“Resilience” – “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” this old saying speaks to the quality of resilience. Dr Nicole Weeks, a research psychologist at Macquarie University is our guest today. Nicole is working with Resilience Research and training systems, founded by Dr Monique Crane at Macquarie, you can find out more about this at occupationalresilience.com.au – The views expressed in this Podcast are not necessarily those held by the City of Parramatta Council.
To listen click here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRXF3Lp67vQ&t=52s
Our librarian delves into the origins of Halloween and recommends a few of her favourite haunting reads. To reserve books shown in the video for yourself click the links below:
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
The Woman in Black by Susan Hill
Poe: Stories and Poems by Gareth Hinds
Silence of the lambs by Thomas Harris
Turn of the screw by Henry James
This Podcast discusses difficult Father/daughter relationships in memoirs. Often in memoir and in literature family relationships loom large, especially father/daughter relationships. All three daughters suffered abuse & neglect in various forms, yet all three are high achieving women. This discussion focuses on these recent memoirs “Small Fry” by Lisa Brennan Jobs, Jeanette Walls “The Glass Castle” and Tara Westover’s “Educated”.
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Life After Life – Kate Atkinson
Book Summary
In 1910, Ursula Todd is born during a snowstorm in England, but two parallel scenarios occur – in one, she dies immediately. In the other, she lives to tell the tale. As the possibility of having a second chance at life opens up, the novel unfolds, following Ursula as she lives through the events of the twentieth century again and again.
What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right?
During a snowstorm in England in 1910, a baby is born and dies before she can take her first breath.
During a snowstorm in England in 1910, the same baby is born and lives to tell the tale.
What if there were second chances? And third chances? In fact an infinite number of chances to live your life? Would you eventually be able to save the world from its own inevitable destiny? And would you even want to?
Life After Life follows Ursula Todd as she lives through the turbulent events of the last century again and again. With wit and compassion, she finds warmth even in life’s bleakest moments, and shows an extraordinary ability to evoke the past. Here is Kate Atkinson at her most profound and inventive, in a novel that celebrates the best and worst of ourselves.
Comments
The group found this book “Life after life” confusing and even frustrating. The writing was well done but passages in German did not help our understanding.
Going back and forward in time as well as the different realities did not make for continuous reading. Also, reviews of the book were misleading – not what we were expecting. It was a chore not a pleasure.
Group rating: 4 ½ out of 10
Read By – Dundas Readers
This week the literary world celebrates Banned Book week and remembers that the right to free speech and difference of opinion should never be taken for granted. Nowadays hardly any books are actually banned in the English speaking world but quite a few are challenged regularly, usually by parents on the grounds of age-appropriateness. However, a number of books and comic books are still censored for their content. You might be surprised to find that Australia has its own list of banned books although the bans have been lifted now. Did you know that ‘American Psycho’ is still technically banned in Queensland with sales of the book restricted to those over 18? Some of the books available in our libraries are banned in other parts of the world. A list of banned books and the governments that ban them can be found on Wikipedia and is an interesting read.
American Library Association has released a list of ten most challenged books of 2017: