Recommended Reading
Latest additions in our libraries, Prize and award announcements, how to choose, what to read ...
How to Choose what to read ...
Which Book?
allows you to set guidelines telling it the kind of features you enjoy in novels you like to read - you can even put in plot, character and setting details and they will come back with suggestions.
Choose Novelist one of the library's online databases and use your Leichhardt library card to check out what authors may be 'Read-alikes' to the ones you've read. It is a fiction database that provides subject heading access, reviews, annotations, and much more for over 135,000 fiction titles. It also includes other content of interest to fiction readers, such as Author Read-alikes, What We're Reading, Book Discussion Guides, BookTalks, and Annotated Book Lists. For school media specialists and teachers there are Picture Book Extenders and articles on Teaching with Fiction.
AllReaders works in a similar way, and will allow detailed searching to find books that match your preferred type of reading.
Austlit
indexes and describes Australian literature published in a range of print and electronic information sources. It also makes available selected critical articles and creative writing in full text.
Bibliomania
Free online literature with over 2000 classic texts.
American Authors Webcasts
Googlebooks
Google
digitizes many books from library collections.
Award Winning Books
The Australian Vogel
in 2008 was awarded to 'Document Z', by Andrew Croome. It is described as a '... tightly told story of secrets, lies, deception and betrayal – both personal and political.'
The Interational IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
was awarded in 2008 to De Niro's Game by Rawi Hage. The story is of two young men, Bassam and George, growing up in Beirut during the Lebanon war of the 1980s.
The Man Booker Prize
In 2009 the Fiction prize was awarded to Alice Monroe
The Miles Franklin Award
was presented in 2008 to 'The Time We Have Taken' by Steven Carroll.
It is the third novel in a series that began with The Art of the Engine Driver and continued in The Gift of Speed. The Time We Have Taken is both a meditation on the rhythms of suburban life and a luminous exploration of public and private reckoning during a time of radical change.
The New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards
consists of a eleven awards.
The Nobel Prize for Literature
was awarded in 2008 to
Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio. A French author known for his richly poetic language and his ability to write across cultural divides.
The Pulitzer Prize
for Fiction in 2009 was awarded to "Olive Kitteridge" by Elizabeth Strout.
Below are lists of authors in genres you may wish to add to your reading list.
How to choose what to read ...
Crime and Mystery
Family Sagas
Gothic and Horror
Romance
Fantasy
Science Fiction
Book Reviews
BooksUnlimited from the Guardian is worth browsing from time to time, particularly for UK writing news. New York Review of Books, and London Review of Books are good sources of reviews for recently releases books on a range of subjects. You can look at Readers Read or Oprah's Book club for ideas on what to read next as well as information about your favourite authors.
If the books are not available at Leichhardt library you may like to ask about inter library loans (which is when your local library borrows a books from another library so that you can read it). You can search their catalogues when you visit the libraries. You can look at the catalogue for the State Library of New South Wales. You can even look at library catalogues for overseas, but it may be expensive to borrow books from these libraries. You can look at the Library of Congress as well as library catalogues from all over the world.