Speaker 1: Hi there, It's Ruby Jones and I'm back to introduce
Speaker 1: the last episode of Read This for twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: Schwartz Media's Books podcast is hosted by the editor of
Speaker 1: The Monthly, Michael Williams, and it's show about the books
Speaker 1: we love and the stories behind them. In this final
Speaker 1: episode for the year, host Michael Williams went to Fitzrow
Speaker 1: Pool in Melbourne's in and North to find out what
Speaker 1: people are reading now that summer is finally here coming
Speaker 1: up in just a moment, we went back to fitzroy Pool.
Speaker 2: There's a few things to note about fitzro Pool if
Speaker 2: you've got the time and you're not too busy scoping
Speaker 2: out a concrete perch at which to bake and take
Speaker 2: in the scene, or maybe just plunging into the water
Speaker 2: to escape the summer heat. This is as we noted
Speaker 2: when we've visited at the end of last year Helen
Speaker 2: Garnet Country. It's indelibly seared on the national literary consciousness
Speaker 2: by her Classic Monkey group. The pool was nearly shut
Speaker 2: down in the nineties by a local government who deemed
Speaker 2: it economically unviable. There was this community campaign full of
Speaker 2: locals and musicians and artists, and more than a few
Speaker 2: writers who fought successfully to save it. The famous painted
Speaker 2: sign up one end of the words aqua Profounder is
Speaker 2: slightly misspelt, a bastardized blending of Latin and Italian. Local
Speaker 2: law has it that it was painted in the nineteen
Speaker 2: fifties by this pool manager who'd grown tired of and
Speaker 2: I quote, hauling the kids of Italian migrants out of
Speaker 2: the deep end. It pops up again and again in
Speaker 2: our literature. Earlier this year, I was reading Jocksorong's magical
Speaker 2: new Fantastical history Cherrywood, and was delighted when the pool
Speaker 2: raided a mention. One of my nephews was equally delighted
Speaker 2: to discover it was the inspiration for Courtney Barnett's song
Speaker 2: aqua Profounder.
Speaker 3: A sill and laying to me, you to freestyle than switch?
Speaker 3: I could see dark cold hair.
Speaker 2: What a cultural impact this pool has had. So we
Speaker 2: are back again. It's our final episode audit of what
Speaker 2: the people lining the pool are reading. There are lots
Speaker 2: of phones, to be sure, and even more closed eyes
Speaker 2: and tired faces, just looking to forget the year that's
Speaker 2: been and soak up the sun instead of the literary greatness.
Speaker 2: But over there's a copy of Sally Rooney's Into Metso
Speaker 2: and a dog eared John Lecare lying battered in the sun.
Speaker 2: One handsome, middle aged bloke is so intensely reading To
Speaker 2: Kill a Mockingbird that he hasn't looked up no matter
Speaker 2: how many times we try to approach it. So that's it.
Speaker 2: Even though I'm loath to interrupt a content reader, I'm
Speaker 2: going to lean into my nosiest snoopiest self for the
Speaker 2: final read this of twenty twenty four. It's time to
Speaker 2: ask some of these people what they're reading now that
Speaker 2: summer is here. From Schwartz Media. I'm Michael Williams, and
Speaker 2: this is Read this show about the books we love
Speaker 2: and the long summer reading sessions ahead of us.
Speaker 4: This is Clara.
Speaker 5: Hi, I'm Charlie.
Speaker 2: Charlie.
Speaker 6: That's weak, Yeah, an Ally, that's a thing.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean I've only just picked it up. Really,
Speaker 7: I actually found it on the street, someone just left
Speaker 7: a box of books and I thought, why not, I'll
Speaker 7: give it a go.
Speaker 5: So, yeah, enjoy.
Speaker 2: Its fan five hour reading.
Speaker 5: Though pul side.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I'm not going to lie.
Speaker 7: It's a warm day and I'm kind of struggling through,
Speaker 7: but it's still pretty interesting. I mean, yeah, it's so far,
Speaker 7: you know, talking about her life in Paris, and yeah,
Speaker 7: I mean I'm enjoying it because I've come to Australia,
Speaker 7: you know, I got here like a month ago, and
Speaker 7: so she's talking about her travels and I'm kind of
Speaker 7: enjoying it.
