The sense of an ending by Julian Barnes has been awarded the 2011 Mann Booker Prize, from a short list of six authors. He received a cheque for £50,000 for this his first novel in six years. He was shortlisted three other times, in 1984 for Flaubert’s Parrot, 1998 for England, England, and in 2005 for Arthur and George. His first novel Metroland was published in 1980. He lives in London.
“Music Ad Lib”, hosted by our own library staff music enthusiasts, airs monthly on Access Radio 783 AM. The show is on a Saturday afternoon from 4.30-5.00pm on Access Radio 783 AM, and will also be available as a podcast on the Access website. The show on Saturday the 29th is hosted by Mark, and here are the tracks that will be playing…
Suede [deluxe].
Track: Sleeping Pills (Demo)
Dog man star [deluxe].
Track: The Asphalt World (Unedited Version)
Track: My Dark Star
Coming up [deluxe].
Track: By The Sea
Head music [deluxe].
Track: Leaving
Track: Heroin
My daughter was really keen to make sock puppets during the school holidays. I’d also found a book about sock toys at the library and thought we could make some soft toys from socks and gloves too.
So it was off to the local opportunity shop for socks and gloves only to discover someone had been in earlier in the day and bought all the socks. Perhaps they had the same school holiday activity in mind? We did find two non-matching gloves, but thought that would be OK. Sock and Glove by Miyako Kanamori is a lovely story about Billy the glove dog and Marcus the sock monkey. They need some friends, so put lots of gloves and socks on mum’s table and hope she will make them some. She does, and they have lots of fun together. Mum even makes them some clothes.
The patterns are included in the back of the book, and are very easy to follow. I really liked the diagrams of the socks and gloves with cut and stitch lines drawn over each. The patterns range from very simple (like the fish) to quite complicated (like Marcus the monkey). We choose something made with two gloves, and something made with socks. We think our sock bunny is very soft and cute.
Most of the sock animals need the whole sock (or two), so using socks with holes won’t work. We found some nice stripped socks for the bird, and a coat toggle in the button jar at home for her beak. Sock Bird and Glove Bunny are the best of friends…just like Billy and Marcus.
Stupid sock creatures: making quirky lovable figures by John Murphy
Sewing: 25 projects for a crafty afternoon edited by Kathreen Ricketson
Sock Monkey boogie-woogie: a friend is made by Cece Bell (children’s picture book)
Sock Monkey rides again by Cece Bell (children’s picture book)
New non-fiction books addressing modern environmental and economic concerns. What are some of the challenges we face and what are some of the possible solutions? These recent picks tackle those questions and many more, have a browse!
World on the edge : how to prevent environmental and economic collapse / Lester Brown.
“In this urgent time, World on the Edge calls out the pivotal environmental issues and how to solve them now. We are in a race between political and natural tipping points. Can we close coal-fired power plants fast enough to save the Greenland ice sheet and avoid catastrophic sea level rise? Can we raise water productivity fast enough to halt the depletion of aquifers and avoid water-driven food shortages? Can we cope with peak water and peak oil at the same time?” – (adapated from Syndetics summary)
Energy for a sustainable world : from the oil age to a sun-powered future / Nicola Armaroli and Vincenzo Balzani.
“This book surveys the energy issue from a broad scientific perspective while considering environmental, economic, and social factors. It explains the basic concepts, provides a historical overview of energy resources, assesses our unsustainable energy system based on fossil fuels, and shows that the energy crisis is not only a tough challenge, but also an unprecedented opportunity to become more concerned about the world in which we live and the society we have built up. By outlining the alternatives for today and the future, it gives an extensive overview on nuclear energy, solar thermal and photovoltaics, solar fuels, wind power, ocean energies and other renewables, highlighting the increasing importance of electricity and the long-term perspectives of a hydrogen-based economy” – (Book jacket)
Global energy transformation : four necessary steps to make clean energy the next success story / Mats Larsson.
