Category: Subjects

Flying solo: New travel books

AmyLeave a comment

Traveling is an incredible experience, being able to see other parts of the world and to learn about different cultures. While it’s great to travel with loved ones, there are benefits to travelling alone as well. You can have complete control over the itinerary, meet new people and it can really help build your confidence. It can sound intimidating at first, but it can be a positive experience that will create many memories. Check out these new travel books for inspiration:

Solo travel / Mylne, Lee | ebook available
“A friendly resource to help you prepare for exciting domestic or international travel — on your own. Solo Travel For Dummies teaches you how to plan the solo trip of a lifetime with must-know info, insider tricks, safety essentials, and more. Get expert tips on safety, budgeting, and so much more! Solo Travel For Dummies is for anyone who needs a trusted, comprehensive source of information as they prepare to travel independently.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Amazing train journeys
“Discover 60 of the world’s greatest and most memorable train journeys, from classic long-distance trips, such as Canada’s Rocky Mountaineer and Darwin to Adelaide’s The Ghan, to little-known gems on regular commuting lines. Each profile features a detailed description of the whole experience, with practical information such as ticket recommendations, key stops and the best time to travel. Inspiring photographs and an illustrated route map bring every train journey to life.” (Catalogue)

The man who loved Siberia / Jacobsen, Roy
“Siberia, to me, is a fairy-tale land. Fritz Dorries set out on his first trip to Eastern Siberia in 1877, when there were still blank spaces on maps of the world. Through his twenty-two years in Siberia, Dorries collected a wealth of essential material for scientific institutions, fundamental to our understanding of fauna and flora. This account of his adventures, set down for his daughters in his ninetieth year, and adapted for publication by Roy Jacobsen and Anneliese Pitz, is his second great legacy.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Mexico
“Fully-illustrated, The Passenger collects the best new writing, photography, art and reportage from around the world. Mexico: once synonymous with escape and freedom, better known nowadays for widespread violence, narcotraffic, and migration. The ocean, the beaches, the ancient ruins, the tequila: under the patina of mass tourism there’s a complex, neurotic country trying to carve out a place for itself in the shadow of its hulky neighbor.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Epic : adventures across Aotearoa / Salisbury, Ray
“Over the years, countless sea kayakers, climbers and alpine trampers have attempted journeys across New Zealand’s incredible landscape. In Epic, the stories of a dozen memorable Kiwi explorers are brought together, with detailed maps, backstories and stunning images. From the first traverse of the Southern Alps, to the nineteen-year-old who travelled 8000km of coastline, Epic is a testament to endurance, and a reminder to get out there and experience the wild, stunning places of our planet.” (Catalogue)

Wavewalker : breaking free / Heywood, Suzanne | ebook available of Wavewalker
“Aged just seven, Suzanne Heywood set sail with her parents and brother on a three-year voyage around the world. What followed turned instead into a decade. Suzanne fought her parents, longing to return to England and to education and stability. From the bestselling author of What Does Jeremy Think?, Wavewalker is the incredible true story of how the adventure of a lifetime became one child’s worst nightmare – and how her determination to educate herself enabled her to escape.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Best beaches : 100 of the world’s most incredible beaches
“Discover the world’s most extraordinary shorelines inside this dazzling display of diverse beaches. Featuring transporting photography, tips for how to reach each beach, and reasons why Lonely Planet selected these as the 100 best, this is the ultimate collection of the sand, stone and sea the world has to offer. Whether you’re looking to be inspired for your next trip or simply desire some beach-chair travel, experience the world’s best beaches in this book.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Edgeland : a slow walk west / Swire, Sasha
“In Edgeland, the political diarist Sasha Swire escapes the confines of Westminster to walk the northern stretch of the South West Coast Path. She discovers that the path is not only a walk-through Britain’s windswept and wave-battered western fringes but a tale about how we and nature have, through extraordinary resilience and relentless spirit, learnt to tame the various forces that are stacked against us. That we live at the edge of the possible.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Villainous Newtown event: Now available to view on YouTube

NeilLeave a comment

Recently at Newtown Library we had the rare opportunity to hear four fabulous crime writers in full flow talking about their work, when the Ngaio Marsh Awards in association with Wellington City Libraries invited booklovers to an unmissable crime and thriller evening as part of the build-up to the 2024 Ngaio Marsh Awards.

