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The Bookshelf

ABC (Australia)

What are you reading, loving or being challenged by? We review the latest in fiction for dedicated readers and for those who wish they read more and join out monthly Book Club on Facebook.

Location:

Brisbane, QLD

Description:

What are you reading, loving or being challenged by? We review the latest in fiction for dedicated readers and for those who wish they read more and join out monthly Book Club on Facebook.

Language:

English

Contact:

Books + ABC Radio National GPO Box 9994 Brisbane 4001


Episodes
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Dystopias, ship's monsters and trees: Claire G Coleman, Jokha Alharthi, Jess Kidd and Jane Rawson

7/8/2022
Australian dystopias, historical shipwrecks and women's lives in Oman: reading Claire G Coleman's Enclave, Jokha Alharthi's Bitter Orange Tree and Jess Kidd's The Night Ship with guests novelist Sally Piper and essayist Eda Gunaydin; and Jane Rawson on her A History of Dreams and its influences

Duration:00:57:39

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The Book Club: Celebrating Australian literature for the ABC's 90th

7/1/2022
Reading Alexis Wright's Carpentaria and Patrick White's The Vivisector with critic Geordie Williamson - and with words from the writers themselves, as well as other voices and commentators from the ABC Archives

Duration:00:53:42

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Frank Moorhouse from the ABC Archives: podcast special

6/27/2022
Vale Frank Moorhouse, journalist, essayist, shortstory writer and novelist. Remembering the writer with his friend, Angelo Loukakis, and with archival interviews from 1980 (The Everlasting Secret Family) and 2000 (Dark Palace, the second in the Edith Campbell Berry trilogy, which went on to win the 2001 Miles Franklin Literary Award)

Duration:01:05:33

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A Métis family tree and a Sydney Leprosarium: Katherena Vermette's The Strangers and Eleanor Limprecht's The Coast

6/24/2022
A tough and poetic family story of the Métis (Michif) people of Canada in Katherena Vermette's The Strangers; and exclusion and compassion in Australian history, with a novel set in a lazaret, in Eleanor Limprecht's The Coast (read by historian Dr Ian Hoskins)

Duration:00:53:59

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Abomination, modernism and crime: new fiction from Ashley Goldberg, Michelle Cahill and Matthew Spencer

6/17/2022
Three books by Australian authors: crime in Sydney in Matthew Spencer's Black River; rewriting a sidelined character from a classic of modernism, in Michelle Cahill's Daisy and Woolf, and friendship and exile in an Orthodox Jewish community in Melbourne in Ashley Goldberg's Abomination, with guests writer Kari Gislason and literary interviewer Michaela Kalowski

Duration:00:59:51

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Racecourses, race, sex work and exile: new fiction from Geraldine Brooks, Leila Mottley and Zaheda Ghani

6/10/2022
Reading Geraldine Brooks' Horse, Leila Mottley's Nightcrawling and Zaheda Ghani's Pomegranate and Fig with journalist, music writer and memoirist Mawunyo Gbogbo (Hip Hop and Hymns) and CEO of the Australian Muslim Women's Centre for Human Rights, Diana Sayed

Duration:00:56:40

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The Book Club: Horses and their Riders

6/3/2022
Reading Gillian Mears' 2011 novel Foal’s Bread and Craig Sherborne's recent release The Grass Hotel with critic and biographer Bernadette Brennan and writer and cultural historian Luke Stegemann

Duration:01:03:19

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Ireland, Italy, England and Oz: four bold new works of fiction

5/27/2022
Reading Brendan Colley's The Signal Line, Louise Kennedy's Trespasses, Lauren John Joseph's At Certain Points We Touch and Jonathan Bazzi's Fever with novelists Nigel Featherstone (My Heart is a Little Wild Thing) and Ellie O'Neill (Family Matters)

Duration:00:54:06

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From the Sydney Writers Festival: The Joy of Re-reading

5/25/2022
Why do we read and reread? And how does rereading read us? From the Sydney Writers Festival, Kate was onstage with bibliomemoirist Ruth Wilson and scholar Bernadette Brennan

Duration:00:51:36

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From the Sydney Writers Festival: with Jackie Huggins, Damon Galgut and George Haddad

