The race that closes the Boroondara Libraries

Ashburton, Balwyn, Camberwell, Hawthorn and Kew Libraries will be closed on Melbourne Cup Day Tuesday 4 November.

Normal hours will resume on Wednesday 5 November.

Parentonomics: an Economist Dad's parenting experiences

Meet Joshua Gans, author of Parentonomics: an Economist Dad's parenting experiences.

Forget about inflation and unemployment – in Parentonomics, Economics Professor Joshua Gans demonstrates how he utilises his knowledge of economics and game theory to tackle really important subjects such as fussy eaters, toilet training and the tooth fairy.

By laying bare some of the hidden economies of parenting, his book may help you stay one step ahead of your children.

Parenting will never be the same!

Admission is free, however bookings are essential.

When: Thursday 13 November 2008 at 7.30pm
Where: Kew Library, Cnr Cotham Road & Civic Drive, Kew
Phone: 9278 4666 or book online

2008 Australia-Asia Literary Award Longlist

The longlist for Australia's richest literary prize, the $110,000 Australia-Asia Literary Award, was announced on October 17, 2008 by Western Australia's Culture and Arts Minister John Day.

The longlisted works are:

J.M. Coetzee, Diary of a Bad Year
Matthew Condon, The Trout Opera
Michelle de Kretser, The Lost Dog
Ceridwen Dovey, Blood Kin
Rodney Hall, Love Without Hope
Mohsin Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Mireille Juchau, Burning In
David Malouf, The Complete Stories
Alex Miller, Landscape of Farewell
Haruki Murakami, After Dark, Translator: Jay Rubin
Indra Sinha, Animal's People
Janette Turner Hospital, Orpheus Lost

The winner will be annouced on Friday November 21, 2008.

Bring your Library Card

When borrowing at Hawthorn Library on Saturday 25 October, you must present your library card to staff (license or other types of ID will not be adequate)in order to borrow.

This is due to work being carried out in Hawthorn which will result in a limited service at Hawthorn Library on Saturday October 25 from 10am to 5pm.

All other branches will be operating as normal.

We apologise for any inconvenience.

Q & A with James Phelan

James Phelan is the next author to be interrogated by the Boroondara Blogger!

What are you writing at the moment?

I’m working on the 4th book in the Lachlan Fox thriller series, titled LIQUID GOLD, to be published in August 2009. I’ve just recently finished writing my first teen novel, titled ALONE, which will come out some time in 2009.

Can you give us an idea of your typical writing day?

Get up at the crack of noon, walk down the street for a few coffees, then I get in front of my computer and write, usually in my home office. I’ll write anywhere from 6-10 hours each and every day of the year. When the deadline is looming, the hours grow longer.

What do you do when you’re not writing?

Sleeping! I think I’m always writing in some form, even if it’s taking notes or thinking or dreaming. Thinking time is most underrated.

Also, promoting the books takes up a fair bit of time.

Sometimes I hang around uni, chipping away at a PhD and teaching a class in the MA Writing program at Swinburne.

What are you reading right now?

“Shattered” by Michael Robotham, “Without Warning” by John Birmingham. “To kill a mockingbird” for the third time. “Novelists and Novels” by Harold Bloom.

What inspired you to start writing?

A love of reading and a passion for creating.

What are you writing plans for the future?

To write an adult novel and a teen novel each year for a while. I like the idea of being able to write with a view out to a raging ocean and with a faithful dog at my feet, although I’m not sure how much writing I’d get done in that setting.

Most satisfying writing moment?

Writing the final scene of any novel is a great moment.

Anything you would like to add?

Read more. We don’t read enough and life is far too short not to read good books.

Thanks James.

James is speaking at Balwyn Library on Wednesday October 22, 2008 at 7.30 pm.

Click here to book online or call 9278 4666

"The White Tiger" wins Man Booker Prize

Aravind Adiga has won the 40th Man Booker Prize for his debut novel The white tiger.

From the Man Booker website comes the following information about the winner.


Synopsis

Born in a village in heartland India, the son of a rickshaw puller, Balram is taken out of school by his family and put to work in a teashop. As he crushes coals and wipes tables, he nurses a dream of escape - of breaking away from the banks of Mother Ganga, into whose depths have seeped the remains of a hundred generations.

The White Tiger is a tale of two Indias. Balram’s journey from darkness of village life to the light of entrepreneurial success is utterly amoral, brilliantly irreverent, deeply endearing and altogether unforgettable.

Author Biography

Aravind Adiga was born in Madras in 1974 and was raised partly in Australia. He studied at Columbia and Oxford Universities. A former correspondent in India for TIME magazine, his articles have also appeared in publications like The Financial Times, The Independent, and The Sunday Times. He lives in Mumbai.


Click here for more info. on the Man Booker Prize.

Click here for the library catalogue.

Come fly with us - online travel

Do you like to travel?

Then join us in November for a session on how to make more use of the internet to assist in planning & booking your next trip away.

