Thursday, 19 June 2008

Library Membership Campaign a Huge Success


'Join a Library Day' could become an annual event after the success of the National Year of Reading initiative this April.

National library membership saw a 24 per cent increase on figures from last April, prompting the idea of an annual drive on attracting new members.

Honor Wilson-Fletcher, NYR project director, said, "We set a target for the eight months of 350,000 new library members and we hit that target in less than two months."


Wilson-Fletcher attributes the success to "a mix of local activity and national campaigning" and says it doesn't stop there; "we will be doing more work to support libraries in reaching our target audiences both with the Summer Reading Challenge and with adult learning enrolment in the autumn."

Tuesday, 17 June 2008

Harper Lee All Time Favourite


To Kill A Mockingbird has taken the top spot in a new survery of 2000 people to find the greatest book of all time.

The poll, conducted by online retailer Play.com, saw the classic novel beat off competition from recent favourites The Da Vinci Code and the Harry Potter series.

The top 10 titles were:

1. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
2. Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkien
3. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C S Lewis
4. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
5. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
6. Wuthering Heights by
Emily Bronte
7. Animal Farm by George Orwell
8. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
9. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J K Rowling
10. Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones, Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveller's Wife and The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini were among some of the other modern classics making it into the top 50.

Monday, 16 June 2008

Richard & Judy Summer Reads Line-up Announced


This year's Summer Reads have now been announced - the titles are as follows:


The Outcast - Sadie Jones

No Time For Goodbye - Linwood Barclay

East of the Sun - Julia Gregson

Down River - John Hart

The Pirate's Daughter - Margaret Cezair-Thompson

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee - Rebecca Miller

Addition - Toni Jordan

The Ressurectionist - James Bradley


For more information on the selected titles, please click
here.

Thursday, 5 June 2008

Tremain Wins Orange Prize

Rose Tremain has won the 2008 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction for her novel The Road Home (9780701177935).

Awarded yesterday, the judges described the book as "a powerfully imagined story and a wonderful feat of emotional empathy told with great warmth and humour".

Joanna Kavenna won the Award for New Writers for her novel Inglorious (9780571232611).

Established in 1996 as a celebration of fiction written by women, the Orange Prize is frequently met with criticism linking to sex discrimination. Shortlisted author Sadie Jones has backed calls for a men's prize, suggesting it would help promote reading among boys. She said: "Anything that adds interest or glamour for boys can only be good sense."

Monday, 2 June 2008

Under the Spotlight

Escape this summer with a timeless classic from Oxford University Press.

Drawing on the influence of the
NYR's June theme Reading Escapes, for this month's Under the Spotlight, we're suggesting you grab one of the 11 great titles launched this month as part of the Escape collection.

Whether reading to escape, or escaping to read, lose yourself in the intense thoughts of Mrs Dalloway, take a Journey to the Centre of the Earth or experience the adventures of
The Counte of Monte Cristo.

For more details on the other titles available, visit our
homepage or view the titles here.