Reading and books news digest

National Poetry Day

Thursday 8 October 2009 is National Poetry Day, with this year's theme being "Heroes and Heroines."

TS Eliot has been voted the UK's favourite poet.

National Poetry Day web site - the official web site hosted by the Poetry Society

T.S. Eliot's work in our libraries

Man Booker 2009

Hilary Mantel has won this year's Man Booker Prize with "Wolf Hall," set in the world of Henry VIII’s notorious chief minister Thomas Cromwell. We have got copies of "Wolf Hall" in stock in both the Adult Fiction and Best Sellers collections. You might also want to check out some of her other books!

Man Booker Prize web site - the official web site, including articles by short-listed authors

Hilary Mantel's books in our libraries

Meet the author: Sadie Jones

18 September 2009

Come and meet best-selling author Sadie Jones who will be talking about her new novel "Small Wars" at Heywood Library on Wednesday 30 September at 2pm.

Tickets are free, but booking is essential.
Tel: 01706 924941

• More details about this author.

Homelands

18 September 2009

A collection of stories and poems written in English, French and Portuguese by African people living in Rochdale. It's well worth a look:

• Homelands e-book (pdf format)

"Homelands" is published by Tell Us Another One at Cartwheel Arts in conjunction with NESTAC.

National Bookstart Day: Friday 9 October 2009

18 September 2009

Does your child or grandchild have a favourite rhyme? To celebrate National Bookstart Day 2009, there will be special nursery-rhyme themed storytimes for all children under 5 and their grown-ups in our libraries throughout the week. No need to book – just turn up.

Storytimes take place at the same time every week during school term times and everyone is welcome. Why not join the Bookstart Bookcrawl at the same time and make regular library visits even more exciting?

• Under-fives' activities in our libraries — including storytimes and Rhythm & Rhyme

National Bookstart Day web site

Black History Month

18 September 2009

Every October, for over thirty years, Black History Month has been celebrated across the UK. We will be celebrating Black History month with a range of events, displays and reading resources.

• Have you checked out these black writers based in the North West on Lancaster University's Moving Manchester project writers gallery?
  
  
  • Muli Amaye .
    
  • Pete Kalu .
    
  • Joe Pemberton .
    
  
  
• More North West based black writers for you to explore:
  
  
  
  • Segun Lee French .
    
  • Pauline Omoboye .
    
  • Levi Tafari .
    
  • Jackie Kay .

Black History Month web site — the official UK web site

Meet the author: Helen Tse

24 August 2009

On Monday 17 August, Alkrington Library was proud to welcome Helen Tse, local author of the phenomenally successful “Sweet Mandarin”

Helen Tse's books in our libraries

Storytelling course

Apologies to everybody who contacted us about the storytelling course. For reasons beyond our control we have had to postpone this programme. We hope to be able to reschedule it in the near future.

Riveting Reads

We had a very difficult time judging the "Riveting Reads" competition, part of Rochdale Libraries’ celebrations for World Book Day 2009. Young people across the borough were invited to tell us all about a favourite book and many of the resulting reviews were absolutely excellent.

Congratulations to Georgina Hulston who won the up to 11 age group and Tazmina Khatun who won the 12 to 16 age group. They each receive a £10 book token.

Highly commended were our runners-up, Beth Duxbury, Samuel Vain, Bridget Sutton, Jasmine Stott, Kurtis Tweedale and Danny Cheetham, who each receive a £5 book token.

• Here are their reviews.

Reading groups

If you love books and wish to share your experiences with other people why not come along to one of our many reading groups that are held in our libraries throughout the Rochdale borough. They are informal gatherings, which meet on a regular basis to talk about books of all genres and discuss their enthusiasm for reading. Each group is different; some may take a light hearted approach to reading while others are more highbrow and formal. There is something for everyone!

We also have writing groups and poetry groups for those who wish to branch out and participate in something a little more diverse.

Tired of struggling with small print?

You don't have to have "bad eyesight" to finding reading a chore: there are times when you want to read a book but your eyes really don't want to make much of an effort (especially if you have spent all day staring at a computer screen). Help is at hand: your local library has a wide selection of books in large print, including many titles in Amazon's best-selling list.

Here is a selection of some of the popular titles we currently have in our Large Print Collections:

New large print titles in our libraries

If you are a member of the library and have a PIN number you can use your library barcode and PIN to reserve a copy so that you can pick it up at your local library. If you are a member of the library and don't have a PIN, why not ask a member of staff to set one up for you next time you visit? You can use your barcode and PIN to log into the Catalogue so that you can renew your loans as well as place reservations.

The National Year of Reading becomes Reading For Life

2008 was The National Year of Reading, a celebration of words and reading in every form: from novels to song lyrics, from poetry to film scripts.

This year we are following up the National Year of Reading by joining in a new national literacy campaign called Reading For Life. The campaign, which will launch in Spring 2009, will build on the achievements of the National Year of Reading. The campaign will promote the importance of reading to social justice, and will be aimed at key target audiences such as black minority ethnic children, pre-school children, white working class boys and adult learners.

Reading For Life web site — news about the new programme

Read Up — teenagers have your say!

Real Lives at Alkrington Library

For December and January, we have decided to feature something a bit different from our usual “Author of the Month” at Alkrington Library.

