What a night! Can you believe we were fully booked with 100 people coming along to see Kim McCosker – 4 Ingredients cookbooks author. Co-author Rachael Bermingham couldn't make it on the night but as girls do – Kim called her beautiful mum Jennette and she did a fantastic job helping with food preparation and supporting Kim. The 4 ingredients team have such an inspiring story to tell. They are both busy mums but believed in their idea to provide simple recipes with 4 ingredients or less to get people out of the kitchen and spending time with their families – and who doesn't want that?. Kim spoke enthusiastically about the whole writing recipe and book production process. The audience asked questions and sampled Gluten Free recipes from their latest book - including dips, fruit cake and biscuits. The event was supported by Angus & Robertson Bookstore. Kim is pictured above signing books and entertaining the large audience.

Robots, apples and others things quite unmentionable were topics discussed by best selling children's author Andy Griffiths and his fans at Orange City Library recently. Children asked lots of questions about where his ideas come from, how he came up with his book titles, details about his characters and what's coming up next. The author was in Orange to promote his latest book Robot Riot and he encouraged children to tell their own stories, getting them to generate ideas throughout his talk and even calling on volunteers to perform a robot showdown. It was all in good fun as he took time to sign autographs, shake hands with fans and learn from them their favourite things about Orange. He suggested a name change was in order because the city was known for apples but no one in the large audience voted yes. The event was a joint presentation with Angus & Robertson Bookstore. Pictured above is Kaleb Cook meeting Andy and below is Orange City Librarian Elizabeth Barry getting up close to Andy's touring bus.

Galileo is one of the fathers of modern science. He was a physicist, mathematician, and astronomer and 2009 is the 400th anniversary of Galileo's development of the telescope and his first pointing it to the heavens with such earth-shattering results. His book Dialogo dei massimi sistemi (Dialogue on the two chief world systems), his celebrated defence of the Copernican system, was published in Florence in 1632. It led to his house arrest and the banning of his books in Italy. The only copy of this book in Australia is held by the State Library of New South Wales and it has never before left Sydney until now.......... You are invited to see this rare book and hear Paul Brunton, Senior curator from the State Library of NSW, speak at Forbes Library,Victoria Lane, Forbes on Friday 16 October at 1pm for a 1.15pm start. Please RSVP by calling the Library on 6852 1463.

A concert featuring Paul Brunton and professional musicians from Orange Regional Conservatorium of Music performing Monteverdi (Heavenly Bodies Galileo and Monteverdi: A Feast of 17th Century Italian Genius) will also be held on Thursday 15 October at the Conservatorium at 7.30pm. For tickets ($35 Adults , $25 Concession) please contact Book City on 6393 1333. All funds raised will support the Conservatorium and Library.

The rare Galileo Book will also be on display at Orange City Library on Thursday afternoon. Paul is pictured above with a rare Longitudes book.

Central West Libraries and Orange Regional Conservatoium present Heavenly Bodies Galileo and Monteverdi: A feast of 17th Century Italian Genius on Thursday 15 October at 7.30pm in the ORC Auditorium at 73a Hill Street, Orange. It will be a divine event combining a talk on Galileo by State Library of NSW Senior Curator Paul Brunton and the romantic compositions of Monteverdi performed by the Orange Regional Conservatorium's professional musicians. Please book your seat by calling 6369 1333. Prices are Adult $35, Concession $25. For more details read the article in today's CWD http://www.centralwesterndaily.com.au/news/local/news/general/galileo-event-of-note/1641527.aspx

Orange City Library is hosting a guest speaker from the Black Dog Institute on Wednesday 7 October at 2pm for a free talk. The Black Dog Institute is a not-for-profit, educational, research, clinical and community-oriented facility offering specialist expertise in depression and bipolar disorder. The event is part of 2009 Mental Health Week which has the theme Building Resilience – Sign Up, Link In, Get Involved. Information about the Black Dog Institute's 2010 writing and photographic competition will also be available at the talk. So come along.

