Speaker 1: There's a few things to note about Fitzro Pool if
Speaker 1: you've got the time and you're not too busy scoping
Speaker 1: out a concrete perch which to bake and take in
Speaker 1: the scene, or maybe just plunging into the water to
Speaker 1: escape the summer heat. This is, as we noted when
Speaker 1: we visited at the end of last year, Helen Gardan country.
Speaker 1: It's indelibly seared on the national literary consciousness by her
Speaker 1: classic Monkey group. The pool was nearly shut down in
Speaker 1: the nineties by a local government who deemed it economically unviable.
Speaker 1: There was this community campaign full of locals and musicians
Speaker 1: and artists and more than a few writers, who fought
Speaker 1: successfully to save it. The famous painted sign up one
Speaker 1: end of the words aqua profounder is slightly misspelt, a
Speaker 1: bastardized blending of Latin and Otanian. Local law has it
Speaker 1: that it was painted in the nineteen fifties by this
Speaker 1: pool manager who'd grown tired of and I quote, hauling
Speaker 1: the kids of Italian migrants out of the deep end.
Speaker 1: It pops up again and again in our literature. Earlier
Speaker 1: this year, I was reading Jock Serong's Magical New Fantastical
Speaker 1: history Cherrywood and was delighted when the pool raided a mention.
Speaker 1: One of my nephews was equally delighted to discover it
Speaker 1: was the inspiration for Courtney Barnett's song Aqua profounder.
Speaker 2: Us and laying next to me you to freestyle than twist.
Speaker 3: I could see.
Speaker 2: Dark hair.
Speaker 4: What a cultural impact this pool has had. So we
Speaker 4: are back again.
Speaker 1: It's our final episode audit of what the people lining
Speaker 1: the pool are reading. There are lots of to be sure,
Speaker 1: and even more closed eyes and tired faces, just looking
Speaker 1: to forget the year that's been and soak up the
Speaker 1: sun instead of the literary greatness. But over there's a
Speaker 1: copy of Sally Rooney's Into Metso and a dog eared
Speaker 1: John Lecare lying battered in the sun. One handsome, middle
Speaker 1: aged bloke is so intently reading to Kill a Mockingbird
Speaker 1: that he hasn't looked up no matter how many times
Speaker 1: we try to approach it. So that's it. Even though
Speaker 1: I'm loath to interrupt a content reader, I'm going to
Speaker 1: lean into my nosiest snoopiest self for the final read
Speaker 1: this of twenty twenty four. It's time to ask some
Speaker 1: of these people what they're reading now that summer is here.
Speaker 1: From Schwartz Media. I'm Michael Williams and this is Read
Speaker 1: This the show about the books we love and the
Speaker 1: long summer reading sessions ahead of us. This is Clart.
Speaker 5: I'm Charlie's thing. Yeah, I mean I've only just picked
Speaker 5: it up. Really, I actually found it on the street.
Speaker 5: Someone just left a box of books and I thought,
Speaker 5: why not, I'll give it a go.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, enjoy its fan fibrow reading though side.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm not gonna lie. It's a warm day and
Speaker 5: I'm kind of struggling through, but it's still pretty interesting.
Speaker 5: I mean, yeah, it's so far, you know, talking about
Speaker 5: her life in Paris, and yeah, I mean I'm enjoying
Speaker 5: it because I've come to Australia, you know, I got
Speaker 5: here like a month ago, and so she's talking about
Speaker 5: her travels and I'm kind of enjoying it.
Speaker 4: Really excellent.
Speaker 1: Well, I hope next time you pick up a box
Speaker 1: of books it's slightly less worthy and a little more
Speaker 1: conducive to like summertime. Ready.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think maybe I'll just give myself a really
Speaker 5: easy read after this and see what I can find. O.
Speaker 1: Well, Best of Black thanks for chatting to thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you say much. Do you mind if we haressled
Speaker 1: you while you're sitting in the pool. I'm going to
Speaker 1: sit down properly because I've discovered that my crouching has
Speaker 1: a shorter shelf life than I realized.
Speaker 4: If you could each say your names before your chat.
Speaker 6: I'm Milli Ruby, I'm Phoebe.
Speaker 1: Really, I understand you're reading the Slab at the moment.
Speaker 1: How are you going with it?
Speaker 6: I am loving the Slab. I've been meaning to read
Speaker 6: it for years, and a few friends are reading it
Speaker 6: recently and it's so fun Bingji Summer read Melbourne Cultural Commentary.
Speaker 1: Loving it as one that you've heard talked about for years.
