Fifteen minutes of fame, annus horribilis, the cold war, we are not amused, elementary my dear Watson, let them eat cake … are all phrases used frequently. Who said that first?: the curious origins of common words and phrases by Max Cryer explores who said what, when  and why. The mastermind of some of the phrases can be quite surprising. Enjoy reading this – make your day!

Most thriller readers wonder if they have it in them to write their own bestselling novel. This book How to write a damn good thriller: a step by step guide for novelists and screenwriters by James N. Frey could be the first step. Written in a practical and entertaining manner he focuses on plot and character and uses the writing of successful thriller authors as examples.

Martha C. Sammons book The Longman guide to style and writing on the Internet is an accessible reference tool for anyone wanting to create successful Web documents. The book has been updated to add the latest Web terms, design and writing tools and will be of use to all Web writers.

Read these titles and others including Paul Holmes’ columns, poetry and how to write better essays in last month’s Recent Literature Picks.

The LIANZA Book Awards were announced yesterday, with an ecclectic collection of winners, showcasing the best of the New Zealand publishing world. For more information on the awards visit the NZ Book Council news page. The winners were:

The Russell Clark Award (contribution to illustrated children’s books): There Was a Crooked Man, Gavin Bishop. The English rhyme about the man with the crooked smile, illustrated by one of New Zealand’s best known children’s writer/illustrators. This is a board book, suitable for very young people.

The Elsie Locke Award (for children’s non-fiction): Dear Alison, edited by Simon Pollard. “A reproduction of the diary of Dudley Muff, a New Zealand prisoner of war in Germany written for his niece, Alison, who was four and living in Timaru.” (library catalogue)

The Esther Glen Award (for junior fiction): The Billionaire’s Curse, Richard Newsome. Gerald is left a 13 year old billionaire after his great aunt dies. When he becomes entangled in the theft of a rather large diamond he must uncover the mystery that surrounds his great aunt’s death (was she murdered?) and her connection to the diamond.

The LIANZA Young Adult Award (awarded for the first time): Banquo’s Son, Tania Roxborogh. Fleance, Banquo’s son, gets one short reference in Macbeth (told to “fly” by the mortally wounded Banquo). In this novel, Fleance is ten years down the line, haunted by ghosts: it’s time to avenge his father’s death.

Te Kura Pounamu: Hewa, Darryn Joseph. “Hewa” is fantasy in Māori, and Hewa is a fantasy story written in te Reo Māori “about a boy who wants to help protect his family and friends from a baddie. It’s set in an online game and involves American military software, a futuristic battleship called the USS Barack Obama, and artificial intelligences gaining sentience and self determination.” (from Massey University website)

Te Tohu Hoani Whatahoro (for te waihanga Pukapuka Pono (children’s non-fiction)): Ngā Rākau series by Huia Publishers.

Te Tohu Pounamu (for te wahanga Kaiwhakamaori): Hautipua Rererangi, edited by Julian Arahanga and illustrated by Andrew Burdan. A Te Reo graphic novel about John Porokoru Pohe, a World War II pilot who was a prisoner at Stalag Luft III (of The Great Escape fame). While he escaped, John Pohe was recaptured and subsequently killed.

Te Tohu Taurapa (for te wahanga Pukapuka Pikitia (picture books)): Hūhū Koroheke, Kyle Mewburn, illustrated by Rachel Driscoll and translated by Kāterina Te Heikōkō Mataira. Old Huhu in English (from the author of the loved Kiss, Kiss, Yuck, Yuck), this book picked up the Supreme Award at the New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards earlier this year.

Te Tohu Nga Kete e toru (for mo te waihanga Pukapuka Paki (fiction)): Hewa, Darryn Joseph.

Read Mondo Lucha a go-go: the bizarre and honourable world of wild Mexican wrestling by Dan Madigan and find out what super head-scissors takedown, Molly-go-round and corner slingshot splash are. Beginning in Latin America this form of wrestling is now worldwide and has a large fan-base. Many of the wrestlers cover their faces and fight incognito. Why? It would take a brave person to ask. Colourful posters, cards and mementoes are found through-out the book.

