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Teen Blog

Reading, Wellington, and whatever else – teenblog@wcl.govt.nz

Month: October 2008

Rapunga Google

Did you know you can google in Te Reo? Google.co.nz is offered in Māori as well as English, so next time you feel like extending your Māori vocab select the Māori option and rapu.

New music and films

There are a few new CDs and DVDs in this month. A multi-media feast! Here are the new CDs:

Bleeders – Bleeders. This is the NZ hardcore/punk band’s second album from last year (their first album is called #2). It’s a nice, new, copy!
Breakout – Miley Cyrus. The year that Miley Cyrus (her real name is Destiny Hope Cyrus) was born – 1992 – was the same year that her father released ‘Achy Breaky Heart’. Last year she went out with one of the Jonas brothers, which helpfully provides a nice segue to …
Jonas Brothers – Jonas Brothers. This is their second album, from 2007. We also have their third album …
A Little Bit Longer – Jonas Brothers. The title track is about Type One Diabetes, which Nick Jonas has. Their are three Jonas brothers; similarly there are three brothers in …
Only By The Night – Kings of Leon. The father of the three brothers in this band was a preacher, and the Jonas brothers’ father was a pastor – how about that?

New DVDs!

The Hills : Season One  & The Hills : Season Two  – The Hills is a pseudo-reality television series (it’s real, but parts are set up to provide story and some of the roles are improvised) about some people in LA doing stuff.
St Trinian’s – This is, believe it or not, the sixth film in a series that began in 1954.  
Sydney White – Sydney White is a thrown out of her sorority and is taken in by seven socially challenged guys. It’s a new version of the Snow White story, with the most popular girl on campus as the wicked Queen. (There’s also a prince.)
Clueless – This is an older film (thirteen-years-old!) but this particular version – the ‘”Whatever!” Edition’ – has loads of special features.

Fluff, embellishments & reality TV: an interview with William Kostakis

William Kostakis is an Australian writer, whose book Loathing Lola is in the library now. He very kindly agreed to be interviewed for the Teen Blog, and we asked a few probing questions about writing …

1. At what age did you begin writing? How old were you when you first had something published?

I guess I started in Year One. I always loved story-writing tasks. At the end of the year, I won the award for ‘excellence in creative writing’. How anyone can judge ‘excellence’ in a seven-year-old creative writer is beyond me, I’d call it ‘the ability to string four maybe five words together on a page coherently’, but hey, excellence or not, labelling it like that must have gone straight to my head. Early in Year Three, I first had something published, I was a finalist in a cinquain competition for a kids magazine called the Starfish Generation. I remember it off by heart:

Dogs.
Bite people.
Stay away okay?
Dogs are very vicious.
Fluff.

… It isn’t very good.

2. Do you write professionally, or do you need to work a regular day-job? And does it interfere with your writing?

I’m a full-time student at Sydney University studying Media and Communications, and I’m also a private suite attendant at the Sydney Cricket Ground and the Sydney Football Stadium, so writing’s what I do when I have nothing to do. I guess I’m used to it, though. I grew up balancing writing with high school and a horrible job at McDonald’s… if I just wrote, I don’t think I’d know what to do with all that spare time.

3. Where do you get your ideas for writing from?

More often than not, I base my work on personal experiences. Obviously, I embellish and the stories end up completely different to what I based them off, but my personal experiences are my starting points, usually. Take Loathing Lola for instance. It’s about a teenage girl who stars in her own TV show… which has absolutely nothing to do with my life. But if you look at what it started as – a story about someone grieving the death of a loved one – you can see how my personal experience has marked the story (a close friend passed away as I was writing the book). When I’m not writing from personal experience, I’m usually writing to make fun of something (which is where the whole anti-reality TV message came from). For example, when I won Sydney Morning Herald Young Writer of the Year in 2005, one of my stories, ‘Bing Me’, was written solely as a way to pay out a friend who was in an internet “relationship”.

4. Who are your favourite authors?

Hmmm… Terry Pratchett’s amazing – in one sentence, he can make you laugh at and care for the same character. Chuck Palahniuk’s good in small doses. But really, I’m not that big a reader. Like most teens, I’m more of a TV and movies kind of guy.

