The Bookshelf

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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.

ABC Radio


    • Jul 9, 2022 LATEST EPISODE
    • weekly NEW EPISODES
    • 50m AVG DURATION
    • 270 EPISODES


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    Latest episodes from The Bookshelf

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

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 9, 2022 57:39


    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

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

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 2, 2022 54:07


    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

    Frank Moorhouse from the ABC Archives: podcast special

    Play Episode Listen Later Jun 27, 2022 65:39


    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)

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

    Play Episode Listen Later Jun 25, 2022 54:05


    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)

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

    Play Episode Listen Later Jun 18, 2022 59:58


    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

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

    Play Episode Listen Later Jun 11, 2022 57:30


    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

    The Book Club: Horses and their Riders

    Play Episode Listen Later Jun 4, 2022 63:28


    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

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

    Play Episode Listen Later May 28, 2022 54:06


    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)

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

    Play Episode Listen Later May 25, 2022 51:48


    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

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

    Play Episode Listen Later May 21, 2022 54:05


    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

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

    Play Episode Listen Later May 14, 2022 57:32


    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)

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

    Play Episode Listen Later May 7, 2022 54:06


    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)

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

    Play Episode Listen Later Apr 30, 2022 55:19


    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

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

    Play Episode Listen Later Apr 23, 2022 54:06


    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

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

    Play Episode Listen Later Apr 16, 2022 55:46


    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)

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

    Play Episode Listen Later Apr 9, 2022 53:33


    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.

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

    Play Episode Listen Later Apr 1, 2022 57:14


    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

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

    Play Episode Listen Later Apr 1, 2022 57:14


    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

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

    Play Episode Listen Later Mar 25, 2022 53:43


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

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

    Play Episode Listen Later Mar 18, 2022 57:43


    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

    New fiction from Ireland and New Zealand

    Play Episode Listen Later Mar 11, 2022 56:55


    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

    The Book Club: Monica Ali's Brick Lane and Love Marriage

    Play Episode Listen Later Mar 4, 2022 55:54


    Reading Monica Ali's 2003 debut novel, Brick Lane and latest release, Love Marriage with guests writer Roanna Gonsalves and RN's Richard Aedy. Love, marriage, migration, displacement, drama, storytelling.

    New fiction from Omar Sakr, Karen Joy Fowler and Aoife Clifford

    Play Episode Listen Later Feb 25, 2022 54:05


    Western Sydney, coastal Victoria and nineteenth-century America: reading Omar Sakr's Son of Sin, Karen Joy Fowler's Booth and Aoife Clifford's When We Fall with guests historian Ethan Blue and crime afficionado Felix Shannon

    Reading Korean history, fierce Italian parents and a theme park of funerary futures

    Play Episode Listen Later Feb 18, 2022 56:57


    Reading Sequoia Nagamatsu's How High We Go in the Dark, Juhea Kim's Beasts of a Little Land and Claudia Durastanti, Strangers I Know with guests Melissa Fulton from The Big Issue and literary studies academic Julian Novitz

    Reading our way to islands, monsters, balloons, snowscapes, heroes and more

    Play Episode Listen Later Feb 11, 2022 54:07


    Reading Emily Brugman's The Islands, Vanessa Len's Only a Monster and Hélène Gaudy's A World With No Shore (translated by Stephanie Smee) with writers Michelle Law and Molly Murn

    The Book Club: Rebecca and Rebecca

    Play Episode Listen Later Feb 4, 2022 54:08


    Reading Daphne du Maurier's 1938 novel, Rebecca, and Graeme Macrae Burnet's Case Study (which includes a character in the mid 1960s who takes on a Rebecca persona in direct response to du Maurier's novel) - with guests literary lecturer Susannah Fullerton and crime writer Chris Hammer

    Reading Hanya Yanagihara, Gary Shteyngart and Nikki May

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 28, 2022 54:11


    Reading Hanya Yanigahara's To Paradise, Gary Shteyngart's Our Country Friends and Nikki May's Wahala with novelist and critic Jessie Tu and poet and performer Geoff Forrester (whose alter ego, Tug Dumbly, also offers up a poem)

    Pip Williams and The Dictionary of Lost Words

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 28, 2022 54:05


    A special edition of The Bookshelf, with writer Pip Williams speaking to Kate about her career, research, year in Italy, and interest in the history of words and their visibility, leading to the novel The Dictionary of Lost Words (a conversation from the 2021 Brisbane Writers Festival, online).

