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.

If your The Slap radar was tuned in this week you would've heard that the award-winning novel by Christos Tsiolkas, The Slap, will be developed into a television series by ABC TV and Matchbox Pictures. The eight-part (like the book's 8 chapters) drama series will begin development in November and will go into production in Melbourne in 2010. ABC TV's Acting Head of Drama, Amanda Higgs, says the drama will resonate with audiences. "The Australian novel that provoked fiery discussion from offices to dinner parties to mothers' groups and suburban barbeques will become the most talked about series on television." The Age newspaper reported Matchbox Pictures announced that after a competitive bidding process it had purchased the rights to produce a television adaptation of the novel, which is set in Melbourne. This year, The Slap has won the Commonwealth Writer's Prize, the Australian Book Industry Book of the Year award, the Victorian Premier's Literary Award, the ABA Book of the Year, and the Association for the Study of Australian Literature Gold Award. Go The Slap - there is no stopping the talking point power of this book as our Pageturners book discussion group discovered.

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.

Romanian-born German writer Herta Mueller won the prestigious 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature saying Nicolae Ceausescu's brutal dictatorship compelled her to write of how a powerful few can dominate and destroy a nation. The Swedish Academy paid tribute to Mueller "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed." Mueller, who charted the brutality and oppressiveness of Nicolae Ceausescu's dictatorship, was lost for words when she learnt she had won the prize. Mueller is known for works such as "The Land of Green Plums" which she dedicated to Romanian friends killed under Ceausescu's Communist rule and "The Appointment" in which a Romanian woman sews notes saying "Marry Me" into suits of men bound for Italy.

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.

Hilary Mantel is the winner of the £50,000 Man Booker Prize for Fiction for Wolf Hall, published by Fourth Estate. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel was picked from a shortlist of six titles. A.S. Byatt, J.M. Coetzee, Adam Foulds, Simon Mawer and Sarah Waters. Wolf Hall is set in the 1520s and tells the story of Thomas Cromwell's rise to prominence in the Tudor court. Hilary Mantel has been praised by critics for writing 'a rich, absorbingly readable historical novel; she has made a significant shift in the way any of her readers interested in English history will henceforward think about Thomas Cromwell.' James Naughtie, comments 'Hilary Mantel has given us a thoroughly modern novel set in the 16th century. Wolf Hall has a vast narrative sweep that gleams on every page with luminous and mesmerising detail. Sales related to the Man Booker Prize have been exceptionally strong this year. More than double the number of copies of books have been sold between longlist and shortlist announcement, and from shortlist announcement to winner announcement, compared to last year. Check out www.themanbookerprize.com website for more details.

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.

Arts Minister Peter Garrett has announced the 15 Australian books shortlisted for the 2009 Prime Minister's Literary Awards. Minister Garrett said the Awards, now in their second year, have again recognised an outstanding collection of must-read Australian titles. Fiction shortlist: The Pages - Murray Bail, People of the Book - Geraldine Brooks, Wanting - Richard Flanagan, Everything I Knew - Peter Goldsworthy, One Foot Wrong - Sofie Laguna, The Boat - Nam Le, The Good Parents - Joan London, Non-Fiction shortlist: Van Diemen's Land - James Boyce, Doing Life: A Biography of Elizabeth Jolley - Brian Dibble, Gough Whitlam: A Moment in History - Jenny Hocking, The Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island - Chloe Hooper, House of Exile: The Life and Times of Heinrich Mann and Nelly Kroeger-Mann - Evelyn Juers, Drawing the Global Colour Line - Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, The Henson Case - David Marr, American Journeys - Don Watson. Visit www.arts.gov.au/pmliteraryawards for details of the shortlisted books. More than 250 entries were received for the 2009 Prime Minister's Literary Awards. Winners receive a tax free prize of $100,000 each in the fiction and non-fiction categories.

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