Final card swap for 2012, part 1

Final card swap for 2012 had 12 of us participate. Here are the cards: 

Book: Identical strangers: a memoir of twins separated and reunited

Summary: Elyse Schein had always known she was adopted, but it wasn't until her mid-thirties while living in Paris that she searched for her biological mother. When Elyse contacted her adoption agency, she was not prepared for the shocking, life-changing news she received: She had an identical twin sister. Elyse was then hit with another bombshell: she and her sister had been separated as infants, and for a time, had been part of a secret study on separated twins.  Paula Bernstein, a married writer and mother living in New York, also knew she was adopted, but had no inclination to find her birth mother. When she answered a call from the adoption agency one spring afternoon, Paula's life suddenly divided into two starkly different periods: the time before and the time after she learned the truth.

As they reunite and take their tentative first steps from strangers to sisters, Paula and Elyse are also left with haunting questions surrounding their origins and their separation. They learn that the study was conducted by a pair of influential psychiatrists associated with a prestigious adoption agency. As they investigate their birth mother's past, Paula and Elyse move closer toward solving the puzzle of their lives.

What I thought: This book was hit and miss. Some great parts and some ordinary. Fascinating story though. I wonder if I have a twin out there...

Book: Outback Heart

Summary: Joanne van Os was just twenty-two when she met Rod Ansell. At twenty-three Rod was already a legend in Australia and around the world, having survived alone for two months without supplies in one of the harshest and most remote parts of northern Australia. To Joanne, Rod was a a genuine hero who could do anything, could make anything out of nothing, told the funniest yarns, had a philosophy on everything. She married him, and they had two beautiful sons who idolised their father. Together they lived the tough life of outback bull catchers and cattle musterers.But as time went on Joanne came to realise that Rod was both a complicated and deeply troubled man. For the sake of her sons she never gave up on Rod, even after their divorce, but just how far he'd gone only became apparent when his life ended in tragedy: out of his mind on drugs, Rod became involved in a shootout in which a young police office was killed. 'How does someone, whose extraordinary story of survival in the wild inspired so many Australians, become a psychotic, drug-crazed gunman?' Joanne asks. Outback Heart captures the Territory life on paper: the dust, the heat, the struggle and the larger-than-life characters. But it's also a deeply moving and powerful story of a love affair and a marriage, and the pain when it all falls apart. It's the story of Rod Ansell, but even more it is Joanne's story, of how a young, naive woman grows up the hard way, and has the most exhilarating and the most heartbreaking times doing it.


What I thought: I really enjoyed this as she grew up just around the corner from me and I went to school with her nephews so I felt like I knew many of the people individually. What a life though. Just amazing. The Territory is just so different from my world...

Book: Valley of the White Gold

Summary: The Half Moon Valley is not easy to farm, nor are its inhabitants easy to know. But the valley produces the best superfine merino wool in the country, and Dan Stafford is its top woolgrower. Dan relies on his capable son, Jim, and his two eye-catching daughters, Bella and Beth, to help run the property. Now he is battling to retain its prize-winning status. When Bella marries and moves away, and the neighbouring property is sold to an outsider, Dan is unnerved. At least Beth seems content to remain on the land. But Dan's new woolclasser, the intriguing Rod Cameron, turns out to be more than Dan bargained for. With Rod on the scene, Dan's status and Beth's future are far from assured.

What I thought: A great country romance with that old fashion feel.

Health Libraries Inc. Conference

Last Friday I headed down to Melbourne for the annual HLI Conference.  As always it was fabulous to catch up with other health library colleagues, to chat to vendors and to head out for a yummy dinner afterwards. There were a few tweets under #HLIConf2012. Here are my notes from the day:

Ilana Jackson - Western Health

Health education strategy
Lit search survey
Dashboard - feedback, lit searches
Marketing - Scholar, Up-to-Date, Discovery services
If you block a tool the user wants they will go elsewhere

Michele Gaca - Heart Foundation

Be visible, involved, relevant
KNOWN - build reputation on timely and quality solutions
Constantly sell your message
Expertise - we can find it, and find it quicker
Quotes from customers

Mary Peterson - SA Health Library Network

Support from clinicians
Go to clinical meetings
High level profile
resources are worth 50cents per hit (etc.)
Cost of individual purchase compared with centralised

Stephen Due - Barwon Health

Empowerment has to include facing up to challenges and problems
Acknowledge you need more - have a prepared plan so you hit the ground running when funds are available
Competition - other libraries (especially academic), CHC, publishers
Need strong web based presence
CLIENT SURVEY
E-books, current deficiency. need critical mass to work. ebrary (proquest, 1000 books), clinical key (800 books)

Ann Ritchie - on marketing

Position. Position. Position.
Perceptions of values.
Communication values.

