ComicFest 2024 is Sat 4 May! Register your interest

ComicFest 2024 Website

This May 4th 2024, Wellington City Libraries in association with the National Library of New Zealand, will be celebrating 10 years of ComicFest — join us for this fantastic, and totally free, national celebration of all things comics-related in New Zealand!

Explore the world of cartoons and comics at the National Library of New Zealand in Thorndon! From 9am – 4:30pm, we will be hosting a festival of workshops, talks, comic giveaways, live drawing, and even a children’s cosplay competition!

We’ll be teasing our full line-up of amazing artists in the upcoming month, so save the date and stay tuned!

Register your interest in ComicFest

What? ComicFest 2024!
When? 4 May 2024, 9am – 4:30pm
Where? National Library Wellington,
Cnr Molesworth and Aitken Street

Villainous Newtown: crime writers author talk 22 March

 

The Ngaio Marsh Awards, in association with Wellington City Libraries, invites booklovers to an unmissable crime and thriller event coming up, as part of the build up to the 2024 Ngaio Marsh Awards.

The event features two Ngaio Marsh Award winners, one finalist and one of the hottest debut crime writers around!

When: Friday 22 March 6.00 – 7.00pm

Where: Newtown Library

Villainous Newtown Ngaio Marsh Awards Facebook Event

This is a free event, featuring:

Debut author and 2024 entrant Nick Davies, author of El Flamingo

Ngaio Marsh Best First Novel finalist and 2024 entrant Kim Hunt, author of The Quarry

Ngaio Marsh Best First Novel winner Jennifer Lane, author of Miracle

and, rounding this incredible panel off:

Ngaio Marsh Best Novel winner 2023 Charity Norman, author of Remember Me

Continue reading “Villainous Newtown: crime writers author talk 22 March”

Te Tiriti o Waitangi: 6 Huitanguru 2024

Te Tiriti books

Kia Tūpato: let’s begin this kōrero (in somewhat turbulent times) with a waiata from Morvin Simon:

And as we pause — kia maumaharatia anō Te Tiriti o Waitangi, me hora te aroha engari anō te rirhau, spread love not anger — ngā kupu mōhio nō ō tātou rangatira:

Here are some resources for Te Rā o Waitangi, gathered from ngā hau e whā…

Continue reading “Te Tiriti o Waitangi: 6 Huitanguru 2024”

Reader Highlights from Summer Reading!

Check out these awesome photos of our enthusiastic readers photo highlights whilst participating in our Summer Reading Adventure! One of the challenges is to take your book outside and discover the great outdoors. For some, that’s finding solace from the summer heat under the shade of a leafy tree, for others its a secluded spot with a killer view!

Photo collage of lots of reading spots, including on the ferry, in the library, under tree branches, in a forest, on the couch at home, and on a garden swingPhoto collage of books outdoors - at the beach, by a bonfire, under a tree, watching the sunset

We also asked readers to get making! Whether it be a LEGO® architectural masterpiece or a crafty holiday project using all the bits and bobs, we wanted creativity to run free… and look at the masterful results of our readers!

Lego creations - a dragon, a moon landing module, a person, and Lego friends creations Crafty creations - a crochet monster, a mini loom weaving, a towel hoodie for after the pool

A library bingo grid sheet, with lots of activitiesThere’s also still time left to complete challenges and mark off your Library Bingo sheets! Simply drop by any Library branch and grab a Bingo sheet that’s full of fun activities to complete across the Summer Reading Adventure! Do you have a friend or family-member who isn’t tech-savvy but would love our Summer Reading Adventure? Recommend Library Bingo to them as a way to join the fun!

Help us reach our community goal of reading 20,000 books before the Summer Reading Adventure ends on January 31st!

(Note: Please return your completed Bingo sheet to your library by February 7th).


What’s hot, what’s not: Summer Reading Adventure reviews

Summer Reading Adventure - 1 December 2023 to 30 January 2024

Full information - Summer Reading Adventure 23/24

Have you ever harboured secret dreams about being a world-famous New York Times literary critic?

Or read a book that you simply must share with the world?

Or, conversely, want to spread the word about a tome that simply just wasn’t up to scratch?

One of the most popular activities in our Summer Reading Adventure, both with children and adults alike, are the reviews.

We’ve received over ten thousand reviews to date as part of this year’s Summer Reading Adventure. These range from twelve words or so long (short and sweet!), to pages in length; can be funny or serious or right on the money — it’s really up to you! (But please no straight copies of book cover reviews as we have to reject these.)

And whilst the prestige of a review well-written is reward enough, we also have some spot prizes to give out!

So, if being an ace book reviewer appeals to you, find details below about getting started with Summer Reading at the link below, and send us your reviews!

Summer Reading Adventure – All the info

To whet your appetite, below are just a few of the thousands of reviews we’ve already received. Have a read, and send us your reviews! Remember, it’s not just physical books — don’t forget to log your eBooks or audiobooks and help us reach our 20,000 collective target!

