From good reads to good deeds

Oamaru Rotary Club’s annual Bookarama opened yesterday with 10s of thousands of books for sale.

A small but dedicated team of book lovers, not all of whom are Rotarians, have spend the past three weeks collecting, sorting, pricing and displaying the books.

We’ll be there every day until Sunday next week when everything gets packed up and moved out.

All the proceeds will be donated to local community projects.

It’s a huge effort for a small team but well worth it to turn good reads into good deeds.

Reads to recommend

PDM left a comment yesterday, saying he reads two or three books a week, all year round.

I used to do that until I started blogging.

I have dozens of books on my to-read piles and I am planning to blog less and read more next year.

At this time of year I enjoy reading new, or at least new to me, books and also re-read old favourites.

Among the latter are Grievous Bodily by Craig Harrison, For Better, For Worse and For Lunch by Christina Hindhaugh and Cattleman by R.S. Porteous.

If you’ve got any good reads to recommend, please do.

On The Record – Steven Joyce & Mike Hosking

Steven Joyce has written a memoir, On The record.

A candid and comprehensive account from one of National’s main powerbrokers during the John Key years.

‘Few ministers have such influence and make the impact and contribution Steven Joyce did. We knew him as Mr Fixit; the press gallery called him The Minister for Everything; but the public saw it more simply. He was the guy who got the stuff they wanted done and he did it in spades and with style.’ – Sir John Key

‘Steven Joyce was at the heart of the sustained policy and political success of the John Key government. He has a unique combination of discipline, positivity and political acumen. He got stuff done.’ – Sir Bill English

Before Steven Joyce entered politics, he had a hugely successful 17-year career building and running the radio network RadioWorks. He learnt to cut deals, compete ferociously, and carefully manage the on-air talent. They were all skills he would put to great use when he joined the National Party.

After entering Parliament in 2008 when John Key took back power from Labour, Joyce was appointed directly into Cabinet, and was a senior minister for almost all of his 10 years in Parliament. Alongside his portfolios – including transport, infrastructure, tertiary education and economic development – Joyce occupied a pivotal role as National’s campaign strategist, including leading the party’s winning campaigns in 2008, 2011 and 2014.

Such was Joyce’s effectiveness, he gained the nickname of ‘Minister for Everything’. Alongside Key and Bill English, Joyce was one of the main powerbrokers of the Key government, as both strategist and upholder of party discipline. Here, Joyce details the hard slog, discipline and negotiating skills necessary to thrive in the often-brutal world of politics.

On the Record reveals what it takes to win and keep office, and the secrets behind the strategy and campaigning that led to National being in power for almost a decade. This is an essential read for anyone interested in the business of governing: packed full of insider knowledge, honest appraisals of the main players, entertaining anecdotes and the reality of how politics works.

Mike Hosking interviewed Steven on the book, and his life:

 

Cattleman

Cattleman by R.S. Porteous tells the story of Ben McCready who is in hospital nearing the end of a long and full life.

As people come to visit him, his memory takes him back to the past from drover’s lad to one Queensland’s biggest landowners.

His is a story of adventure, and misadventure, trials and triumphs, sadness and success.

It traverses farming and family struggles, both World Wars, and does it well.

While set in the Australian outback, it’s a story that will resonate with anyone who loves the land and the people who work on it.

Cattleman was out of print for years but still comes up at secondhand book sales. It has recently been reprinted and is available at Outback Books.

The publisher told me of an outback butcher who told him he had owned only two books – the Bible and Cattleman, and named his sons after Ben’s!

P.S. If you can’t put Ben’s treatment of women and Aborigines in their historical perspective you might not enjoy this book.

If you’re unsure, it might help to remember this: * how to read authors of earlier times who expressed views or created characters that we find repugnant today

It’s as if we imagine an old book to be a time machine that brings the writer to us. We buy a book and take it home, and the writer appears before us, asking to be admitted into our company. If we find that the writer’s views are ethnocentric or sexist or racist, we reject the application, and we bar his or her entry into the present.

As the student had put it, “I don’t want anyone like that in my house”.

I think we’d all be better readers if we realized that it isn’t the writer who’s the time traveler. It’s the reader. When we pick up an old novel, we’re not bringing the novelist into our world and deciding whether he or she is enlightened enough to belong here; we’re journeying into the novelist’s world and taking a look around.

*Hat Tip: Not PC

 

 

Still giving

A small group of Rotarians started sorting books we’d collected since last year’s Bookarama on April 12th.

We set up the venue for this year’s sale on the 14th and with the help of the rowing club moved everything in on the 15th.

Two days later Rotaraians and book-loving volunteers started sorting, categorising, pricing where applicable, and displaying books, magazines, puzzles, games, CDs and DVDs, as they were donated.

We did that every day from Monday to Saturday, except Anzac Day, until we opened on May the 5th.

A queue of people almost the length of the block, including dealers with huge bags, was waiting for the doors to open at 10am and we were busy until the doors closed at 8pm.

Mindful of the pressure on most people’s budgets we were more conservative in pricing this year and most books cost only $2. In spite of that we took around $22,000 in cash and EFTPOS the first day.

Working at Bookarama gives a fascinating insight into human nature. There’s those who pull off the stickers showing prices we’d put on newer or more valuable books; others who take CDs and DVDs, leaving empty cases behind and some who complain that prices are too high, even on the last couple of days when everything was half-price.

But they are the minority and a wonderful contrast to them are the people who donate what we sell – sometimes books or puzzles they’ve bought from us at previous Bookaramas or even only a few days earlier; the ones who tell us how grateful they are to be able to buy so much for their children or themselves for so little; and the ones who tell us to keep the change or add quite a bit to the EFTPOS payment.

And of course there are the Rotarians and other volunteers who were there day after day and without whom Bookarama couldn’t happen.

Experience from past years indicates that the final total is about twice the first day’s and we did better than that. We finished nine days later having raised more than $50,000 which will be donated to local causes.

While Rotarians were selling books, Lions were also busy with their winter feed competition and by the end of their celebration dinner last Friday they’d raised more than $60,000.

That’s more than $100,000 raised in the same week by two service clubs from people in what is not a wealthy area, evidence that in spite of tougher times we’ve still got people who are still giving.

Was it all a marketing exercise?

News that Roald Dahl’s books were being butchered by sensitivity readers resulted in widespread condemnation.

The butchering didn’t just apply to new publications, they automatically applied to people who had bought eBooks.

 

In an unsettlingly dystopian move, readers who bought electronic versions of Roald Dahl's works prior to Puffin Books making hundreds of 'progressive' revisions to the classic tales have had their eBooks updated automatically, and without their consent. https://t.co/owB2AGie3y

— The Free Speech Union (@SpeechUnion) February 25, 2023

But now the publisher has backtracked, at least on the paper copies.

Puffin will now publish original versions of Roald Dahl's books alongside new, 'progressive' editions. That's a welcome U-turn — taken together, the changes made by the publisher constitute an infringement of an author's right to #freedomofexpression.

🔗https://t.co/cN6tsMG8HT pic.twitter.com/bl9QkdNoPh

— The Free Speech Union (@SpeechUnion) February 25, 2023

The news of the butchering resulted in increased sales of the original versions which begs the question: was this just a marketing exercise?

Another question to which we won’t know the answer for some time: now that both editions are to be sold, will the original or butchered versions sell better?

 

 

Sanitised and boring

Oh dear, sensitivity readers have sanitised Road Dahl’s children’s books, destroying the richness of the language and imagery.

Thank goodness I kept my originals from the 80s. I loved them as a child and these were the versions I read to my own children.

— SnoozeOfSuburbia (@womanofsuburbia) February 19, 2023

 

The reader is a visitor to the author’s time and world. That doesn’t mean you have to accept or approve of behaviour, language, standards and ways that have now changed for the better.

But nor does it mean that books have to be sanitised to reflect today’s behaviour, language,, standards and ways.

And it definitely shouldn’t require making books boring and destroying the author’s art.

Children enjoy naughtiness and larger than life character. They should be used as teaching points, not censored and sanitised.

Apropos of which is this video.

If you’re offended by bad language, don’t watch.

On reading

…if you love books then I always think you have a layer of protection against the world…If you read then I think you don’t always have to take your own word for it. There are more heads to be in, more lives to be lived than simply your own..  And I still believe reading is the best form of direct brain-to-brain communication humans have yet figured out- Jenny Colgan

I suffer from an illness, an illness which has no cure, no limit and no end. It’s compulsive, expensive, consuming and addictive, it fills my house and my life and my time — I refer of course to reading. – Lydia Wevers 

When I am reading something that fully engages me, makes me think and feel and hear and see, where the sound of the sentence and its beautiful placement on the page and the complex rivers of what it is saying come to one place in my brain, I experience a feeling of completion, as if the book has expressed me, as if reading has achieved, for a potent instant, what I am meant to be. – Lydia Wevers 

It took a team

Work for the Rotary Club of Oamaru’s annual Bookarama is a year-long process with people picking up books from donors at any time.

This year it included a house lot which took two SUV loads to shift. It was well worth the effort, I have never seen so many books of such good quality and variety from a single source in the more than 10 years I’ve been helping with the event.

Sorting began in April and the Old Boys’ Rugby Club moved books, tables, empty banana boxes and other paraphernalia into the venue – what used to be Noel Leeming’s on the town’s main street on April 30th.

