The Eastern Regional Library Show

Library staff member Lesley Conway runs a radio show each Wednesday 12:05pm-12:45pm on Eastern FM 98.1 called The Eastern Regional Library Show. Tune in next Wednesday for a great show.

On yesterday's show

If you were wanting to read some short stories, where would you look? You might know already that in our Fiction collection we have spine labels which alert you to Short Stories, and if you were searching the catalogue and entered 'short stories' as a subject search, you would end up with a list of 337 titles. But...this is not all. In the Non-fiction collection is a Literature section which runs between 800 and 899. It includes collections of short stories at 823, and at 808 and 813 a whole range of interesting short reads including anthologies, collections of letters, newspaper articles and musings ( writing that doesn't fit any hard and fast category, such as Michael Leunig's Wild Figments).

Some of the great reads that I found on the shelf at Lilydale include the delightful
The Works of Jane Austen : Volume VI Minor Works in which the sharp wit and humour are evident in the 15 year old girl as in the more mature writer. Two very different collections of autobiographical stories are Gladys Ward's memories of growing up on a German mission in Western Australia Unna you fullas, and David Sedaris' hilarious and quirky memories of his family and friends in Dress your family in corduroy and denim.

A book to appeal to our crime enthusiast Lyn Baines is The reason why : an anthology of the murderous mind edited by Ruth Rendell, including poetry, excerpts from plays and novels, and letters, which throw light on the character and motivation of the murderer. As Rendell puts it "Murder itself is not interesting. It is the impetus to murder , the passions and terrors which (inspire) compulsive fascination." I also found Stories by Elizabeth Jolley, which is a compilation of all her short stories, and The collected essays, journalism and letters of George Orwell, which includes some very interesting articles he wrote during the Second World War.

In short, there is plenty on the shelves for helping pass the time on a train trip, or for those times when you know you can only indulge in a 15 minute read. Last but not least are compilations of winning stories from the Eastern Regional Libraries National Story Writing Competition. There is some good reading there, and also, for writers of short stories some useful information from the judges about how they select the winners.
---- Lesley

Cheers, Maryanne