News Blog @ Wellington City Libraries

How exciting it is to take care of your home this month. You can adopt creative design solutions for your home with Decorating: ideas that work, or infuse your interior with the Indian influences of Space matters: use the wisdom of vastu to create a healthy home. From the inside to the outside, be daring in your garden  with Exotic planting for adventurous gardeners, get a girl’s guide to gardening with You Grow Girl, instill your children with the love of plants thanks to A child’s garden: 60 ideas to make any garden come alive for children, and create your own private little oasis following the advices provided  in The intimate garden. Do go to the Home and Garden Recent Picks page to peruse this  month’s selection and more !

This month in our DVD Recent Picks we feature Tina Fey’s 30 Rock. A behind-the-scenes workplace comedy in the grand tradition of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Dick Van Dyke Show, 30 Rock stars comedy geek goddess Tina Fey (head writer and a performer for long-running American comedy sketch show Saturday Night Live) as Liz Lemon, a character who juggles her hapless personal life with her chaotic career as the producer and head writer of a sketch comedy show (30 Rock is semi-autobiographical). Also in this month’s picks: Black Gold, a documentary about the second-most most actively traded commodity in the world after oil – coffee; Helena Bonham Carter and Aaron Eckhart star in Conversation(s) with other women; Memento meets Inside Man in The Lookout; and, Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution. Plus much more…

In this month’s Crafts Recent Picks, you can learn all manner of crafts, from popular prints to beautiful beads and buttons. Lotta prints : how to print with anything, from potatoes to linoleum shows how easy it is to print patterns on all sorts of surfaces, and Beads & buttons : 25 simple jewellery projects to instruct and inspire presents a collection of must-have jewellery projects. Plus, cross-stitching is re-invented in Stitch graffiti : unexpected cross-stitch with projects like a cross-stitched fly swatter, and Textile surface decoration : silk and velvet introduces the reader to techniques used to decorate silk and velvet. There’s even something for the mischievous with AntiCraft : knitting, beading, and stitching for the slightly sinister in which you’ll find craft ideas never seen before such as the “Curse Your Boyfriend” sweater, and the “Snowballs Chance in Hell” arm warmers.

“In this third electrifying title from Ursula Jones and Russell Ayto, the witch’s children’s friend, Gemma, is scared about her first day at school. So, the Little One turns her into an ogre to give her courage …but ogres don’t fit in at school. Never mind. The Little One has a solution – to turn the whole school into a storybook, which is a good place for an ogre. The trouble is, the witch’s children are very good at doing spells but not so good at undoing them…who can help?” — Amazon UK

In this month’s Picture Book Recent Picks you’ll find hungry crocodiles, Mrs Muffly’s monster, prickly porcupines and Fleabag the dog. Plus, the witch’s children go to school! Have a look.

It’s Montana Poetry Day this Friday and Newtown Library is celebrating with an open-mike night.  Don’t be shy – read your own verse or a favourite from another poet.

If it’s like other poetry evenings held at Newtown Library, it’ll be a great event to attend.

In our July Popular Science Recent Picks, take a journey to the rainforest with Bruce M. Beehler, a widely travelled expert on birds and tropical ecology. Lost worlds : adventures in the tropical rainforest will take you on a journey of all the mysterious sounds, unfamiliar smells and spectacular sights of a tropical rainforest – without the expensive air fares, or plate-sized spiders! Plus, travel to the future – through the visions of the past. Complete with household jetpacks and personal robots, experience the early 20th century’s futuristic utopian plans for home and work. While we didn’t get the household jetpacks, we did get things like the super-fantastic building materials of the future – asbestos, for one… Also this month, the book of the television series Mythbusters, quantum cats, science’s strangest inventions and The Little Book of Bees.

Simply Material : Exploring the Potential of Materials and the Creative Competency presents many art works that have been created from a wide variety of materials. It shows how raw and basic items can be transformed by creative flair into unique pieces. Logo Mondo is a collection of more than 1,000 typographic, icons, and illustrations reflecting today’s urban aesthetic covering Hip-Hop, Neo-Baroque, kanji, kana, psychedelic, 60s to 70s, corporate, and other distinct groups. The groundbreaking work of design studio Modern Dog is featured in Modern Dog : 20 Years of Poster Art with a collection of posters for theater, events, music, social issues, and self-promotion. Detail in Contemporary Landscape Architecture stresses and illustrates how important attention to detail is in landscape architecture. These are the books highlighted in this month’s Design Recent Picks , amongst others such as Alexander Girard Designs for Herman Miller and Raf Simons.

In this month’s Cooking Recent Picks, there is a wide selection of recipies to fight off the winter chill. Polish & Russian : 70 traditional step-by-step dishes from Eastern Europe features all the classic dishes of eastern-europe including Borsch, Chicken Kiev, Beef Stroganov, Pirozhkis and Blinis, and Soups and breads : the soup recipes you must have contains a delicious collection of soup and bread recipes from around the globe. And if you miss the warmth and sun Moroccan is the ideal cookbook to bring summer back… in your kitchen. Amateurs of fine wines and brews are not forgotten with Vineyard visits , a guide to over 150 New-Zealand wineries, and Extreme brewing : an enthusiast’s guide to brewing craft beer at home, which will teach you all you need to know to home-made beer.

In this month’s Computing Recent Picks, software developers, web designers, server administrators and bloggers will be satisfied. Head first software development, and Beautiful code review the challenges and best practices of software development. Web design : studios. 2 features the best design studios from over 30 countries, their work and favorite tools. Beginning Ubuntu server administration : from novice to professional enables server administrators to configure, deploy, and manage network services more effectively than ever. And,  The IT girl’s guide to blogging with Moxie allows would-be bloggers to master all the subtelties of this popular social networking platform. Finally, Jacquard’s web : how a hand-loom led to the birth of the information age goes back to the era of the industrial revolution when Joseph-Marie Jacquard invented a loom that used revolutionary punched cards to store instructions for weaving the required pattern or design : the world’s first computer programs.

We’re going Olympic for the July school holidays! Meet the Push Play team and have fun playing ‘olympic’ games and doing ‘olympic’ activities while learning about the Olympic Games. Our first session starts tomorrow at Cummings Park at 2pm… kids, come along for some fun!

‘We’re Going Olympic’ sessions will be on at all our Wellington library branches. Visit the Kids’ events page for dates and times and we’ll see you there!