    Summer Reads: Hannah Kent, Caleb Azumah Nelson, Sunjeev Sahota and Aravind Adiga

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 21, 2022 54:10


    Kate and Cassie read Hannah Kent's Devotion; RN's Daniel Browning reads Caleb Azumah Nelson's Open Water; novelist Rashida Murphy reads Sunjeev Sahota's China Room; and novelist Aravind Adiga on Australian fiction

    The Bookshelf that Made Me: Siri Hustvedt & Jennifer Mills

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 20, 2022 34:20


    Reading, writers, family, art and mentors in Siri Hustvedt's essay collection, Mothers, Fathers and Others; and dissipating ghosts, cities and stories in Jennifer Mills' The Airways

    Summer Reads: Patricia Lockwood, Ann Patchett, Simon Winchester, Suyi Davies Okungbowa and Jay Kristoff

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 14, 2022 54:09


    Kate and Cassie read Patricia Lockwood's No One is Talking About This; Eugen Bacon on Suyi Davies Okungbowa's Son of the Storm; a story from Ann Patchett's These Precious Days; Simon Winchester discussing Anthony Trollope in remote China; and Jay Kristoff on the books that shaped his latest, Empire of the Vampire

    The Bookshelf that Made Me: Tilly Lawless & Jon McGregor

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 13, 2022 28:35


    Tilly Lawless on her debut novel Nothing but My Body, and her reading inspiration; and Jon McGregor on aphasia and Antarctica, in his Lean Fall Stand

    Summer Reads: James Ellroy, Jhumpa Lahiri, Guillermo Martinez and Charlotte McConaghy

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 7, 2022 54:06


    Kate and Cassie on James Ellroy's Widespread Panic; Debra Oswald on Jhumpa Lahiri's Whereabouts; Robert Gott on Guillermo Martinez' The Oxford Brotherhood and Charlotte McConaghy with the Bookshelf that Made Me (and her book, Once There Were Wolves)

    The Bookshelf that Made Me: R W R Mcdonald & Jacqueline Bublitz

    Play Episode Listen Later Jan 6, 2022 28:36


    Crime writers R W R McDonald (The Nancys, Nancy Business) and Jacqueline Bublitz (Before you Knew My Name) on the books that they are writing against, in concert with, inspired by, and so on (it's a complicated business).

    Summer Reading: a wild party, Beowulf, and Gillian Mears

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 31, 2021 54:06


    Biographer Bernadette Brennan on why we should read and know Australian writer Gillian Mears; music writer Mark Mordue on Taylor Jenkins Reid's Malibu Rising, and mediaevalist Louise D'Arcens on a new translation of Beowulf

    The Bookshelf that Made Me: Colm Tóibín and Emily Gale

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 30, 2021 28:36


    A fictional biography of German Nobel Prize winning writer Thomas Manne (and his extraordinary family) by Irish writer Colm Tóibín, with The Magician; and a roadtrip across America in Emily Gale's Wild Abandon. But what do these writers read?

    Summer Reading: Jane Austen, Joan Silber, Kevin Barry and Elizabeth Strout

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 24, 2021 54:06


    A new interview with Elizabeth Strout about Oh, William! and the Bookshelf that Made Her; and favourite review discussions from the year about Jane Austen, Joan Silber and Kevin Barry with readers Ruth Wilson and Michael McGirr

    The Bookshelf That Made Me: Sarah Winman and Nick Earls

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 23, 2021 28:36


    Writers and their bookshelves. Sarah Winman's Still Life moves between England and Florence, while Nick Earls' Empires travels from Brisbane to Alaska, London, Vienna and Hong Kong. But what are the books that shaped these novels and these writers?