It will cover a wide range of sites for all aspects of travel such as comparing flight prices, booking flights and accommodation, how to find the right travel insurance for you, and safety tips regarding buying online.

This session is free, however bookings are essential.

When: Thursday 13 November at 2pm
Where: Kew Library, Cnr Cotham Road & Civic Drive, Kew
Phone: 9278 4666 or book online.

Davitt Awards

The awards season is well and truly upon us with the Davitt awards being announced last night.

Frantic, by Katherine Howell, won Sisters in Crime’s Davitt Awards for the best (adult) crime novel by an Australian woman in 2007.

The Davitt Awards were set up by Sisters in Crime in 2001 to celebrate the achievements of Australian women crime writers.

Other winners were:

Young Adult
The Night Has a Thousand Eyes
Mandy Sayer

True Crime
Killing Jodie How Australia's most elusive murderer was brought to justice
Janet Fife-Yeomans

Reader's choice
Scarlet Stiletto – The First Cut
edited by Lindy Cameron

The awards are named after Ellen Davitt (1812-1879) who wrote Australia’s first mystery novel, Force and Fraud, in 1865.

2008 Nobel prize in Literature

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2008 is awarded to the French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio

"author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization".


Find out more about the 2008 Nobel prize winners here.

Q & A with Hazel Edwards

As part of our Stop.Write.Now series we asked our authors a few questions - here's what Hazel Edwards had to say.

Q1. What are you writing at the moment?

Because I write for children AND adults, I always have about five simultaneous projects at different stages. Currently I’m finalising the 10th version text for picture book ‘Hurrah, There’s a Hippo on the Roof Having a Birthday Party’ out next year with Penguin to celebrate the 30th anniversary. Sydney based Illustrator Deborah Niland and I have had lots of emails this week regarding the gender and age of the child and whether the hippo will be on roof or ground due to OHS qualms! Readers assume that short books can be done quickly, but there’s actually more work behind every word in a picture book.

‘Let Me Eat Cake,’ says Roof Top Hippo’ is my unconventional Q and A based on fan letters to the hippo character.I’m going to put instalments up on my website and maybe consider later print publication. This is quirky ,fun writing from the viewpoint of an anti-bureaucratic hippo.

As part of a China-Aust Electronic Writer in Residency, organised by Australian Aileen Hall who is currently Principal at a Nanjing International School, I’ve been working with Templeton Primary on ‘Easy Over, The School Turtle’ picture book which is translated into Mandarin to swap with the Nanjing International School, who are creating a comparable English-Chinese school story, based on my sleuth characters from ‘Gang O Kids’ which is about children who solve non violent mysteries on site. Also working with Highvale Primary about their sleuths Hi and Vale and the Sanctuary Saga based on their animal sanctuary garden. Gang O Kids is set against an orienteering background, which is a sport in which my family has been involved and many schools are using it in literacy programs because students like to create their own active plots based on the character dossiers at the front of the book. Recently Alice Springs students created an extra, Jo an indigenous tracker kid for their Alice based story around the Gang O Kids sleuths

I write a monthly Writing a Non Boring Family History online column for aboutseniors and wrote about using family history in the writing of eulogies because I’d been to many funerals recently. My website also has a section on How To Write articles because I get so many requests on technique from new writers of all ages.

‘Making a Killing at the Pokies’ is a satirical performance script about pokies addiction which has had one dramatised reading, but I’m looking for a community group to perform it.

An international Travelling Exhibition for the 30th anniversary of the Hippo has been proposed and I have to collect support material for that.

My ‘Fake ID’ a cyber family history mystery is being translated into Tamil at the University of Madras and I’ve been asked to Chennai in India next year and also to Nanjing where several of my books are being translated into Chinese.

Out this month, ‘The Flight of the Bumblebee’ DVD of audio (read by Antonia Kidman) music, story and printed book has been a delightful classical ‘Music Box’ project in which to be involved.I was commissioned to write a new story for the wellknown Rimskay Korsakov music, and the sound flooded my study for weeks.Loved that.

Q2. Can you give us an idea of your typical writing week ?

Readers image authors write new stories all the time. Probably only about 30% of my time is ‘new’ original writing.

On average I probably spend about 50 hours per week on author related work, but some of it is really fun, like autographing books, meeting readers or doing quirky activities in connection with my children’s book characters. Like driving up the freeway with a large hippo strapped in the passenger seat. Participant observation research is a fascinating and necessary part of writing realistic backgrounds so I visit places and interview ‘experts’ on subjects as diverse as pyrotechnics, plumbers, platypus and pokies gambling.

The reality is that I have 180 published books, and so, much of my time is spend in the ‘administrivia’ of the marketing , publicity, legal and business side of being an author.. I get hundreds of fan e-mail (which I answer) and requests for project information ( those answers are on my website) but also international and local requests for talks or interviews. In writing answers to a blog like this I try to answer in a way which is relevant for you, but that I can also use again.That’s why I have generic ‘How To Write’articles which can be downloaded from my website and which have been written in response to earlier requests.

