What have you been reading lately? On Thursday 11 October between 10:30 – 11:30am Parramatta City Library held a reading forum. From prize winning Australian novels to historical fictions set during the Great Wars, romances, true crime, biographies and adult non-fiction were shared. In addition, there was an online demonstration on how to discover more reading resources online via the library eresources webpage under the “reading” subject. Continue reading
2012 Nobel Literature Prize
Mo Yan, a Chinese writer, who has written ‘Red sorghum’, ‘Big breats and wide hips’ , ‘Life and death are wearing me out’, and many more other titles, wins this years Nobel Literature Prize for his merging of “folk tales, History and contemporary with hallucinatory realism.”
Parramatta City Library has some Mo Yan’s title available for loan.
Second Tuesday Reading Group read The happiest refugee by Anh Do
A memoir of a young family that escapes from Vietnam, the book tracks their journey to Australia and their experiences “settling in” to Australia.
The group knew Anh Do as a comedian and knew parts of his story so were keen to read the “full story”. The book was as funny as expected and extremely easy to read. We all wanted to keep reading and got absorbed by the storylines.
Anh Do’s most admirable quality is his positivity and ability to be thankful or see value in all his experiences.
Some readers thought that the negative and difficult experiences may have been glossed over, but as he is a comedian, the writer wanted to keep the book funny and “happy”.
Readers were surprised at the lack of racism that Anh says he wasn’t exposed to. All readers thoroughly enjoyed the book and highly recommend it.
Sweet tooth – book review
Author: Ian McEwan
Title: Sweet tooth
Yan’s pick
Young, innocent, gorgeous and recently graduated fromCambridge, Serena is recruited by MI5. But she finds herself in a low paid job and the income hardly enough even to purchase hardcopy books. She’s determined to stay on and tries to make it through dull tasks every day.
That’s why she’s grateful and excited when one day she’s interviewed and given a spy task, codenamed ‘Sweet tooth’ by the guys from the top floor. The job is simple. The top bosses want her to see a new writer, TH Haley. MI5 wants to fund writers like Haley to write for their cause. It’s 1972 and the Cold War is on with the propaganda machine in full swing. Continue reading
Ist Wednesday book group read Where men win glory by Jon Krakauer
The group discussed how this was a very interesting book which focuses on the policies of the Bush Government, and how that government manipulated the incident of Pat Tillman’s death.
The history of Afghanistan over the last 100 years is very well researched and presented.
The subject of the biography, Pat Tillman, was a man of incredible integrity who was not pro-war but felt it was his patriotic duty to fight for his country. The cause of his death was due to an army bungle which was covered up by the administration.