Speaker 4: Really excellent.
Speaker 2: Well, I hope next time you pick up a box
Speaker 2: of books it's slightly less worthy and a little more
Speaker 2: conducive to like summertime.
Speaker 4: Ready.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think maybe I'll just give myself a really
Speaker 7: easy read after this and see what I can find.
Speaker 2: Oh well, best of Lack, thanks for chatting.
Speaker 7: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Do you mind if we haressled you while you're sitting
Speaker 2: in the pool. I'm going to sit down properly because
Speaker 2: I've discovered that my crouching has a shorter shelf life
Speaker 2: than I realized. If you could each say your names
Speaker 2: before your chat.
Speaker 6: I'm really Ruby, I'm babe, really.
Speaker 2: I understand you're reading the Slap at the moment. How
Speaker 2: are you going with it?
Speaker 9: I am loving the Slab. I've been meaning to read
Speaker 9: it for years, and a few friends are reading it recently.
Speaker 9: And it's so fun BINGI summer read Melbourne Cultural Commentary, loving.
Speaker 2: It as one that you've heard talked about for years.
Speaker 2: How does it measure up with the expectation, like is
Speaker 2: it is it more or less what you thought it
Speaker 2: was from the conversation around it, or is it a
Speaker 2: different beast?
Speaker 9: I think you know, my parents read it and they
Speaker 9: were really obsessed with it, and I always saw it
Speaker 9: on the bookshelf and kind of had it as like
Speaker 9: my parents' generation kind of story. But now maybe that
Speaker 9: I'm a bit older, like resonates a bit more and
Speaker 9: it's funny to imagine kind of our friendship group having
Speaker 9: having children and navigating these questions about private public school,
Speaker 9: you know, cultural clashes in suburban Melbourne. So loving it,
Speaker 9: loving it.
Speaker 2: Which of your friend's kids you would most like to hit?
Speaker 9: We were literally just talking about this. Who would it be?
Speaker 10: Which friend we did?
Speaker 9: It's a good like talking point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a good thing. Did you bring some little
Speaker 2: into that? I did?
Speaker 8: I did.
Speaker 10: I've got a couple of books with me. Actually, one
Speaker 10: of them is an advanced copy of Ritual by Chloe
Speaker 10: Elizabeth Wilson, which is coming out next year, which the
Speaker 10: whole stick is like imagine if.
Speaker 11: Your favorite cult beauty.
Speaker 12: Brand was actually a cult. So it's a lot of fun,
Speaker 12: it's very Melbourne.
Speaker 6: I'm loving it.
Speaker 12: And then I also brought a copy of the Shadow
Speaker 12: of the Wind by color through Safon, which I read
Speaker 12: many years ago, but I'm now trying to read in Spanish.
Speaker 2: You did a circuit before to kind of work out
Speaker 2: who had box and I saw the zaphon and then
Speaker 2: saw it was in the Spanish, and I was like,
Speaker 2: that's impressive. Someone's really committed that trying.
Speaker 12: There's a lot of Google Translate being picked up along
Speaker 12: the way.
Speaker 2: But were you a fan of Shadow of the Wind
Speaker 2: when you first read it?
Speaker 10: I adored it.
Speaker 12: Yeah, and I never went back and read like the
Speaker 12: second or the third, so hoping to get there on
Speaker 12: this round. But yeah, it was a beautiful book, like
Speaker 12: so Gothic and so fun to like imagine that barcel owner.
Speaker 4: Of the past. And did you bring a book to that?
Speaker 11: Yeah, I brought to I have I couldn't believe it
Speaker 11: by Shandlier and then unlicensed bootlegging as a creative practice.
Speaker 2: Why did you pick those two? And why did you
Speaker 2: bring two? Is one to back up in case the book.
Speaker 11: I just started Shawndlier's one, so I wasn't sure if
Speaker 11: I was gonna like it or not, but I think
Speaker 11: I will, And then the other ones more like Theory
Speaker 11: are theory.
Speaker 13: You never know what mood you're going.
Speaker 14: To be in.
Speaker 2: No, I'm the same. I'm repeatedly mocked for having multiple books,
Speaker 2: but nothing worse than sitting down beside the pool and
Speaker 2: suddenly being like, oh no, why did I think I
Speaker 2: was a worthy person? I'm on trash or the opposite. Yes,
Speaker 2: thank you all so much. And yeah, it feels very
Speaker 2: intrusive at the pool, but it's really great to change.
