The Eastern Regional Library Show

Sorry for the lack of blogging lately. I've been off work sick for a few days in the past two weeks and have been trying to catch up with everything. That includes having to print off 600 overdue and hold notices for the past few days (which actually wasn't a lot considering) and sending out about 70 PINs this morning. "Easter Tuesday" is actually the busiest day of the year at our libraries. Branch visits are up and the volume of items returned are huge, which is great actually. It's nice to be missed.

Anyhoo, library staff members Lesley Conway and Pia Butcher run a radio show each Wednesday 12:05pm-12:45pm on Eastern FM 98.1 called The Eastern Regional Library Show. Tune in next Wednesday for a great show. The following is a summary of the radio show for the 13th March......Cheers, Maryanne

Reading book reviews can be very exciting, and sometimes frustrating. Books which you decide you must read as soon as possible, have barely made it into the bookshops, and are in the library catalog, but not on shelf yet. This is when a reservation is the best option. Reservations are free, and you can put on as many as you need.

I was inspired by a recent review of A voyage round John Mortimer : the authorized biography by Valerie Grove. I have long been a fan of Mortimer's Rumpole of the Bailey, and of the writing of his first wife Penelope Mortimer. This is a revealing, robust and affectionate portrait of a multi-faceted, talented, flawed human being.

An Australian novel which I first discovered through a review is The art of the engine driver by Steven Carol. It is a tale of 'ordinary' suburban lives, on the fringe of Melbourne in the 1950's. It is a story of one summer evening when Vic, an engine driver, his wife and son go to a party given by one of their neighbours, which gently unfolds to reveal layers of complexity and drama.

And for light relief The meaning of tingo and other extraordinary words from around the world by Adam Jacot de Boinod ( originally titled Toujours Tingo ). I came accross an article about this book in Country Life magazine December 13 2007, and it intrigued me immediately. As the author Jacot de Boinod says, " we must encourage the survival of some rare and wonderful languages which are, tragically, becoming extinct at the rate of one a fortnight". For example the Tsonga word poyipoyii, which means 'a person who talks at length, but doesn't make sense', or the Hindi kanjus makkhichus which is a person 'so miserly that if a fly falls into his cup of tea, he'll fish it out and suck it dry before throwing it away'. My favourite is the Nilo-Saharan barbarian-on, 'to sit in a group of people warming up in the morning sun', enough to make you elmosolyodik, Hungarian for 'break into a smile'.

---- Lesley