    The Bookshelf That Made Me: Ken Follett, Rose Tremain, Amie Kaufman & Jaclyn Moriarty

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 17, 2021 60:32


    What are the books that have shaped these writers and (in particular) their latest works? Ken Follett, Rose Tremaine, Amie Kaufman & Jaclyn Moriarty

    Best Reads 2021 Part 2: General Adult Fiction

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 10, 2021 54:05


    Reading recommendations from writer and critic Beejay Silcox, crime writer Christian White and memoirist Lech Blaine. What are the books they have especially admired this year?

    Claudia Karvan and the Books that Made Us: Pod Extra

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 8, 2021 20:59


    Actor Claudia Karvan speaks to Kate Evans about her reading life and the Books That Made Us

    The Book Club: John Hughes' The Dogs + Kate Grenville's The Secret River

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 3, 2021 54:04


    Reading John Hughes' The Dogs and Kate Grenville's The Secret River with historian David Hunt and writer and philosopher Michael McGirr

    Classic Australian Novels - Alexis Wright's Carpentaria

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 30, 2021 21:02


    Introducing Classic Australian Novels. A collection of interviews from the ABC Archives with Australian authors about their most significant work. In 2007 Alexis Wright won the Miles Franklin Award for her epic novel Carpentaria, set in and around the mythical town of Desperance in Queensland's Gulf Country.

    Classic Australian Novels - Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 30, 2021 37:55


    Introducing Classic Australian Novels. A collection of interviews from the ABC Archives with Australian authors about their most significant work. In True History of the Kelly Gang Peter Carey took a mythic Australian story and turned it into a Booker Prize winning novel.

    Classic Australian Novels - Richard Flanagan's Gould's Book of Fish

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 30, 2021 13:46


    Introducing Classic Australian Novels. A collection of interviews from the ABC Archives with Australian authors about their most significant work. With his first two novels Richard Flanagan had already garnered a reputation as great author. But then in 2001 the Tasmanian writer consolidated his literary reputation, and his gift for great titles, with Gould's Book of Fish.

    Classic Australian Novels - Michelle de Kretser's Questions of Travel

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 30, 2021 16:00


    Introducing Classic Australian Novels. A collection of interviews from the ABC Archives with Australian authors about their most significant work. The politics and philosophy of tourism are at the core of Michelle de Kretser's book Questions of Travel which charts the lives of two characters living worlds apart.

    Classic Australian Novels - Helen Garner's Monkey Grip

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 30, 2021 16:41


    Introducing Classic Australian Novels. A collection of interviews from the ABC Archives with Australian authors about their most significant work. Monkey Grip ushered in a new voice in Australian Literature. Released in 1977 it was Helen Garner's first novel and the first time Australians had read such a frank account of bohemian life in Melbourne's inner north.

    Classic Australian Novels - Kim Scott's That Deadman Dance

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 30, 2021 24:00


    Introducing Classic Australian Novels. A collection of interviews from the ABC Archives with Australian authors about their most significant work. That Deadman Dance was published in 2010 and is the third novel from Miles Franklin winner Kim Scott. Set in the Western Australian whaling port of Albany in the early 1800's it's an exploration of culture, first impressions, and the so called 'friendly frontier'.

    Classic Australian Novels - Kate Grenville's The Secret River

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 30, 2021 27:21


    Introducing Classic Australian Novels. A collection of interviews from the ABC Archives with Australian authors about their most significant work. Kate Grenville's The Secret River released in 2005 became an instant classic, inspiring a sequel, a television series, and a theatre production.

    Best Reads 2021 Part 1: Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 26, 2021 54:05


    Reading recommendations from writers Emily Gale and Tristan Bancks (both of whom write for both teens and younger readers); and the Books That Made Us Youth Fiction Prize. (Part 2 of our best reads recommendation on 10 December)

    On Christos Tsiolkas' 7 ½, Vietnamese smoky ghosts & a helluva book

    Play Episode Listen Later Nov 19, 2021 53:57


    On Christos Tsiolkas' 7 ½: A Novel, Violet Kupersmith's Build your House Around my Body and Jason Mott's Hell of a Book with comedian and writer Matt Okine and writer and producer Sheila Ngọc Phạm

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