Two days later a team of volunteers began the work of setting up and sorting donated books.

People were dropping books off every day and we had so many really good books we set up a table outside giving away the not so good ones.

We use the bed sheet rule when deciding what to keep and what to discard – if you wouldn’t feel comfortable with a book touching your sheets if you’re reading in bed it goes out.

Charity shops find they’re used as a dump and some boxes and bags always go straight to the skip. Often these would have been very salable had they not been stored in garages or sheds where they got dirty and damp.

There’s other books that are still clean and in good order but don’t sell including Readers’ Digest condensed books which we couldn’t even give away.

But there were plenty that would sell and some gems included this which had an inscription showing it was awarded as a Hampden School prize in 1882.

Also of historical interest was a Plunket mothercraft book from the 1950s.

It has  a recipe for a supplement for breast milk which included cod liver oil and this photo:

It took three weeks of sorting,  categorising and displaying to get ready for the sale.

People were queueing outside more than an hour before we opened the doors on the first morning.

By the end of the day we’d taken about $26,000, more than half the total for the whole sale last year and a remarkable sum given most books were selling for only $2.

We had planned to be open form Monday to Sunday but still had so many good books left we extended the sale to Friday.

It’s very much a case of from the community, by the community, for the community with people donating books, people buying books and all the people volunteering their time to sort and sell.

It took a team to do it but with $60,000ish taken and costs of about $5,000 we’ll have a good sum to donate to good causes.

The Happiest Man On Earth – Eddie Jaku

Eddie Jaku was a proud German but he and his family were also Jewish and when Hitler came to power their lives changed for the worse, and for ever.

HIs autobiography tells of a happy childhood, harrowing young adulthood, several years of which were spent in concentration camps, and life afterwards where he moved to the other side of the world and his work was rewarded with the Order of Australia.

It is testament to the worst and best of humanity, the power of friendship and love, and how good can triumph over evil.

It also shows the truth of the words of another holocaust survivor, VIktor Frankl: Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

The Happiest Man On Earth by Eddie Jaku.

Published by Pan Macmillan

A book loving book seller

Ruth Shaw, author of The Bookseller at the End of the World writes:

My first bookshop in Manapōuri was 45 South and Below. A middle-aged lady came into the shop one day and without any greeting she started to collect together books with green spines. Her pile grew as she stripped my shelves.

“This is an interesting collection of books,” I said eventually. “Are you aware that some of them are rare . . . and quite . . .expensive?”

“Oh, I’m not worried about the cost,” she replied. “Only the colour. I have a new home and want to colour-coordinate the library.”

She smiled when she said this.

I had never heard of a colour-coordinated library. I stood looking at her in total disbelief. After about 20 seconds of stunned silence I managed to blurt out, “Well, my books have to be read! I will not sell any of my books just to be put in a fake library and forgotten. You can’t buy any of these books!”

“I’m willing to pay for them!” she replied, taken aback.

“Well, I’m not going to sell them,” I said sharply, and started to put the books back on the shelves.

She gathered up her things and stormed out of the shop. . . 

That might not please her accountant, but this establishes Ruth as a book lover.

I don’t give people an overall price for a box of books; I price each book individually, which can take many hours. If I am invited to go into a home to price a library and identify rare or special books, I explain that even if they don’t want to keep the books for themselves, maybe a grandchild will treasure them later in life. Every book has a story, and many carry precious memories.

When I hold one of my mother’s books I remember her; I touch the same page she touched, I read the same words she read. Books collected over many years become part of the family. They have been loved, read and re-read, and have often travelled around the world. They live in silence for years in a family home bearing witness to many special occasions, bringing the reader joy and sometimes tears.

I therefore handle every book with care. . . 

Jack Tame interviewed Ruth on Saturday, you can listen to that here.

Kim HIll interviewed her a couple of years ago, you can listen to that here.

Can you sell books if you’re not a booklover?

I suppose it’s possible, but as a book lover who’s been hooked in to buying more books by a book loving bookseller I’m sure that loving books makes you better at selling them, and Ruth Shaw sounds like a woman who proves my hypothesis.

After reading this column and listening to the interview I put visiting her shops on my bucket list, bought a copy of the book and read it in a single sitting.

Her life has been difficult, some of her stories are harrowing, some are sad. But those are interspersed with tales of adventure and anecdotes from her book shops which entertain and delight.

HIghly recommended.

Eric Carle 25.6.29 – 23.5.21

Eric Carle, the man who created The Very Hungry Caterpillar and many other children’s books has died.

His website gives his biography.

 

Books before blogging

A small team of volunteers has spent the last three weeks sorting books for the Rotary Club of Oamaru’s Bookarama.

