Here are the Library team’s top recommendations
It’s always about the food by The Monday Morning Cooking Club
Several years ago I was at a dinner party where the host served THE most delicious dessert I have ever eaten. After the second bite, I asked/begged/pleaded for the recipe.
I bought the book and since then have made nearly everything from it. That book was part of the Monday Morning Cooking Club collection.
It’s Always About The Food showcases a variety of exceptional dishes from all over the world.
The Monday Morning Cooking Club started more than 10 years ago when six Jewish Sydney women met every Monday morning and celebrated their love of food. They shared handed down family recipes, new recipes and beloved ones and started to think that this incredible collection should be made into a book.
They wanted to create a beautiful cookbook that would sit alongside the best cookbooks in the world and tell the story of the Jewish food obsessed community.
Four books later, these talented cooks have more than made their mark on the culinary world.
My late grandmother-in-law made a delicious körözött (or Liptauer) dip which is popular in Hungarian households. This cookbook has an easy and yummy version – although sorry ladies, not a patch on Nana’s.
But that is the only slightly negative thing I can say about this cookbook as every single dish I have made from it receives many “ooohs” and much “aaahs” from the eager eaters and without fail, I am always asked for the recipe. High praise indeed.
Library Call Number: 641.5 GOL
Land by Andrew Pippos
“The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said “This is mine,” and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society.
From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
In 1889, thousands of hopeful people raced southward from the Kansas state line and westward from the Arkansas boundary to stake claims on the thousands of acres of unclaimed pastures and meadows. Across the twentieth century, water was dammed and drained in Holland so that a new province, Flevoland, rose up, unchartered and requiring new thinking. In 1850, California legislated the theft of land from Native Americans. An apology came in 2019 from the governor, but what of the call for reparations or return? What of government confiscation of land in India, or questions of fairness when it comes to New Zealand’s Maori population and the legacy of settlers?
The ownership of land has always been complicated, opaque, and more than a little anarchic when viewed from the outside.
In this book Simon Winchester explores the stewardship of land, the ways it is delineated and changes hands, the great disputes, and the questions of restoration – particularly in the light of climate change and colonialist reparation.
Land details the human history of land around the world: who mapped it, owned it, stole it, cared for it, fought for it and gave it back.
Library Call Number: 333.73 WIN
Teach yourself about shares by Roger Kinsky
Had this book been around 20 years ago, it may have prevented this reviewer from purchasing the lemon shares of Data Fast. True to their name, the shares did go fast – fast downhill and into oblivion.
If you want to learn more about the sharemarket but you’re unsure where to begin, or if you are already a share investor but want to improve your profitability on the market, this is the book for you.
Teach Yourself About Shares is the most comprehensive share-investing book on the market and this new edition of Roger Kinsky’s bestseller is a user-friendly, up to date guide that will have you trading and investing with confidence in no time.
In the 3rd edition of this comprehensive and trusted guide—updated for the latest investment regulations and innovations—respected author, instructor, and trader Roger Kinsky defuses the painful jargon and demystifies the complexities that hold many people back from getting into the market. Along the way, he shows you how to build up your investing expertise with practical examples and self test problems with supplied solutions that help you consolidate your learning and move onto your next step with confidence.
- Set up and manage your investment portfolio according to your needs and goals
- Understand the different types of shares and the reasons why share prices fluctuate
- Learn how to profit from capital gains and dividends-
- Understand financial statistics and the basics of technical analysis (charting)
-Know how to trade with confidence and the various types of orders you can place
-Evaluate the market to trade the right shares at the right time
Whether you’re just starting out in your investing experience or looking to improve your investing success, this is your friendly, proven route to market success.
Library Call number 332.64 KIN
The unlikely pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
Meet Harold Fry, recently retired. He lives in a small English village with his wife, Maureen, who seems irritated by almost everything he does, even down to how he butters his toast.
Little differentiates one day from the next. Then one morning the mail arrives, and within the stack is a letter addressed to Harold in a shaky scrawl from a woman he hasn’t seen or heard from in twenty years. Queenie Hennessy is in hospice and is writing to say goodbye.
Harold pens a quick reply and, leaving Maureen to her chores, heads to the corner mailbox. But then, as happens in the very best works of fiction, Harold has a chance encounter, one that convinces him that he absolutely must deliver his message to Queenie in person. And thus begins the unlikely pilgrimage. Harold Fry is determined to walk six hundred miles from Kingsbridge to the hospice in Berwick-upon-Tweed because, he believes, as long as he walks, Queenie Hennessey will live.