Speaker 2: I'm thrilled that you're reading Jackie Collins tell us about
Speaker 2: Deadly Embrace, so I've.
Speaker 8: Actually only just started it. This is probably my thirtieth
Speaker 8: Jackie Collins. In the last few months. I'm writing a
Speaker 8: book on Jackie Collins with the colleague of mine, so
Speaker 8: this is technically work amazing, but I love her. I
Speaker 8: was quite late to the bonkbuster genre, you would say,
Speaker 8: so I've read a lot of Jackie Collins quite quickly,
Speaker 8: and she's amazing. So I haven't read this one, but
Speaker 8: it's just like the third in a series with Madison Castelli,
Speaker 8: who is this journalist woman and she's found out her
Speaker 8: dad possibly murdered her mother, and you know, they're all
Speaker 8: just full of characters like this, and she's, you know,
Speaker 8: she's flying to La to go have dinner with her
Speaker 8: friend who's a TV presenter, and someone's going to get kidnapped,
Speaker 8: someone will probably get murdered again.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, is this your primary genre of reading or
Speaker 2: is this a kind of reading where you enjoy it
Speaker 2: but then you read other stuff for pleasure or other
Speaker 2: stuff differently.
Speaker 8: I read quite widely, I think. So I'm an academic,
Speaker 8: I saw. I work at university and I teach genre
Speaker 8: fiction romances my specialty, so that's kind of where the
Speaker 8: Jackie Collins thing came from. But for pleasure, I read
Speaker 8: much more widely than that. I'm very, very fussy with
Speaker 8: romance reading this kind of reading, I think because it's
Speaker 8: my job a little bit. But I quite like crime fiction,
Speaker 8: love a bit of fantasy. I'm reading another book which
Speaker 8: is like a kind of retelling, Nettle and Bone. It's
Speaker 8: like a fantasy, kind of fairy tale retaelling, which is
Speaker 8: quite good.
Speaker 2: And last question before I let you go, did you
Speaker 2: watch the adaptation of Rivals, the Jilly Cooper book, and
Speaker 2: what did you think of it?
Speaker 15: I loved it.
Speaker 8: I'm thrilled they're doing a second season. I think they've
Speaker 8: really lent into kind of the eighties nostalgia of it
Speaker 8: actually adapting it also from modern twenty twenty four sensibilities.
Speaker 8: These books can be problematic and some of the lingering,
Speaker 8: especially the eighties ones, the racism. They're quite homophobic in
Speaker 8: some ways, so it's nice that they've managed to kind
Speaker 8: of make something that's palatable in twenty twenty four and
Speaker 8: the TV show. And yeah, it looks like what these
Speaker 8: books may make me imagine it.
Speaker 2: That's the saying. That's enough. Jilly Cooper talk perfectest, Thanks heaps.
Speaker 13: I just finished to Love and Other Demons by Gabriel
Speaker 13: Garcia my kids. Yeah, I really, I really love my
Speaker 13: curves And the only thing I haven't read by him
Speaker 13: is Love at the Time of Cholera, and then I
Speaker 13: found that in a book library the other day, So
Speaker 13: it looks like it's all meant to be.
Speaker 4: What is it you like about his books?
Speaker 13: He's so primal, He's so like raw, like like visceral,
Speaker 13: you know, like the way he talks about emotions, people's
Speaker 13: relationships and things like that. But that's and I guess
Speaker 13: obviously this saga, you know, it's like everything turns back
Speaker 13: in on itself and stuff like. That's really nice. That's
Speaker 13: my take.
Speaker 2: I love it. Are you guys big readers or is
Speaker 2: it something that you only get to give over to
Speaker 2: like summer sitting around.
Speaker 4: I read, he said, He said, he also, so we
Speaker 4: go three.
Speaker 13: I work at readings conflict of intro and we've got
Speaker 13: a journey over there, and we've got an editor over there,
Speaker 13: and yeah, I think I yeah, I think I saw
Speaker 13: a mean about a long time ago about monkey Grip
Speaker 13: and the circular when you come to the pool and
Speaker 13: therefore a part of the original that's on in.