Sue McKerracher - Re: HLI Survey

IMPACT - what users do with the info you source for them
Quality report to the Board (during May's LIW)
Dollar values - 40 gratis ILL's = 40 x $16.50
Average all hits out. eg. St V is $3 per article. Pay per view is $12-$50.
Insync surveys (about $3000)
Email signature. Words that align with BHS vision

Book: Zoe's Muster

Summary: When Zoe, restless black sheep of the Porter family, discovers that her biological father is a North Queensland cattleman, Peter Fairburn, her deep desire to meet him takes her from inner city Brisbane to a job as a stockcamp cook. Zoe’s mother, Claire, is wrestling with guilt and shock over Zoe’s discovery. She swears Zoe to secrecy, fearing that the truth could ruin the career of her high profile politician husband. When she is forced to confront her past, Claire also reassesses her marriage
Virginia Fairburn is happily married to Peter, but she’s always lived with the shadow of the other woman her husband loved and lost. On the muster at Mullinjim, Zoe meets brooding cattleman Mac McKinnon, who knows from painful experience that city girls can’t cope in the bush. Every instinct tells Mac that Zoe is hiding something. As the pressure to reveal her mother’s secret builds, Zoe fears she must confide in him or burst.

What I thought: Loved it! Another great rural chick lit book.

Another card swap batch. Swap 3, batch #3

Another card swap batch. Swap 3, batch #2

Another card swap batch. Swap 3, batch #1

Me and 15 of my closest friends (including acquaintances and strangers) have taken part in another card swap challenge. The general gist was that you made 16 of the same cards (one design), then you sent them to me, I split them out and send you back 16 different cards. The next few post are photos of the cards. Apologies for being so slow to load them all!

Book: Love Our Way

Summary: Managing a household of eight children is not for the faint-hearted. When you′ve adopted six children from overseas and succeeded in creating a riotiously happy family of ten, there′s a good chance you can handle any challenge life throws at you.  That′s what Julia and Barry Rollings thought until they discovered that two of their children had not been willingly given up for adoption in India. Much worse, Akil and Sabila had been stolen from their mother while she slept - and sold by their father.

How do you deal with such devastating news? Bow to the advice that ′You adopt the child, not the family′? Perhaps not tell the children until they are older - or not at all? But Julia Rollings is not one to take the
easy road. She makes the courageous decision to reunite Akil and Sabi, 13 and 12, with their birth mother, Sunama, and her family.  In Love Our Way Julia shares their moving journey of discovery to India and how it has expanded and enriched her family in more ways than one.

What I thought: Fantastic book. What an amazing family. So inspirational.

Return of the card swap. Batch 2 #3

Return of the card swap. Batch 2 #2

Return of the card swap. Batch 2 #1

Me and 16 of my closest friends (including acquaintances and strangers) have taken part in another card swap challenge. The general gist was that you made 17 of the same cards (one design), then you sent them to me, I split them out and send you back 17 different cards. The next few post are photos of the cards.

Book: Mistaken Identity

Summary: Five lives were lost in a tragic accident involving a Taylor University van, and one young woman, severely injured and comatose, was rushed to the hospital. Families, faculty, students, and communities grieved their losses and joined in prayer and hope as the one young woman, Laura Van Ryn, fought for her life in a hospital bed. The national news spread the story, and people everywhere shared the grief and the hope.

Five weeks passed for the Cerak family. Believing they had buried their daughter, the Ceraks clung to their faith and worshipped God through their tears, learning to look forward with hope to an eternal reunion with their lovely daughter Whitney. They spent weeks in mourning and grief, slowly moving toward healing.

Five weeks passed for the Van Ryns. Keeping a constant bedside vigil over their precious daughter Laura, they sat and prayed and hoped. They rejoiced at each tiny advance toward recovery. They celebrated each sign of Laura's healing. And then the shock! "Okay, Laura, I would like you to write your name for me," the occupational therapist said. W-H-I-T-N-E-Y.

What I thought: OMG I was hooked. How amazing that this can happen! And that the family didn't know! Just amazing! Both families were also amazing. Again this very much had a religious side and I was amazed by both families faith in god and how much He plays a part in their lives. Well worth a read.

Book: Murder by Family

Summary: One fateful evening, the Whitaker family walked into their house to discover a gunman waiting for them. He opened fire on the family, killing the wife and one son. Mr. Whitaker and his other son were airlifted to a local hospital and survived the deadly attack. While lying in the emergency room, Mr. Whitaker learned of his wife and son’s deaths and had to decide whether to forever hate their killer or forgive him. Mr. Whitaker chose the path of forgiveness.  In the weeks following the murder, the police learned that the attack had been orchestrated by the son who survived—Mr. Whitaker had unknowingly forgiven his own son for destroying their family. That son was eventually arrested and convicted of the crime, and now he sits on death row. Murder by Family is the story of Kent Whitaker’s forgiveness in the face of the ultimate betrayal...

What I thought:  This was a great read. I think the most I got out of it was their faith in god. I'm not sure the son is as sorry as his father thinks he is but it was a fascinating insight into a sad case.