Still in his yachting shoes and light coat, Harold embarks on his urgent quest across the countryside. Along the way he meets one character after another, each of whom unlocks his long-dormant spirit and sense of promise. Memories of his first dance with Maureen, his wedding day, his joy in fatherhood, come rushing back to him – allowing him to also reconcile the losses and the regrets. As for Maureen, she finds herself missing Harold for the first time in years.
And then there is the unfinished business with Queenie Hennessy.
Quirky, heartwarming and literary food for the soul.
Library Call number F JOYC
The wife upstairs – by Rachel Hawkins
Newly arrived to Birmingham, Alabama, Jane is a broke dog-walker in Thornfield Estates––a gated community full of McMansions, shiny SUVs, and bored housewives. The kind of place where no one will notice if Jane lifts the discarded jewellery off the side tables of her well-heeled clients. Where no one will think to ask if Jane is her real name.
But her luck changes when she meets Eddie Rochester. Recently widowed, Eddie is Thornfield Estates’ most mysterious resident. His wife, Bea, drowned in a boating accident with her best friend, their bodies lost to the deep. Jane can’t help but see an opportunity in Eddie––not only is he rich, brooding, and handsome, he could also offer her the kind of protection she’s always yearned for.
Yet as Jane and Eddie fall for each other, Jane is increasingly haunted by the legend of Bea, an ambitious beauty with a rags-to-riches origin story, who launched a wildly successful southern lifestyle brand. How can she, plain Jane, ever measure up? And can she win Eddie’s heart before her past––or his––catches up to her?
Library Call number CRI F HAWK
Florence Adler swims forever – by Rachel Beanland
I loved this book. It made my heart sing, my heart ache and ultimately, my heart swell with love for its characters.
Atlantic City, 1934. Every summer, Esther and Joseph Adler rent their house out to vacationers escaping to “America’s Playground” and move into the small apartment above their bakery. Despite the cramped quarters, this is the apartment where they raised their two daughters, Fannie and Florence, and it always feels like home.
Now Florence has returned from college, determined to spend the summer training to swim the English Channel, and Fannie, pregnant again after recently losing a baby, is on bedrest for the duration of her pregnancy. After Joseph insists they take in a mysterious young woman whom he recently helped emigrate from Nazi Germany, the apartment is bursting at the seams.
Esther only wants to keep her daughters close and safe but some matters are beyond her control: there’s Fannie’s risky pregnancy not to mention her always-scheming husband, Isaac and the fact that the handsome heir of a hotel notorious for its anti-Semitic policies, seems to be in love with Florence.
When tragedy strikes, Esther makes the shocking decision to hide the truth at least until Fannie’s baby is born and pulls the family into an elaborate web of secret-keeping and lies, bringing long-buried tensions to the surface that reveal how quickly the act of protecting those we love can turn into betrayal.
Based on a true story, Beanland’s family saga is an exquisite portrait of just how far we will go to in order to protect our loved ones and an uplifting portrayal of how the human spirit can endure and even thrive after tragedy.
Library Call number F BEAN
Secret & Special – by Will Davies (Old Trinitarian)
Will Davies is a historian, writer and filmmaker and Old Boy from the Trinity class of 1967.
Somme Mud: The war experiences of an Australian infantryman in France 1916-1919, which he edited, has become a bestseller in Australia and the UK and The Netherlands. In The Footsteps of Private Lynch has also been published to acclaim in Australia and the UK.
His latest book, Secret & Special is the untold story of Z Special Unit and Operations, the precursor to the elite SAS, and the extraordinary feats they undertook in the Pacific during the Second World War.
Soon after the declaration of war on Japan, a secret military reconnaissance unit was established, based on the British Special Operations Executive (known as SOE) and called the Inter-allied Services Department. The unit was tasked with the role to “obtain and report information of the enemy … weaken the enemy by sabotage and destruction of morale and to lend aid and assistance to local efforts to the same end in enemy occupied territories.”
In 1943 it became known under the cover name Special Reconnaissance Department (SRD) and included some British officers who had escaped from Singapore. After arriving in Australia, they assembled in Melbourne, forming the nucleus of ISD and together with some Australians established what became the Z Special Unit. Training began in a number of locations around Australia including Fraser Island off the Queensland coast, Broken Bay near Sydney, Careening Bay in Western Australia, at the “House on the Hill” in Cairns and at East Arm near Darwin.
From these training areas and bases, Z Special undertook intelligence gathering and raiding missions throughout Southeast Asia including New Guinea, Singapore, Timor, Malaya, Borneo, Vietnam and the Dutch East Indies.
Library Call number 940.548 DAV