Our Villainous Newtown author line-up - featuring Nick Davis, Kim Hunt, Jennifer Lane and Charity Norman
Our Villainous Newtown author line-up – featuring Nick Davis, Kim Hunt, Jennifer Lane and Charity Norman

It was a fabulous night, and although this very special event has now passed into the annals of history, we were very lucky to have permission from all the authors and the Ngaio Marsh Awards to film the proceedings. It’s now our pleasure to present that recording for your enjoyment further below.

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Janis Freegard and Reading the Signs: Poetry and soundscape performance recording

wclstaffLeave a comment

I am blue. I am a deep, electric shade of blue and I sound like waves crashing. My colour is so intense it has substance even though it lacks mass.

Excerpt from Perhaps the spider on my pillow is spinning me a dream by Janis Freegard

The acclaimed Wellington-based poet, novelist and short story writer Janis Freegard is regarded as one of the most unique and distinctive voices in the New Zealand literary World at the moment. Recently, she gave a live experimental poetry reading at the Twin Rivers Bookshop in Miramar, accompanied by soundscape visual artist and Wellington City Libraries’ Librarian, Neil Johnstone.

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Transgender Day of Visibility 2024

Kath

This Sunday March 31st we celebrate the International Transgender Day of Visibility.  A day in which we celebrate the lives and stories of transgender people, their contributions to society and highlight the discrimination faced by trans people worldwide.  Here are a selection of books by and about transgender people from all over the world.

Black boy out of time : a memoir / Ziyad, Hari
“One of nineteen children in a blended family, Hari Ziyad was raised by a Hindu Hare Krishna mother and a Muslim father. Through reframing their own coming-of-age story, Ziyad takes readers on a powerful journey of growing up queer and Black in Cleveland, Ohio, and of navigating the equally complex path toward finding their true self in New York City. Exploring childhood, gender, race, and the trust that is built, broken, and repaired through generations, Ziyad investigates what it means to live beyond the limited narratives Black children are given and challenges the irreconcilable binaries that restrict them. Heartwarming and heart-wrenching, radical and reflective, Hari Ziyad’s vital memoir is for the outcast, the unheard, the unborn, and the dead. It offers us a new way to think about survival and the necessary disruption of social norms.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

Detransition, baby : a novel / Peters, Torrey
“Reese had what previous generations of trans women could only dream of; the only thing missing was a child. Then her girlfriend, Amy, detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Ames thought detransitioning to live as a man would make life easier, but that decision cost him his relationship with Reese, and losing her meant losing his only family. Then Ames’s boss and lover, Katrina, reveals that she is pregnant with his baby– and is not sure whether she wants to keep it. Ames wonders: Could the three of them form some kind of unconventional family, and raise the baby together?” (Adapted from Catalogue) Also available in eBook format

Our work is everywhere : an illustrated oral history of queer & trans resistance / Rose, Syan
“Over the past ten years, we have witnessed the rise of queer and trans communities that have defied and challenged those who have historically opposed them. Through bold, symbolic imagery and surrealist, overlapping landscapes, queer illustrator and curator Syan Rose shines a light on the faces and voices of these diverse, amorphous, messy, real, and imagined queer and trans communities. The many themes include Black femme mental health, Pacific Islander authorship, fat queer performance art, disability and health care practice, sex worker activism, and much more.” (Adapted from Catalogue) Also available in eBook format

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March’s New Music for Te Awe…

MarkLeave a comment


via GIPHY

Statler: Well, it was good.
Waldorf: Ah, it was very bad.
Statler: Well, it was average.
Waldorf: Ah, it was in the middle there.
Statler: Ah, it wasn’t that great.
Waldorf: I kind of liked it.”
-‘The Muppet Show’.

I’m Mark, the Music & Film Specialist at Wellington City Libraries. I buy music for the CD & Vinyl collections, and also run the Libraries’ Wellington Music Facebook page). My Music Specialist colleague Sam, and Fiction Specialist (and avid music fan) Neil, join me every month to cast an eye over the new material we have been buying for the music collection at our CBD Te Awe library. We pick out some interesting titles across a range of music genres, and try to limit our reviews to a few lines only. Can we encapsulate an entire album in just a couple of lines? [Ed. This is probably unlikely at this point]. Do we actually know anything about new music? Or, are we just too old to understand what most of this is banging on about? [Ed. This is more than likely]. Read on to find out…

