Today is International Mother Language Day, a day that commemorates the death, in 1952, of students from Dhaka University who were killed by Pakistani police during the Bengali Language Movement protests (the image below is the monument to the students' courage). Wade Davis described languages as old growth forests of the mind, a metaphor which makes complete sense if you consider the relationship between languages and culture, languages and society, languages and faith, languages and ... well, everything.

All over the College there are posters asking, How Many Will You Get? - referring, of course, to the roses that will be distributed with much fun and laughter this evening at the Valentine's Day supper. I think it might be a better idea, maybe next year, to ask the question, How Many Will You Give? For some of us, Valentine's Day isn't lighthearted and romantic, but fraught with pressure. One way around that is to decide whether or not you want to be a part of what is, basically, a consumer-driven 'celebration'. And if you decide to join in, don't wait anxiously to be chosen - you be the Valentine to your friends and family. Or just avoid the whole issue: come to the media centre, curl up with a good book and let it all wash over you!

When Rural Meets Urban is the theme for this year's English Olympiad - and, as ever, we have a large group of enthusiastic senior students of literature participating in the programme led by Mrs Peacock, which will culminate in a national examination on March 6. This post is primarily to support the Olympiad girls' preparation, as there is a research component built into this year's theme. Olympiad girls are urged to read the biographical and visual display outside the media centre to glean information, as well as to click on the links below to access useful Internet sites. A copy of Harry Owen's interview with Janet van Eeden has been stored in the Resources folder: go to Resources, open the English folder and then open the English Olympiad 2012 folder.

The poets selected for study are Chris Mann, Harry Owen and Don Mclennan. Because of his significance in the poets' lives, Mrs Peacock has included Guy Butler as background to the Olympiad, although he is not included in the anthology being used. And, because of the importance of Grahamstown to the poets, I am including a few links on the town itself.

Sometimes I hear, to my astonishment, a plaintive voice muttering from somewhere in the book stacks, "There's nothing to read," We have nearly 12 000 books, films and journals in our media centre: it's my unenviable December task to take each one off the shelves, scan it for stock-take, and put it back, so I know how abundant our collection is! But often, too much choice can be as overwhelming as too little choice is disheartening. The Form 2s and I have been talking about how to go about choosing a book to read and I thought I would remind us all.

• Consult your friends. Our friends will often have similar tastes and values; find out what is keeping their noses buried and ask if you can read it next.
• Listen when girls give book talks in class or do prepared readings. If something resonates, jot it down.
• Ask your teachers and the library staff. We are all here to help.
• Keep a list of recommended reads in your homework journal or on your i-Pad. Don't rely on your memory!
• Make a note of authors.
• Think about titles as you are scanning the shelves. Does one 'speak' to you?
• Consider the cover: if it is appealing, it will attract you - but remember that some wonderful books have dreadful covers. Try not to judge.
• Read the blurb - the writing on the back of the book. It's like a trailer for a film.
• Read the first chapter. Give the book a chance; try it on; see if it fits...
• Register on Good Reads, complete the reading assessment and let the website recommend your next book to you. Click on the link: http://www.goodreads.com/.

And finally, the new books on display are for issuing: please come in and ask if your next read happens to be in the window. See you at the issue desk soon!

Shortly, I suspect, I will begin to grow a beard and plait hand-rolled clay beads in my hair. This radical departure from my usual style is being influenced by my trawling through ( in the interests of research, so it's your fault if I begin to chant in a high-pitched, nasal sort of way) many, many New-Age Mayan Calendar sites on the Web, explaining why, according to the Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar, December 21, 2012 is such a crucial date. Some of you may have heard that because of a dreadful cataclysm, the world will end on that day.

Actually, according to my sources (chanting as I type), the Mayans never, ever suggested life as we know it would end on that date. Rather, The Time of Trial on Earth will come to an end (that's 'trial' in the singular, Matrics, not Trials) and there will be a Reawakening of the Divine Feminine. The latter sounds particularly promising for we women, so hooray for that.