Figure skating is beautiful to watch and requires grace, power and an incredible amount of courage. Steve Milton’s book Figure skating’s greatest stars is a who’s who from the 1950’s through to today’s champions. Artistic and technical boundaries will continue to expand wowing judges and public alike.

New Zealand fishing guide: North Cape to Stewart Island edited by Bruce Duncan and Mark Airey covers all types of fishing including boat, surfcasting, freshwater, diving and game fishing. Find out the best spots for marlin, snapper, kingfish and many more chosen by New Zealand Fishing News writers and other experts.

Read these books and others including boxing, soccer training, tennis, basketball and more in this month’s Sport Recent Picks.

This week, in places we’d like to go, is the super annual Auckland Zinefest! It’s being held this Saturday, August 14th, at St Kevins Arcade, Newton, 11am-4pm in the Alleluya Cafe Space and Wine Cellar. They are having more workshops than we could possibly hope to list here, a competition for the best zine of the fest, zines to buy and zines to read in a special zine reading area. Check out the full schedule of events here.

A Turkish gallery wants your zines. The project is called ‘Even My Mum Can Make A Book’, and the idea is to collect an archive of independent publications from across the world to go on tour around venues in Turkey and elsewhere, beginning at the gallery Manzara Perspectives in Istanbul. Submission date is August 31.  For more information and to find out how to send in your zine, follow the link – Even My Mum Can Make  a Book

Wellington City Libraries has a monthly radio show on Radio Access. For an upcoming show (7 August, 4.00 – 4.30) we recently interviewed Edmund McWilliams (Ed Cake) writer of brilliantly skewed pop gems over the last 15 or so years.  (Grab a preview of this show below)

His most recent release, The Fearsome Feeling was the last CD to be featured in Nick Bollinger’s ‘100 essential New Zealand albums.’

Here’s how it’s described on Pie Warmer’s Myspace page,

‘The album features songs about love, not love songs as such, but songs that blend ideas about love with fear, insanity, talkback radio, violence against children, death of a loved one, indecision, abandonment, fame, Michael King/motorcars.’

Listen to the entire interview – covered are 2 songs from each of Ed’s 3 albums so far and Ed’s views on his songs, music and the potential of percussive tap dancers!

Below are the albums featured in the show:

Downtown Puff by Edmund Cake

Bressa Creeting Cake by Bressa Creeting Cake

The Fearsome Feeling by Pie Warmer

Library staff have been remembering films from previous festivals:

When we were kings (1997 festival)
I bought tickets to this one for all my family in a fit of righteous movie mania and my brothers and in-laws and mother and sister, thankfully, enjoyed it. Muhammed Ali has bucket loads of carisma. There’s a witch doctor sub-plot, a govenment dictatorship and blood on the steps of the stadium, groovy music from James Brown and hope, sweet, hope. It didn’t seem to matter that we were in the back row in the old Embassy’s uncomfortable seats – we still talk about this film.

Ringu, (2000)
I saw [this film] (later remade by Hollywood as The Ring) at the festival before Japanese and Asian horror became huge, and all the decent ones got remade. It was the first horror film I had seen in a long time that actually scared me. I could not look at a TV set after dark for a long while after seeing this film.

Hana-bi (Fireworks) by Takeshi Kitano (1998)
Basically a Japanese cop film with surprising swings in mood. Takeshi Kitano drew the wonderful colour-spotted pictures that provide the hope and upside to what is often a brutal, tragic film. One of those seminal festival films for me in that it seemed to extend my idea of what film could do and so many things about it linger still – the music, the cinematography, the understated acting, the suprises – probably Kitano’s best.

Kung Fu Hustle (2005)
This Kung Fu concoction knocked me out one late, late winter’s night. Stephen Chow’s unevenly brash mixture of broad slapstick humour, brilliant stunts, CGI effects and a seemingly endless string of super humanly endowed villains sent me back to a childhood of similar movies. Similar, but in no way as good – Kung Fu Hustle made me feel like a Kung Fu kid again…

Helvetica (2007)
I sat in the theatre surrounded by Massey students watching this captivating film about a typeface. And not just any typeface – Helvetica was shown to be symbolic of its era, ubiquitous in government signage, and even possibly the cause of the Vietnam War (ok, they were stretching). I’ve never looked at typefaces the same way since seeing this film – it’s well worth watching.

