News Blog @ Wellington City Libraries

There are loads of new zines in the Zine Collection, here are some highlights:

Make Your Place: Affordable Sustainable Nesting Skills
Written and illustrated by Raleigh Briggs
This little book has all the intimacy and charm of a hand-written letter. Born out of a series of workshops in Seattle, Washington and previous zines on the subject, it contains all sorts of interesting information on the use of non-toxic materials for First Aid, cleaning, body care, gardening and composting. Many recipes for products are given; the author believing that making these is a spiritual and life-enhancing act, as well as the most basic step we can take to save our planet.
The style is very vernacular, the author addressing the reader as a friend and fellow traveller. The many pen and ink drawings are simple but nicely executed. This is a pleasant and worthwhile publication and one which serves a very useful purpose.
- Reviewed by Sue

Papercutter – issue 10
This issue of Papercutter features the work of Damien Jay, Jesse Reklaw and Minty Lewis. All three have completely different drawing styles and it’s a real treat to have them together in one zine. I especially liked Damien Jay’s comic about a corpse named Willy who won’t rest and won’t let anyone else rest either! It’s melancholy rather than scary, and simply but beautifully drawn.
- Reviewed by Steph

Cardboard Box, issue three
Cardboard box is a breath of fresh air on the NZ zine scene. Now with three issues under their belt it looks as though the Box isn’t going anywhere too soon, and it’s a good thing too. This issue includes a feature on Squam Art Retreat (I really want to go now, who cares that it’s in the States…), a thought provoking article on the NZ news media, and a DIY cleaning chemistry recipe page; who knew cleaning could be so fun?

All this goodness comes along with interviews with hot shot musicians and artists, great illustrations, poetry and blog and music reviews…so much quality packed into a zine-shaped cardboard box.
- Reviewed by Carmel

For more info about the WCL Zine Collection, please visit www.wcl.govt.nz/zines

This month’s Science Fiction Recent Picks feature assassins, sorcerers, clones, a portal to hell, warring gods and fallen angels, humanity on the brink of extinction, a math prodigy, the downtrodden masses of a corporation-owned world, sinister plots, vengeance, resurrection, space cowboys, mortal enemies, the founding of a new world, a witches’ coven, revolution, war, and a yeti in the frozen food aisle at the supermarket. For all of the above (and more!) check out our  Science Fiction Recent Picks for July. Whew.

40 years ago this July humans landed on the Moon for the first time – and then did it five more times over the next three and a half years. In this illustrated presentation, David Maclennan, President of the NZ Spaceflight Association, will reflect on how and why the Apollo programme came to be, its historical and cultural significance, and how we experienced it all from afar here in New Zealand.

Project Apollo reflected the heady optimism of the “Swinging 60’s”, when the world finally shook off the post-World War 2 gloom and envisaged a bright, shiny future, perhaps best epitomised by Stanley Kubrick’s classic movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. That this utopian future never quite eventuated may in part explain why humans haven’t returned to the Moon since December 1972.

But all that will soon change – come along to find out more about plans for humans to be back on the Moon by 2020, and later on to Mars…

When: Tuesday 21 July, 7-8pm

Where: Central Library, 65 Victoria Street, Wellington

1950s Calcutta, a dusty post-war summer in rural Warwickshire, a small town in south-east Ireland in the 1950s, Shanghai in 1937, and Alabama in 1931 – our Contemporary Fiction Recent Picks this month range across many different times and places. You’ll find sprawling sagas, broken dreams, personal tragedies, a guilty conscience, one journey of a lifetime, crumbling masonry, a garden choked with weeds, and a journalist in search of justice and a Pulitzer who finds himself in the sights of a murderer (Michael Connelly’s The Scarecrow). And did we mention the prehistoric giant squid? Check out our Contemporary Fiction Recent Picks.

Feisty heroines, neo-Victorian melodrama, strange sounds, awful smells, a semi-demonic cat, and murder most foul – all wrapped up in a nice tidy package for your perusal in our Mysteries Recent Picks this month.

Just a few of the titles featured this month… Liars Anonymous is Shamus Award-winner Louise Ure’s new book, wherein damaged heroine and emergency roadside operator Jessie Dancing is drawn into a web of intrigue when she answers an emergency call from a driver who sounds as if he’s being murdered. Also on our reading list this month: the new Dalziel & Pascoe novel from Reginald Hill; an Irish tale of world politics, industry and organised crime in Brian McGilloway’s Bleed a River Deep; and Scott Frost’s new Lieutenant Alex Delillo book – the Lieutenant has a serial killer on his hands when the bodies of prominent community members start showing up posed as a copy of a Goya painting. Plus, for semi-demonic cats and all manner of the macabre, check out Daniel Edward Craig’s Murder at Graverly Manor.