5/20/2022
In front of an audience, and with plenty of book recommendations, Kate and Cassie are onstage with historian and biographer Jackie Huggins and novelists Damon Galgut and George Haddad

Duration:00:53:52

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Making umbrellas in the afterlife: New books from Steve Toltz, Emiliano Monge and Domonique Wilson

5/13/2022
Reading Steve Toltz's Here Goes Nothing, Emiliano Monge's What Goes Unsaid and Dominique Wilson's Orphan Rock with Lauren Chater (The Winter Dress) and Jonty Claypole (Words Fail Us: In Defence of Disfluency)

Duration:00:57:24

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Soap, silences and happy stories (maybe): new fiction from Paddy O'Reilly, Patrick Gale and Norman Erikson Pasaribu

5/6/2022
Reading Paddy O’Reilly's Other Houses, Patrick Gale's Mother’s Boy and Norman Erikson Pasaribu's Happy Stories, Mostly with writers Ennis Ćehić (Sadvertising) and Hilde Hinton (A Solitary Walk on the Moon)

Duration:00:53:08

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The Book Club: Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad & The Candy House

4/29/2022
Reading Jennifer Egan's 2010 novel A Visit from the Goon Squad and her newly-released The Candy House, with rock'n'roll reader Tim Rogers and novelist Rhett Davis

Duration:00:54:05

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A moon colony, T S Eliot, Shakespeare and pain: new fiction from Emily St John Mandel, Steven Carroll and Mona Awad

4/22/2022
Cassie is away this week, so Kate is joined by the ABC's Tiger Webb: reading Emily St John Mandel's Sea of Tranquility, Steven Carroll's Goodnight, Vivienne, Goodnight, and Mona Awad's All’s Well, with novelist Rhett Davis and critic Nicole Abadee

Duration:00:52:45

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A Glasgow teenager, a Roman emperor and a sneaky revolutionary: new books by Douglas Stuart, Julian Barnes and Charmian Clift

4/15/2022
Reading Douglas Stuart's Young Mungo, Julian Barnes' Elizabeth Finch and Charmian Clift's Sneaky Little Revolutions: Selected Essays with writers Nadia Wheatley and Ruth Wilson (The Jane Austen Remedy)

Duration:00:54:51

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A snowy Tokyo, a haunted house and a cracked swimming pool: books by Jessica Au, John Darnielle and Julie Otsuka

4/8/2022
Reading Jessica Au's Cold Enough for Snow, John Darnielle's Devil House and Julie Otsuka's The Swimmers with novelists Anna Downes and Diana Reid.

Duration:00:53:21

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The Book Club: reading New Zealand through Keri Hulmes' The Bone People + Lloyd Jones' The Fish

4/1/2022
Children, violence, landscape, and powerful and strange writing: we're talking fiction from New Zealand with the director of Wellington's Verb Writers' Festival Claire Mabey and novelist Sam Coley. Rereading Keri Hulmes' The Bone People from 1984 and the newly-released The Fish by Lloyd Jones. Passion, laughter, and even some tears

Duration:00:57:14

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Mexico, dystopian exile, and Oz suburbia: new fiction from Fernanda Melchor, Toni Jordan and Tom Watson

3/25/2022
Reading Mexican writer Fernanda Melchor's Paradais, Australian Toni Jordan's Dinner with the Schnabels and English debut novelist Tom Watson's Metronome

Duration:00:53:36

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Iceland, Nebraska and the Sunshine Coast: new fiction from Robert Lukins, Kári Gíslason and Harlan Coben

3/18/2022
Reading Robert Lukins' Loveland, Kári Gíslason's The Sorrow Stone and Harlan Coben's The Match with crime writer Loraine Peck (The Second Son) and mediaeval Icelandic literature specialist Lisa Bennett

Duration:00:57:32

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New fiction from Ireland and New Zealand

3/11/2022
Reading Irish novel The Colony by Audrey Magee, and two New Zealand novels, Becky Manawatu's Auē and Sue Orr's Loop Tracks, with guests publisher Jemma Birrell and novelist Lyn Yeowart

Duration:00:56:55