Category Archives: Recommended Reading

There is no such thing as ‘Too Many Books!’ Or is there?

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I am happy to admit that I ‘love reading and books’ but sometimes, well if I am honest, most of the time I find it extremely hard to read. Does that make sense? What I am trying to say is that while I want to read, I find it hard to concentrate and make a decision on what to read. You can only re-read Harry Potter and Jasper Jones so many times!

You might think working in a library would make this decision easier, well it doesn’t. In fact it makes it one thousand times harder. When your job requires you to be up to date with what new titles are coming out and provide reading suggestions on an almost daily basis, having to then decide what books you want to read can prove almost impossible.

I find my interest is influenced by what I am working on at the time. For example while providing personalised reading suggestions for one of our recent Parra Reads Match requests; which was for thriller recommendations. I thought to myself you know what, I think what I feel like reading is a, thriller!

You might think this story ended there and I picked up the perfect thriller. Well it didn’t. I did choose four wonderful books to read and read the first few pages of each. Then put them all down. Not because they weren’t good, it was because I had already moved on to working on some ‘Chick Lit’ or you might like to call them, ‘Rom Com’ title recommendations for our library readers.

Hopefully you can now understand my dilemma. Or maybe you are thinking how hard is it to pick just one book to read. Or you might be wondering if I finally managed to choose a book to read.

Well unfortunately I haven’t actually managed to read any book yet. I have however managed to pick some amazing titles which, fingers crossed I will eventually read!

Until that time, I hope that you might find a great book to read or listen too among my ‘Wish List’.

Happy Reading, fingers crossed!

Jody

Jody’s Wish List

House of Earth and Blood, Crescent City Book 1 by Sarah J Maas

Jacinda Ardern by Michelle Duff

The Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler

Maggie’s Going Nowhere by Rose Hartley

The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams

The Nowhere Child by Christain White

The Secrets She Keeps by Michael Robotham

The Mother-In-Law by Sally Hepworth, (Parra Reads Online Book Club)

Alice to Prague by Tanya Heaslip, (Parra Reads Online Book Club)

The Switch by Beth O’Leary.

Stella Prize Winner 2020

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Congratulations! 2020 ‘Stella Prize’ Winner Jess Hill for her novel ‘See What You Made Me Do: Power, Control and Domestic Abuse’.

The ‘Stella Prize’ is one of our favourtie awards here at City of Parramatta Libraries. With each year being a celebration of the talent and quality of Australian women’s writing in our every growing community of Australian Writers.

Each year the ‘Parra Reads Group’ of book-crazy Librarian’s get together and read all the books that make it to the ‘Stella’ shortlist and of course discuss each one. For the past two years we have featured that discussion on our podcast, Parra Pods. This year in episode 33 Nisa and Sandra read and discussed ‘See What You Made Me Do’; which stood out among the other titles as a “gripping & essential read”. I can remember Nisa very passionately telling anyone who would listen that they had to read ‘See What You Made Me Do’.

If you missed our special ‘Stella Prize’ episode of Parra Pods you can listen anytime on Podbean, Apple Podcasts and Google Play, or here!

As a special promotion for Book Clubs and our wider reading community, ‘See What You Made Me Do’ is available as an eBook with NO WAITING, NO HOLDS! Available to download from our rbDigital app. Just download the app to start ‘Reading Together’, at home!

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Parra Reads, Online Book Club

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Online we can all ‘Read Together’.

Joining a book club is a great way to socialise with like-minded people while discovering new authors and books!

But what do you do when an in-person book club doesn’t work? Maybe you have work commitments, or your friends don’t live nearby, or maybe it’s April 2020 and COVID-19 and social distancing has resulted in your monthly book club meetings being ‘put on hold’ until the world rights itself!

Given the current situation and because we have been wanting to do this for a while we thought it would be the perfect time to start up an online book club, and we called it ‘Parra Reads’ of course!

Every month, a book-crazy group of Librarians will select two books they love and share them with readers.

Join in the online discussion on the ‘Parra Reads’ forum page, or share your thoughts via Twitter using #parrareadsbookclub

The books selected will include a mixture of both fiction and non-fiction and include newer and older titles.

The two titles chosen for April are:

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NSW PRC eBooks

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Calling all NSW students in Kindergarten to Year 9 and taking part in PRC!

Take part in this year’s NSW PRC from home with our collection of eBooks from the official booklists. All you need is your Library Card number and your PIN/password – hint if you have forgotten it reset it online via the Library Catalogue or contact us. Visit the website or download the app to start reading one now.

Book Review – The Lost Man by Jane Harper

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Jane Harper’s books continue to be popular among our City of Parramatta Libraries book clubs. With all three titles out each month. In February Cultcha Club book club read ‘The Lost Man’, and thoroughly enjoyed it! Which is great because they have waited very patiently for their turn.

Happy Reading!

A twisted tale that kept us guessing all the way through. Lots of twists and turns with a few red herrings that kept the pages turning. We absolutely loved it! Now the third book of Jane Harper’s that we have read and thoroughly enjoyed.

Harper knows how to sell the scene. A wonderful turns of phrase that makes the reader feel the environment as if they were living it. In ‘Force of Nature’, we could feel the closeness and density of the forest, and in ‘The Lost Man’, we could feel the heat and remoteness of the Queensland outback. The unrelenting heat and neighbours that are three hours way.

We loved the relationships between all the characters, and the way their secrets unfolded. How our opinions of each of them changed as they changed and grew throughout the book. In particular, we loved the story lines and relationship between Nathan and his son, Xander.

We loved this book! Highly recommended!

8.5/10

Cultcha Club

Available as eBook from our BorrowBox Library

Available as eAudiobook from our rbDigital Library