Speaker 2: The Yeah, there is there is a circle happening. We're
Speaker 2: all kind of subject to the cliches of literature. That's fine,
Speaker 2: it's a healthy thing. I haven't seen a monkey group today.
Speaker 2: I did see someone reading Garna when I was here
Speaker 2: last week, and I was like, all.
Speaker 9: Right, what do you want? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I loved it. Yeah this season.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 14: My partner works for Enguin and she got it for
Speaker 14: me three months.
Speaker 6: Trying to pull some strings and.
Speaker 14: Arrived like forty five minutes before we.
Speaker 16: Went out for like my birthday.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's pretty good.
Speaker 4: It's pretty And Helen, I've Flemington.
Speaker 6: Helen lives nearby and so we see her around a bit.
Speaker 2: That's pretty good. You guys, thank you. You've really delivered
Speaker 2: on the Melbourne But yeah, okay, I think I have
Speaker 2: pested enough people for the day.
Speaker 4: Microphone a time for a dip when we come back.
Speaker 2: Some of Australia's best writers share their recommendations for summer reading.
Speaker 4: We'll be right back. This year we hosted forty five writers.
Speaker 2: On Read This, each and every one of them an
Speaker 2: unmitigated delight. We couldn't be more grateful to them for
Speaker 2: their company, for their generosity and their wisdom. And you
Speaker 2: can catch up on the archive of those episodes anytime.
Speaker 2: That can be your company on the long road trip ahead,
Speaker 2: or maybe when you're cleaning the house after you've gotten
Speaker 2: rid of the relatives and you're munching on leftovers, and
Speaker 2: not just hours of excellent listening to the Read This archive,
Speaker 2: but once you're done, you can go to the audio
Speaker 2: version of the books we discussed. You'll be spoiled for choice.
Speaker 2: So if you need one more recommendation before the year
Speaker 2: is done. Maybe there's a Christmas gift you've forgotten. Maybe
Speaker 2: you're just thinking about your own book list for those
Speaker 2: days off. We've invited some of our supremely well read
Speaker 2: guests from this year to offer their advice for summer reading.
Speaker 6: Hello, my name's Briany Doyle, and it was wonderful to
Speaker 6: be a guest of read this in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 6: the year of novels that are both thought provoking and titillating.
Speaker 6: So my recommendations for the summer are The Safe Keep
Speaker 6: by Yale Van der Wooden and All Fours by Miranda July.
Speaker 6: I say picked the first if you want racy historical
Speaker 6: content and the second if you want to stay in
Speaker 6: the racy present. Both are queer, smart page turners with
Speaker 6: important social implications for a summer that will be hot
Speaker 6: yet deeply engaged.
Speaker 5: I hope you enjoy my.
Speaker 14: Bruce Pasco and my favorite book for the year was
Speaker 14: Time's Monster by Preyasatia.
Speaker 5: This is a work of genius. Hi, my name's Melanie Chang.
Speaker 5: And last Christmas, I was engrossed in Jumna Kasab's book
Speaker 5: The Lovers I just adored it. I would love to
Speaker 5: be encountering it again for the first time this summer holiday.
Speaker 5: It is fable like magical, but it was also brimming
Speaker 5: with truth about love across the life cycle, good and bad.
Speaker 5: I just think Yumna is one of the smartest writers
Speaker 5: working in Australia today. I highly recommend it. You won't
Speaker 5: be disappointed.
Speaker 16: I'm Robbie Onnatt and my summer reading recommendation is Deep
Speaker 16: Water by James Bradley my loyal li Lay. My name's
Speaker 16: Winnie Dunn and I'm the author of dirt Porn Islanders.
Speaker 16: My summer reading recommendation is The Tribe by Michael Muhammad Ahmad,
Speaker 16: who is my dear friend. The Tribe, in its anniversary edition,
Speaker 16: which was published this year, is about members of a
Speaker 16: small Muslim sect who fled to Australia just before the
Speaker 16: Civil War in Lebanon. So it really is a book
Speaker 16: that speaks to our times, despite the fact it was
Speaker 16: published ten years ago. What I really love about The
Speaker 16: Tribe is that he focuses on three generations of an
Speaker 16: extended family, as seen through the eyes of one of
Speaker 16: its youngest Offsprings, a child named Banni Adam so the
Speaker 16: tribe is short and sweet and perfect for summer reading.