Purge / Godflesh
Sam Says: Godflesh established themselves as a major pioneer of the industrial and post metal genres back in the late ‘80s into the ‘90s and went on to become influential to many artists across a variety of metal genres, including such major names as Metallica, Fear Factory, Korn and Mike Patton. They disbanded in the early-2000s, before forging a successful comeback a few years later. Purge is their third album since then and finds them in a comfortable and familiar place, infusing musical features from various stages within their eclectic career. Particularly of note is the inclusion of trip-hop and breakbeat elements, which came to the forefront in their mid ‘90s output on albums such as Songs of Love and Hate and Us and Them. This is slathered with noisy and punishingly discordant heavy guitar riffs recalling their earlier work, albeit with much slicker production values, which in turn makes it firmly feel like a Godflesh album in the present day. Purge carries a real sense of catharsis, with the title being a reference to Godflesh’s music providing a temporary relief from frontman Justin Broadrick’s diagnosed autism and PTSD. Overall, this is an impressively potent collection of songs for a band now several decades into their career.

Madra / NewDad
Mark Says: A pandemic success story, this Irish rock band put out a series of singles & videos over the lockdown, building an online audience and millions of streams. Their debut full-length throws up a strong entry into the shoegaze revival, very much reminiscent of the 90s Trip-hop/shoegaze sound, channelling elements of Curve, Garbage, early Sneaker Pimps, and also Robin Guthrie’s post Cocteau’s band Violet Indiana (with vocalist Siobhan de Maré). There’s nothing really new here, but it’s done really well. A nice slice of spiky, angsty pop from a young band who are sure to rise above their influences with further releases.
Neil Says: The debut album from London Via Galway pop shoegaze band NewDad clearly shows their influences, but also shows their desire to move beyond them. It is clear that the dulcet tones of bands like Garbage, The Pixies, The Breeders and The Cure frequently grace their turntables. The lyrics are more personal, and are focused around themes of self-doubt and the emotional turmoil of being a young adult. It’s a fizzing dream pop outing with heavy fuzzy guitars and solid bass lines; the sound of a band who know where their roots lie, but who also want to stamp their own musical identity on them.

Dangerous day to be a cold one / Dartz
Sam Says: Over the past five years, Dartz have rapidly become one of the most exciting and prolific acts within the local Wellington punk scene, with several EPs and singles put out since 2019. Released on the famed Flying Nun records, the aptly (and humorously) titled Dangerous Day to be a Cold One is their sophomore full-length effort, and finds them sounding more confident and polished than ever before. Packed full of infectiously catchy and highly energetic pub-rock party anthems over the space of 30 minutes, it is a fiercely immediate and decisive album from a band firing on all cylinders, a notion made all the more apparent by the quick turnover since the release of their debut little over a year ago. With Dangerous Day to be a Cold One, Dartz have clearly established themselves as a major up-and-coming force within the local scene.
Neil Says: The second album from the New Zealand slash and burn punk rock outfit Dartz sees them capitalising on their reputation for high octane explosive live gigs. They’ve been playing to packed audiences of ecstatic heavily involved fans, and this resulting new album doubles down on their brand of raucous, anthemic, fast and furious punk sing along tracks, all with a unique local bite to their lyrics.

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Grassroot Beginnings: New Sustainability Books

AmyLeave a comment

Small sustainable ideas have the potential to grow into a global movement. This can all be started at a grassroot level, with the help of your family, neighbourhood or local community. Get inspired by others changing the world with our new sustainability books:

Just transformations : grassroots struggles for alternative futures
“The need for a radical societal transformation in the interests of social justice and ecological sustainability has never been greater. But where can we turn to find systemic alternatives? Just Transformations looks to local environmental struggles for the answers. Interrogating each case study for valuable lessons, the contributors develop a conceptualisation of a just transformation that focuses on the changes that communities themselves are trying to produce.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

How to create things for the world sustainably / K, Sarah
“A practical guide for anyone who designs or creates things for the world to achieve sustainable outcomes. Illustrated with the beautiful, photographic documentation from over a decade of Sarah K’s sustainable design initiative, supercyclers.” (Catalogue)

Ignition : lighting fires in a burning world / O’Connor, M. R.
“In a riveting investigation of the science and ecology of wildfires, journalist M.R. O’Connor ventures into some of the oldest, most beautiful, and remote forests in North America to explore the powerful and ancient relationship between trees, fires, and humans. At the heart of Ignition is a discussion about risk and how our relationship to it as a society will determine our potential to survive the onslaught of climate change.” (Adapted from Catalogue)

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