“Over the next few years, political and financial power will move in the direction of individuals, companies and nations that are able to use energy in a more efficient way. This book describes this challenge and presents a way forward by which we may achieve the goal of increased energy efficiency in the different areas that need to change.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)
Biodiversity and ecosystem insecurity : a planet in peril / edited by Ahmed Djoghlaf and Felix Dodds.
“This book provides an authoritative and comprehensive assessment of the threats presented to human security and well-being by the loss of ecosystems and biodiversity – recently confirmed as one of the critical ‘planetary boundaries’ that has already been exceeded. Contributors examine the current trends and state of biodiversity globally, the drivers of biodiversity loss including climate change and economic and population pressures, and the mechanisms and policies needed for conserving and restoring biodiversity in the future.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)
Sustainability unpacked : food, energy and water for resilient environments and societies / Kristiina A. Vogt…[et.al.].
“This book addresses energy, food, forests, soil, and water as they relate to the pathway to sustainability, a worldwide goal. Vogt (ecosystem management, Univ. of Washington, Seattle) and colleagues aim to contribute to the knowledge needed to make good decisions to sustainably produce and consume resources using well-managed ecosystems. The book presents and reviews indexes developed by international organizations as they relate to decision making for sustainability. The Human Development Index, Environmental Performance Index, (total) Ecological Footprint, and Water Footprint are four of the nine indexes that are evaluated for use in decision making on resource choices.” – (adapted from CHOICE review)
Environmental and natural resources economics : theory, policy, and the sustainable society / Steven C. Hackett ; foreword by Michal C. Moore.
“Author Hackett (economics, Humboldt U.) offers a thoroughly revised and updated version of his treatment of environmental and natural resources economics, which includes discussions of climate change and the economics of sustainability. This fourth edition includes new figures and tables, definitions for readers, and updates on policy. It is, essentially, an integration of science, economics, and public policy.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)
Alternative energy for dummies / by Rik DeGunther.
“”Alternative Energy For Dummies” presents readers with a multifaceted examination of various forms of alternative energy, including solar, wind, nuclear, biomass, geothermal, biofuel, and other sources. Each alternative scenario is compared to current fossil-fuel intensive practices in the scientific, environmental, social, political, and economic realms.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)
Cars at the end of an era : transport issues in the New Zealand greenhouse / John Robinson.
“Dr John Robinson, an experienced researcher and technology assessor, looks at the car in the context of New Zealand’s transport. He comes to a series of uncomfortable but unavoidable conclusions: the car is the wrong technology in a greenhouse world.” – (Book jacket)
This month in People & Places we feature the best in biography, travel, history and NZ fiction. Highlights include: double-Duchess delights with the lives of Wallis Simpson and Sarah Ferguson; Last Train to Paradise relives the glory days of NZ rail; and Wellington author Craig Cliff explores a number of novel themes – pregnancy tests, the poetry of Sappho and the artistic potential of photocopiers among others – in his short story collection, A Man Melting.
That woman : the life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor / Anne Sebba.
“This is the story of the American divorcee notorious for allegedly seducing a British king off his throne. “That woman,” so called by Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, was born Bessie Wallis Warfield in 1896 in Baltimore. Neither beautiful nor brilliant, she endured an impoverished childhood, which fostered in her a burning desire to rise above her circumstances. Acclaimed biographer Anne Sebba offers an eye-opening account of one of the most talked about women of her generation.”(Synopsis from globalbooksinprint.com).
Mary Boleyn : ‘the great and infamous whore’ / Alison Weir. “Mary Boleyn is remembered by posterity as a ‘great and infamous whore’.She was the mistress of two kings, Francois I of France and Henry VIII of England, and sister to Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife. She may secretly have borne Henry a child and it was because of his adultery with Mary that his marriage to Anne was annulled. It is not hard to see how this tangled web of relationships has given rise to rumours and misconceptions that have been embroidered over the centuries. In this, the first full-scale biography of Mary Boleyn, Alison Weir explodes much of the mythology that surrounds her subject and uncovers the facts about one of the most misunderstood figures of the Tudor age.” (Synopsis from globabooksinprint.com).
