Discover a new love when you cuddle up with a book & ignite your passion for reading. Parramatta City Library will be encouraging readers to find romance in the written word when we celebrate Library Lovers Day on 15 February.

Enjoy a festival day packed with music, guest speakers at the end of the day and take home a mystery date with a book. Love your library and it will love you right back, we promise!

Susannah Fullerton is a well known literary lecture, writer and a very popular presenter at the State Library of NSW. She is the president of The Jane Austen Society of Australia.  Susannah Fullerton is passionate about English literature and has degrees from the Universities of Auckland and Edinburgh. 

Susannah Fullerton has written ‘Jane Austen: Antipodean views’ and ‘Jane Austen and crime’. Her latest title ‘Brief encounters: Literary Travellers in Australia’ has been published last year.  This wonderful book looks at those great literary figures who travelled to Australia, revealing what they thought of us – and what we thought of them. Anthony Trollope, Mark Twain, Agatha Christie, Rudyard Kipling, and D H Lawrence are among the one female and ten male writers featured.  

Susannah Fullerton is coming to Parramatta City Library in joining our celebration of Library Lovers Day. She will continue the romantic theme of the day and talking about Jane Austen and her romantic characters, such as Mr Darcy. 

Parramatta City Library has launched a new type of talking book collection – Playaway.

Half the size of a deck of cards, Playaway is the simplest way to listen to a book on the go and – with no tapes or CDs – it can hold up to eighty hours of content on each unit.

Using clearly marked buttons, Playaway gives listeners the ability to move back and forth within or between chapters and alter the speed of a narrator’s voice – It even has an automatic bookmark feature that remembers where you left off.   

There are over 8,000 titles on Playaway, including many selections for children, language learning programs, bestselling adult fiction, and classics. Playaway’s format is friendly for listeners of all ages; and every patron can enjoy the new format.  The Parramatta collection includes popular titles such as:   My Sister’s Keeper, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, A Thousand Splendid Sunshine, and The Da Vinci Code, and many more popular titles.

The best Australian science fiction, fantasy and horror of 2009 have been announced from Aurealis Awards. For those who are fans of these genres will be able to find some titles that are available from Parramatta City Library.

Best science fiction novel

Wonders of a Godless World by Andrew McGahan

Best fantasy novel

Magician’s Apprentice by Trudi Canavan

Best horror novel

Red queen by Honey Brown

Best Collection

Oceanic by Greg Egan

Best illustated book/graphic novel

Scarygirl by Nathan Jurevicius

Best young adult novel

Leviathan Trilogy: Book One by Scott Westerfeld

Best children’s (8-12 years) novel

A Ghost in My Suitcase by Gabrielle Wang

Best children’s (8-12 years)
short fiction/illustrated work/picture book

Victor’s Challenge by Pamela Freeman (author), Kim Gamble (illustrator)

It’s quite interesting to see what Australian novels that our Australians would like to read. Here is the top ten among 290 titles nominated from ‘Australian Book Review Fan Poll’ along with some comments. All titles are available at Parramatta City Library.

1 – Cloudstreet by Tim Winton – ‘Tim winton’s books attract international kudos, prestigious awards and massive sales.’

2 – The fortunes of Richard Mahony by Henry Handel Richardson – his trilogy – Australia Felix (1917), The way home (1925) and Ultime thule (1929), first collected in 1930, is one of the true epics of our literature.

3 – Voss by Patrick White – Patrick White, Australia’s first Nobel Laureate for Literature, dominated Australian literature from the 1950s to his death in 1990.

4 – Breath by Tim Winton – Author’s mind and most recent novel, won him his fourth Miles Franklin Award, explores themes of Friendship, risk-talking and the sea.

5 – Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey – Peter Carey’s third novel, published in 1988, won the Miles Franklin Award and the Booker Prize and was subsequently filmed.

6 – My brother Jack by George Johnston – George Johnston’s fifteenth novel, published in 1964, opened his semi-autobigraphical trilogy, and won the miles Franklin Award. His second wife, Charmian Clift, adapted it for television.

7 – The secret river by Kate Grenville – Kate Grenville’s sixth novel and won the Commonwealth Prize for Literature Award.

8 – Eucalyptus by Murray Bail – Murray Bail’s third novel, published in 1998, won the Miles Franklin Award. Among the favoured novelists, Bail’s oeuvre is perhaps the smallest and most original.

9 – The man who loved children by Christina Stead – Christiina Stead’s masterpiece, published in 1940 and long neglected, invites comparisons with the greatest novels of the twentieth century, Faulker’s among them.

10 – The tree of man by Patrick White – his fourth novel, published in 1955, two years before Voss, concerns the lives of Stan and Amy Parker from the 1880s to the 1930s.

11 – My brilliant career by Miles Franklin

12 – Monkey grip by Helen Garner

13 – Dirt music by Tim Winton

14 – The vivisector by Patrick White

15 – Picnic at hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay

16 – Remembering Babylon by David Malouf

17 – For the term of his natural life by Marcus Clarke

18 – The merry-go-round in the sea by Randolph Stow

19 – Carpentaria by Alexis Wright

20 – The slap by Christos Tsiolkas