I teach ‘Writing for Children’ and ‘Non Fiction Projects’ at Holmesglen TAFE in the Diploma of Professional Writing and enjoy seeing those adult students place their work. A couple of them have had family history based projects and being required to produce a weekly chapter for workshopping is good discipline to get their books finished. We share a champagne when they have a success. Alcoholic or non alcoholic.

Whenever I have new book out, such as ‘The Flight of the Bumblebee’ I do interviews and talks and occasionally writing workshops for adults or children, depending upon the title. The Gang O Kids workshops , where the participants create mysteries on site have been very popular.

I also speak at conferences and recently gave a keynote at Latrobe Uni in Bendigo about multi-media from an author’s perspective. This included Braille and Auslan signed DVDs for deaf children.

Sometimes organisations approach me with writing projects and sometimes I initiate my own.

I just finished a project with the Royal Children’s Hospital on health-related ‘magabooks’ which are midway between magazines and books in design but have lots of medical factual content presented in an accessible way for mid primary. So I’ve learnt a lot about gender, nutrition, obesity, diabetes etc recently.

Q3. What do you do when you are not writing?

Swimming, bellydancing, reading , travelling and meals with friends and family.My 9 year old grandson is here often, and he recently taught me DanceFit’ which was very energetic.

Each month I try to do something new, so I won’t be boring in my old age. In 2001 I went on an Antarctic expedition as writer , and have been entranced by icebergs ever since.An iceberg is like writing a book, only one tenth of the work shows. This month I went to a jewellery auction, to observe , not buy. Participant observation, where I do in order to write accurately, enriches the life of an author.

Q4. What are you reading right now?

I often listen to audio books in my car. Enjoyed ones by Inga Clendinnen and Liz Bryski recently.

Q7. Anything you would like to add?

Hazel Edwards
www.hazeledwards.com
Latest Books: Gang-O Kids
Cycling Solo:Ireland to Istanbul
Outback Ferals
Red Day (Chinese translation)
Coming:
Flight of the Bumblebee DVD
Script Solutions (classroom plays)
Dramatics

Thanks Hazel.

Hazel is speaking about Writing a non-boring family history at Hawthorn Library on Thursday 30 October @ 7.30 pm.

Q & A with David Metzenthen

As part of our Stop.Write.Now series we asked our authors a few questions - here's what David Metzenthen had to say.

1. What are you writing at the moment?

I’m working on three projects: Jarvis 24, a novel for teenagers set in Camberwell, 2008, about two boys and a very fast-running girl. Hide That Horse, a little story for little readers about a little horse who comes to town because of the drought… and The Really Wet and Wild Canoe Ride, for primary school-aged readers… oh, and I’m doing preliminary research for an adult novel set in Port Melbourne.

2. Can you give us an idea of your typical writing day?

My average writing day is to walk the dog, get the kids to school, start at nine fifteen, work until three or four or five depending - then abandon the mission.

3. What do you do when you're not writing?

3 When I’m not writing I’m a struggling parent like everyone else. I do like trying to keep fit and I really like fly-fishing. I read and try to do some kind of low-key travel. Also I’m trying to improve my surfing, master basic French, and I love Melbourne and footy.

4. What are you reading write now?

. I’m currently reading Paul Theroux’s new travel book, Ghost Train To The Eastern Star. It’s interesting and funny. I highly recommend it, as I like train travel, and checking out other places and people.

5. What inspired you to start writing?

. I was inspired to write by my imaginings of what the world might offer. I wanted to be a cowboy, so you can see where I’m coming from. I find people and the world interesting, and so instead of living adventures, to an extent, I decided that writing about the world might do as a job. I admire anyone who tries to do anything as well as they can; writing offers a chance to work hard at something that I value.

6. What are your writing plans for the future?

My plans for my writing future are to try and always write at the highest level I’m capable of.

7. With regards to your writing career to date, would you do anything differently?

I wouldn’t change my writing career to date. I feel I’ve been extremely fortunate, and lucky, and have enjoyed the help of many people to publish my novels and stories. I’ve really liked the journey. I’ve been able to select projects that interest me, and to see them come to fruition has been kind of miraculous!

Thanks David.

Hear David speak at Ashburton Library on Monday 13 October @ 7.30 pm. Book here or phone 9278 4666.

System Upgrade 6th & 7th October.

Due to a system upgrade Boroondara Libraries will be operating on a

limited service on the 6th & 7th October.

During this period:

· Borrowers must have their library card present to borrow or renew any items.

· Items to be renewed must be brought into the library.

· The library catalogue will be out of service.

· Reservations cannot be placed.

We apologise for the inconvenience.

LibraryLink Victoria (LLV) is now available.

Thank you for your patience during this upgrade.

Library Link Victoria (LLV)

Just a reminder that LLV will be unavailable from 5pm today due to a system upgrade.

It is expected that LLV will be offline until Friday 3rd October.

We apologise for any inconvenience.