Monday 13 May 2013

Kate de Goldi- Changing Faces, Changing Places

Last Friday night Waitaki District Libraries, along with the Janet Frame Eden Street Trust hosted New Zealand author Kate de Goldi. 

Kate is the author several books for children and young adults, including the award winning 'The 10pm question'. Kate also regularly presents book reviews on radio and televsion. In her talk she mentioned that she reads three books every week as part of this role! I wish I had that much dedication! 

Kate is an awesome speaker. She is so warm and engaging and really gets involved with her characters. One of the big themes of her talk was the importance of place in her writing. She mentioned that her books often feature 'real' places, like her old hometown Christchurch, but may not always be geographically accurate! 

Her style of writing really appeals to me, it is very down to earth but amusing at the same time. I also feel like I can relate to the characters which is always a feature in books I enjoy. If you are wanting to read one of Kate's books, I would recommend 'The 10pm question' which is excellent. You can check out some reviews of it here

If you ever get the chance to hear Kate speak, I would highly recommend it. 

The library filling up before the event.

Kate in action.

8 comments:

  1. Hmm, first comment got eaten!!
    Funny, I was with a book rep today and one of the key things we kept coming back to is how important a good sense of place is. There are a couple of new Kiwi authors she showed me who have it sussed apparently. Will be interesting to see what our readers make of them.

    Kate's excellent - glad you had a fun visit with her.

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    1. I'll have to look into that!
      Thanks for your comment- we do have some great Kiwi authors :)

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  2. Great to see good audience turnout. Kate de G is a great speaker - her enthusiasm is infectious.

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    1. Couldn't have said it better myself! :)

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  3. Hey, trying to do that thing where I comment on blogs I read. You posted your blog url in someone else's blog comments (nice!).

    Incidentally, it wasn't obvious how to leave a comment on your blog - clicking "no comments" or whatever it said felt kinda wrong... And I couldn't post using Chrome, not sure if one of my settings is preventing it or what, but using Firefox now.

    Anyhow, the bit about your post I wanted to comment on was how someone reads three books a week. I admit, at first that sounds really impressive, but what is that person reading? Immanuel Kant, Maeve Binchy, Julia Donaldson? I've got nothing against those authors, although I've never read Binchy my partner really enjoys her, and that's good enough for me.

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    1. Go blog commenting! Thought it was a bit cheeky but it obviously worked!
      I'll look into the problems you had with commenting-maybe thats another reason people don't comment- Blogger is pretty clunky :( Thanks for the feedback.
      I think she mainly reads childrens and YA books as that is what she reviews. I reckon some people just have the gift of 'speed reading' and that reading is soemthing that you get better at the more you do it, just like any other skill if that makes sense?

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  4. 1st photo - spot me :)
    2nd photo - Kate never did use the lectern, did she?

    I've read 'The 10 pm Question', and it took me almost the whole book to figure out what the 10 pm question was! I enjoyed the talk, anyway.
    Thanks for the post, Julia :)

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    1. There's your head! It was a pretty good talk wasn't it? Thanks for commenting :) :)

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