Matilda : Queen of the Conqueror / Tracy Borman. “Matilda, wife of William the Conqueror, was the first woman to be crowned Queen of England and formally recognised as such by her subjects. Beyond this, though, little is known of her life. No contemporary images of her remain, and in a period where all evidence is fragmentary and questionable, the chroniclers of the age left us only the faintest clues as to her life. So who was this spectral queen? In this first major biography, Tracy Borman elegantly sifts through the shards of evidence to uncover an extraordinary story.”(Synopsis from globalbooksinprint.com).
No regrets : the life of Edith Piaf / Carolyn Burke.
“The beloved French chanteuse comes to life in this enthralling biography, which captures Piaf’s charismatic appeal along with the time and place that gave rise to her remarkable international career.” (Syndetics summary)
How to survive the Titanic : or, The sinking of J. Bruce Ismay / Frances Wilson.
“When the ship hit the iceberg on 14 April 1912 and a thousand men prepared to die, J Bruce Ismay, the ship’s owner and inheritor of the White Star fortune, jumped into a lifeboat with the women and children and rowed away to safety. Accused of cowardice, Ismay became the first victim of a press hate campaign. his reputation never recovered and while other survivors were piecing together their accounts, Ismay never spoke of his beloved ship again. For those who survived the Titanic the world was never the same again. But as Wilson superbly demonstrates, we all have our own Titanics, and we all need to find ways of surviving them.”(Library catalogue summary)
Finding Sarah : a duchess’s journey to find herself / Sarah Ferguson, The Duchess of York.
“The author documents a low period in her life and how she found strength in her struggles with adversity and eventually regained her sense of purpose for her life with the help of friends and several celebrity experts.”(Library catalogue summary).
This month: journey from a remote Italian mountain village, to a canal boat in World War II England; from the rich farming land of Southern France and Northern Spain, to the banks of the Tigris River. Experience all this and more in our new travel book picks – have a browse!
Violin lessons / Arnold Zable.
“From the songs of Arab diva Umm Khultum on the banks of the Tigris to The strains of a young boy playing the violin for his mother in Melbourne, to the swing jazz of the nightclubs and cabarets of 1940s Baghdad, a fisherman playing a flute on the banks of the Mekong, and Paganini in the borderlands of eastern Poland… Music weaves its way through each of these spellbinding stories… Arnold Zable takes the reader on an intimate journey into the lives of people he met on travels over the last forty years…” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)
Thin paths : journeys in and around an Italian mountain village / Julia Blackburn.
“You come across the shell of a ruined house. It could be anywhere in southern Europe where people once lived and then moved away because there was no work to hold them there… The house is remote, but it is surrounded by a tracery of thin paths… Julia Blackburn and her husband moved to a little house in the mountains of northern Italy in 1999. She arrived as a stranger speaking no Italian, but a series of events brought her close to the old people of the village. They began to tell her stories that made the landscape come alive, repopulating it with their vivid memories…” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)
Maidens’ trip : a wartime adventure on the Grand Union Canal / Emma Smith.
“In 1943 Emma Smith joined the Grand Union Canal Carrying Company under their wartime scheme of employing women to replace the boaters. She set out with two friends on a big adventure: three eighteen-year-olds, freed from a middle-class background, precipitated into the boating fraternity. They learn how to handle a pair of seventy-two foot-long canal boats, how to carry a cargo of steel north from London to Birmingham and coal from Coventry; how to splice ropes, bail out bilge water, keep the engine ticking over and steer through tunnels. They live off kedgeree and fried bread and jam, adopt a kitten, lose their bicycles, laugh and quarrel and get progressively dirtier and tougher as the weeks go by.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)
Last train to paradise : journeys from the golden age of New Zealand railways / Graham Hutchins.
“‘Last Train to Paradise’ describes the halcyon days of New Zealand rail, some of which the author was fortunate enough to experience personally. The ‘name’ trains and journeys cover a considerable period of New Zealand’s history, from the late 1800s, through the ‘golden’ era of train travel (the first four decades of the 20th century). Among the special journeys covered are the Prince of Wales’ royal progress through New Zealand in 1920, and travelling the ‘Test Match Special’ to enjoy the rugby in 1956. The book also includes a wide variety of fascinating and unfamiliar photographs, not just of the trains themselves but also of the characters who travelled in them.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)
We have a great list of new books in our History Recent Picks this month. Enjoy!