I love this time of year. Exams finished today so there was a palpable sigh of relief in the corridors (and quite a few shrieks), the Carol Service is tomorrow night, the delicious Christmas lunch and traditional dip in the pool are tomorrow afternoon...all the annual events counting down to our girls being fetched, leaving on buses and planes or walking home to Begin the School Holidays!

Because of new technologies available to most of you, even though we are a full boarding school and many good friends don't see each other for five weeks of holidays, nearly everyone stays in touch through social media. It's a joy to be able follow one another on Twitter, or Facebook, to BBM or to post YouTube clips for friends to watch, to read one another's blogs - the list is growing longer all the time and means that our relationships can stay current. But I thought I would blog about being mindful of social media in the holidays, when it is easy for excitement to override caution - some of you might have noticed the posters I have put up in the side computer room and the photocopy room from KBSD on this subject?

Congratulations to our Form 2 girls, who officially completed their Battle of the Bookworms reading programme on Friday, November 11th. We held our BoB prize-giving this morning, attended by our Form 2 girls and their English teachers, as well the College Head, Mr Arguile, who was our guest of honour, and Mrs Crossman, our Head of English.

I have been Tweeting about books, Austen and various other tidbits, as Twitter is more portable than Joomla, but not getting to our blog site (I thought being a librarian was a very peaceful, Zen sort of position; lots of quiet reading and browsing and the odd stamping of a book. HA!). But do follow me on Twitter, if you have an account. And if you haven't, open one by clicking on this link: http://twitter.com. Once you have a Twitter account, you will find me at  http://twitter.com/#!/PamelaNeethling. This sounds horribly Me!Me!Me!, which it isn't: I Tweet solely about books, current affairs and global issues that I think will be of interest to our community. I re-Tweet articles that I think might make good reading, such as one from the Guardian today speculating that Jane Austen might have been the victim of arsenic poisoning.

Examination-eerieness has settled over the College. Either that, or the senior girls are responsible for very lively lessons and lots of noise, because this morning, as the mist and mizzle blew in again, it was strangely silent in the new block. The media centre was packed this afternoon with groups of girls revising and reviewing their work - and teachers, red pens clutched in focused hands, marked and assessed from first thing this morning. So I think it is fair to assume that no one has time for a creative writing competition? Just in case, let me tell you about one. It is US$20 to enter, so you need to be serious about taking part. (If you wish to enter but don't know how to manage the online payment, speak to me - I can help you with that, as long as you have your parents' permission to have that sum put on your College account.) Narrative (http://www.narrativemagazine.com/node/149075) is an online magazine dedicated to story-telling in the digital age. The publication is holding a Fall Creative Writing Competition and there are some generous cash prizes on offer, in a variety of categories. Click on the link and give it a go (and the Lord of the Flies cover competition, too, please!). Note: the deadline is November 30th. There is no better way of refreshing your brain than shifting gear into something more creative...good luck.

At the end of October this year, the WWF-Vietnam Director went public with a heart-breaking announcement: The last Javan rhino in Vietnam has gone,  said Tran Thi Minh Hien. Please understand that gone is a euphemism for has been hunted, trapped, shot and slaughtered for its horn. Rhino horn is worth an insane US$30 000 on the black market that feeds (mainly) China and Vietnam's need for rhino horn for traditional medicines and 'cancer cures'. Black market, indeed. It doesn't get blacker than slaughtering unique, beautiful creatures that once lost, can never be replaced.

Once the most widespread of rhinos, Javan Rhinos lived on the islands of Java (which gave the animal its name), Sumatra, in India and China - across most of South East Asia, in fact. Despite living in the relative safety of Cat Tien National Park in Vietnam, the one, lone (and no doubt lonely) Javan Rhino there was confirmed dead early this year - another horn for the poachers to sell. Now that there are no more Javan Rhinos in Vietnam, the sole remaining population of about 50 animals lives on the island of Indonesia. Fifty Javan Rhinos left to try to survive a loss of habitat, disease,  limited genetic diversity and worst of all, hunting - and this set against the backdrop of our numbers reaching seven billion last week. 

