The Great Libby Magazine Showcase

via GIPHY

For November, we’re focusing on the amazing eMagazines you can find in the Libby collection. Running from the 14th to the 27th, if you visit the Libby homepage you’ll see a different featured eMagazine chosen from a selection handpicked by us! Keep reading for a look into the selection we have on offer, as well as news about a great new Libby feature. 

Ready to dive into the collection? Browse our eMagazine collection here.

                                                                         
Within Libby there’s thousands of eMagazines available to borrow, all for free, and they can be read in your browser or downloaded to your device to read offline. As well as containing perennial favourites The NZ Listener, Guardian Weekly and the Woman’s Weekly, the collection covers a diverse range of topics like gardening, pets, trains and art. They come from publishers all over the world and are available to read in lots of languages: for example, Japanese, Chinese, French, German, and Arabic.

Titles are searchable from within your Libby app or their website, and if you check out the magazine guide on the homepage you’ll find plenty of curated subject lists to help you discover new and interesting magazines to read! Most magazines come with about two years’ worth of back issues, so there’s lots of content to choose from and there’s no limit on the amount you can take out.

Issues can be borrowed in the same way you would borrow an eBook. Simply select the issue you want and click on the borrow icon. eMagazines are loaned for 21 days, and they return automatically when that time is up – just like eBooks!



One great feature is the ‘Notify Me’ tag, which allows you to subscribe to the eMagazines you read regularly. When there’s a new issue available, Libby will notify you with an app notification or an email.
This will take you to the new issue, for you to borrow in the same way you normally would. ‘Notify Me’ can be found when you borrow a magazine, it pops up under the chosen issue. Just click on that and you’re subscribed! Your subscriptions are viewable in your Libby bookshelf.

#StayAtHome Film Festival: Kerry’s Fashion Picks

Looking to escape your living room lockdown by gazing at beautiful dresses and appreciating elegant design? Missing popping out for some lunchtime window shopping?  Dreaming of the opportunity to wear something more classy than trackies?  We have you covered!

Our online resources contain a surprising amount of fashion related content, from movies, to the all important magazines, and a whole resource dedicated to the Vogue archive.  You will never not know what a minaudiere is again.

Beamafilm, our online movie streaming platform, have a whole category dedicated to fashion films aptly titled Fabulous Fashion – so you can binge all of the movies.  Below is a selection of my documentary picks about well-known designers.


Dior and I

Year: 2014
Length: 90 minutes
Director: Frédéric Tcheng

Watch the full film here!

Raf Simons is one of the most revered designers of the last few years.  So much so that he will soon be joining Miuccia Prada at the helm of Prada – quite the honor!  This fascinating documentary covers his career at Dior, and in particular, the creation of his first haute couture collection for the house.  It is a real behind the scenes glimpse at both Raf and Dior, extremely chic and surprisingly emotional.  You can read an interview with director Fredereic Tcheng (from Interview magazine) here.


McQueen

Year: 2018
Length: 111 minutes
Director: Ian Bonhote

Watch the full film here!

McQueen follows the meteoric rise of Alexander McQueen as he was discovered and set up his own fashion label.  He was an incredibly inspired designer and the film highlights how innovative and influential he was on the fashion world during the late nineties and oughties.  It’s also a very moving film that looks a the challenges he faced professionally and personally and his eventual decline into depression.  A good watch for some drama. Vogue UK comprehensively covered this documentary, the director’s and McQueen’s legacy: begin your reading here.


Dries

Year: 2017
Length: 89 minutes
Director: Reiner Holzemer

Watch the full film here!

I watched this film recently and it is pure escapism.  Dries van Noten is a very elegant designer who creates beautiful, wearable – and covetable! – clothes.  This documentary looks at his career trajectory and design processes, following the creation of a collection and the corresponding fashion show.  We also see behind the scenes into his life, relationship and mind-blowing house.  Worth it just for the glimpse into his garden – the kind of magical garden we only can only dream of, especially at the moment.  (Here is a video interview with director Reiner Holzemer.)


Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist

Year: 2018
Length: 80 minutes
Director: Lorna Tucker

Watch the full film here!

