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

Month: December 2008 Page 1 of 2

Short Short Story Competition: final reminder

This is the last time, I promise! Just to let you know you’ve got until 12pm today to get your short story in! (Email them to teenblog@wcl.govt.nz.)

Good luck!

Librarian’s Choice Best of 2008: Bridget’s Pick

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, E. Lockhart

Book CoverFavourite line: “That’s a lot of chutzpah you’ve got there. Don’t let it weigh you down.”

Frankie’s a fifteen year old girl with a brain and gumption, but the people around her don’t seem to notice this. She’s “Bunny Rabbit” to her family and “adorable” to her boyfriend. Frankie’s not the kind of girl to let that slide and let people take care of her, though. She embarks on an ambitious project to prove herself – to herself as much as anyone else, possibly – with astonishing success, but unfortunately she lands the Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds (an exclusive all-male secret society) in some strife in the process, the undoing of which could be the real making of Frankie.

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks is a great book; thoughtful, philosophical, clever and hilarious. Frankie is the real female hero of 2008 literature.

If you’re into chick lit then you really have to read E. Lockhart. She’s a totally ept writer; reading her books leaves you feeling turbed and gruntled.

~ Bridget

Reminder

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12pm, Wednesday 24th December 2008

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Librarian’s Choice Best of 2008: Adrienne’s Pick

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

Book CoverMarcus, whose online name is W1n5t0n, is a high school student in San Francisco. He’s street smart and knows the system inside out. His high school’s security systems are no match for him as he constantly bunks out of school.

But one day, after he’s bunked out of school for the afternoon, he and his friends find themselves caught up in the aftermath of a huge terrorist attack on San Francisco. Marcus and his friends are found to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and are captured by the Department of Homeland Security as suspects. After days in a secret prison, where they have been mercilessly interrogated, they are released into an unrecognisable San Francisco.

His city has now been turned into a police state where everyones’ movements are tracked and everyone is monitored. The innocent often disappear for no apparent reason. Everyone is being treated like a potential terrorist.

Reunited with his friends, Marcus decides that something must be done to protect everyones’ freedoms. He can’t turn to the government and police for help, so he decides that he must take down the Department of Homeland Security himself using his computer programming and hacking skills.

You will not want to put this book down! It’s a very exciting and thought-provoking read.

~ Adrienne

Truck with a view

A small Toyota truck that can transform into a two-storey bach sounds too good to be true. But it is true!

Librarian’s Choice Best of 2008: Raewyn’s Pick

Paper Towns by John Green

Book CoverQuentin Jacobsen is a genius! He hangs out with geniuses and he has a perfect attendance record at high school! NERD you might say, but then one night, Margo Roth Spiegelman, the girl next door he has loved from afar all his life, climbs into his bedroom window dressed for stealth and wanting HIM! Well his driving skills actually, as she sets out on a night of revenge on her ex-boyfriend and others. Think photo of ex running down the street with items of his anatomy hanging out and dead fish under seats of cars! Then the next day she disappears, leaving him clues to follow as to where he might find her. His friends help to try and solve the puzzle but will it end with them finding her alive or dead?

~ Raewyn

Here is some new music.

Some new CDs have appeared on our ‘new music that needs to be blogged about shelf’, so I will blog about them for your enjoyment.

First up is Ne-Yo with Year of the Gentleman. He is wearing some very sharp suits on the cover and the tunes inside are the sort of cutting edge R&B you would expect from him. Great job Ne-Yo.

Next on the pile is another sharp-suited R&B man; Lloyd with Lessons in Love and he wears an impressive studded jacket on his cover. Lil’ Wayne drops by for a guest appearance too.

Estelle’s The 18th Day brings us more R&B, but this time from a female perspective. This one actually came out in 2004, but it’s new to the library and quite good.

Christina Aguilera has a greatest hits out called Keeps Gettin’ Better, A Decade Of Hits. I would like to respectfully disagree with her on the title, in my opinion at least ‘Genie in a Bottle’ cannot be bettered. All the faves are included here.

Local lads The Tutts’ new one Get in the Club is here for some Rock if all the R&B listed above isn’t your thing. They were the ones who did that song on the C4 ads.

Oh look! What’s this? It’s a playlist made so you can listen to songs off the albums I just wrote about. How handy. Check out our imeem page for all our playlists.