If Rome hadn’t fallen : what might have happened if the Western Empire had survived / Timothy Venning.
“This is a fascinating exploration of how the history of Europe, and indeed the world, might have been different if the Western Roman Empire had survived the crises that pulled it apart in the 4th and 5th centuries. Dr Timothy Venning starts by showing how that survival and recovery might plausibly have happened if several relatively minor things had been different. He then moves on to discuss a series of scenarios which might have altered the course of subsequent history dramatically. Would the survival of a strong Western Empire have assisted the Eastern (Byzantine) Empire in halting the expansion of Islam in the Middle East and North Africa? How would the Western Roman Empire have handled the Viking threat? Could they even have exploited the Viking discovery of America and established successful colonies there? While necessarily speculative, all the scenarios are discussed within the framework of a deep understanding of the major driving forces, tensions and trends that shaped European history and help to shed light upon them. In so doing they help the reader to understand why things panned out as they did, as well as what might have been.” (Global Books In Print)
Turn right at Machu Picchu : rediscovering the lost city one step at a time / Mark Adams.
“Journalist Adams, whose previous Mr. America was an entertaining rediscovery of the life of early 20th-century fitness guru Bernard Macfadden, explores the weird crevasses of American exploration. In this fascinating history/travelogue, Adams looks at the work of Hiram Bingham III, who became a national sensation after he “discovered” the ancient city of Machu Picchu in July 1911. To celebrate the centennial of Bingham’s discovery, Adams attempts to follow Bingham’s exact footsteps through the Andes Mountains of Peru, with two clear goals: to figure out “how Bingham had gotten to Machu Picchu in the first place” and, in the face of recent claims that he had illegally smuggled artifacts out of the country, to understand the broader story of Bingham’s “all-consuming attempt to solve the mystery of why such a spectacular granite city had been built in such a spellbinding location.” (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved (Publisher Weekly)
Great central state : the foundation of the Northern Territory / Jack Cross.
“This book tells the sometimes bizarre story of the founding and precarious existence of the Northern Territory up to its constitution as a separate entity in 1911. Acquired by South Australia in 1863, the early years are a case study in planned colonisation, a world-wide movement in the mid-nineteenth century which, at its most ambitious, aimed at spreading civilisation around the world. This grand vision was marred by human folly, pride and hubris, overarching ambition, petty jealousy and murderous payback. Strange tales abound in this very lively history being published ready for the Territory’s centenary celebrations in 2011, as Jack Cross casts a wry, affectionate eye over a meticulously researched text that also anticipates the day when the Territory’s unique proximity to Asia determines that it becomes the seventh Australian state.” (Global Books In Print)
From Short Stories to Science Fiction and Fantasy, this selection of new fiction show cases the diversification and skill of New Zealand writers.
Geist / Philippa Ballantine.
“The first in a new series. Between the living and the dead is the Order of the Deacons, protectors of the Empire, guardians against possession, sentinels enlisted to ward off malevolent hauntings by the geists. Sorcha Faris , a powerful member of the Order of the Deacons, is dispatched to an isolated village to aid a Priory plagued by violent Geist activity.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)
A man melting : short stories / Craig Cliff.
“This collection of stories moves from the serious and realistic to the humorous and outlandish, each story copying an element from the previous piece in a kind of evolutionary chain. “A Man Melting” was awarded the 2011 Commonwealth Writers Prize Best First Book.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)
The circus of ghosts / Barbara Ewing.
“New York, late 1840s, and in the wild, noisy, brash and beautiful circus of Silas P. Swift a shadowy, mesmeric woman entrances crowds because she can unlock the secrets of troubled minds. Above them all her daughter sweeps and soars: acrobat and tightrope-walker. The mysterious woman can help so many others, but she cannot unlock dark, literally unspeakable, memories of her own. In London memories fester in the mind of an old and venomous duke of the realm. He plots, with an unscrupulous lawyer (and a huge financial reward) against the mother and the daughter: to kill one, and to abduct the other and bring her across the Atlantic to him”. – (adapted from Amazon.co.uk description)
The conductor / Sarah Quigley.
