Mosman Readers

"Book lovers never go to bed alone"

All Blog Posts (316)

NSW Premier’s Literary Awards: Vote for the 2009 People's Choice

The judges of the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards have selected these six titles as the best in new Australian fiction:

Breath - Tim Winton

Disquiet - Julia Leigh

The Spare Room - Helen Garner

The Good Parents - Joan London

A Fraction of the Whole - Steve Toltz

The Lieutenant - Kate Grenville

And now (if you live in NSW) you can… Continue

Added by Mosman Library on April 27, 2009 at 17:14 — No Comments

Digital fiction from Penguin

We Tell Stories takes a different approach to fiction.

Might be a gimmick, but it might also be a future for writers and writing. Why restrict yourself to pages (printed or LCD) when your characters can be scattered across the internet... Slice has the characters blogging and tweeting.

There's also a couple of updated 'choose your own adventure' stories, and one where… Continue

Added by Bern on April 18, 2009 at 21:00 — No Comments

Now that's what I call a long overdue

Washington and Lee University has a missing library book back on its shelves — nearly 145 years (52,858 days) after it was stolen by a Union soldier during the Civil War.

The 1842 book, the first volume of W.F.P. Napier's four-volume History of the War in the Peninsula and in the South of France From the Year 1807 to the Year 1814, was returned recently by a friend of one of the soldier's descendants to the Lexington school's Leyburn… Continue

Added by Mosman Library on April 17, 2009 at 10:00 — No Comments

Mosman Readers go tweet

If you're on Twitter, follow @mosmanreaders to get real-time alerts of what's happening on Mosman Readers.

And if you're interested, here's what's happening in the background. We're sending our 'Latest Activity' feed to Yahoo! Pipes, where it gets a bit of regex work to make the titles more human-friendly. The output of the Pipe is checked by Twitterfeed every 30 minutes.… Continue

Added by Mosman Library on April 6, 2009 at 15:00 — 1 Comment

CBCA Book of the Year Shortlists Announced

The shortlists for the Children's Book Council of Australia book of the year have been announced- check them out here:

http://cbca.org.au/shortlist.htm

Added by Kate on March 31, 2009 at 14:52 — No Comments

Books You Hate

It's happened to all of us.

A friend says, 'Hey, have you read this?' and hands you a book. No, you haven't read it.

Or maybe you read some review in the paper and though, 'ooh, that sounds good'

So you get the book, happily take it home and start reading....

And you hate it. For whatever reason, the book just does not click with you. It could be the story, the characters, the plot, whatever. But you just can't read it.

Maybe you trudge… Continue

Added by Amy B on March 31, 2009 at 14:00 — 5 Comments

e-reading - it's coming

When Rebecca's bus broke down, she had to resort to F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Curious Case of Benjiman Button on her iPhone.

"Instantly, I became an ereading convert..."

Added by Mosman Library on March 31, 2009 at 13:00 — 1 Comment

2009 NSW Premier's Literary Awards- Kids and Teens

Ethel Turner Prize for Young People's Literature

Di Bates- Crossing the Line - published by Ford St

Michelle Cooper- A Brief History of Montmaray - published by Random House

D M Cornish- Monster Blood Tattoo: Lamplighter - published by Omnibus

Alison Goodman- Two Pearls of Wisdom - published by HarperCollins

Nette Hilton- Sprite Newberry - published by HarperCollins

Joanne Horniman- My Candlelight Novel -… Continue

Added by Kate on March 31, 2009 at 12:28 — No Comments

The mother lode of recommended reading

MetaFilter is one of the web's most successful online communities with 65,000 registered users, 60,000 discussion threads, 70,000 question threads and over one million comments. It has been going for more than eight years.

During that time, lots of people have asked for book recommendations on specific topics - e.g. things like Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series,… Continue

Added by Bern on March 30, 2009 at 14:30 — No Comments

Line by line

Booker prize-winning Nigerian author Ben Okri is releasing a new poem line by line on Twitter, writes Alison Flood in the Guardian.

"Forms follows adversity – we live in uncertain times. I think we need a new kind of writing that responds to the anxiety of our age and yet has brevity," he said. "My feeling is that these times are perfect for short, lucid forms. We need to get more across in fewer… Continue

Added by Bern on March 26, 2009 at 13:30 — No Comments

Sophie Hannah

Just finishing Sophie Hannah The Other Half Lives and looking forward to Little Face. Easy reading but good!

Added by Sally on March 25, 2009 at 12:07 — 1 Comment

Libraries are a hot bed of socialism

Continue

Added by Amy B on March 3, 2009 at 11:09 — No Comments

What we desire we shall never have

On these nights of low moon, people of a more unstable temperament began to do weird things. There was always a sleepwalker edging along the parapet of a skyscraper with his arms reaching toward the moon, or a werewolf starting to howl in the middle of Times Square, or a pyromaniac setting fire to the dock warehouses. By now these were common occurrences that no longer attracted the usual crowd of rubberneckers. But when I saw a girl sitting, completely naked, on a bench in Central… Continue

Added by Bern on February 27, 2009 at 20:00 — No Comments

London by the book

The Books in London map locates more than 400 books either set in, or about, the capital.

You'll find Absolute Beginners in Ladbroke Grove, Nick Hornby around Highbury and Brick Lane in Shoreditch.

The website also offers The Rough… Continue

Added by Bern on February 24, 2009 at 13:00 — 3 Comments

Library Value Calculator

An interesting library value calculator created by Denver Public Library.
I'm sure it's not exactly the same as it would be here in Australia, but it does make you think....
My value was $31.26.

Added by Amy B on February 23, 2009 at 10:26 — 1 Comment

Put warning labels on books

...before I started reading, I was a rather subservient, slow little boy who never really did anything wrong, but never did much right either. Books inspired me to be very naughty indeed...

Alastair Harper is bemused at the prevailing attitude to reading - that it's a wholesome, anodyne activity that will uplift young illiterates who spend all day at myspace and… Continue

Added by Bern on February 18, 2009 at 16:17 — 1 Comment

"Found Jewish princess. Good-bye succulent pork."

The title of this post is one of Smith magazine's Six-Word Memoirs on Love & Heartbreak. You can submit your own, or email someone else's as a Valentine's card.

The link came from NPR's Valentine's Day special that offers A Poetry Slam For Valentine's Day and… Continue

Added by Bern on February 13, 2009 at 8:45 — No Comments

Librarians may find the following blog post distressing

Brian Dettmer is an American artist who carves artworks out of books. He seals, then cuts into older dictionaries, encyclopedias, textbooks, science and engineering books, art books, medical guides, history books, atlases, comic books, wallpaper sample books, and others, exposing select images and text to create intricate three-dimensional derivative works that reveal new or alternative… Continue

Added by Bern on February 5, 2009 at 10:30 — 2 Comments

John Updike 1932 - 2009

Acclaimed American author John Updike passed away on Tuesday, January 27, 2009 at the age of 76. John Updike won many awards for his works including Pulitzer Prizes for his novels Rabbit is Rich (1991) and Rabbit at Rest (1982). In 2008 he was awarded the Literary Review Lifetime Achievement Award for Bad Sex in Fiction for his fourth consecutive nominationThe Widows of… Continue

Added by Jane B on January 30, 2009 at 14:46 — No Comments