Book buying excitement!

A few months ago our PTSA, on behalf of the library, was the recipient of a grant from the Masonic Charitable Trust.  This fund was to enable us to buy some popular non-fiction to increase our stock of the sort of thing that might hook non-readers into enjoying books.  Drawing non-readers into the library is a focus here and we really hope that this initiative will have a great knock on effect.  There are many students here who love to read and our fiction issues are really high, but non-fiction readers don't use the library as much as the fiction readers and we hope that these new books might draw in some new library users who discover through them that books are great.

In the photo are Aiden, Nathaniel and Micah, all regular contributors to this blog and active BookGang members, who came shopping with me to help choose the books.  We encouraged people to write in our suggestions book the kind of things they wanted us to get hold of and we tried really hard to respond to their requests.  This is the buying team after our trip to the University Book Shop, these guys just can't wait to get their hands on the new books as soon as the PSTA and the men from the Masonic Trust have checked them out.

Caught Reading!

Mr Frost is a reading legend!  He devours books with alarming speed.  He is often to be found skulking  or lurking around in the library office searching for his perfect weekend reading, which he prefers to leave with unissued, he likes his books hot out of the box or bag before others have sullied them.  He considers he is doing the students an enormous favour by getting in first and making sure that the books are "up to standard" as he likes to put it, in other words he liked it or didn't as the case may be.

Bad Influence by William Sutcliffe

Review by Thomas Keane (Year 10) as part of the 50 Book Challenge 

There are two friends called Ben and Ollie, they are the best of friends and do everything together, a new kid called Carl arrives on the scene and they begin to hang out with him.  Turns out, he is a crazed freak, he dares them to do all kinds of terrible things but they hang out with him anyway,  He leads them into dangerous places and they start to steal things and smoke under his influence.  He is dangerous but they want to spend time with him.  Ollie is drawn into Carls horrible games and Ben eventually gets dumped, but there is much more to the story than this.  It was really creative as a story but I found it a bit slow in places.  I recommend it but it has gross nasty bits.  If you liked Violence 101 you will like this book too.

Soldiers without borders by Ian McPhedran

Reviewed by Aidan Hall (Year 13)

Soldiers Without Borders (Beyond the SAS) is about the lives of various Australians (and a couple Kiwis’) that have dedicated their lives to the SAS.  Each guy has his own chapter in the book, and each tells their story of their life with the SAS.  Some tell about the vicious C.T. training in the 1980’s, and how the government refuses to acknowledge their services, some recall really bad accidents, some just say about how it made them a better person.

Probably the best part of this book is how each guy tells it as it is, without glorifying everything to make it sound like every thing that happened was superficial. As a result this book is a really full of inspirational stories about how the SAS improved their lives, while remembering to include  he dangers of the Regiment. 

Skulduggery Pleasant - the faceless ones by Derek Landy

Reviewed by Thomas Keane, Year 10 (as part of the 50 Book Challenge)

It is the third book in the Skulduggery Series and they just keep getting better in my opinion! 

This one is about a group of people called the Daimblerie who want the gods called the Faceless Ones to return.  They are evil and it is up to Skulduggery and Valkyrie along with a few others to save the world ...  You can't say too much about this book without it sounding really confusing (for those that haven't read them) or really weird or without ruining the story.  They get 5 stars out of 5 from me.  Read them.

If you are a big fan of Skulduggery Pleasant and co you can follow them on Facebook, click the link here!  Alternatively you can listen to an interview with Skulduggery here.