This is the ninth year in which FOBL has held writing competitions for the primary schools on the peninsula and for the Balmain Campus of the Sydney Secondary College (SSC). As in previous years, for the Secondary writing competition we worked in conjunction with Mirjana Simic, the Head Teacher of English, to choose a theme to fit with the English …
October 2018 – Inaugural Trivia Night
It was our first, and I hope our inaugural, FOBL Trivia night. The Balmain Town Hall small meeting room had been turned into a patchwork of colourful tables. These were waiting to be filled by teams testing their literary knowledge as well as the occasional question about Balmain history. The evening started with people helping themselves to the delicious supper …
Professor Steve Rayner – “Climate Change: Armageddon or damp squib?”
On the 30th August FOBL was proud and fortunate to be able to present Professor Steve Rayner while he was in Sydney attending a conference on the Social Study of Science. Not a stranger to these shores, Steve had previously visited Australia on several occasions. In 2010 he delivered the Jack Beale Memorial Lecture at the University of NSW and …
Andrew Andersons AO talks about the Sydney Modern project
FOBL’s year opened on Friday April 27 with a fascinating talk about the Sydney Modern project by Andrew Andersons AO, the renowned architect who designed the previous extensions to the Art Gallery of NSW. The function was well attended with FOBL members and non members who clearly had an interest in what is a closely scrutinised project. Our speaker’s talk was illustrated …
Kate McClymont, Investigative Journalist, Sydney Morning Herald
It was a full, excited, house on Friday 6th October to hear Kate McClymont speak to FOBL. Her talk was entitled The Bold, The Belligerent and the Bagmen. Kate McClymont is an investigative journalist currently reporting for the Sydney Morning Herald. In the late 1980s, McClymont worked for two years as a junior reporter on Four Corners. In 2002, she …
Boosting the Books with FOBL in October 2015
Friends of Balmain Library workers had a very happy time presiding over our Third Book Boost. We spent almost $5,000.00 buying books for the Library on the weekend of 17/18 October. This is how it works: we ask the Library staff which areas need a top up. Last year it was non-fiction which resulted in a very colourful supply of …
December 2018 Open Book Group – The Book of the Night Women by Marlon James
I welcomed the chance to moderate The Book of the Night Women by Marlon James, a Man Booker Prize-winning author. A historical novel set in 1785, Lilith is one of six mulatto house slaves born on Humphrey Wilson’s Montpellier estate in Jamaica. Their mothers were all raped by the same overseer Jack Wilkins. Through Lilith, speaking in Jamaican patois, we …
November 2018 Open Book Group – Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift
Thank you to Maggie for moderating Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift. The OBG crowd quickly swelled to 18 as they streamed in to grab a seat before our ever punctual 1.00 pm kick off. It’s Mothering Sunday 1924 twenty-two-year-old Jane Fairchild, foundling and maid to the Niven household has no mother to visit. Her clandestine lover for many years Paul, …
October 2018 Open Book Group – Light and Shadow: Memoirs of a Spy’s Son by Mark Colvin
Thank you to Kevin for moderating Light and Shadow: Memoirs of a Spy’s Son by Mark Colvin. Mark Colvin was born into an English father and an Australian mother. He was brought up in England enduring the brutality of boarding at Preparatory School, Summer fields and then attending an elite Public School, Westminster. He travelled to Australia at the age …
July 2018 Open Book Group – In The Darkroom by Susan Faludi
Welcome to Toni and thank you to Gillian Shenfield for moderating In The Darkroom by Susan Faludi. Faludi is a successful New York-based feminist journalist and author. In 1991 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism. Out of the blue in 2004, Faludi receives an email from her father, living in Budapest, from whom she has been estranged for …
June 2018 Open Book Group – Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
Thank you to Chris for moderating Lincoln in the Bardo, the 2017 Man Booker Prize winner, by George Saunders. Well, wow, was this an original Post-Modern novel or what? Chris noted she had chosen the book because she had really wanted to “talk to someone about it”. The feeling was obviously mutual as a large group gathered getting straight down …
May 2018 Open Book Group – Dark Emu Black Seeds: agriculture or accident by Bruce Pascoe
Bruce is a scholar from Tasmania with an aboriginal heritage. I suggested this book for the group after a number of friends told me it was a ‘must read’. I am very pleased that I took their advice because for me and I think the OBG group, it was a real eye-opener. Pascoe’s thesis, in summary, is that aboriginal people …
April 2018 Open Book Group – The Easy Way Out by Steven Amsterdam
Welcome to Dorothy and thank you to Sylvia for moderating The Easy Way Out by Steven Amsterdam. The novel is set sometime in the near further. Section 961 has been passed allowing registered nurses to attend patients wishing to end their life voluntarily by taking a dose of Nembutal. The patients must qualify with a terminal illness to access the …