Drowning by Numbers (1987)
Quirky and strange, but very entertaining, I saw this film amongst three others on the same day, as you do during the Festival. It really stood out with its cleverness and baudy humour: 3 women all named Cissie Colpitts drown their husbands. I liked it far more than Greenaway’s other films – in fact I bought the script months later (and no, it wasn’t just to find out where each of the numbers had been shown).

My Mother’s Smile – The Religion Hour
My favourite must have been in 2003 (when I was younger and everything seemed newer).  They had a film that had been banned by the Vatican called “My Mother’s Smile” a.k.a “The Religion Hour”. It was about an athiest who opposes the canonisation of his mother, who was killed by his mentally-disturbed brother.

What films would you recommend from filmfests past? Feel free to add them in the comments below…

The Girl who played with Fire is the second movie to be adapted from the late Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy novels following the very popular The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Like that earlier film, this new release stars Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander, a woman on the run and Michael Nyquist as the journalist Mikael Blomkvist, who is desperate to find her. This movie promises to be as dark and action-packed as the previous movie.

To win a 2 for 1 voucher just answer this simple question:

What is the title of the third book in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy? Send your answer to Linda before 15^th August 2010 to be in the draw.

Agora (imdb page) recounts the events around and subsequent to the destruction of the library at Alexandria in 391AD, telling the story of Hypatia, a notable female mathematician, philosopher, astronomer and teacher. After Emperor Constantine declared Christianity legal, Alexandrian society was shaken to the core, with the political and religious machinations of Cyril, Pope of Alexandria, and Orestes, Prefect of the Diocese of Egypt, leading to a tragic climax.

Read the review of Agora in Sight and Sound here (you’ll need your library card number). Director Alejandro Amenábar was also responsible for The Others (2002), starring Nicole Kidman, and The Sea Inside (2005) with Javier Bardem.

The Library at Alexandria features in Library: an unquiet history, by Matthew Battles and also Libraries in the ancient world, by Lionel Casson

(Incidentally, the new library of Alexandria is an impressive building. Visit the website here, or have a look at the architecture here.)

If you would like to read more about Hypatia try these titles:
The book of dead philosophers, Simon Critchley
Doubt: a history: the great doubters and their legacy of innovation, from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson, Jennifer Michael Hecht

Search for books on the history of astronomy, and early Church history.

Hypatia is also the subject of the novel Hypatia: New Foes with an Old Face by Charles Kingsley, published in 1894. The library has a copy, or you can download it for free from Project Gutenberg here.

Certified Copy (imdb page) netted Juliette Binoche the Best Actress award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Not too much happens in this story of an antique shop owner (Binoche) who has the chance to show a writer and art historian (played by William Shimell, who is actually an opera singer), around a village (Lucignano) in the Arezzo Province in Tuscany for a day. At least that’s on the face of it: the film also talks about what it means to be an original and what it means to be a copy. Is being a copy less worthy?

The slow, conversational nature of the film suggested a Before Sunrise for another generation, swapping out Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke, and Vienna (even down to the pressing nature of train timetables, which wait for no existential discussion).

Some random facts and links:

Read about the background to Certified Copy in ‘Reality Check’ by Jonathan Romney in the October 2009 issue of Sight and Sound (you will need your library card number to access it).

This is director Abbas Kiarostami’s first non-Iranian film: if you’re interested in his previous work, the library has got several of his films, including The Wind Will Carry Us, for example.

Arezzo, the home of “She” (Binoche) and also incidentally of the poet Petrarch, also features in Roberto Begnini’s 1997 film Life is Beautiful.

The Cannes Film Festival website has a detailed archives section dating back to 1946 (which included, for example, Brief Encounter (which the library has), based on the play Still Life by Noel Coward).

If you would like to do a retrospective viewing of Juliette Binoche films, the library can offer you this selection.

Wishing you could be in Tuscany? The library has many titles to tempt you, from a collection of aerial photographs (Tuscany: Flying High), through guidebooks, to Frances Mayes’ latest effort, Every Day in Tuscany, the sequel to Under the Tuscan Sun (the book is nothing like the romantic comedy film of the same name starring Diane Lane, apart from the renovations). Have a look in the geography and travel sections at a branch near you.