Vivienne Westwood is a principled designer and activist whose message is more relevant than ever.  Throughout her career she has always espoused consuming less, protecting the environment and engaging with society.  This documentary takes us into her world, showing us what motivates her work.  It is told mainly in her words, through interviews – somewhat painfully and grouchily drawn out of her.  The movie also illustrates just how ground-breaking and iconic Westwood is in both her designs and lifestyle.  Director Lorna Tucker calls Westwood her hero, read an interview with her here.


Discover More:

Image from ‘The Wanderers’ Vogue, March 2010, v200 n3
For further reading on any of these designers you could try our Vogue Archive online tool.  It offers access to all the content from US Vogue, from 1892 to the present, both images and articles.  You can search for a designer or brand (or any topic or keyword) and it will show you articles, editorials and fashion shoots, and even adverts.  All high-resolution, downloadable, full-page, colour images.  The ability to limit your search results to find exactly what you want is incredibly detailed – you can search for a year, a fabric, an illustration, a type of clothing or style.  The perfect lockdown activity! (Click here for a Youtube tutorial to get you started.)

Who knows what changes will come to the fashion industry and magazine publishing post-Covid-19, so time for some reading now!  The library has a huge range of fashion magazines available, in lots of different languages, through our online magazine platforms – RBdigital and Pressreader.  My pick would be Vogue UK (pictured above and found in RBdigital) which is edited by Edward Enninful, who has created a magazine that addresses the challenges of inclusivity and sustainability.  Also pictured are Vogue India and Vogue Russia which, along with Vogue US and Vogue Australia, can be found in RBdigital.

Did you know that magazines from RBdigital and Pressreader can be read for free, on your computer or in an app on your tablet or phone?  You can download magazine issues to your device to read offline – and keep forever!  – as well as set up alerts that let you know when the latest issues are available.  You can find help getting started with these resources through our eLibrary here.  The RBdigital and Pressreader apps are available to download for free from the Google Play or Apple stores.

 

 

 

New for RBdigital in 2018

RBdigital

We have just renewed our RBdigital magazine subscriptions for 2018.  We always use this time as an opportunity to review our collection and look at what new magazines are on offer.  There’s always some cancellations too – either by us (due to performance), or by RBdigital as sometimes magazines are no longer available to renew (which is beyond our control).

This year you can expect to see five new magazines – UK House and Garden; Australian Men’s Fitness; Minecraft World, W magazine and New Zealand’s Metro magazine.
The titles that are no longer available are – Australian Rolling Stone; Australian Metro; Girlfriend; Horrible Histories, Vanity Fair and Renegade Collective.

All changes will kick off from March 1st, so expect to see the new magazines from then.  All back issues of the cancelled magazines will still be available to read and download for a while after that date.

If you haven’t used RBdigital before then now is the time!  They provide us with lots magazines that you can read for free and if you download them to your device you can keep them forever.  You can find the RBdigital homepage in our elibrary or through our Mygateway pages.  There’s a helpful userguide to get you started, all you’ll need is your library card.  The RBdigital app is available to download for free from the Play or Apple stores and it allows you to read magazines offline.  So check it out and if you need any help, pop in to your local library for assistance or fill out our technical support form to put you in touch with our elibrary team.

Kerry’s Fiction Picks: An interview with Richard Jackson

rsz_confessions-revised_2Last week I suggested the upcoming novel from writer Richard Jackson, Confessions of a Terrorist.  He was delighted to have his novel mentioned by Wellington City Libraries and offered us the chance to interview him about his new book and the topic of terrorism.  Jackson is a Professor of Peace Studies at Otago University; he has written extensively on terrorism – journal articles, academic books and chapters.  Jackson also edits a journal on terrorism,  Critical studies on Terrorism, and maintains his own blog on the subject.

So how could we say no to the chance to hear more about this exciting book!?  Here’s what he had to say.

2rsz_1portrait_-_rj-5On your blog you talk about wanting to give a glimpse into a terrorist’s mind, to humanise them and present a terrorist as a fully formed person with feelings and ideas.  Was this your main motivation for writing a fictional novel about terrorism?

