The Bookshow Blog

Natasha Mitchell’s best reads

Monday, December 13th, 2010

Natasha Mitchell, Presenter & producer, All in the Mind, ABC Radio National. Science journalist.

My year is jam-packed with non-fiction, sometimes two even three solid science books in a week for interviews, so my Summer reading is all about blissing out on novels. A grassy patch of mottled shade, a glass and a book. Heaven.

The bedside table is already tetering with some of my possibles (admittedly, some are left over from last year’s must reads!)

Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna is there, long awaited since her stunning saga, The Poisonwood Bible.

Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is too.  I’m itching to see the Swedish film of the first in Larsson’s hit-trilogy, but I’m a “read-the-book-first” kind of girl, and relish the opportunity to generate my own vivid imaginings about characters before a film does it for me.

I just picked up a copy of Ian Thomson’s biography of Primo Levi in a second-hand bookshop. Levi is a man I’m compelled to know more about, and this, alongwith finishing Rebecca Skloot’s acclaimed The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, might be my concession to non-fiction this silly season. Ten years in the sleuthing and writing, Skloot’s powerful work stands out as a beacon of science writing in 2010.

If you haven’t read Cordelia Fine’s Delusions of Gender and Rebecca Jordan-Young’s Brainstorms, I recommend them from my reads this year, for their foray into the hot debate over the science of sex differences.

Summer is all about the music too, so I’ll be flicking through Goodbye 20th Century: A Biography of Sonic Youth and Paul Kelly’s How to Make Gravy. 

And, I can’t resist including a picture book. I’m learning about gardening, and have a passion for Australian natives. 2010 has been my personal festival of the gardening book, including the spectacle that is Wildflower Country: Discovering Biodiversity in Australia’s Southwest. The work of award-winning photographers Stanley and Kaisa Breeden reminds me of the triffid-like pictures of 19th Century German sculptor and photographer Karl Blossfeldt. Flowers come alive with personality – gorgeous and grotesque – as if almost human.

This year I also caught up with Tim Winton’s Breath, and Sonya Hartnett’s Butterfly, both of which I loved for their dark evocations of Australian childhood. Quite melancholy, even chilling, but beautiful too.

What do you think I should read in the fiction stakes this Summer? I’d love your recommendations.

Happy reading!

Tags: ABC Radio National, fiction, non-fiction, summer reading
Posted in Radio National's best reads | 4 Comments »

Author hunt in Paris

Thursday, December 2nd, 2010

Jemma Birrell, event organiser, Shakespeare and Company, Paris

I spoke to Chales Recoursé recently, the French editor of Douglas Coupland and translator of David Forster Wallace. He’s going to come and read an extract of his French translation of Infinite Jest next April at Shakespeare and Company in Paris to celebrate the publication of the new Foster Wallace book The Grey King. He was lovely. Lovely! Even in response to my accented overly-enthusiastic-anglophone French. This was a surprise. No patronizing-you’re-not-French-why-are-you-trying-to-speak-our-language tone there…

Working at Shakespeare and Company gives me an unusual position in a sort of no-man’s land between the French and English publishing worlds. We’re not in the heart of either but dabble in and out of both. I’ve been speaking to various French publishers over the last few years, trying to find authors to tap dance in the bookshop. Trying to hunt down anglophone authors coming to Paris is a tricky thing and not easy when you don’t have a budget. And why would French publishers want to organise an event at an English bookshop where there are zero copies of the French editons to sell? I send off emails, randomly call and sometimes go and visit these French publishers. (more…)

Tags: Adam Haslett, Chales Recourse, Dinaw Mengestu, English, Europe, fiction, French, Nam Le, Nick Flynn, publishing, Shakespeare and Company, Wells Tower
Posted in Paris | No Comments »

Anita Barraud’s best reads

Thursday, December 2nd, 2010

Anita Barraud, Walkley winner. Producer, The Book Show ABC Radio National

This has been a year for catching up on some, but not nearly enough, of the current fiction. Until I started on The Book Show in April this year I lived mainly in the non-fiction world apart from the occasional thriller (I like Jesse Kellerman particularly Brutal Art about outsider art) or revisting my best loved classics read as a young teen and therefore all the more imbedded (there was an amazing librarian at my school) such as Flann O’Brien’s wonderful The Third Policeman, The Fall by Camus, Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, The Tin Drum by Gunther Grass – sometimes poetry – WB Yeats is a favourite as well as modern poets like Charles Simic and sometimes reading well loved children’s stories to young friends. Dido Twite is one of my favourite girl characters from Joan Aitken and her Wolves Chronicles. I tried reading The Wolves of Willoughby Chase to a seven year old boy recently but he wriggled too much so I had to resort to the old faithful – Roald Dahl. Her language is old fashioned but for me that’s the charm.

