Book Review - One Summer by Roisin Meaney

A succession of summer lets at Nell's house by the sea brings people who need to change direction in their lives to the perfect place for making decisions and seeing new possibilities. Nell is letting her house to earn money to save up for her wedding to Tim but she is spending dangerous amounts of time with everyone but him. Meanwhile other village residents also experience events of great sadness and great happiness as the summer unfolds. Relaxing reading by another accomplished Irish writer. There must be as many charming Irish villages as there are murders in Midsomer!
Wendy

Unexpected Afghans: innovative Crochet Designs with Traditional Techniques by Robyn Chahcula

This is a welcome addition to our extensive craft collection. The author has collected designs from many contemporary American crochet designers. Explosions of colours, granny motifs, Tunisian, cable and lace designs. I am definitely going to make one of the cable afghans – but which one to choose? Who knew you could do cable in crochet? Not me, but it looks very impressive in the examples in this book. Unfortunately, as it is an American book, it uses American terms, so for those of us who learnt the Australian/British terms you will need to translate Double crochet stitches into Triple crochet etc . I think some of these designs are definitely worth the effort.

Wendy

Book Review - Wesley: The story of a remarkable owl by Stacey O'Brien

Stacey is a besotted biologist who adopts a baby owl who has a wing injury and cannot be rehabilitated to the wild. She doesn't realize that Wesley will become the companion of 19 years of her life and will help to develop our understanding of his species along the way. Full of owl facts and very human emotion as Stacey learns 'The Way of the Owl" from an owl with great personality and a deal of playfulness. One of the most interesting features was the difference in how to 'train' owls as opposed to creatures we are more used to living with such as cats and dogs. One for animal lovers. Find it in the Biography section.
Wendy

Book Review - Force of Nature by C.J. Box

Another American anti-hero with a shady military past and an awesome repertoire of skills, Nate Romanowski's past catches up to him in this thriller where falconry, wilderness hunting and the magnificent southern Wyoming countryside are an integral part of the story. Big old cottonwood trees by the river, red rock cliffs and everywhere a winter dusting of snow forming a backdrop to Nate's battle with his old master in a clandestine killing unit. Escapism with an arsenal, suspend disbelief and enjoy this latest of C.J. Box's muscular, tautly written series.
Wendy

Book Review - an interesting history of an accounting standard.

Double Entry: How the merchants of Venice shaped the modern world and how their invention could make or break the Planet by Jane Gleeson-White


In the fourteenth century, Venetian merchants were using Roman numerals and an abacas to manage their businesses. Hindu-Arabic numerals were viewed with great suspicion and were in fact outlawed until their subversive use became so widespread that they had to be accepted. These numbers also enabled developments in painting (through the understanding of perspective transforming the flat two dimensional pre- Renaissance paintings) and architecture, spawning the great buildings we see on Grand Tours today. Their great benefit was to enable the use of arithmetical calculations on paper. The principle of double entry accounting launched the great merchant shipping voyages and through ever increasing complexity underpins our great global corporations today. This is an entertaining historical account of the rise of accounting practice (OK! I have no life!); its great advances and its great shortcomings. After the great Depression of the 1930s and during the two World Wars, countries saw the need to embrace a national accounting system which has gradually developed to guide many international transactions. The people developing these systems knew they were limited in their capacity to quantify indirect costs such as environmental damage. This is the next great challenge in corporate and national accounting.

Wendy

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Powell

Eleanor is new and doesn't quite fit in. Her clothes are weird, her family is chaotic and dysfunctional courtesy of her abusive stepfather and her life is difficult. She meets Park on the bus. Park is half Korean and has a father with a military background. His life is ordered and conventional. They are 16 and this is the bittersweet and tender story of how they fall in love. This is a first novel but it is an assured debut from an author who has great gifts in both remembering and conveying the soaring, confused turbulence of adolescence and the overwhelming nature of first love. Funny and charming, sad and nostalgic, you'll be glad you spent time with Eleanor and Park.
Wendy