Librarian’s Choice Best of 2008: Sam M’s Pick

Spud, by John van de Ruit

Book CoverI picked up this book recently, during my lunch hour, and found it near impossible to put down.

It’s 1990 and John ‘Spud’ Milton is a scholarship boy entering his first year at an elite boarding school in Durban, South Africa. Spud’s family consists of a high-maintenance mother, a mentally unstable father who fears the crumbling of apartheid and the impending release of Mandela will ruin the country, and Spud’s senile grandmother, Wombat. Though Spud is off to boarding school, he is unable to escape his dysfunctional family who visit him occassionally and to whom he returns every long weekend and holiday. At boarding school, Spud is thrust into a world of raging testosterone, bullying prefects, and the typical hi-jinks that act as a counterbalance to archaic institutionalism. Spud’s dorm group forms the Crazy Eight, a group of misfits and rebels who’s escapades and midnight swims become legend throughout the school. All the glorious mayhem inherent in coming of age is faithfully chronicled in Spud’s diary, which is the narrative device of the story.

Spud is written by John Van De Ruit, South African writer, actor, producer and playwright. Unshelved have done a little comic strip review as part of their Unshelved BookClub feature.

~ Sam M

Hip Hop Album Covers Lego Style

Nothing puts a person in their place better than seeing themselves recreated in Lego. Some genius has produced Lego versions of classic Hip Hop album covers. They’re really special, so I had to pass them on. King of Rock by Run-DMC is my favourite.

Teen Blog Competition: One Week to Go

Short Short Story CompetitionSick of swans, forks and carpets yet?

You’ve got almost exactly one week to get your short stories into us! Remember that the close off time is 12pm on Wednesday the 24th of December.

Some things to remember: make sure you include the following things (exactly); “forks”, “a swan” and “red carpet”. Make sure your story is no more than 350 words long too. And don’t forget to include your name and  your library card number with your entry.

See all the rules here.

By the way, you can enter more than one story, but remember that we’re not pulling names out of a hat; you’re just as likely to win with one entry as with ten, so make sure it’s as good as you can get it.

Librarian’s Choice Best of 2008: Ben’s Pick

The Magician of Hoad, Margaret Mahy

A hero, an ageing magician, a farm boy, a noble daughter and a mad Prince all play a part in Margaret Mahy’s latest young adult novel. Eloquently written and at times quite poetic, The Magician of Hoad will have your imagination working overtime to keep up as this is definitely a hard book to put down.

~ Ben

Librarian’s Choice Best of 2008: Tom’s Pick

Dooley Takes the Fall by Norah McClintock

book coverOnly a few months out in the world after a three year sentence in a juvenile detention hall, Ryan Dooley comes across the body of a teenager while on his way home from work. Dooley wants nothing more than to keep his head down, stay out of trouble and get through the last year of high school in peace, but he does the right thing and calls the police.

But the dead boy turns out to be a fellow student who was known to have caused trouble for Dooley, and bit-by-bit evidence is mounting up pointing straight to him. The police aren’t likely to look elsewhere once they have an obvious suspect; his school has judged him guilty and just wants to get rid of him; and Dooley’s uncle – the only one who has given Dooley a break – is having a harder and harder time believing him. But Dooley isn’t going to take the fall without a fight…

This is an exciting, well-written ‘high-school noir’ mystery, in a similar vein to the movie Brick and the television series Veronica Mars, but with the added appeal of Dooley: a cool, hard-nosed, world-weary kid who, through all his misadventures, has the reader rooting for him.

~ Tom

Librarians’ Choices: Best of 2008

We asked some librarian types what their favourite books of the year have been and which they would recommend the most. They’ve read some interesting stuff, as it turns out; over the next few days we’ll be highlighting one of their reviews per day, counting down to Christmas. Check them out, if you haven’t already.

Gooooooooooooogle Books

Google Books is a pretty cool book-specific search engine (including magazines) which you can use to, as the name suggests, search for info on books. Being Google it’s pretty neat and tidy and easy to use, although (being Google) you still have to use your brain a bit when you sift through the information it gives you – it’s quantity rather than quality with Google, remember!