This year is the 25th anniversary of the publication of Maus, Art Spiegelman's graphic novel that tells the story of the Jewish Holocaust in Nazi Germany, cleverly using mice, dogs, cats and pigs (Jews, Americans, Nazis and Poles, respectively). The only graphic novel/comic book to have won a Pulitzer Prize, Maus was inspired by Spiegelman's father, Vladek Spiegelman, a survivor of Auschwitz - and the anniversary of its publication has been celebrated with the release of a new book, MetaMaus. MetaMaus has been called an 'extravagaza': it's a big, fat volume of interviews, early sketches for the graphic novel, multiple references to Spiegelman's early influences...even a hyperlinked DVD.

For the Guardian reviewer, her favourite part of the MetaMaus? The rejection letters Spiegelman received in sack-loads from a number of well-known publishing houses and publishers, who must be kicking themselves black and blue in their glam corner offices in skyrise buildings the world over. It is good to remember that even the most successful writers had to start off somewhere; even the most lauded authors have been shown the (metaphorical) door occasionally, usually early in their careers when they are the most vulnerable and likely to give up.

Hands up if you have watched the animated (and charming) film, Ratatouille? Next question: what do we have in common with the brown rat that is the eponymous star of the film? Nope, it's not a taste for good food, nor is it a fondness for the romance of Paris, nor even the Sunday evening pleasure of watching a good rom-com. The answer: only Homo Sapiens Sapiens and Rattus Norvegicus, of all the species that live and have lived on our beautiful planet, have been able to breed billions of offspring.

Tomorrow, Monday, October 31st, is a vital date in our global history because it is the day when, according to the United Nations Population Fund - http://www.unfpa.org/ -  our world's population will tick over to SEVEN BILLION PEOPLE (and slightly fewer rats). The first time our world's population reached the billion mark was in 1804; it took another 123 years to double to two billion but after that? There was no stopping us. By 1960, we had reached three billion people, by 1974 the world was supporting four billion inhabitants, by 1987 the total was five billion and by 1999, the number was six billion. I am famously unskilled at mathematics, but even a dunce can do this sum: we are increasing our numbers at a terrifyingly fast rate. The global experts in world demographics suggest our third doubling is just around the corner, relatively speaking: 2023.

Many of us have read William Golding's iconic novel, Lord of the Flies, for pleasure (and if you haven't, add it to your Must Read list immediately!). Even more of us have studied the novel in our Form 4 year at St Anne's. This year is a very special year for Golding fans because it is his centenary year - he was born in 1911 - and to celebrate, there is an exciting competition open to anyone, anywhere in the world, who will be aged between 13 years and 16 years on January 12, 2012. Golding's publishers, Faber, and the Guardian are planning a new edition of the novel in 2012, and they are looking for younger artists to design an artwork, which will be used as the new cover on the new edition of Lord of the Flies! (Have a look at the official Golding website: http://www.william-golding.co.uk/)

Interested? Go to http://lordofthefliescover.com/ - all of the information about the competition is available on the website, including examples of previous covers so that you can be sure that your inspiration is entirely fresh and original. Entries must be submitted electronically, via this website: no other means of submission will be considered. The artwork you submit, should you enter, must follow the illustration brief, which can be downloaded as a PDF from the website - or pop into the media centre and borrow mine. (Sadly, I am too old to enter...)

On October 4th of this year, Nobel Prize history was made. Women do not often enjoy the honour of being awarded Nobel Prizes, which have been distributed anually since 1901 in the fields of chemistry, physics, literature, medicine and to men or women who work for peace. (Read more about the history of the Nobel Prize and what the organisation's aims are at www.nobelprize.org/.) Only 43 women have won Nobel Prizes, between 1901 and 2011 - although Marie Curie has the distinction of having won two.