Humanising ‘terrorists’ was definitely one of the main motivations for writing the novel. It is a feature of our current society that ‘terrorists’ have been thoroughly dehumanised and demonised, largely through the medium of politics and culture, including in most contemporary literature about terrorism. The danger of dehumanising any group of people – terrorists, murderers, paedophiles, gang members – is that it frequently results in human rights abuses and the erosion of civil liberties more broadly. The consequence of so thoroughly dehumanising ‘terrorists’ in recent years, for example, has been the spread of torture, rendition, targeted killings, mass surveillance, the erosion of habeas corpus, and other insidious illiberal practices. More prosaically, of course, the dehumanisation of ‘terrorists’ is a misrepresentation of reality and factually incorrect. They are not inhuman creatures; they are flesh and blood and completely human in the way you and I are. I know this in part because I’ve talked to people who were convicted of terrorism and have since been released. I’ve even invited them to speak at my conferences. From one perspective then, my novel is an attempt to address this widespread cultural misperception and break down the stereotypes that have arisen about ‘terrorists’ and their motivations. As I argue in the introduction to the book, I believe that this is a necessary first step towards finding a more productive and positive way of responding to acts of politically motivated violence, one that doesn’t involved sacrificing our social and political values in the process.

Had a story been forming in your mind while you went about your academic career?  Were you inspired by the people you encountered through your academic writing?

Actually, it was a very conscious and deliberate decision to write a novel about terrorism at a particular point in my career. I had not considered it before. After publishing eight academic books and dozens of articles, I realised that only a very small academic audience ever read my work and it had very little impact beyond the academy. I also noted that there were too few novels about terrorism that I could honestly recommend to my students as a way of animating them about the subject. I came to believe that writing my own novel might be a more effective way of reaching a wider audience and engaging my students. Once I decided to write the novel, I then had to work out a good story, characters, dialogue and the like. I shared my initial thoughts with people I trusted, and over a number of drafts and a lot of conversations, a story emerged. Of course, I also drew upon my own stories of growing up in Africa, and the stories of people I had met or knew. Novelists are in many ways, story collectors. They pick them up and then try and weave them into a new narrative.

Did you have to do much research?

I’ve been immersed in the subject of terrorism and political violence for more than 15 years, so I had a strong understanding of the subject to begin with. In my role as a lecturer and editor-in-chief of an academic journal on terrorism, I’ve read huge amounts of the academic research on terrorism. In that sense, I believe my novel is rooted in and accurately reflects the current state of terrorism research. I did however, deliberately seek out writings by former militants, as well as articles and interviews where ‘terrorists’ and militants explained their actions in their own words. I wanted to make sure I had the right language and perspective – the nuances of how they speak and think – of individuals who have chosen this path. Many of the words said by The Professor in the novel are actually paraphrased from what I’d heard or read directly from militants themselves.

Did your background in academic writing make the book easier to write?

No, it actually made it more difficult. Academic writing follows a very particular form, which in some ways, is antithetical to writing fiction. At the most basic level, as an academic you’re disciplined into writing in an abstract, authoritative, ‘objective’ manner, bereft of personality or human voice. You’re also taught to employ specialised jargon which fellow scholars in your own field can relate to. I had to leave all these ways of writing behind and try and find a more creative, human voice for the novel. In part, the choice to make the central character a former university professor was a way of trying to bridge these two ways of writing, the academic and the creative. I found it a really challenging and uncomfortable process. I still find the creative voice much harder than the academic voice.

Can you tell us a bit about the unique format of the text?  Why did you decide on that?

I chose to write the novel in the form of a secret, redacted transcript for a number of very specific reasons. The simplest reason was that I felt that this particular format allowed the maximum opportunity for the ‘terrorist’ to speak and explain himself. Allowing the ‘terrorist’ to fully explain himself at length – his motives, his beliefs, his story – was one of the primary aims of the novel. In the real world, we are hardly ever allowed to hear a ‘terrorist’ speak at length about themselves. I also chose this format because I felt that it would be a good vehicle for building tension, leaving clues and creating a series of narrative twists. I also wanted to explore whether it would be possible to construct a sense of character, and of physical and social space, through a very stark and bare transcript. Lastly, I wanted the novel to be rooted in the espionage/thriller genre, and the secret world of spies and security agencies. The transcript, modelled on real secret transcripts I’ve seen, aims to give a sense of the secret world which ‘terrorists’ and spies are seen to inhabit.

