Top 5 most requested nonfiction for November 2012

"Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers."
- Charles W. Eliot

In my mind, this introduction was going to be an absolutely stunner. I was going to wow you all with my wit and way with words. And then I woke up and realised that's so not my style. Instead, I'm going to keep it simple. Today's Top 5 list features an NZ cook, a rugby player, The Rod (as in Stewart AND I see that they managed to fit the word 'knickers' in to the synopsis somehow), rushing woman's syndrome, and a place on the Shore that makes the most amazeballs food I have ever seen. I give you our Top 5 most requested nonfiction for November 2012.

Top 5 most requested nonfiction titles for August 2012

"To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him and travel in his company."
- Andre Gide

The meaning of life, a food truck, a woman a would-be-king abdicated the throne for, rushing to and fro, and a cafe (or two, rather) with the most amazeballs food - what do they all have in common? Our top 5 most requested nonfiction titles list for August 2012, of course. Like, what else, right? Happy reading. (I know, I'm getting better and better at this 'short intro' thing. WIN!).

5 new cookbooks for busy worker folk

List by Danielle

"Derive happiness in oneself from a good day's work, from illuminating the fog that surrounds us."

~ Henri Matisse

Grey, dampish weather, lines of rush-hour traffic, dark by the time you get home... if you're a keen cook but are finding your enthusiasm is low for hanging out for hours in the kitchen at the end of a busy workday, or your bank account's feeling a bit tight and pinchy at the thought of fancy ingredients, we've got a stack of great new cookbooks on this month's New Titles list. Easy to prepare, simple ingredients, but still really inspiring recipes that look like fun to try. You can even try making your own (healthy yeah sure blah blah blah whatever) takeaways!

5 new Kiwi cookbooks worth slapping a request on

List by Danielle

'I like to think that if you eat food with gratitude then you somehow won't put on weight. It's all about your attitude.'
~ Kim Evans

There's a neat story on the front page of Friday 13th's North Shore Times (read it here on Stuff), about single mum/baker/businesswoman Kim Evans, who went from selling homemade goodies at the Takapuna markets to running not one but two wildly successful Auckland bakeries (Little and Friday), after working her way through something like 18 hour days when her first bakery was getting going. She's just put out her first cookbook, Treats from Little and Friday - which we have!!! yay libraries - so I thought I'd see what else is new in the way of recent Kiwi cookbooks. We've got some gems coming out in 2012, an eclectic mix that runs from fancy restaurant fare to rural recipes for seasonal fruit and veg, with a couple of Masterchef NZ spin-offs thrown in for good measure. Plenty to get your tastebuds going and give you something new to try on anyone kind enough to play guinea-pig for you!

5 books or films you may not have known were banned or challenged in New Zealand

List by Tosca

"To choose a good book, look in an inquisitor's prohibited list."
- John Aikin

When it comes to freedom of choice in relation to books I have always been eternally grateful that I live in New Zealand. I grew up encouraged to read - through my parents and school - both classic and contemporary books that, in the US, were considered highly controversial. I didn't know they were controversial at the time. It certainly wasn't a concern to my parents or teachers. I know, though, that they didn't encourage me to read those books on a whim. I believe that they gave them to me for three reasons: they had enjoyed them, they thought I might enjoy them and they wanted to challenge my way of thinking. Often I wonder whether or not I've lived up to that ideal. Sometimes, I think yes. Other times, not so much. I've been rather smug in the idea that New Zealand bans very little. Or at least, what I thought was *very little* until I delved a little further. I had assumed that there weren't many titles that had ever been banned (oh, naivety, thy name is Tosca) so I was all kinds of astounded to learn differently. The Office of Film and Literature Classification has a Classified books/film list from 1963 to 9 July 2010 that made for most interesting reading. I downloaded the spreadsheet and browsed through all of those marked 'Banned' and then chose my top 5 from the ones that surprised me the most. So here you go.

My top 5 confessions about library items I've read/watched this week

List by Tosca

"Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it."
- P.J. O'Rourke

This list will not have much in the way of an introduction. It's a list of confessions - things these books/dvds made me think, do and/or feel. What have I learnt about myself? That I'm not a particularly complex person :)

Top 5 NZ Music Month discoveries

List by Danielle

'We're just happy people.'
~ Dave Gibson, Elemeno P

31 days... 31 NZ cds! That was the challenge I set myself at the start of the month.

