As part of promoting programs for Your digital library, Fast Lane Checkout – self service point is running for every customer at all Parramatta City Libraries. From 15 Nov to 19 Dec 2010, customers who check items out on those fast lanes will automatically enter a draw for winning an eReader – Kobo as the 1st prize, $50 & $20 Borders gift card as 2nd and 3rd prize. It will be drawn on 20 December. Continue reading
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Get Reading! 2010
Get Reading! is Australia’s largest annual celebration of books and reading. Previously called Books Alive, Get Reading! is a nationwide Australian Government initiative developed through the Australia Council for the Arts.
To celebrate Get Reading! 2010, Parramatta City Library is running a Book Review Competition. Continue reading
Spring into Spring – a gardening feast
The Last Thursday Reading Group extended its last meeting to a bigger crowed at Parramatta City Library. It was a huge success with 25 attendants.
It was a special book club event featuring famous gardens presentation and guest speaker Marc Warner from CALM project. Marc made a great presentation to show a lot famous gardens and plants around the world. Everybody enjoyed the event and were rewarded with a small pot of the Sunshine Wattle. It is being promoted in the Parramatta region and has a historical significance. It was kindly donated by the Environmental and Heritage unit in the Parramatta City Council. A nice refreshment was also provided. Continue reading
Cookbooks display and events at Parramatta City Library
Parramatta City Library is hosting A State Library of NSW travelling display – ‘Australian Cookbooks from the State Library’. Two exciting events related to food and cooking will also be held at the library. Continue reading
Review – The Pregnant Widow
Title: The Pregnant Widow
Author: Martin Amis
Dean’s pick
A novel which is essentially a male perspective on feminism is always fraught with danger. Especially if the main character of said novel is a randy 20 year old male whose main concerns in life are his sexual conquests. And yet, this is what Martin Amis has done in his latest satirical offering, The Pregnant Widow.
Set at the start of the sexual revolution, which Amis describes as ‘a time when girls began acting like boys and boys went on acting like boys’. The pregnant widow has at its centre, Keith Nearing, a 20 year old intellectual who spends the summer of 1970 in an Italian castle with his girlfriend Lily and her best friend Scheherazade. Keith longs to sleep with Scheherazade, the glamorous, and for most part, unattainable beauty who strolls around the castle grounds topless, and causes near riots when she walks down the street. When Keith eventually has his desires fulfilled from an unexpected source the experience haunts him for the rest of his life.
With the exception of Keith’s sister, Violet, who is a tragic victim of the sexual revolution due to her exuberant promiscuity, the majority of the characters in The pregnant widow are thoroughly unlikable. This is however, not always a negative, as the characters struggle to come to terms with the consequences of their actions in a time when all the rules of sexual engagement are changing. It would almost be tragic, if they weren’t so conceited and their predicaments so deserved and so comical.