Night tribe / Butler, Peter
“YA fiction is not normally my thing, but I was compelled to check it out after hearing Kim Hill interview the author. The tag line is “Deep in a cave off the Heaphy Track an epic adventure unfolds” and the Heaphy Track and environs featured large in my childhood. The premise is that two rangitahi – Millie and Toby – become lost after setting out to find help when their mother breaks her leg in a side track on the Heaphy. They are then “rescued” by a group of people call themselves Night tribe, who dwell within the cave network that riddles the limestone country beneath the North-west Nelson region, yet remain hidden from the outside world. The tribe are supposedly the descendants a bunch of convicts escaped from Botany Bay and eventually shipwrecked on the remote coast above the Heaphy river after a skirmish with local iwi 200 years ago. Throughout the story line blends factual events with imaginary ones, the author having worked on the Heaphy and still lives in the Golden Bay region. His knowledge of the region shines through the work. His previous works were non fiction and this is his first YA book. While it wasn’t my thing overall, I feel it would appeal to its intended audience, and its great to see a New Zealand themed adventure story come to the YA market.” (Review by Linda)

One Piece Omnibus 67-68-69 : New World / Oda, Eiichirō
“Another fantastic volume, thank you Oda sensei. I particularly enjoyed the part just after Luffy ate a dragon, when that decapitated chauvinist Samurai kept scaring all those giant children held captive on the 50/50 punk island with his Marlin from Nemo “have you seen my son!?” schtick. Nice also to see Captain Smoker back in the fray, that guy’s so cool. Smoking TWO cigars at the same time? Inspired.” (Review by Ethan)

Everyone in my family has killed someone / Stevenson, Benjamin
“A fun whodunit with quirky characters, a humorous narrator, relatable family drama (without any murder thus far in my family ), all while maintaining a sense of danger. My favorite book that I’ve read in the last 6 weeks. I’ll look out for new books from the author.” (Review by Tali )

Bowerbird blues / Parker, Aura
“OH MY GOODNESS! What a stunning book with the sweetest story. The artwork is breath-taking and deeply soothing in shades of blue, and the story is delicious poetry. This would be a lovely book to read aloud to little ones, have them read to you or to just enjoy on ones own, no matter the age. The depictions of Sydney are particularly wonderful.” (Review by Kath)

Beowulf : a verse translation
“This version of the greatest Old English epic poem to be preserved in the Nowell Codex is a simple presentation of the original text with heavy glossing on facing pages. If you want to understand the origins of epic fantasy in English literature, this is the place to start. Much has been made of the difficulty of reading and translating Beowulf, so if you are totally unfamiliar with the story or the language, I might suggest starting with the Seamus Heaney translation, or the great recent graphic novel adaptation by Santiago Garcia and David Rubin. But if you’re keen to jump into the original text, this is as good a place as any to do so. But look, I won’t lie to you. The story is as basic as they come (spoilers ahead). There’s this dude called Beowulf, he’s a big ol’ guy with big ol’ muscles, and he kills a big ol’ monster called Grendel for the crime of eating 30 Danish party-goers… every day for like 20 years (you would think the Danes might have called in the cavalry a little earlier but I guess they didn’t want to look like lil nerds who couldn’t even take down one monster). Then he kills another big ol’ monster who happens to be Grendel’s mum. Then he gets to sit around being king for a while before he has to kill — you guessed it — a third big ol’ monster. Except this one is a dragon and it sets him on fire and bites a hole in his neck, thus ending Beowulf’s story (though being the badass he is, being on fire and bleeding out doesn’t prevent him from killing the dragon anyway — his last words are basically “at least show me the sick loot I got for beating this boss” before dramatically dying all over his new pile of gold-plated dinnerware). So if you like monsters, magic, epic journeys and lots of blood and gore, Beowulf is the story for you! It’s basically LOTR (or like the second half of The Hobbit) but without all the filler. It’s not all doom and gloom though — the sċop (bard) who wrote the original version of the poem down devotes a weird amount of time to dunking on this loser Unferth who keeps trying and failing to talk down to our buddy Beowulf. Not cool, Unferth — in Beowulf’s words, “in helle sċealt werhðo drēogan, þēah þīn wit duge” (basically, “go to hell you big nerd.”) Classy!” (Review by Stephen)

Some literary treats for 2024

Consult Betty Boop GIF by Fleischer Studios

Image via Giphy.

A very warm welcome to 2024. As is now our annual custom for this time of year, we are going to peer into the tea leaves of the future at the bottom of the literary teacup. In this blog, we will be selecting just a few of the literary highlights that we at Wellington City Libraries are looking forward to. In the process, we hope to spot just a few of the novels that everyone will be talking about this year.

These are of course just the few of the fiction treats that have already been scheduled and announced for this year, many of the books that will feature in the ‘Best of 2024’ lists aren’t even listed yet. Indeed, one of the great delights of the literary world are the surprise novels that seemingly come out of nowhere to become one of the shining stars of that year, so there will be plenty of surprises in store. Having said that, there are already lots of interesting titles to look forward to. So, let’s start off with our list of what to look out for in the fiction world in 2024.

The first book on our list, due out later in January, is a Bird Child and Other Stories by the legendary Aotearoa author Patricia Grace.  This is Patricia Grace’s first collection of short stories in 17 years, and needless to say it is already hotly anticipated! Further afield in January, My Friends by Hisham Matar is getting a lot of advance interest. The novel starts off in London during a protest at the Libyan embassy and contrasts the civil war in Libya and life in Britain.  Also in January, we have Sigrid Nunez’s The Vulnerables, a lockdown novel beginning in 2020.

In February we have Kitten by Olive Nuttall, a debut Aotearoa novel that’s already causing waves in reviewing circles.

Continue reading “Some literary treats for 2024”