Speaker 4: Of fwato Hi.
Speaker 14: I'm Claire right, and twenty twenty four has been a
Speaker 14: big year for me, with the completion of my Democracy trilogy,
Speaker 14: which I've been working on for over two decades, with
Speaker 14: the publication of the final installment, Knaku Darruk, and what
Speaker 14: I'm looking forward to diving into this summer is appropriately
Speaker 14: a trilogy, and that Frank Moore House's The Edith Trilogy.
Speaker 14: I can't quite believe that I've never managed to get
Speaker 14: to these books. So many people would have expected that
Speaker 14: it would be right up my alley and that I
Speaker 14: would have taken to them like a duck to water.
Speaker 14: But instead of continuing to mix my metaphors, I'm just
Speaker 14: going to start reading them top to bottom, and I
Speaker 14: think it's going to be a very happy summer's worth
Speaker 14: of reading.
Speaker 5: A happy summer to you too.
Speaker 4: What a treat.
Speaker 2: A big thank you once again to all our guests
Speaker 2: from this year. One of the reasons this show is
Speaker 2: so much fun to make is that the best writers
Speaker 2: are always terrific readers themselves. It's the books we love,
Speaker 2: the stories behind them, the authors we love and the
Speaker 2: stories they read themselves. So just to finish up for
Speaker 2: a different flavor of summer, there's a poem that I
Speaker 2: go back to this time of year without fail. It's
Speaker 2: by the late glorious genius John Clark, who put together
Speaker 2: a collection called The even More Complete Book of Australian Verse.
Speaker 2: The book took us its central conceit the idea that
Speaker 2: the world's great poets were all actually Australian and they're
Speaker 2: best understood through that lens. It's both an absolutely pitch
Speaker 2: perfect literary satire, but also they're gorgeous palms in their
Speaker 2: own right. The John Clark version of Dylan Thomas. He
Speaker 2: calls Dylan Thompson and introduces him as a martyr to
Speaker 2: the terps, who often woke in unfamiliar circumstances and attempted
Speaker 2: to catch the speech rhythms of the sea. Here's John
Speaker 2: reading that poem. I think it's glorious.
Speaker 15: A child's Christmas in Warnamball. One Christmas was so like
Speaker 15: another in those years around the sea town corner now
Speaker 15: that I can never remember whether it was one hundred
Speaker 15: and six degrees in nineteen fifty three or whether it
Speaker 15: was one hundred and three degrees in nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 15: all the Christmases roll into one down the wave, roaring salt,
Speaker 15: squinting years of yester boy. My hand goes into the
Speaker 15: fridge of imperishable memory, and outcome salads and sunburned lotions,
Speaker 15: the brief exuberant hiss of beer being opened, and a
Speaker 15: laugh of wet haired youths around a zephyr six, the
Speaker 15: smell of insect repellent and eucalyptus, and the distant, constant,
Speaker 15: slowly listless bang of the flywire door and resting on
Speaker 15: a forour micer altar waiting for Ron, the biggest pav
Speaker 15: in the world, a magic pav, a cut and come
Speaker 15: again pav for all the children in all the towns
Speaker 15: across the wide brown bee, humming trout fit, sheep rich
Speaker 15: two horse country, and the ants always, the ants in
Speaker 15: the kitchen. On the black and white photograph beach of
Speaker 15: the past, playing out the rope to a shared childhood,
Speaker 15: caught in the undertow and drifting, and some numerous uncles
Speaker 15: wondering occasionally why they weren't each other, coming around the
Speaker 15: letterbox to an attacking field in the test match and
Speaker 15: being driven handsomely by some middle order nephew skipping down
Speaker 15: the vowel flattening pitch and putting the ball into the
Speaker 15: tent flaps on the first of puberty.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening to the final episode
Speaker 1: of Read This for twenty twenty four. The show will
Speaker 1: be back every Thursday starting January sixteenth, and you'll be
Speaker 1: able to catch it on Sundays here on seven am
Speaker 1: each week after that. As always, if you want to
Speaker 1: dive further into read This, you can search for it
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to podcasts. There are more than seventy
Speaker 1: episodes in the archive for you to enjoy. Happy holidays,
Speaker 1: See you next year.