Matched

17 year old Cassia lives in a perfect futuristic world where there is no sickness or disease, everyone dies at the age of 80, and everyone's future is mapped out for them by the Society.
Matched begins with Cassia travelling to her Match Banquet to find out who the Society has decided she is to marry when she turns 21. Cassia is relieved to find she has known her match all her life: her good friend Xander. However when she sees another boy's face flash up on her screen as well, she is confused - the Society does not make mistakes. Cassia knows the other boy too - Ky - and falls for him even though, for many reasons, she knows she shouldn't.
Cassia soon finds that life under the Society is not as perfect as it seems, and she must choose whether to follow the rules or her heart.
Matched is a compelling love triangle, but also a gripping thriller as Cassia begins to question everything she has always known. The first in a trilogy, this book will appeal to young adults, particularly girls, who enjoy futuristic love stories with a bit of depth and have had enough of vampires!
Check availability here.

Reviewed by Angela

Recent release audio books

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Band of Brothers

Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg produced this fantastic mini series based around the efforts of Easy Company of the 101st Airborne in the Second World War. It is mainly based on the best selling biography of the men by Stephen Ambrose. It takes them back to the formation of Easy Company and the rigorous training that they had to complete before being shipped off to England. Here, they received yet more training and learned that they were to be part of one of the largest 'drops' in WWII – D-Day.

It goes through the various places they fought in the war from France, the disastrous 'Market-Garden' in Holland and the freezing winter in the Ardennes in Belgium, right through to Germany and the end of the war. Easy Company received a 100% casualty rate during the war, but this didn't stop them from becoming known as the “Battered Bastards of Bastogne”. Instead, the events that they went through bonded them as a group and helped form a sense of camaraderie that only exists in certain circumstances, such as combat.

The series follows various characters and their reactions to the situations that they had to face. I would highly recommend this series. It kept me riveted from the start to the dramatic conclusion. The Library has Band of brothers in both DVD and Blue-ray.

(Reviewed by Jasmine)

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One very old book

The bible is the one book that has probably had more impact on our modern society than any other. You can not tell the history of New Zealand or any other western country without talking about the bible. It has been translated into almost every language. I have it in Maori at home while my mother has a copy in Bislama (How many of you can tell me where they speak Bislama?)

The most famous version of the bible however is possibly the King James Bible and this year is the four hundredth year of the King James Bibles long publication history. To celebrate the Invercargill Bible society are holding a Bible read-athon in the library between 1 & 4 pm this Sunday.

I personally think the bible is one of those books that everybody should have read. Even if your not religious it's a book that contains masses of stories, histories and philosophy. From love stories to blood and gore, the bible has it all.

If your interested the library also holds books on the history of the bible. One specific to the King James is David Norton's 'The King James Bible : a short history from Tyndale to today'

So if your in any way interested in this weekend's event come along to the library this Sunday or contact Diane (216 3622) for more information or to volunteer.

New Non-Fiction

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ERIC - Education Resources Information Centre

OK, so here is the database for finding all those bibliographic references (over 1.3 million in fact) for education literature, as well as a growing collection of full text articles. This database covers:

• journal articles

• books

• research syntheses

• conference papers

• technical reports

• policy papers

• other education-related materials

From the “Search Eric” tab your options are: Basic, Advanced or Search the thesaurus. On the right of the search screen is a “Search Tips” box that provides useful help. The Basic search allows you to enter a search term or terms and choose keyword, tile, author, descriptor (subject from the thesaurus) or ERIC number, from a dropdown menu.

The Advanced search option provides more control over the search strategy, for example:

• Full text

• ED/EJ (ERIC document or ERIC journal)

• Peer reviewed

• Publication date (pre 1966 – 2011)

• Publication type

• Education level

One particularly good feature of this database is the “thesaurus” – very useful and you can search it alphabetically or by category. Using the category option you can drill down through subject topic menus to get the broad, narrow, related, and used for terms as well as a scope note. If you choose the alphabetical option you also drill down through the topics. With that description you are sure to find the exact aspect of a subject you are looking for. One thing to note is that the “Thesaurus” does use American spellings such as “catalog”. More records are added monthly to ERIC. PDF of full-text articles can be downloaded. When you have found something of interest you can place it on your “Clipboard”. From the clipboard you can print, email, export citations or save to “My ERIC” for future use. You can search for specific journal titles under “Our Collection” and then “Journal List”.

As a test for New Zealand content, a search for “New Zealand flax” brought up one hit, “Maori chief” found four. ERIC indexes the New Zealand Journal of Adult Learning and New Zealand Journal of Geography. So why not try this database all you students, teachers, tutors and researchers out there.

Vanessa