“In June 1941, Nazi troops march on Leningrad and surround it. Hitler’s plan is to shell, bomb, and starve the city into submission. Most of the cultural elite are evacuated early in the siege, but Dmitri Shostakovich, the most famous composer in Russia, stays on to defend his city, digging ditches and fire-watching. At night he composes a new work. But after Shostakovich and his family are forced to evacuate, only Karl Eliasberg, a shy and difficult man, conductor of the second-rate Radio Orchestra, and an assortment of musicians are left behind in Leningrad to face an unendurable winter and start rehearsing the finished score of Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony.” – (adapted from Book cover)
The big kahuna : tax and welfare / [Gareth Morgan and Susan Guthrie].
“The big kahuna takes as its base assumption that we don’t, as a society, accept that huge differences in income are acceptable and that we therefore choose to redistribute wealth. While they are generally regarded as separate, the tax and welfare systems are fundamentally both methods of doing just that – redistributing income from those who have plenty to those who don’t.” –Back cover.
The World Cup is almost over (though you may have heard that there is one very big game left), but we’re still keeping in the spirit by showing off our librarian’s flair for decorating at our branches. As a quick side note; it’s not too late to enter our Guess Who? competition here.
At Central Library on the second floor is a cabinet full of historical books about the game of rugby from the Rare Book Collection, come up and take a look!
There’s some really interesting items in there.
At Johnsonville Library not only is the front entrance World Cup themed…
… but so is the front desk.
The rugby books in the East Cluster have been collected together in a colourful display.
It’s been a great World Cup at our libraries. Enjoy the rest of the final! (and the 3rd vs 4th playoff if you are clinging on to the hope of third prize in your office pool)
Here are some of our newest books on true crime. Stolen moon rocks, Mafia wars, art forgery and a different perspective on New Zealand crime, it’s all here so have a browse!
Gang land / Tony Thompson.
“The landscape of organised crime has changed beyond all recognition over the last five years. Youth violence, the drug trade and rising levels of gun crime are rarely out of the news. Beginning on the troubled streets of the inner cities, Gang land takes its readers on a journey up through the underworld hierarchy until it finally reaches the very highest levels, occupied by elusive and shadowy ‘Mr Big’ characters” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)
Badlands : NZ: a land fit for criminals / David Fraser, with forewords by Theodore Dalrymple & Garth McVicar.
“Have you been a victim of any kind of crime in your life? Maybe you know someone who has. This book tells you, in ordinary language, how successive governments and bureaucrats have kept you in the dark about New Zealand’s crime rate. The myth: Home detention will be available for people purely at the lower end of the scale of offending …no serious or violent offenders – Corrections Dept, 1999 The reality: Over half the 1517 criminals placed on home detention in 2007 had convictions for sex crimes, violence and drug offences – Badlands.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)
Harold Shipman : prescription for murder / Brian Whittle and Jean Ritchie.
“He was a pillar of the community, serving on local committees, donating prizes to the rugby club, organising charity collections. His patients thought the world of him: he was attractive, kind, never too busy to chat. Yet Dr Harold Frederick Shipman was also the most prolific serial killer the world has ever known, with between two hundred and three hundred victims…..” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)
Sex on the moon : the amazing true story behind the most audacious heist in history / Ben Mezrich.
“….Thad Roberts, while at the University of Utah, became determined to be an astronaut and threw himself into science courses…. While cataloguing samples, he noticed the moon rocks NASA categorized as “trash”-samples returned after experiments. Then Roberts met and fell in love with a new recruit, Rebecca, and planned to give her the moon, or at least its profits, by stealing the “used” moon rocks…” – (adapted from Publishers Weekly)
Provenance : how a con man and a forger rewrote the history of modern art / Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo.