But this year, three women, jointly, won the Nobel Prize for Peace for their efforts promoting and encouraging non-violence, whilst being voices that have resonated for the rights of humans, regardless of gender, race or religion, in their communities and around the world. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who is president of Liberia, Leymah Gbomec and Tawakkul Karman, a Yemeni campaigner for women's rights and press freedom, are role-models and an inspiration to women and girls all over the world; we are proud of them and the changes they are making in their countries.

The winner of this year's Man Booker prize (http://themanbookerprize.com/), arguably one of the most prestigious - and lucrative - awards in the literary world, was announced last Tuesday (October 18th) in London. Julian Barnes, four-times-nominee, who has previously refered to the prize as posh bingo, won with his 150 page novel, The Sense of an Ending. Employing what critics call the miniaturist technique, the novel tells of a friendship that endures between two school boys into adulthood, before becoming complicated by relationships, sex, suicide and ultimately, the imperfections of memory. The novel has also sparked a very interesting debate on Twitter and in the press, both online and hard copy, around what constitutes a novel as opposed to a novella. Read one of the articles in The Guardian on this topic: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/oct/19/julian-barnes-novel-or-novella.

I fear what might be of greatest interest to one or two, or three or four, of our senior girls, however, is the length of Barnes' novel (or novella - where will you stand in the debate?). A few, a very few, of our senior girls seem to be selecting their personal reading based on a text's brevity rather than how it will add value to their lives and insight to their worlds. Many of us seem to live time-starved lives and we must definitely plan our lengthier reads for periods of less pressure. But the key verb is plan.

How often do we finish a novel we have thoroughly enjoyed, only to be stumped by what to read next? Of course, we can consult fellow reader friends, our English teacher or the library staff and media centre monitors, pour over the lists displayed on the media centre walls or stare hopefully at the displays. However, the danger is if we don't find another novel quickly, in our busy lives it is too easy to let weeks go by and get out of the habit of daily reading. But now there is another way of sourcing what we will enjoy reading and, importantly, maintaining and adding to those lists all the time.

A favourite book site of mine is www.goodreads.com/. The URL says it all: it is a site all about reading and recommending good books. And it gets better! Goodreads is now offering personalised recommendations, because their technicians (aka wizards) have developed some kind of brilliant proprietary algorithms to use over 20 billion data points (please ask your Maths teacher; do not ask me) that can analyse your input and create suggested books lists for you.

I am cheering through clenched teeth, as this is my third attempt at posting our first media centre blog entry (I am not familiar with Joomla; in my case, it's more like Gloomla) so I am going to stop trying to add hyper-links. All that happens is, like the Starship Enterprise, my blog warp-speeds into hyper-space, never to be seen again, and I go puce with frustration, like the portly Captain Kirk. So, everyone, something to look forward to next week: links to click on that will take you to websites that I would love you to see.  If, I mean, when I mention anything interesting for now, Google it.  And watch this space (I love a little pun) next week.

Currently, we are focusing on Breast Cancer Awareness month. Read the  informative, positive display reminding everyone with breasts (that's you, too, any chaps because men also get breast cancer) to check your breasts once a month, because if caught early, breast cancer can often be cured. Inside, as well as  the Rugby World Cup (join us for a wallaby braai on Sunday?), we are celebrating our girls' creativity. A number of our Forms 4 to 6 girls did very well in the Douglas Livingstone Creative Writing Competition; their poems and short stories are on display, as well as some background to the competition, founded to honour the eponymous Kwazulu-Natal poet. Spend a few minutes reading their entries. Some of the Form 3s have crafted gorgeous masks and invitations to the Capulet's ball, to complement their study of Romeo and Juliet.  The Battle of the Bookworms display is spurring on the Form 2s in their reading.