So what does it give you? Type in the title of a book and you’ll get a page with a synopsis, book cover (just to check you’ve got the right one I guess), a list of online reviews and references from web pages… plus the option to buy online (using Amazon or Fishpond) or check to see if it’s at your local library*.

If you have a Google account you can even create a library of items so you can keep track of what you like and what you’ve read.

This is all extremely useful if you’re doing an extensive book review – it saves you a lot of trawling and cuts to the chase.

* This is done via worldcat. Worldcat is a catalogue of every possible book/CD etc you could imagine which links to libraries around the world – you just have to type “New Zealand” in the location information field and then select “Wellington City Library” and you’ll end up directly in the WCL catalogue page for that particular book. Cool.

Our first playlist!

This is the first in what will be a weekly feature on the Teen Blog. Every week I will find some cool songs to add to our new imeem.com account and you can listen to them. Sometimes there will be a theme (like this week which is based on our best albums of 2008 list) other times it will just be stuff I like. Think of it as a try-before-you-issue type thing. Or just some background noise. Anyway, enjoy …

Top 10 Albums for 2008

Even though most people just download remixes from the Hypemachine these days, lots of albums were still released this year and some of them were really good. Here are the ten of the best we have at the library. Some are in the YA section, and some aren’t (so will cost to issue).

1. MGMT – Oracular Spectacular
A couple of weirdo hippies making a psychadelic-electro album with Prince-esque disco moments sounds like a fantastic idea. And it was, even if ‘Kids’ ends up as this year’s ‘Hey Ya’ in terms of ubiquity. Perfect for summer.

2. TV on the Radio – Dear Science
This is TV on the Radio’s third album and also their most danceable. David Bowie is a huge fan and so am I.

3. Black Seeds – Solid Ground
The Black Seeds keep on pushing out the reggae/dub and this, their fourth album shows that they might just be the best around at doing it.

4. Radiohead – The Best Of
You could pretty much burn a cd of 18 random Radiohead songs and it would rule. A great starting point for a great band.

5. Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles
Electro + Punk Attitude = Awesome. Mathematics never lies.

6. Last Shadow Puppets – The Age of the Understatement
Artic Monkey, Alex Turner’s “other” band delivered this fine effort and I for one hope that it won’t be a one-off side project. One of the coolest sounding albums I’ve ever come across.

7. Ladyhawke – Ladyhawke
Finally! It’s Blondie for the new millenium. And she’s from Wellington. And she’s really cute, sigh.

8. The Black Keys – Attack & Release
I went to see these guys live earlier this year and they were mighty impressive. The production by Danger Mouse adds an extra layer to their potent blues rock.

9. Cut Copy – In Ghost Colours
Australian electro at its very best. Another great summer album.

10. These New Puritans – Beat Pyramid
This makes it on the list for a few reasons; Cross by Justice came out in 2007 so I needed one more, Simon really likes them, and I’ve had Elvis stuck in my head for at least 6 months. Oh yeah, it’s a really good album too.

Here are the videos from each (after the Read more …):

Read More

Nothing amuses me more

Austenbook is what you get when you cross Jane Austen with Facebook. My favourite line: ‘Mrs. Bennet joined the group Widows of Men Killed in Duels’.

Streetball

Young Wellingtonians will be able to shoot hoops with basketball legend Kenny McFadden when the Push Play Summer Streetball Series takes place on courts around the city this summer.

[The] series is a casual six-week programme giving young people the chance to develop their ‘game’ … [more]

Streetball is like basketball, only with fewer players and half the court is used. The series was very popular last year and can only be more popular this year. It’s free as well.

Young Writers’ Society

The Young Writers Society is a website for writers aged between 13 and 25. It has a forum and a very nice blog, all geared to assist young writers hone their craft:

By promoting creative writing as a past time, the site seeks to encourage creative thinking, proper grammar, and better writing.

Today, the Young Writers Society is proud to boast well over 3,000 members, over 10,000 poems and stories, and a review to story/poem ratio of nearly 6 to 1. The average age on the site is 17.5, and the site receives over 400 posts per day on average. There is no other site for young writers on the web that even comes close.

Great stuff! 

Twitting

The Wellington City Libraries now has a Twitter page. Very Web 2.0! It lets us tell people what we’re up to. The Twitter homepage goes into more detail about Twitter and how it works; you can join up and let others know what you’re up to (if you want them to know).

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