"Winter Is Coming..."

Some of you will be thinking I am talking about the fact that tomorrow is the first official day of winter but for others these three words are an ominous and mysterious foretelling that something bad is on its way. Like many (and there are many) I have been pulled into the world that is Game of Thrones and am loving every minute of it.

Now I've never been a big fantasy fan (shock, horror, I know) but I just didn't see the appeal. It was a whole genre that just left me feeling a little confused.

Magic? Fairies? Flying horses?

I wanted something a bit more realistic. A world of possibilities. Any possibility. Good or bad.

I want glimpses into the future, whether its grim and gritty or glorified and great and I want characters who were flawed and real and oh so human. Give me a world of spaceships and aliens and wormholes rather than worlds populated with elves and dragons and dwarves.

I have, of course, tried to get into fantasy. Robert Jordan, David Eddings, Raymond Feist, I've read them all at various stages with little success and when the Lord of the Rings movies came out it seemed like a good idea to try reading the books, after all so many people raved about how good they were. Perhaps if I read them, I too would finally understand the appeal of all things magical.

Sad to say I only managed to get half way through the first one before I tossed it across the room. I just didn't get it.

Then Game of Thrones came along.

This was fantasy?

Betrayal, bloodshed, murder and mayhem. How could I have not known about this. It was like Lord of the Rings meets the Sopranos with hefty dash of The Tudors and Spooks thrown in.

I was hooked.

This is a series that has it all. There's death and political intrigue and family feuds and well... more deaths. It's violent and sexual and raw and not for everyone, but for those who prefer their fantasy with a lot more grit and realism then this is a series for you.

In the world of Game of Thrones the magic takes second stage to the characters and what wonderful characters there are; from the sharp tongued dwarf to the bastard son who is torn between family and duty to the psychotic son of a fallen king, these are characters that you love to hate or just plain love. It is the characters that drive the story and for me that's a major part of it's appeal.

This is a world where good men can die from doing the honourable thing and bad guys can get ahead through lies and manipulation. It's about survival at all costs. As George R. R. Martin so aptly puts it.

"When you play a game of thrones you win or you die."

Psst - Sneak a peak at what's happening in June

June is another busy month in Auckland Libraries.  Here's a sneak preview of some of the things that will be happening.  If you want any more information, head over to the Library Website events page.

1 Jun: Japanese Storytime & Songs for preschoolers at St Heliers Library


1 Jun - 20 Jul: Auckland: Then & Now at Central City Library

5 Jun: Author talk: Anna Hoffmann at Papatoetoe Library

6 Jun: Money Matters Series - Where to go for local help and information at Te Matariki Clendon Library

7 Jun: An Evening with Te Awhina Arahanga at Devonport Library

7 Jun - 30 Jun: The Apprentice at West Auckland Research Centre, Waitakere Central Library

13 Jun: Photographers & Photographists: Investigating early NZ photographers with Keith Giles at Central City Library

13 Jun: Jenny Pattrick presents Skylark at Remuera Library

16 Jun: World Wide Knit in Public Day at Botany Library

19 Jun: Dear Heart: 150 New Zealand Love Poems at Central City Library

20 Jun: Orewa Library presents Gary Daverne at Orewa Library

20 Jun: Tails of a Veterinary Nurse at East Coast Bays Library

21 Jun - 21 Jul: Matariki 2012 at Auckland Libraries (multiple locations)

21 Jun: Made with love Rhymetime at Birkenhead Library

21 Jun: Tunnel Vision: Unearthing the secrets of North Head book launch at Devonport Library

22 Jun: National Flash Fiction writing competition prize-giving ceremony at Central City Library

27 Jun: Grey’s New Zealand Māori Manuscripts with Robert Eruera at Central City Library

29 Jun: Pyjama Storytime and Toy Sleepover at East Coast Bays Library

From bovine apocalypse to killer tyres

Readers of my blog on the weirdness that permeates Auckland Libraries will have guessed I have a soft spot for the odd and ridiculous. While my own reading is largely from the crime shelves, I love stumbling across something that adds a bit of spice to our collection. Scanning the journals for new material to buy here at Collections HQ, I've discovered a few winners. Although, quite frankly, nothing can ever beat Cooking With Poo (a Thai chef called Poo, of course).

Hopefully one of these titles will tickle your fancy too!

Grandad, There's a Head on the Beach - Colin Cotterill

A mystery set in Thailand (though with no characters called Poo, I understand). The author has quite a tradition of interesting titles, with other novels such as Curse of the Pogo Stick, Disco for the Departed and Killed at the Whim of a Hat.

Apocalypse Cow - Michael Logan

Sounds like a bovine Black Sheep. An escaped bioweapon turns cows into a cud-chewing zombie apocalypse. This won the latest Terry Pratchett prize for best unpublished SF/fantasy novel, so it could be a prime rib-tickler. Mooooooooo.....

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - Ransom Riggs

A spooky and highly original book for tweens, teens and adults alike, complete with (real) photos of peculiar children like the floating girl on the cover. I'm looking forward to the sequel!


