Big City Read author signs off at Acomb Explore

Join us for the Big City Read 2014 finale event at Explore Acomb Library Learning Centre on 24 September with the York-based author of this year’s chosen novel, The Orpheus Descent.

Acomb Library Learnign Centre Feb 08

After a summer of 24 events held in libraries across the city alongside associated events held by partners, Big City Read author Tom Harper will bring this year’s Big City Read to a close on Wednesday 24 September at 6.30 pm. The event is free but booking is advised through any Explore York Library.

Tom will reminisce on his experiences of being this year’s featured author, the events he has taken part in and will give a taste of some of the other books he has written to take Big City Read participants’ reading further.

The Big City Read issues 5,000 copies of the chosen title to residents to read over the summer. Books always have some link to York and the book for this year, The Orpheus Descent is by local writer Tom Harper. Tom came up with the idea for the book from reading in the University of York Library, which he researched in more depths in York’s libraries before writing the novel in York.

Big City Readers have given Explore York Libraries feedback on The Orpheus Descent including: “A well-crafted archaeological adventure with a fast-moving narrative thread and telling descriptive passages”,  “A thought-provoking read” and “A rattling good yarn by a new-to-me teller of tall tales! If they’re all as entertaining as this, then I’d happily read his others.”

Fiona Williams, Chief Executive of Explore York, said: “It has been another successful Big City Read and we would like to thank Tom for all the time he has given us. I loved the book and am now reading another of his about the Crusades.”

Acomb Explore’s first transatlantic event to be with Orange Prize-winner

Achilles2
Author Madeline Miller will be talking about her Orange Prize winning novel, The Song of Achilles, live from the East Coast of the USA.

The talk, including a question and answer session, will be broadcast from Boston via Skype to a large screen at Acomb Explore on Thursday 21 August, 7-8pm, with entry by ticket only.

The American writer is a classical specialist and her book is a very human retelling of the Ancient Greek tale of the god Achilles and his lover Patroclus, hero Hector and the siege of Troy.

“A captivating retelling of the Iliad and events leading up to it through the point of view of Patroclus: it’s a hard book to put down, and any classicist will be enthralled by her characterisation of the goddess Thetis, which carries the true savagery and chill of antiquity.” Donna Tartt, in The Times

Madeline Miller was born in Boston and grew up in New York City and Philadelphia. She attended Brown University, where she earned her BA and MA in Classics. She has studied at the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought and in the Dramaturgy department at Yale School of Drama, where she focused on the adaptation of classical texts to modern forms. While for the last ten years she has been teaching and tutoring Latin, Greek and Shakespeare to high school students.

The Song of Achilles was her first novel and was awarded the 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction and was a New York Times bestseller. It has been translated into twenty-three languages including Dutch, Mandarin, Japanese, Turkish, Arabic and Greek. Madeline was also shortlisted for the 2012 Stonewall Writer of the Year, and her essays have appeared in a number of publications including the Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Lapham’s Quarterly and NPR.org. She currently lives in the USA, where she teaches and writes.

Fiona Williams, Chief Executive of Explore York Libraries and Archives, said: “This is our first event by Skype and we are privileged that it is with such an amazing author. Using this technology opens up the whole world to us and we will be using it lots more in the future. Madeline’s book is one of my favourites and I can’t wait to hear her talk about how it came to be written.”

Tickets are £5 and include a glass of wine and can be bought from any Explore Library.

Help celebrate Dringhouses’ 150 Festival

Dringhouses Library

Dringhouses Library

Residents are invited to help celebrate a special birthday!

Dringhouses Library on Tadcaster Road is over 150 years old. First a Victorian school, the building became a library during World War Two in 1942.

Throughout July, the library will be commemorating the building’s role in the life of the people of Dringhouses for the last century and a half. Although it was built in 1852, the school and its teachers were legally required in 1863 to keep a daily log of pupils and teaching and so 150 years of records began then.

Some 80 years later in 1942, Colonel George Wilkinson left the building to the council, with the instructions: ‘The premises to be used as a public library or for such other public purpose for the benefit of the citizens of York, in particular the inhabitants of Dringhouses.’

The building, its history and current use will be celebrated as a place of community and learning through theatre, music, lectures, author talks and more.

 The festival begins on Thursday 10 July with a play specially-commissioned by the library from Ellen Stevens, a recent theatre graduate of the University of York. In it, local actors and pupils from the current Dringhouses Primary School play the parts of their nineteenth-century counterparts in a piece of community theatre not to be missed!

 Other festival events include a chamber music concert by group Bellissime of popular Victorian music, a local history group talk about the library, a talk by Big City Read author Tom Harper and lots more. The Dringhouses 150 Celebration Party on 9 August from 2-3:30pm draws events to a close, before the next 150 years begin!

This festival supports York Explore Libraries and Archives’ vision of enabling people to live fuller, more connected and engaged lives by celebrating the history, future and community of Dringhouses Library.

Fiona Williams, Chief Executive of Explore York Libraries and Archives, said: “Dringhouses Library is one of our most popular libraries and it is exciting to be celebrating how the building has been at the heart of its community for so long. Here’s to the next 150 years!”

For more information and to book places on the events please visit www.yortime.org.uk or call Dringhouses Library on 01904 552674 or visitwww.exploreyork.org.uk for the festival timetable.

 

Dringhouses 150 – Celerating the libraries contribution to the local community

 

click for brochure

click for brochure

Come and help us celebrate our birthday! Dringhouses Library is over 150 years old.

It has been a library since 1942, and was a Victorian school before that.

Throughout July 2014, we will be commemorating this role in the life of the people of Dringhouses for the last century and a half.

We celebrate the building as a place of community and learning, through theatre, music, lectures, author talks, and more. 

See the brochure of events (PDF, 12 pages).

 

York’s Bid City Read announced – The Orpheus Descent by Tom Harper

The Orpheus Descent will be available free from all libraries from Thursday 10 July. Look out for copies when out and about across the city.

Visit your local library today to get your Big City Read brochure which details all of the activities and events happening across the City over the summer

coverI have never written down the answers to the deepest mysteries, nor will I ever…

The philosopher Plato wrote these words more than two thousand years ago, following a perilous voyage to Italy — an experience about which he never spoke again, but from which he emerged the greatest thinker in all of human history.

Today, twelve golden tablets sit in museums around the world, each created by unknown hands and buried in ancient times, and each providing the dead with the route to the afterlife. Archaeologist Lily Barnes, working on a dig in southern Italy, has just found another. But the thirteenth tablet is different. This tablet names the location to the mouth of hell itself. And then Lily vanishes.

Has she walked out on her job, her marriage, and her life — or has something more sinister happened? Her husband, Jonah, is desperate to find her. But no one can help him: not the police; not the secretive foundation that sponsored her dig; not even a circle of university friends who seem to know more than they’re saying. All Jonah has is belief, and a determination to do whatever it takes to get Lily back.

But like Plato before him, Jonah will discover the journey ahead is mysterious and dark and fraught with danger. And not everyone who travels to the hidden place where Lily has gone can return.

NB. While the York central library is closed for refurbishment (until the Autumn) books can be returned to a “drop box” located in the foyer of the Council HQ at West Offices or to any other library.