Instead of a single author, we are showcasing a selection of books, which we have called “Real Lives” – in other words, biographies and autobiographies. There are always lots of new titles published in this genre at this time of year.

How about Ant and Dec’s jointly written “Ooh! What a Lovely Pair: Our Story” or Vera Lynn’s “Some Sunny Day.” Maybe “Did You Like That?”, Don Haworth’s biography of steeplejack Fred Dibnah, is more your cup of tea?

If you usually read novels, why not have a change and take a look at our “Real Lives” selection? You might find that some lives are stranger and more exciting than fiction.!

Quest Seekers meet the Mayor

The Mayor of Rochdale, Councillor Keith Swift, presented the prizes for Design Your Family Shield competition and the Quest Seekers at The Wheatsheaf Library on Saturday 10 October. The children also had the chance to have their photograph taken with the Mayor and Mayoress Sue Etchells.

Before presenting the awards the Mayor spoke to the winners and their families, he said:

"It is really good to see all the winners here this morning with their mums, dads, grandparents and carers.The time and effort that you as parents put in with your children is well recognised, your support is pointing them in the right direction. Children are the future of the borough and with them the borough can progress."

The overall winner of the Family Shield Competition was Zanib Ashraf (aged 13) who was presented with an iPod Touch.

• The runners-up were Eve Whelan (aged 10) and Callum Purcell (aged 11) who won book tokens.
• Highly commended were Abigail Heslin (aged 10), Rebecca Shaw (aged 4) and George Denson (aged 5).
• Winners of the Quest Seekers prize draw were James Crompton (aged 11) who won a family day out to York Dungeon, and Danielle
  Cain (aged 8) who won a family day out to Leeds Armouries.

Well done everybody!

• More photos of the presentation

Spread the Word!

Spread The Word — the organisation set up by The Bookseller's Association to encourage a love of reading — has set up a web site called Books To Talk About, which does what it says on the tin. Amongst the features on the site are competions and a discussion forum.

You'll also find links to the web site for this year's World Book Day on March 6th. This site will be listing events and activities for World Book Day but you don't have to wait until then to have a look at the games and links.

We've added links to titles from the Books To Talk About list on our Web Catalogue. Borrowers registered with Rochdale Library Service can reserve any of these titles by clicking on the "Request item" button and it won't cost you a penny. All you need is the barcode from your library card and your PIN number (if you don't have a PIN, or can't remember it, you can ask a member of staff to set one up for you next time you're in the library).

Winning Reads

We've added this year's William Hill Sports Book of the Year longlist to our Web Catalogue. This year's winner is "Provided You Don't Kiss Me: 20 Years With Brian Clough" by Duncan Hamilton.

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Elsewhere in the Web Catalogue, we've updated the Quick Reads list and Authors of the Month.

Pure Passion: Christina Jones

Castleton Library was the venue for a very successful "meet the author" event featuring novelist Christina Jones on Wednesday November 14th.

Many thanks to everyone who turned up to the event and joined in the question and answer session. Thanks also to Janice and Bev for making such a good job of all the arrangements.

Christina is currently at the top of a regional vote to find readers favourite romantic novelist, thanks to her latest book, ‘Love Potions.’ Her writing has been published in many magazines including ‘Take a Break’ and ‘Company’. She had her own monthly humour column in the Oxford Times for six years, and now broadcasts regularly on radio and television.

Christina’s appearance was part of ‘Pure Passion’, a promotion of 20 of the best contemporary romantic novels available to borrow from public libraries in the borough. You can vote for your favourite reads online and make your own recommendations.

Alternatively, you can complete a ‘Pure Passions’ postcard at any library. The region’s most popular will be announced in time for Valentine’s Day 2008.

Authors of the Month

We've just updated the "Authors of the Month" feature on our Web Catalogue. This is a list of the authors featured in some of our libraries, click on any entry in the list and you'll see which of their books with got in our libraries. If you then click on any particular title you'll see which libraries have copies and whether or not any are available.

If you're a member of our libraries and have your barcode and PIN to hand you can reserve a copy to be picked up at your nearest convenient library. This is a free service to our customers. If you don't have a PIN, next time you call into the library please ask for one to be set up for you.

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Not all of our libraries run "Author of the Month" features. Some prefer to run features celebrating particular genres or subject areas. Others prefer to run features that cut across genres and collections, including both fiction and non-fiction. These last can be particularly difficult to turn into searches that can be build into the Catalogue, the Love Stories list in "Themed Reads" being one of the few examples we've done so far. (As its name suggests, it's also the easiest!) Every so often we'll include one of these wider-ranging features in the Blog o'Reading.

Quick Reads

"Quick Reads" is a national initiative providing fast-paced, bite-sized books by bestselling writers for emergent readers, anyone who had lost the reading habit or simply wanted a short, fast read.

We have Quick Reads titles in all our libraries.

Not sure what to read next? Have a go at The Quick Reads Quiz.

Rochdale Library Blog o'Reading

For a long while we've wanted somewhere on the web for us to share reading ideas with our customers and for them to come back to us with ideas of their own. So we've started the Rochdale Library Blog o'Reading, which will include ideas from Library Service staff and our customers. We hope we'll be able to include links to local reading and writing groups' blogs as well as links to online resources from the wider world.