Rubber (R16)

I've included a DVD in here, because no collection of oddities would be complete without it. If you thought the likes of Delicatessen were strange, wait till you see this offering by another French film-maker. It's all in English, don't worry, but you may have difficulty following it all the same. You see, it's a road trip tale about a homicidal tyre called Robert who blows people up with his magical powers. It's also a story about the people who are watching things unfold within the movie. And a paean to "no reason". Lunacy with latex and a high splatter quotient.

Triumph: Unnecessarily Violent Tales of Science Adventure for the Simple and Unfortunate - Greg Broadmore

Speaking of Black Sheep, here's a forthcoming graphic novel by one of its creators (and published by Weta Digital). Since the first word was transcribed onto parchment, man has searched for tomes that lift the lid on the inner machinations of the human condition and reveal truths about humanity and its place in this universe - there are books that teach, books that inspire and books that offer a glimpse into our very souls. Triumph, on the other hand, is full of violence, bad language, interplanetary racism and a little sprinkling of smut, but you get what you pay for. Strictly for adults!

VN - Madeline Ashby

This could be a teen/adult crossover, for fans of sci-fi and dystopian novels (with unusual tastes.) Amy Peterson is a self-replicating humanoid robot. For the past five years, she has been grown slowly as part of a mixed organic/synthetic family. She knows very little about her android mother's past, so when her grandmother arrives and attacks her mother, Amy wastes no time: she eats her alive. (As you do.) Now she carries her malfunctioning granny as a partition on her memory drive, trying to find the secret of why she alone can override the programming not to kill humans. 

Let me know if you've come across any great titles or stories of your own.

Talofa lava, Malo le soifua,

Welcome to Samoan Language Week at Auckland Libraries.  Samoan is the second most used language in Auckland and libraries around the city are celebrating it this week with events and activities.  Don't be surprised if you are welcomed into the library with "Talofa" and a smile.  There are also some great displays in different libraries around Auckland.

To find out what's on at a library near you visit the Libraries Samoan Language Week events page.  Learn to count in Samoan at one of the storytimes (Tasi, lua, tolu, fa...).  There are scavenger hunts, craft activities and more.  Mangere East are hosting an Island Nite on Thursday. 

A highlight of the week are the Author Talks by Lani Wendt-Young.  Hear this prize-winning author speak about her published books and her life as a Samoan writer.  Lani is based in Auckland.

Auckland Libraries holds many Samoan language resources for Aucklanders. With our extensive range of Pacific books, DVDs, picture books and junior readers, you definitely won’t be feeling left out of the Pacific buzz.

Keep up to date with what’s new on our shelves through the Pasefika NextReads eNewsletter. Read latest editions and subscribe for the monthly e-newsletter online.

Ia manuia le aso (ear-manu-ear leh- a-so)

Have a good day!

Near future possibilities from Robert J. Sawyer

I have just finished another book by Robert J Sawyer, a Canadian science fiction author, who wrote FlashForward, which was turned into a TV series of the same name. He has also won numerous Hugo and Nebula Awards. 

Two of the reasons I enjoy Robert J Sawyer's work is that it is often set in the near future, meaning that it references current events from our time (like Barack Obama being the President of the United States) but from the point of view that they are in the recent past, and it always features technology that *could* happen. The technology always feels plausible, and he genuinely explores the "what if this was actually possible" question.

His WWW trilogy (Wake, Watch, Wonder) explored the possibility of Webmind, a consciousness that emerges from the World Wide Web. It was a fascinating, intriguing and thought-provoking read, and it is one of my highly recommended reads.

Anyhow, having finished the WW trilogy a while ago, I was really looking forward to his latest book, Triggers. I'm going to just tease you with the opening premise of the book (so that you'll have to get hold of a copy and see how it all ends).

The book opens with the attempted assassination of Seth Jerrison, the current President of the United States of America who, is rushed to hospital. While he is in the operating theatre, there is a bomb attack on the White House. It is the latest in a series of terror attacks that have ravaged several large US cities. In the same hospital, Dr Singh is experimenting with ways to erase trauma from people's memories.

The President suffers a cardiac arrest during the detonation of the bomb. He has a "near death" experience, but the memories he sees flash before his eyes aren't his own.The electromagnetic pulse of the bomb has triggered a strange phenomenon of a random group of individuals able to access other people's memories, including the mind of the President of the United States.

While it might sound so far like a bit of a political thriller, with a bit of sci-fi thrown in, the book in fact explores the technological possibility of memory sharing and the social implications might be if this did indeed happen.

What would it mean if someone could access your memories - *all* of them, the good, the bad, the ugly, not just the ones you wanted to share - and you could also read someone else's mind. How would it make you feel to know that you couldn't stop reading their mind, no matter how much you wanted to. And what would it mean if someone else was delving into your mind in the meantime.

If we had the opportunity to truly walk a mile in someone else's shoes, to experience what they have experienced, for a white person to see the world through a black person's eyes, for a young person to see the world through an old person's eyes, for a woman to see the world through a man's eyes. What would that mean for our understanding of other human beings?

Robert J Swayer has again captured the near future possibility of technology changing the way we live our lives. My only disappointment is that now I have finished the book, I will have to wait for the next one.