It’s a big job – we advertised we’d be open for drop offs from 10 to 12 from Monday to Saturday and most days it’s been nearer 5pm that we’ve closed.

We have thousands of books, jig saw puzzles, CDs, DVDs, videos, games, magazines and a few other items we’re not sure how to categorise.

All have been donated and many of the donors have told us they’ll be back to buy replacements.

It’s a lot of work but worth it as it’s also a wonderful fundraiser and all the profit goes to community initiatives.

We open at 10am today and if the past is any guide, buyers will be queuing to get in for more than an hour before that.

For the next five days – and possibly longer as we clean-up – blogging will be light as Bookarama will take priority.

Not Forgetting The Whale

Joe Haak washes up, naked, on a beach in Cornwall.

He’s an analyst for a city bank and fled the city in fear that he’d caused a global financial meltdown.

Then there’s a ‘flu pandemic. . .

I enjoyed this book the first time I read it. I enjoyed  rereading it even more at the weekend.

This is a story about connections – human and financial.

It’s funny and sad and hopeful.

The writing is lyrical and the story is a heartwarming, and timely, modern fable.

Not Forgetting The Whale  by John Ironmonger, published by Weidenfield & Nicolson, 2015.

Living in the temple of knowledge

Ronald Clark’s father was custodian of a branch of the New York Public Library at a time when caretakers, along with their families, lived in the buildings. With his daughter, Jamilah, Ronald remembers literally growing up in a library, creeping down to the stacks in the middle of the night when curiosity gripped him. A story for anyone who’s ever dreamt of having unrestricted access to books.

Why read?

A holiday thought from Alain de Botton:

Dear Reader,

We wouldn’t need books quite so much if everyone around us understood us well. But they don’t. Even those who love us get us wrong. They tell us who we are but miss things out. They claim to know what we need, but forget to ask us properly first. They can’t understand what we feel — and sometimes, we’re unable to tell them, because we don’t really understand it ourselves. That’s where books come in. They explain us to ourselves and to others, and make us feel less strange, less isolated and less alone. We might have lots of good friends, but even with the best friends in the world, there are things that no one quite gets. That’s the moment to turn to books. They are friends waiting for us any time we want them, and they will always speak honestly to us about what really matters. They are the perfect cure for loneliness. They can be our very closest friends.

Yours,

Alain

Oamaru Rotary Club is preparing for its annual Bookarama.

I’ve been going through my book shelves, weeding out books that could go to another home.

As always happen I come across some I haven’t read for ages, but still can’t give away.

Now I’ve read de  Botton’s letter, I realise why. They’re old friends and even if we haven’t seen each other for years, they’re still friends.

Reading facts

Fact 1

Reading can make you a better conversationalist.

Fact 2

Neighbours will never complain you are reading too loud.

Fact 3

Knowledge by osmosis had not yet been perfected so you’d better read.

Fact 4

Books have stopped bullets. Reading could save your life.

Fact 5

Dinosaurs did not read. Look what happened to them.

365 days of gratitude

Why do I bother saying I won’t buy any more books until I’ve got to the bottom of the ever-growing yet-to-read pile?

No matter how much I think I mean it when I say it, the strength of my resolution is never as strong as the lure of another book.

In spite of breaking the resolution I only rarely regret a book purchase even if quite a long time elapses between buying it and reading it.

And I always enjoy the ability to scan the pile and find a book that suits the mood of the moment.

Today I’m grateful for options available in my yet-to-read pile.

 

 

Giggly granny’s Wonkey Donkey

The Wonky Donkey, which has been delighting Kiwi kids and those who read to them for several years, has become a global hit thanks to a YouTube video of a giggling granny reading it to her grandson:

Scottish granny Janice Clark was caught on film reading The Wonky Donkey to her four-month-old grandson Archer and she couldn’t contain her laughter.

Since the video went viral days ago, book lovers all around the globe have been searching for the book, by New Zealander Craig Smith.

The Wonky Donkey is based on Smith’s song of the same name and tells the tale of a three-legged donkey. . .

 

A Kaleidoscope of Butterflies

A beauty, a brainwave, a brilliance?

I couldn’t find a collective noun for books, but any and all of those three would be an appropriate one for A Kaleidoscope of Butterflies by Kate Hursthouse.

The seed for the book was planted during a conversation about zebras in which she was told the collective noun for the animals is a dazzle.

The seed grew and blossomed into a book of collective nouns for animals, beautifully and creatively illustrated with pictures which reflect the words.

Each time I open the book I see something more.

It is described as a children’s book but will interest and delight adults too.

You can buy the book from the artist’s website.

There’s more about the artist and the book at: Renaissance artist – the Aucklander helping keep alive age-old art of calligraphy.