In terms of writing, were you inspired by any particular novelists?

My favourite novelist about the world of spies and espionage is John Le Carre. He has an eloquence and incisiveness that lifts him above the usual writers in that genre. I also think his novels about the war on terror and the way governments have cynically used the threat of terrorism to justify a multitude of crimes and wrongs have been searing indictments of Western foreign policy. He was clearly very angry with what was going on, and it came out in the series of brilliant deconstructions of the absurd and savage war on terror. While other novelists in this genre have embraced the logic of the war on terror unquestioningly, John Le Carre tore its inverted morality and counterproductive logic to shreds. I am also a fan of Yasmina Khadra, who writes about the conflicts in Algeria, Palestine and Iraq with an insight and authenticity that many Western authors simply haven’t captured.

You also mention on your blog about being frustrated/disappointed with other fictionalised depictions of terrorists.  Why is that? Are there any writers/movies etc who deal with the topic you would recommend?

I remain puzzled by the failure of novelists to depict ‘terrorists’ in an authentic manner, although it’s not surprising given the cultural taboo against terrorism today. In a sense, ‘terrorists’ are viewed in the same way that paedophiles are – as a kind of pure evil, inhuman and without any redeeming human qualities. This is the result of years of political speechmaking, movies, television shows, novels and the like depicting them mainly as cruel, inhuman fanatics. As a consequence, it now takes a very brave novelist to consider depicting them in any other way, and particularly in a sympathetic manner. The point is, even a most basic level of research would reveal that terrorists are not evil, inhuman, animal-like. I would have thought that some courageous novelists would have by now made a real effort to understand their subjects as real human beings – done some real research – and then narrated them in more authentic, more human terms. Sadly, because of this state of affairs, we still don’t have anything meaningful on ‘terrorists’ in literary terms. On the other hand, film has been much better at depicting ‘terrorists’ in meaningful and insightful ways. Paradise Now, for example, is a brilliant exploration of two Palestinian suicide bombers in the twenty four hours after they receive word that they have been selected for an operation. It draws out their humanity, their politics, their frailties, and never reduces them to stereotypes or caricatures.

Is the aim of your book to inform the readers?  To be thought provoking?

The main aim of the book is to entertain with a thoughtful tale which contains some twists and turns in the plot, and some human observations about two very real characters. At the same time, it is definitely aimed at trying to question and challenge popular understandings of terrorism and counterterrorism. In a sense, I wrote it as a way of communicating through a literary rather than academic form all the knowledge I have gained about terrorism over the years – to a wider audience beyond the university. In my view, most of what the media and society thinks they know about terrorism is incorrect, and not supported by the academic research. The novel, therefore, functions in part as a vehicle for communicating something of what we know academically about terrorism and ‘terrorists’.

Lee Child is incredibly popular author at our library (and everywhere!).  His work falls into the military / action genre that’s growing in popularity.  Did you want to write something to rival these blockbusters?  Or were trying to provide a more thoughtful spin on this genre?

I definitely wanted to write a novel that was broadly in the action/espionage/thriller genre, while at the same time being thoughtful and challenging to the normal format and content of that genre. My initial thought was that I wanted to write something that would appeal to my 18 year old (mostly) male students, so it had to have some action, some twists and a sense of danger. At the same time, I really don’t expect that my novel will rival authors such as Lee Childs, mainly because the novel is intensely political, and very challenging to our dominant cultural understandings. The overall argument it makes is that Western states need to examine their own actions in order to see how and why they provoke people to try and attack them. This is not an easy subject matter; in fact, it is very sensitive. I therefore expect it won’t be that popular in many quarters. A great many politicians will dislike its message, as will some of my fellow terrorism scholars. Certainly, unlike most books in the current action genre, it doesn’t promote the heart-warming message that the strong Western hero always defeats the foreign and traitorous enemies who seek to attack us. From this perspective, my novel is more than a little counter-cultural. I hope it will appeal to people who really want to know what goes through the mind of a terrorist, and who are tired of the war on terror and all the torture, mass surveillance, wars and invasive security measures – and who enjoy a good thriller!