Please join us at Orange City Library Monday 28 September 2009, from 10.10am for fantastic morning of new things to learn followed by a sausage sizzle to celebrate Adult Learners Week.

First there will be an official welcome & hear about the experience of adult learners ... then Join in with Information sessions including: 10.30 – 11.30am - Making a will and power of attorney and from 11.45am • Making your own worm farm • Learning opportunities for adults • How to use a digital camera • Using online government and banking • Restoring and preserving photographs • Have you thought about becoming a writer? • Making a porcelain doll. These are drop in sessions and run all morning. Stay and enjoy some lunch, tea & coffee. It all finishes around 1pm. The event is free but bookings are essential by telephoning 6393 8132. See you there.

Prepare to be amazed as we link Dracula and Dorian Gray to Jane Austen. True. Our Classics Book Club readers are enjoying catching up with Thomas Hardy novels and some gothic horror by revisiting Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. Did you know that Bram Stoker attended dinner parties hosted by Oscar Wilde's mother Lady Jane Francesca Elgee Wilde at the family's chicly bohemian salon. And guess which star from the BBC adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice is to star is a film adaptation of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray? Yes that's the Austen connection – would you believe Colin Firth? as Lord Henry alongside Ben Barnes as Dorian Gray(pictured). Sounds all good so far.

And the next Classics Book Club meetings are:

Blayney Library on Tuesday 22 September from 11am - 12 noon to talk about Under the Greenwood Tree and Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy.

Orange Daytime Group on Thursday 24 September 12.30pm - 1.30pm to discuss Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Orange Evening Group on Thursday 24 September 5.30pm - 7pm to discuss Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Cowra Library on Tuesday 29 September from 12.30pm - 1.30pm to talk about Bram Stoker and Dracula.

PS. If you want to see a combined storyline with Frankenstein and Dracula then check out the film Van Helsing – stars Richard Roxburgh, Hugh Jackman and Kate Beckinsdale – great for the special effects and Brides of Dracula.

Photographer - author Trisha Dixon will be the special guest at the opening of the Orange Blossoms Exhibition at Orange Regional Gallery on Saturday 19 September at 2pm and will give an illustrated talk at Borrodell Vineyard, Orange on Sunday 20 September at 2pm, cost $15. She is the author of a number of garden books, including two on the plans and gardens of Edna Walling, and is columnist for Gardening Australia and Outback magazines. Trisha will talk about the landscapes and properties that have inspired some of our leading writers and artists including architecture, gardens, social and cultural history, art and design. People such as our Nobel Prize winning laureate for literature, Patrick White, who jackerooed on a high country property, Bolaro Station and wrote his first novel there. He subsequently bought and burnt every copy he could find of it. Poet Banjo Paterson wrote his last poem in memory of this property as well. To book your place for the garden talk please call Borrodell on 6365 3425 or visit www.borrodell.com.au

Journalist and author Peter FitzSimons was in full storytelling mode as he told yarn after yarn at the Hotel Canobolas on Friday afternoon. Visiting Orange courtesy of Angus & Robertson and Orange City Library to launch his book Sir Charles Kingsford Smith and Those Magnificent Men, the ex-Wallaby couldn't resist a few rugby tales, some choice French phrases, anecdotes from his experiences writing biographies and of course the amazing story of Smithy. Most of the large crowd took time out to enjoy lunch and had the opportunity to ask a few questions learning about his research and work on the book. Thank you to everyone who came along for a unique literary lunch in the pub.

Thank you to everyone who entered our Good Reading Online competition. We hope you are continuing to enjoy keeping up with all the latest news on authors, books and reading in this fabulous online magazine that can be accessed via our Reading and Writing Page. So to our winners...drum roll please......the winners are R Jones of Millthorpe, H Burton of Molong, M Todd of Molong, T Smith of Molong and A Pearson of Orange. Well done to you all and book prizes are winging their way to you. And of course the correct answer was Jennifer Weiner. I told you it was an easy competition.