But in my new role as a producer on The Book Show, I’ve come across some good contemporary reads. I really enjoyed Paul Harding’s The Tinker. It’s a small book less than 200 pages but meaty. It was the surprise award for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction this year. When I was reading it I was humming with its rhythm- sometimes I would re-read a page just for its lilt. The plot sounds simple and even derivative – it’s set in New England across a couple of generations with a Maine clock repairer George Washington Howard looking on his life in the past and present as he counts down to his death. And there are further reflections from his father, the tinker Howard Crosby, as well as other characters’ thoughts and philosophies and even comments on those. I even accepted the idea of the clock ticking down George Washington’s dying minutes… It came as no surprise to read that his mentor was Marilynne Robinson. (more…)

Tags: classic fiction, fiction, literary criticism
Posted in Radio National's best reads | No Comments »

Chris Flynn reviews Great House by Nicole Krauss

Wednesday, December 1st, 2010

Having a mentor like the Russian born poet Joseph Brodsky is a good start to your literary career. American writer Nicole Krauss studied under him at Stanford University.

This year she was named one of the New Yorkers top ‘20 Great Writers under 40′. She’s the author of The History of Love and Man Walks into the Room. Her latest book Great House was a finalist in the National Book Awards this year.

Great House is told in four parts held together by the common thread of a shared desk.

Sitting at that desk, our reviewer Chris Flynn.

I’m usually very sceptical with regards to novels about writing, or writers. When a novelist chooses to make their main character another novelist, who invariably is struggling to pen their next masterpiece, I immediately find myself thinking that they really need to get out more. It must be tricky avoiding such a pitfall in Nicole Krauss’s house though – her husband is Jonathan Safran Foer and they both appear on the New Yorker’s much talked about ‘20 Great Writers Under 40′ list. (more…)

Tags: book review, Chris Flynn, fiction, Great House, Nicole Krauss
Posted in Uncategorized, book reviews | No Comments »

Julie Rigg’s best reads

Friday, November 26th, 2010

Julie Rigg, Presenter, MovieTime, ABC Radio National

It is Ulverton, by Adam Thorpe, a British poet and novelist. It was first published in 1992, and I came across it in a second hand edition.

It’s a fascinating, brilliantly written exploration of 350 years of British history, told through the different voices of inhabitants of one, fictional village. It begins at the time of the disbanding of Cromwell’s army, when a returning veteran is murdered by his wife and the man she married while he was away. It continues through the accounts of various characters, all beautifully captured. The voice of an illiterate woman whose son is waiting to be hanged, a clergyman obsessed with the morals of his parishioners; a group of farm labourers on trial min 1830 for smashing machinery, an adulterous lady of the manor writing to her lover; an incident on the eve of the great war when a squire pressures local men to come forward to volunteer, and one man refuses to be shamed into this…and more.

Thorpe has a wonderful ear for language; an eye for the small poetic detail: what he calls the “tilth” of history. This book gave me more pleasure than anything else I read this year. Chase down a copy if you can. I can’t wait to get it back and reread it.

Other constant joys: when I need cheering up, I turn to Terry Pratchett, who, despite early onset Alzheimer’s disease, managed to publish a new novel last year. His Discworld series never fails to make me laugh. For the uninitiated, it’s a fantasy world inhabited by all kinds of creatures… trolls, wizards, witches, zombies, and poor perplexed humans. It contains much pungent parody of our modern world, delicious wordplay, big philosophical questions ( some of his texts are used regularly in Philosophy classes in the UK), and an unfettered imagination.

I read Unseen Academicals last year, and am saving the latest I Shall Wear Midnight, being a completion nof the adventures of the young witch Tiffany Aching, for my summer reading treat.

Tags: Adam Thorpe, fiction, Ulverton
Posted in Radio National's best reads | No Comments »

Present tense fiction

Friday, October 1st, 2010

A rise in the use of the present tense in contemporary fiction has sparked a lively debate amongst writers. For example, half of the novels shortlisted for this year’s Man Booker Prize are written in the present tense. Some writers, like Philip Pullman of ‘Dark Materials’ fame – see it as nothing less than “an abdication of narrative responsibility” on the part of the story teller – a failure to tell us clearly what happened, what caused it and what the consequences were. He wrote this  about the topic. Former Booker judge, Philip Hensher, is not a fan of the style either.

Laura Miller wrote this article on the current fad and on Tuesday’s Book Show, Peter Mares canvassed the topic with her, listen here. Laura Miller is co-founder of the online magazine Salon.com and a regular Book Show guest. The discussion produced a lively response from Book Show listeners. Here’s a sample:

Hugo Robinson
It seems to me that the present tense has a place in fiction where appropriate. What really drives me mad is the way historians and discussions of history on radio and television use it. The so called “historical present” is hardly ever appropriate and so awkward and unnatural that those using it cannot do so consistently, but keep relapsing into the past and mixing the tenses. (more…)

Tags: fiction, Laura Miller, Man Booker Prize, Philip Hensher, Phillip Pullman, present tense
Posted in Trends | 1 Comment »