Books Alive is on Again

Every year a national campaign called Books Alive is run to ignite Australia's passion for reading. A major part of the campaign is the Great Read Guide. You can pick up your copy from any of our branch libraries.

The Great Read Guide is a collection of 50 remarkable books, selected by an independent panel of book industry experts from right around Australia, across a range of genres and styles: biography, crime, fantasy, history, science, children’s books and more. There is something for everyone in the 2007 Books Alive Great Read Guide.

A couple of the books from this year's Guide have sparked my interest.

The Memory Keepers Daughter by Kim Edwards, a book that explores ramifications of a split second decision. A doctor, forced to deliver his wifes twins, realises that one of the babies has down syndrome. He orders the nurse to take the baby away to an institution and informs his wife that their daughter died.

A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka. Any book with a title like this surely deserves a chance!

The Beginner's Guide to Winning the Nobel Prize by Peter Doherty, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine and Australian of the Year in 1997. A book that gives an insight in to the world of science and how scientists have contributed to our understanding of the world, answering questions such as why scientists and born again Christians can't get along in the process!

It's going to be a busy time for book lovers with all these books and our upcoming talk by local author Markus Zusak (more on this soon!)

I'm sure you can find something in the Great Read Guide that tickles your fancy. Be sure to leave us a comment if you read one of these books and let us know what you thought.