“Filled with extraordinary characters and told at a breakneck speed, Provenance is the astonishing true story of one of the most far-reaching and elaborate cons in the history of art forgery. Stretching from London to Paris to New York, investigative reporters Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo recount the tale of infamous con man and unforgettable villain John Drewe and his accomplice, the affable artist and vulnerable single dad John Myatt.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)
Death and the dolce vita : the dark side of Rome in the 1950s / Stephen Gundle.
“On 9 April 1953 an attractive twenty-one-year-old woman went missing from her family home in Rome. Thirty-six hours later her body was found washed up on a neglected beach at Tor Vaianica. Some said it was suicide; others, a tragic accident. Darker murmurs blamed her death on a drug-fuelled orgy that had gone horribly wrong. The crime gripped the nation. And some were determined to find out the truth of what had happened: the mystery took them from the capital’s seediest back streets right up to the highest office in the land. Stephen Gundle picks his way through the evidence to expose the foul underbelly of Rome in the 1950s – a place of bitter hearts and broken dreams.” – (adapted from Syndetics summary)
The murder of the century : the Gilded Age crime that scandalized a city and sparked the tabloid wars / Paul Collins.
“On June 26, 1897, the first of several gory bundles was discovered: a man’s chest and arms floating in the East River. The legs and midsection were found separately and “assembled” at the morgue for identification. The two most popular newspapers-William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World-devoted entire issues to the corpse, sending reporters out to shadow police and offering dueling rewards for identifying the man. Hearst even formed the “Murder Squad,” reporters who were often one step ahead of the cops.” – (adapted from Publishers Weekly)
The honored dead : a story of friendship, murder, and the search for truth in the Arab world / Joseph Braude.
“Journalist Braude (The New Iraq), an American of Iraqi Jewish origin, spent four months in Morocco embedded with a police precinct in Casablanca whose detectives infiltrate drug cartels, break up al-Qaeda cells, and pursue a variety of more routine criminals. Befriending an unemployed Muslim Berber named Muhammad Bari, the author investigates the brutal murder of Bari’s best friend-a rural migrant killed in the warehouse where he spent his nights. Following the case with Bari-and suspecting the police of duplicity -Braude begins an investigation that takes him through the gamut of Moroccan society…” – (adapted from Publishers Weekly)
Cosa Nostra : a history of the Sicilian Mafia / John Dickie.
“Journalist Dickie (Italian studies, University Coll., London) has written a fascinating history of the Mafia in Sicily from the 1860s through the early 21st century. Having emerged in and around Palermo during the troubled 1860s with the attempt to incorporate the island into the new Italian state, the Mafia gained increasing control over local government using threats and murder; by the 1870s, Sicilian politicians versed in the system had entered the central government. Mussolini moved to destroy the influences of the bosses during the 1920s and 1930s, but many escaped by emigrating to the United States, helping to build the American Mafia, which in turn helped reestablish the Mafia in Sicily at the end of World War II. Public outcry finally led to a crackdown during the 1990s… ” – (adapted from Library Journal)
Ayano Takeuchi is a really talented illustrator. She has made a cool zine about a character called Audrey and her doll . The adventures inside this zine are really beautiful and simple. What I love the most about this zine is the impressive cover illustration which is stamped in gold foil, it is so flash! Ayano has won many awards for her zine. Come to the library and check out her little zine, I am sure you will like it. Learn more about Anyano and her work here.
Here’s what’s new in our computing books collection this month – have a browse!
Murach’s Visual Basic 2010 : training & reference / Anne Boehm.
“Whether you’re new to Visual Basic or you’re upgrading from an earlier version of VB, this book’s unique approach lets you learn how to develop Windows Forms applications at the pace that’s right for you. Along the way, it shows you how to quickly build database applications by using RAD features like data sources and the DataGridView control; how to use object-oriented features like inheritance and interfaces; how to use LINQ to query data; and how to use Visual Studio 2010 to best advantage right from the start. In short, no other book teaches you so much, so fast, or so thoroughly.” (Syndetics summary)
Tradigital blender : a CG animator’s guide to applying the classic principles of animation / Roland Hess.