I'm posting a little early because, well, frankly, I enjoyed my trip through the Manukau Library NZ music collection so much that some days I listened to 2 or more cds. I'm a bit shellshocked by this stage, what with so much new music to listen to in such a short time, but the overwhelming impression I have is that NZ music is pretty darn awesome and well worth a listen. Yes, there were a couple of cds that I had to force myself to soldier to the end of, but there are also about 15 cds that are now on my 'do-some-budgeting-and-buy' list, and at least a handful that I have repeatedly thrashed in the car. I even put my foot down and made the kids take off 'Never smile at a crocodile' for some of them. Choosing 5 is actually a major mission. At least half the list deserve honourable mentions.

NZ Music Month: Top 5 tracks/pages from 'The great New Zealand songbook: autographs' that inspired a mini-epiphany or moved me to tears

List by Tosca

"Music is the medicine of a breaking heart."
- Leigh Hunt

How are you celebrating NZ Music Month? Danielle (the same Danielle who updates the Top 5 Goodies blog with me) set herself an NZ Music Month goal for this year: to listen to 1 new-to-her NZ cd a day. It was such a brilliant idea that I decided to do the same for myself and tweet/Facebook whatever it was that I'd chosen for that day. Two days in to my May resolution and I'm quite excited about the possibilities. My first cd was TV knows better by Clap Clap Riot, which Danielle recommended, and it was a loud and joyous kickstart to my musical journey. I've received a couple of recommendations from people already (please feel free to leave your own as a comment - I will try any and all): Kids of 88's Sugarpills and Whirimako Black's Soul sessions. My NZ Music Month journey led me to my greatest find so far this week, an unassuming title I found by happy accident that is, in a nutshell, a book with a couple of cds. The two cds are The best NZ music from last century and The best NZ music from this century highlighting some 42 songs in total. Every person who appears on the cds was given the opportunity to contribute to a journal where they could handwrite the lyrics to their song and add photos, anecdotes, memorabilia and/or sketches. I couldn't believe how much more meaning this added to each track, to be able to know what inspired a melody, a lyric or even a title. I spent a long time poring over every page, reading and re-reading, both with and without the cds playing, jotting down notes, scribbling them out again, muttering to myself and generally trying to make sure my list was true to me but the hardest part of preparing this post was listening to the music with new eyes. A challenge in and of itself. I wish I could tell you I had some empirical, scientific method for selecting which 5 tracks/pages I love, love, loved the most but that's not my style. I chose, instead, to list those that inspired a mini-epiphany of sorts or moved me to tears because, really, that's the sort of person I am.

Top 5 NZ gigs I have enjoyed (and the albums I forever associate them with)

List by Tosca

A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.
Leopold Stokowski

Happy birthday NZ Music Month! Like the rest of the country I'm looking forward to a month long celebration of homegrown musical talent :) I meant to write a current NZ Music Month list, I honestly did, but it's at this particular time of year, more than any other, that I feel nostalgic. I think a lot of it is to do with the fact that musically I spent my early to late 20s going from one live NZ music gig to another. More often than not on my own. I love live music. I'm not a mosher and never have been but the best spot to stand is right at the front where you can watch every movement the musicians make. Unfortunately, this has meant that over the years, I have been stood on, jumped on and shoved seven ways from Sunday but it was worth it. I'd do it all over again if it meant I could see the five acts I've chosen to list below. These are my top 5 NZ live acts (and the albums I forever associate them with) which are, no doubt, different from anyone else's list. Feel free to leave your own preferred choices as a comment. This year I intend to celebrate NZ Music Month 2011 by looking up 5 current NZ bands/artists whose work I have never heard before. That'll be another upcoming post. How will you be celebrating NZ Music Month 2011?

5 of Harlow's poems that made me want to dog-ear the pages of a library book (although I resisted)

List by Tosca

"Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry."
- W.B. Yeats

I'm an inveterate dog-ear folder of pages. Not because I'm intentionally destructive (although some ardent bibliophiles may argue otherwise). Maybe more because when I connect with a book emotionally I feel as if I have to create some obvious landmark that says, 'Epiphany here!' Once I've finished reading the book in its entirety I tend to go back and re-read the marked pages and try to figure out why I had such a lightbulb moment. Sometimes the reasons aren't always so clear why some lines strike a chord and others don't. I had lots of those moments when reading Michael Harlow's The tram conductor's blue cap. So much so that narrowing down my selection to 5 wasn't so easy. So many passages, if not the entire poem, came to life for me. This is a whimsical post and I make no apologies for my flights of fancy. Here I do little more than share the titles of 5 of Harlow's poems that struck a chord with me although I couldn't begin to tell you why.

