ready for reviewing at SLV this weekend

Mike Shuttleworth, of the Centre for Youth Literature at the State Library of Victoria, informs me that he has put together a workshop on review writing, to be held at the library this weekend.

It has been designed with reviewers of young adult fiction in mind, but has equal application to anyone either interested in, or already engaged in writing reviews for publication.
WHERE and WHEN?

Saturday, March 17th
Conference Centre Lounge
State Library of Victoria
Entrance 3, La Trobe Street
1.00–4.00pm
Cost: $30.00, Subscribers to BookTalk: $25.00

For booking enquiries phone 8664 7262 or email youthlit@slv.vic.gov.au

In other Victorian book news, it's great to hear that the Australian Book Club at Readings bookshop is going so well that they will be running two full meetings a month. For March, members will be meeting to discuss Rodney Hall's Love Without Hope, with new books by Deborah Robertson and Gail Jones to follow.
Email Aviva  for further enquires at avivatuffield@yahoo.com.au.

Finally, I heard some humungous figures at the Library Unconference last week for SLV's incredibly popular program, Text Appeal- as Paula Kelly now knows, my previous remarks were firmly tongue in cheek. They had over 800 participants in the last sessions, have been invited to provide considerable media commentary on the program, and people keep ringing up to put themselves on a waiting list for the next one. Books are much bigger than we all think, even in tooled up Australia, where Internet use is the highest it is anywhere in the world.
Now, if Apple had an iPod Speed Dating event, knowing what I know about music and lists, I think it would be - well, mayhem, actually. Much wiser to stick to one book per session per person, isn't it. (Which is a nice spot from which to nod to Sophie Cunningham's piece on blending book collections, over at Sarsaparilla.)

I had the very great pleasure of co-presenting at the Library Uncon with Paula and her web project manager Lili Wilkinson (she of the excellent YA blog and website, InsideADog), on books and blogging. I've had a bit of a rave about it all over at Library Sputnik (and got a bit carried away, I think - but judge for yourself. That's the kind of day it was). Thanks again to Christine Mackenzie of Yarra Plenty Libraries and her wonderful team, for running a very inspiring event, may there be many more opportunities for Victorian libraries to pick each others' brains using this highly creative format.