“Expand your animation toolkit with foundational animation techniques, software expertise, professional best-practices, proven and time-tested work flows. Roland Hess, a leading Blender artist and instructor, expertly navigates you through Blender’s character animation systems and controls, with a focus on each of the classical principles of animation like timing, anticipation, appeal, staging, exaggeration, squash and stretch and much more. Unique from other software titles, the Tradigital series offers a specific tool-set of practical instruction and foundational knowledge that all great animators will need to know.” (Syndetics)
The non-designer’s Photoshop book : essential imaging techniques for design / Robin Williams & John Tollett.
“Many designers and photographers own the entire suite of Adobe creative products, but they manage to learn only one or two of the applications really well. Robin Williams and John Tollett uses a series of individual exercises to teach image-editing tasks in Adobe Photoshop specifically to designers, who need to enhance their photos. Includes sections about Camera Raw and Puppet Warp features.–Publisher’s web site.” (Syndetics)
The book of Ruby : a hands-on guide for the adventurous / by Huw Collingbourne.
“The Book of Ruby is an in-depth introduction to Ruby, one of the world’s most popular programming languages and the backbone of the acclaimed Ruby on Rails web application framework. With an emphasis on writing clear and maintainable code, author Huw Collingbourne takes readers from the most basic constructs, like types, conditions, and loops, to more advanced techniques, like multithreading and metaprogramming. Rather than bog readers down with a lot of theory, The Book of Ruby takes a hands-on approach and focuses on the real-world issues that Ruby developers confront on a daily basis.” (Syndetics)
Blender foundations : the essential guide to learning Blender 2.6 / Roland Hess.
“More than just a tutorial guide, “Blender Foundations” covers the philosophy behind this ingenious software that so many 3D artists are turning to today. The book offers techniques and tools for the complete Blender workflow, demonstrating a real-world project from start to finish.” (Syndetics summary)
Build mobile websites and apps for smart devices / by Earle Castledine, Myles Eftos, Max Wheeler.
“A practical guide for front-end web designers and developers… Learn to design interfaces for modern devices; use HTML5 and CSS3 to build layouts for every device; use JavaScript to create a native feel with transitions, touch and swipe events, and animations; leverage APIs to take advantage of built-in functionality, and use PhoneGap to turn your web app into a native app for iOS, Android, BlackBerry, and other platforms”–P. [4] of cover.” (Syndetics)
Microsoft Windows security : essentials / Darril Gibson.
“IT security can be a complex topic, especially for those new to the field of IT. This full-color book, with a focus on the Microsoft Technology Associate (MTA) program, offers a clear and easy-to-understand approach to Windows security risks and attacks for newcomers to the world of IT. By paring down to just the essentials, beginners gain a solid foundation of security concepts upon which more advanced topics and technologies can be built. This straightforward guide begins each chapter by laying out a list of topics to be discussed, followed by a concise discussion of the core networking skills you need to have to gain a strong handle on the subject matter.” (Syndetics)
Presented by Kahureremoa Aki, WCLC Rōia Hapori / Community Lawyer.
Kahureremoa is a Community Lawyer working for the Wellington Community Law Centre’s newly established Kaupapa Māori. This is a tikanga Māori discussion space offering free legal drop-in sessions with the aim to make Māori feel more comfortable, when discussing any legal issues. Sessions offered at the Community Law Centre (WCLC) are based around Māori concepts of community, family and spirituality.
Kahureremoa’s presentation at this week’s seminar will be focusing on the following issues:
• What is Māori Land and how the Māori Land Court defines it?
• Succession and entitlement to Māori Land
• How to find title and ownership information of Māori Land.
• How to file an application to the Māori Land Court.
Manawa mai te mauri nuku!
This mini-seminar will take place from 12noon to 1:00pm, on Wednesday, 19 October 2011 at the ground floor of the Central Library. All welcome!
WCL has over 600,000 books, 450,000 magazines, and 85,000 CDs, DVDs, videos and other items at our central library and 11 branches. We are located in New Zealand's capital city, Wellington. Looking for your local branch? Have a look at our Library Locations page.