey, from childhood in the post-World War II era through to the present day, painting an interesting picture of a changing Australia. This audiobook is read by the author, John Howard.

“Desert Queen; the many lives and loves of Daisy Bates” by Susanna de Vries is another new arrival. In the 1890’s, when a woman’s role was seen as marrying well and raising a family, Daisy Bates reinvented herself from humble governess to heiress-traveller and ‘woman of science’. She would become one of the best-known and most controversial ethnologists in history. Born into tough circumstances, Daisy’s prospects were dim. Through sheer strength of will, young Daisy overcame her miserable start, and in 1883 she migrated to Australia with a boatload of orphans, passing herself off as an heiress who taught for fun. Marriage followed, first with a young Breaker Morant, then bigamously with two other husbands. Susanna de Vries presents a complex portrait of the ‘Queen of the Never Never’. This audiobook is read by Beverley Dunn.

“And then the darkness” by Sue Williams is the story of the disappearance of Peter Falconio and the trials of Joanne Lees. This audio book was reviewed by SJH for AudioFile online magazine (http://www.audiofilemagazine.com/), and this is what they had to say: “Australia--tourist haven or murder capital? Kate Hood narrates the true-crime ordeal of English tourists Peter Falconio and Joanne Lees. While on a dream trip around the world, the couple is attacked in the Australian outback. Joanne manages to escape, but Peter is never seen again. Shortlisted for the 2006 Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger Award, the book is sprinkled with tales of Australia's criminal culture, the rough, alienated men who cruise long, barren stretches of dangerous roads, and the many backpackers murdered while traveling in Australia. Hood makes Joanne's every anguished moment real, keeping things intense--from the attack itself to the tedious police procedures in the hunt for the attacker.”

By the by, Audiofile magazine is a nifty site for audiobook readers. It has reviews of books, and information about narrators. While access to the whole site requires subscription, some of the content is available without subscription. The subscription includes six issues of Audiofile magazine. This US based site is worth a look if you are a keen audiobook reader.

These 3 audiobooks are in the MP3 CD format, so the whole audiobook is on just one CD, and can be played on modern CD players and computers. To see what other books the Library has, visit the library catalogue at http://nwls.spydus.com, or come in and browse. Happy reading and listening!

Peter Fitzsimon's new book 'Mawson'

Sir Douglas Mawson, born in 1882 and knighted in 1914, remains Australia's greatest Antarctic explorer. On 2 December 1911, his Australasian Antarctic Expedition left Hobart to explore the virgin frozen coastline below Australia, 2000 miles of which had never felt the tread of a human foot. He was on his way to fulfil a national dream he had first conceived three years earlier, while on his first trip to the frozen continent on the Nimrod expedition under the leadership of the charismatic Anglo-Irishman Sir Ernest Shackleton.

Even as Mawson and his men were approaching Antarctica, two other famous Antarctic explorers were already engaged in nothing less than a race to become the first men to reach the South Pole. While Roald Amundsen of Norway, with his small team, was racing with dogs along one route, England's legendary Scott of the Antarctic, with his far larger team, was relying primarily on ponies and 'man-hauling' to get there along another.

As Mawson and his men make their home on the windiest place on earth and prepare for their own record-breaking treks, with devastating drama to be their constant companion, the stories of Amundsen and Scott similarly play out.

In his new book, “Mawson and the Ice Men of the Heroic Age: Scott, Shackleton and Amundsen”, Peter Fitzsimons provides a compelling portrait of these great Antarctic explorers. In a recent talk reported in “The Bayside Bulletin”, Peter Fitzsimons said “Mawson's perseverance in the face of challenges and setback was inspiring. I think the thing that stood out the most for me was when Mawson finally returns and is on the home stretch, and he sees the ship he was meant to be sailing home on slowly sailing away in the distance.”

This book and many other good books are available for loan from the Library. We hope you enjoy whatever you are reading this week. To see what books the Library has, check out the online catalogue at http://nwls.spydus.com.