Top 5 New Zealand cookbooks

List by Barbara

Please note: This top 5 list has been transferred across from our Manukau Libraries website.

"The biggest seller is cookbooks and the second is diet books — how not to eat what you've just learned how to cook."
- Andy Rooney

Writes Barbara: The books below are for people like me who avoid the kitchen like the plague if they can possibly help it. Just quietly, I know exactly how Barbara feels :-/

Top 5 nonfiction books I've enjoyed thumbing through for NZ Book Month

List by Tosca

"Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folks have lent me."
- Anatole France

EEK! This published before I even had a chance to finish it properly LOL Cursed technology :) It's a quick list of NZ nonfiction titles I spotted by chance and really, really (I can't stress *really* enough) enjoyed. From fish to holidays to museums to baches...

Honourable mention:

101 must-do weekends edited by Renée Lang - 101 great suggested weekends away in different parts of the country, divided into 10 broad themes. Whether you're into history and culture, or prefer to concentrate on food and wine, you'll find the perfect weekend here.

Baches of Raglan edited by Venetia Sherson, David Cook, Andrea Wilkinson ; foreword essay, Bery Fletcher - "This is a book about Raglan's older baches. Many were built in the "boom years" of the 50s and 60s when thousands of Kiwis invested in a bit of land by the sea; others are much older and have been handed down through families with long connections to the Raglan community. Built of wood, concrete or firbrolite with iron roofs, they remain largely unaltered. Their owners have no interest in granite bench tops, polished concrete floors and tinted glass" - Publishers blurb

Baches & cribs : a pictorial journey through New Zealand's favourite holiday places by Jeff Grigor - Fishing shacks at river mouths, beloved family hideaways at the beach or on a remote rocky shore, follies perched precariously on cliff edges, converted railway carriages, mountain huts above the snowline... The Kiwi bach or crib is likely to be a very long way from SH1, have a fantastic view, perhaps not even have electricity - and be regarded as paradise by generations of a New Zealand family. This colourful book is made up of photographs of their favourite baches and cribs supplied by ordinary New Zealanders. Often under threat from local councils and spiralling land values, some of these baches and cribs are now being torn down. This book is thus an invaluable record of an iconic New Zealand way of life.

Top 5 New Zealand titles

List by Josie

'Though methods of warfare have changed, the military machine remains essentially the same; and the record of my own battle against that machine, on behalf of my fellow humans, is therefore relevant to this time also.'

~ Archibald Baxter, Preface to the 2003 edition of 'We will not cease'

Another in our series of posts celebrating New Zealand Book Month, here we present Josie's favourite NZ titles of all time. Josie works in the South Auckland Research Library as an Assistant Reference Librarian.

Top 5 Kiwi cookbooks

List by Rachel (wongrae)

'Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all.'
~ Harriet Van Horne

Rachel, a Customer Services Advisor at Botany Library, is also a frequent and fabulously entertaining reviewer on the Manukau Libraries website - have a looksee through her reviews of cookbooks, scurrilous romances, fashion tomes, rock chick bios and more...

Top 5 New Zealand non-fiction recommendations

List by ex-Manukau Research Library and Central Services staff

'For me each day starts with the same ritual - drawing the curtains and gazing out to sea, often for just a split second, or, if I'm lucky, for a minute or two. I find it's like checking on a friend...'
~ From 'Go fish', by Al Brown

Like the New Zealand fiction recommendations, the 5 books below are the favourite picks of local library staff, and really only just a drop in the bucket of great NZ titles... they aren't so much a 'Top 5' as a sampler platter of the 'Top 1' for each of the staff who responded. Non-fiction covers so much ground, so we've got biographies, gardeners, grandmas, an artist and a chef, as well as an award-winning sharing of traditional teachings and local history.

