The infamous "seven-year itch" has hit Wagga's citywide book club with this year's author-in-conversation gala set to take a very different tone this month.
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The One Book, One Wagga club was looking to eclipse previous readership records after Charlotte Wood's new release The Weekend was named the book of choice in February.
"Physical copies haven't gone in or out of the library since early March [due to the COVID-19 lockdown]," said Riverina Library's Christine Bolton.
"It's been going for seven years now, so there is such thing as the seven-year itch, perhaps it was bound to happen."
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Though the library's supply of hard copies has not moved in a month, there still has been activity in the loaning of digital copies.
But unfortunately, due to the health crisis, the readership is now no longer expected to break previous records.
"We had more than 400 readers before all of this happened so we were tracking well," Ms Bolton said.
"The only other time we've had those strong numbers was a few years back when we read Leanne Moriarity's book.
"We got about 800 readers by the end."
Every year at the end of the reading season, the library hosts a dinner gala with the author. This year, it was due to be held on May 29, but with the gathering restrictions still in place, it will be migrated online.
"It will be an in-conversation video between Amy Heap [from the library] and Charlotte [Wood]," Ms Bolton said.
"We'll be recording it, we were hoping to do it live but Charlotte lives in an area where the internet is not fab."
Until May 15, curious readers can have the chance to enter a question via the library website, for the author to answer.
The conversations video will also be streamed free-of-charge on May 29 thanks to the contributions of the Friends Of Wagga City Library group - the same collective that donates the chosen title to the library each year.
"They've agreed to help us cover costs that won't be recouped through the dinner this year," Ms Bolton said.
"We're very grateful."
But while a lot of the usual readers may have missed out on the opportunity to devour the title ahead of the 'dinner', Ms Bolton is encouraging the masses to put The Weekend on the top of their post-pandemic reading list.
"You can watch the interview and hopefully that will inspire many to read it, we'll have it available after May anyway," she said.
"The conversations tend to focus on the early iterations of the author's careers, finding out about their trajectory in writing, the second part of it is more about the book club so potentially there will be some spoilers.
"We could warn people in the video about that."