Book: The Overlook

Summary: In his first case since he left the LAPD's Open Unsolved Unit for the prestigious Homicide Special squad, Harry Bosch is called out to investigate a murder that may have chilling consequences for national security. A doctor with access to a dangerous radioactive substance is found murdered in the trunk of his car. Retracing his steps, Harry learns that a large quantity of radioactive cesium was stolen shortly before the doctor's death. With the cesium in unknown hands, Harry fears the murder could be part of a terrorist plot to poison a major American city.  Soon, Bosch is in a race against time, not only against the culprits, but also against the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI (in the form of Harry's one-time lover Rachel Walling), who are convinced that this case is too important for the likes of the LAPD. It is Bosch's job to prove all of them wrong.

What I thought: Good read. Quick and easy. I really like Connelly so will have to read a little more of him.

Tuesday Night Bookgroup: Ghost Child

Summary: In 1982 Victorian police were called to a home on a housing estate an hour west of Melbourne. There, they found a five-year-old boy lying still and silent on the carpet. There were no obvious signs of trauma, but the child, Jacob, died the next day.   The story made the headlines and hundreds attended the funeral. Few people were surprised when the boy's mother and her boyfriend went to prison for the crime. Police declared themselves satisfied with the result, saying there was no doubt that justice had been done.
And yet, for years rumours swept the estate and clung like cobwebs to the long-vacant house: there had been a cover-up. The real perpetrator, at least according to local gossip, was the boy's six-year-old sister, Lauren . . .  Twenty years on, Lauren has created a new life for herself, but details of Jacob's death being to resurface and the story again makes the newspapers. As Lauren struggles with the ghosts of her childhood, it seems only a matter of time before the past catches up with her.

What I thought: Brilliant book. I was hooked from page one. Some of the writing needed improving but overall a fantastic read.

Monday Night Bookgroup: Shadow of the Wind

Summary: The Shadow of the Wind is a coming-of-age tale of a young boy who, through the magic of a single book, finds a purpose greater than himself and a hero in a man he's never met.  At the first light of dawn in postwar Barcelona, a bookseller leads his motherless son to a mysterious crypt called the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. This labyrinthine sanctuary houses the books that have lost their owners, books that are no longer remembered by anyone. It is here that 10 year old Daniel Sempere pulls a single book - The Shadow of the Wind - off of the dusty shelves to adopt as his own. With one fateful turn of a page, he begins an adventure that will unravel another man's tragedy and solve a mystery that has already taken many lives and will shape his entire future.

When Daniel speaks with Gustavo Barceló, a local booktrader, to find out more about his new treasure, word begins to spread that he has uncovered a long-sought rarity, perhaps the only copy of any of Julián Carax's works in existence. Soon after, a mysterious stranger whom Daniel recognizes as Laín Coubert, the leather-masked, cigarette-smoking devil from Carax's novel, propositions Daniel, offering to buy the book from him for an astronomical price. Daniel refuses, in spite of the man's thinly veiled threats. With the help of his bookselling friends, Daniel discovers that Laín Coubert has cut a swath of destruction through two countries, methodically searching for and destroying all of Carax's books while erasing every trace of Carax's life.

Daniel and his best friend Fermín Romero de Torres search through Barcelona, tracking down the people who knew the Shadow's elusive author best, hoping to understand Coubert's ruthless pursuit and why Carax's life came to a bitter end so quickly. Each clue reveals a little more about the tragedy of Julián and Penélope, star-crossed lovers who met their doom in a cursed mansion called "The Angel of the Mist." Daniel is swept up in unraveling the great mystery of the author's short but wretched life, an epic of two Barcelona families devastated by a secret no one could have guessed. Only when a woman is brutally murdered for trying to reveal the truth, and Fermín is framed for the crime, does Daniel begin to understand that the threat to his life is very real. And what begins as a young bibliophile's hobby turns into a diabolical murder mystery that, if Daniel is not careful, may write his own tragic ending.

What I thought: OMG. One of the best books EVER!  I was hooked. This isn't my normal sort of read but I was so drawn in. Just LOVED it!

Book: Jacaranda Blue

Summary:  For forty-four years Stella Templeton has been a dutiful daughter and a good citizen living in Maidenville, population 2,800, a town where nothing happens. Until one hot summer afternoon...

An ugly act has lifted the respectable skirts of Maidenville and mystery starts to surround the daughter of the local minister. Then the disappearance of a sixteen-year-old-boy adds to the neighbourhood's confusion. Does something sinister lurk behind the neatly trimmed hedges and white picket fences that divide this sleepy town? No one comes close to knowing the horrifying truth - but after forty-four years of self denial and duty, Stella Templeton is finally beginning to blossom.

What I thought: Brilliant book. I was hooked from page one. Can't believe I've never read her before. Definitely going to read Dettman again.