Sutherland Shire Libraries News

Our next Digital Photography & the Internet course starts on May 10. Contact Sutherland Library to reserve your place.

Here is what some of the participants at our last Digital Photography course had to say:
"I found this course extremely interesting and would appreciate any follow up courses."
"Very helpful and informative."
"Trainers explalined complicated terms & ideas in a way that was easy for someone with little or no experiance to understand."
I will have more fun fun with my photos now!"
This course is aimed at introducing newcomers to digital cameras to the benefits that digital photography provides. The course includes:

• An overview of digital cameras and digital photography
• Tips for taking better pictures - composition, focus and exposure
• Moving photos from camera to computer
• Basic editing - crop, resize, etc.
• Emailing digital photos
• Internet resources

The Digital Photography & the Internet course will run over 2 two-hour sessions, 10th and 17th May, and costs $77. There is a discount for seniors and concession card holders.

For more information or to make a booking please telephone Sutherland Library on 9710 0351.

Regular readers of this blog will remember that we promised to introduce a wireless hotspot at Sutherland Library this year. Well, the time has come!

The hotspot trial is now up and running. Bring your wi-fi enabled laptop into Sutherland Library and you will be able to access the Internet while you're here.

There is no charge for the service. You will, however, need to ask at one of our enquiry desks for an access code. A word of warning! Other than providing the login details, staff can not offer any technical support regarding the set up of your computer or the establishment of a connection to the network.

The hotspot is located on the ground floor toward the back of the Library. You may also be able to get a signal from the Reference Library upstairs.

If you use this service please let us know what you think. Leave a comment below or send us a message via our website.

An Evening Book Group meets on the 4th Thursday of each month at 7.00 pm in the meeting room at Sutherland Library. It's a group for book lovers to meet and have a friendly discussion about books by both new authors and much loved classics.

The next meeting in on May 24 and the book to be discussed is The Tortilla Curtain by T. Coraghessan Boyle. Following that we will be discussing Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird at our June 28 meeting.

For any inquiries please contact Sutherland Library on 9710 0346 or email kjohnson@ssc.nsw.gov.au.

The shortlist for the Miles Franklin Award 2007 was announced on 19 April. The Prize is awarded for the novel of the year which is of “the highest literary merit and which must present Australian life in any of its phases”. The four books in the shortlist are:

Theft: A Love Story by Peter Carey
Michael—a.k.a. “Butcher”—Boone is an ex–“really famous” painter: opinionated, furious, brilliant, and now reduced to living in the remote country house of his biggest collector and acting as caretaker for his younger brother, Hugh, a damaged man of imposing physicality and childlike emotional volatility. Alone together they’ve forged a delicate and shifting equilibrium, a balance instantly destroyed when a mysterious young woman named Marlene walks out of a rainstorm and into their lives on three-inch Manolo Blahnik heels. Beautiful, smart, and ambitious, she’s also the daughter-in-law of the late great painter Jacques Liebovitz, one of Butcher’s earliest influences. She’s sweet to Hugh and falls in love with Butcher, and they reciprocate in kind. And she sets in motion a chain of events that could be the making—or the ruin—of them all.
“A book that is at once cruelly levelling, darkly witty and unsettlingly personal . . . Hilarious and disquieting, a madcap ride.” —THE AGE. More Reviews...

Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones
Alice is entranced by the aesthetics of technology and, in every aeroplane flight, every Xerox machine, every neon sign, sees the poetry of modernity. Mr Sakamoto, a survivor of the atomic bomb, is an expert on Alexander Graham Bell. Like Alice, he is culturally and geographically displaced. The pair forge an unlikely friendship as Mr Sakamoto regales Alice with stories of twentieth-century invention. His own knowledge begins to inform her writing, and these two solitary beings become a mutual support for each other a long way from home.
"If a good novelist makes us look at everyday subjects in new ways, then Jones is an excellent one, and Dreams takes flight, skipping from descriptions of sound waves to Cellophane with bravura flair." - TIME magazine. More Reviews...

Careless by Deborah Robertson
Eight-year-old Pearl tries very hard to get things right. She watches over her small brother and manages her mother's happiness, while carefully guarding her private passions. But the events of a summer's day are about to change Pearl's life, and nothing may ever be right again. In a cooler, greener suburb, Sonia is learning to live alone after the death of her husband, and at the edge of the city, close to the beaches, the young artist Adam Logan is hoping that his recent celebrity will open the doors to a new life. In ways connected but unforeseen, Pearl's tragedy will soon affect the worlds of these two strangers. Combining the intimacy of a family's heartache, with the suspense of a thriller, Careless is a gripping, seductive novel about the ties of caring and responsibility, that are formed, and broken, in our society. It is a novel about our times.
"What a heart swell of a book, so much wisdom and compassion and loveliness and sadness in it, along with writing that makes you suck in your breath at its beauty and precision. As a writer, you just go 'wow'. It's a winner - a beautiful, passionate book that swells your heart." - NIKKI GEMMELL, author of The Bride Stripped Bare.

Carpentaria by Alexis Wright
When Elias Smith, a shipwrecked mariner, walks out of the sea and into the Port of Desperance, a small coastal town in the Gulf of Carpenteria, the whole town turns out to watch his arrival. Carpenteria tells the story of what becomes of his life and his eventual return to the sea against the backdrop of two warring Aboriginal groups who have been feuding over a land dispute for more than 400 years. A great, funny, sprawling and ambitious novel of black and white culture, Carpenteria is narrated by the oracles - the old, traditionally minded people who keep all stories and beliefs from the past to the present.

Visit the Miles Franklin award web site to read more about these novels and what the judges had to say about them. Then celebrate Australian culture by reading them! Click on the links above to reserve a title.

In conjunction with Heart Week 2007 - April 29 to May 5 - Sutherland Library is offering free blood pressure testing on Thursday 3 May, between 10am and 4pm.

If you can make it between 12 noon and 1pm there will also be a clinical nurse available to answer any questions you may have.

Each year, coronary heart disease - mainly heart attack - is the underlying cause of the death for almost 25,000 Australian men and women. During Heart Week 2007, the Heart Foundation is urging all Australians to become aware of the warning signs of a life threatening heart attack and of the importance of calling 000 immediately to save lives and prevent serious damage to the heart.

The warning signs of heart attack vary but the symptoms usually last for at least 10 minutes and you may experience more than one of the symptoms such as pain in the chest, spreading pain, discomfort in the upper body. There may also be difficulty breathing, nausea or vomiting, a cold sweat or a feeling of being dizzy or light-headed.

In all situations, when the warning signs of heart attack are experienced, the Heart Foundation
advises calling 000 for an ambulance. The operator will give advice on what to do before the
ambulance arrives. If calling 000 does not work on your mobile phone, try 112.