Top 5 NZ fiction recommendations

List by ex-Manukau Research Library and Central Services staff

'I have always known that in another life I was - or will be - a dolphin. I am a pink human, caught in a net of ambition and years of hard work. In a few minutes I will dive into artificially turquoise water waiting at my feet. A minute later I'll either be ecstatic or a failure.'
~ From 'Alex', Tessa Duder

In honour of New Zealand Book Month, I put out a call for votes for top reads by New Zealand authors, and here are the favourite fiction picks from my neighbouring librarians. I decided not to number them because I would have had to have asked the librarians in question to duke it out for rankings (though I have a sneaking suspicion that Jolene's passion for the Alex quartet may have taken out top spot, so's you know)...

Top 5 reads for my NZ Book Month challenge

List by Tosca

"No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting."
- Mary Wortley Montagu

I don't read a lot of NZ authors as an adult. As a child, yes. As a teen, absolutely. As an adult - very, very few. If I see an NZ sticker on the spine in the library I tend to wince and move on. The 3 most recent NZ books I read were Mr. Pip by Lloyd Jones, The 10pm question by Kate de Goldi and Ruined: a novel by Paula Morris and those were well over a year ago. It was while reading 'Ruined' that I realised I'd become an NZ-book bigot and, really, my reason for being so wasn't good enough: I don't identify with a lot of NZ books. Which sounds totally daft because, as some of you know, I edit our romance newsletter and there's no way in Hades I identify with a Greek gazillionaire tycoon nor an impossible virgin secretary. Maybe, then, it's that I identify too much with NZ characters. I don't read romance stories with Maori or African-Americans because the character voices - and the possibilities - would feel too much like I was looking into my sibling's backyard. That would strike too close to home. And I think I'd prefer to have it all one giant step removed.

A year or two ago I set an NZ book challenge and lost focus halfway through. This year I plan to step outside my comfort zone (or maybe step back into it, I'm not totally sure yet) and pick 5 books across kids, teens and adults (fiction and nonfiction) and read them all for this year's NZ Book Month. The hardest part of setting this challenge has been choosing the books. Remember, it's been years since I've really read anything NZ-ish that hadn't been picked by our branch book club so I had no clue where to start. In the end I looked up a mix of book award finalists and winners from the Montana Book Awards,NZ Post Children's Book Awards and the NZ Post Book Awards - and so I offer up a jumbled mishmash of all.

I'm already partway through my Top 5 NZ Book Month challenge and, so far so good! Touch wood it stays this way. This month could either be really interesting. Or really awful. I'm about to find out. There are no re-reads on this list - everything is a first-time read for me. Almost as if I were an impossible virgin secretary about to meet a Greek gazillionaire tycoon but yet not.

Top 5 good childhood reads by Kiwi authors

List by Danielle

"At the same time, I think books create a sort of network in the reader's mind, with one book reinforcing another. Some books form relationships. Other books stand in opposition. No two writers or readers have the same pattern of interaction."
~ Margaret Mahy

NZ Book Month, salutations!

Things were pretty great for a budding fantasy reader in the 70s and 80s. Treasured and much re-read titles on my bookshelf included Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising series, Tanith Lee's Companions on the Road and East of Midnight, Richard Adams' Watership Down, and a battered old ex-library copy of Diana Wynne Jones' The Power of Three. Alongside mostly British fare, Kiwi authors also provided some of my favourite childhood fantasy reads, as well as the less fantastical tales that gave me recognisable settings and characters I could relate to, as I lived through their adventures with them.

Top 5 most looked at posts for February 2011

We've had a wonderfully eclectic mix of posts for February 2011 and, for those of you who are new readers, this is little more than a roundup of the most popular posts viewed this month. Weirdly, though, 2 are from last year. How odd!

Top 5 NZ must-see DVDs

List by Danielle

Aurora: We can draw up a roster, and take turns to keep an eye on Grandpa.
Van: Yeah, we can get him a pet!
Aurora: A roster, Van, not a rooster.
~ Outrageous Fortune

Honorary mention (not in our collection): Stickmen (best ever drunken pool-playing heroics by Scott Wills' character, the wonderfully dopey but good-hearted Wayne); the Frighteners (my joint favourite Peter Jackson movie); Bad Taste (see previous). I'd also like to give a big hand to the guys who did such a good job of animating Hairy MacLary, which is currently No#1 choice for 6.30am viewing with my nearly 2 yr old.