5. We really like haiku – can you summarise Loathing Lola in haiku form?

I’ve never written a haiku before, so don’t judge, but…

Fun in funeral
and the smart in smart-arses
Loathing Lola rocks.

The Forbidden City

The Forbidden City: Beyond Space and Time is a virtual tour of the Beijing landmark as it was during the Qing dynasty.  For five centuries, The Forbidden City was the palace of the Emperors of China, and is now a World Heritage Site and museum. It was considered ‘forbidden’, as permission to enter and leave had to be granted by the emperor. Now you can download it (it’s free, but a pretty big download) and explore it with your own avatar dressed in Qing era clothing.

Before I Die by Jenny Downham

Tessa is a 16 year old girl dying from Cancer.  Doctors have told her she only has a few months left to live.  Determined to make the most of her short life, Tess embarks on a journey of personal discovery, completing a list of 10 things she wants to do before she dies.  Despite its sad theme, this novel is enlightening and surprisingly funny.  I really warmed to the characters and enjoyed following Tessa’s adventures with her friends.  I’d recommend Before I Die to anyone looking for something light and life-affirming to read.

If you enjoyed this, try Dear Zoe by Philip Beard.

Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring.

Cellphones: not just a replacement for the megaphone, these handy devices are now fashion statements in themselves. But nothing turns your phone-bling into a pocket albatross like a bad ringtone. Maybe you’ve just never gotten around to changing it from the “Nokia tune” (which is a phrase from Gran Vals, by Francisco Tárrega, an early 20th century classical guitar piece). Or have you (wrongly, oh so wrongly) chosen to have Slipknot or Rihanna blasting out every time someone calls? Shame on you.

The trendiest people in Wellington have natural or everyday sounds for their ringtones. Check out the tones here, and have a tui in your pocket! Or for the more adventurous and avant-garde of you, why not formulate your own ringtone using a whole computational universe (for bonus points you can even read about the new scientific paradigm behind your catchy ring). Just remember though: no matter how catchy and stylish your ringtone is, we still don’t want to hear it at the movies …

Election ’08

NZ Forest & Bird are holding their annual poll to find out which New Zealand bird is the Bird of the Year. Will it be the Fantail, the Kea, or the Kiwi? The Tui, or the Albatross? The adorable Grey Warbler won last year. I particularly like Moreporks (or Ruru), if only because they’re so ridiculously cute, and the Kaka is a great bird too – if you’ve ever been to Nga Manu, you may have had a Kaka sit on your head.

Place your vote here! You have until the 7th of November.

Have a Big Day Out

The first lot of Big Day Out acts were announced this week!

So what better time is there to check out some of their albums at the Library?

Arctic Monkeys – Favourite Worst Nightmare
TV On The Radio – Return To Cookie Mountain
The Living End – State Of Emergency
The Datsuns – The Datsuns
The Prodigy – Experience
Elemeno P Elemeno P
Black Seeds Solid Ground
Nesian Mystik Freshmen

There’s still another 2 announcements to go, so keep a look out!

Win a poster

We have three Twilight movie posters (they’re not too large, but look pretty sweet) to give to the first three people* who comment below with a proper haiku about the Twilight books.

What is a haiku, you wonder? It is a form of poetry popularly from Japan. A haiku has only three lines; they don’t need to rhyme, but the first line must only have five syllables, the second line seven syllables, and the third line five syllables. So an example is;

In Twilight they meet –
Young love’s true dream; but he is
one-hundred-and-eight

Grimm’s (cynical) example is:

Twilight, the movie:
Not long before you can say,
“I preferred the book”.

Go for it!

* Also, you must belong to the Wellington City Library to be eligible.

 

Green Lantern, silver screen

The Green Lantern film is going ahead and should be out in 2010, which is good news if you’re a fan of the comic hero, or enjoy film adaptions of superhero comics. Green Lantern isn’t one particular hero, but is instead the title given to any member of the Green Lantern Corps, an intergalactic police force who use their power rings to do some pretty cool stuff. They inhabit the same reality as Superman and Batman, and I’m not sure who would win in a fight. My money would be on Superman, to be honest.

(Our Green Lantern collection is here.)