Speaker 1: How does it measure up with the expectation, Like is
Speaker 1: it more or less what you thought it was from
Speaker 1: the conversation around it? Or is it a different beast?
Speaker 6: I think you know, my parents read it and they
Speaker 6: were really obsessed with it, and I always saw it
Speaker 6: on the bookshelf and kind of hawd it as like
Speaker 6: my parents' generation kind of story. But now maybe that
Speaker 6: I'm a bit older, like resonates a bit more and
Speaker 6: it's funny to imagine kind of off friendship group having
Speaker 6: having children and navigating these questions about private public school,
Speaker 6: you know, cultural clashes in Sabavan, Melbourne, so loving which.
Speaker 1: Of your friend's kids you would most like to hit?
Speaker 6: We were literally just talking about this. Who would it be?
Speaker 7: Which friend would he think?
Speaker 6: It's a good like talking point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, did you bring something bad today?
Speaker 8: I did?
Speaker 7: I did.
Speaker 9: I've got a couple of books with me.
Speaker 7: Actually one of them is an advanced copy of Ritual
Speaker 7: by Chloe Elizabeth Wilson, which is coming out next year,
Speaker 7: which the whole stick is like, imagine if.
Speaker 10: Your favorite cult beauty brand was actually a cult. So
Speaker 10: it's a lot of fun, it's very Melbourne.
Speaker 7: I'm loving it.
Speaker 10: And then I also brought a copy of The Shadow
Speaker 10: of the Wind by Color through Sapon, which I read
Speaker 10: many years ago but I'm now trying to read in Spanish.
Speaker 1: You did a circus before to kind of work out
Speaker 1: who head box and I saw the zphon and then
Speaker 1: so was in the Spanish and I was like, that's impressive.
Speaker 1: Someone's really committed that trying.
Speaker 10: There's a lot of Google Translate being picked up along
Speaker 10: the way.
Speaker 1: But were you a fan of Shadow of the Wind
Speaker 1: when you first.
Speaker 4: Read it, I adored it.
Speaker 10: Yeah, and I never went back and read like the
Speaker 10: second or the third, so hoping to get there on
Speaker 10: this round. But yeah, it was a beautiful book, like
Speaker 10: so gothic and so fun to like imagine that barcel
Speaker 10: owner of the past.
Speaker 1: And did you bring a book to that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I brought.
Speaker 5: To I have.
Speaker 3: I couldn't believe it by Shandelier and then unlicensed bootlegging
Speaker 3: as a creative practice.
Speaker 1: Why did you pick those two? And why did you
Speaker 1: bring two? Is one of backup in case the book.
Speaker 3: I just started Shawandelier's one, so I wasn't sure if
Speaker 3: I was gonna like it or not, but I think
Speaker 3: I will. And then the other ones more like theory
Speaker 3: are theory. You never know what mood you're going to
Speaker 3: be in.
Speaker 1: No, I'm the same. I'm repeatedly mocked for having multiple books,
Speaker 1: but nothing worse than sitting down beside the pool and
Speaker 1: suddenly being like, oh no, why did I think I
Speaker 1: was a worthy person? I'm on trash or the opposite. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you all so much, And yeah it feels very
Speaker 1: intrusive at the pool, but it's really great. I'm thrilled
Speaker 1: that you're reading Jackie Collins by The booll tell Us
Speaker 1: about Deadly Embrace.
Speaker 11: So I've actually only just started it. This is probably
Speaker 11: my thirtieth Jackie Collins. In the last few months, I'm
Speaker 11: writing a book on Jackie Collins with a colleague of mine,
Speaker 11: so this is technically work amazing, but I love her.
Speaker 11: I was quite late to the bonkbuster genre, you would say, So,
Speaker 11: I've read a lot of Jackie Collins quite quickly, and
Speaker 11: she's amazing. So I haven't read this one. But it's
Speaker 11: just like the third in a series with Madison Castelli,
Speaker 11: who is this journalist woman and she's found out her
Speaker 11: dad possibly murdered her mother, and you know, they're all
Speaker 11: just full of characters like this, and she's you know,
Speaker 11: she's flying to LA to go have dinner with her
Speaker 11: friend who's a TV presenter, and someone's going to get kidnapped,
Speaker 11: someone will probably get murdered again.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, is this your primary genre of reading or
Speaker 1: is this a kind of reading where you enjoy it
Speaker 1: but then you read other stuff for pleasure or other
Speaker 1: stuff differently.
Speaker 11: I read quite widely, I think.
Speaker 10: So.
Speaker 11: I'm an academic. I work at university and I teach
Speaker 11: genre fiction. Romance is my specialty, so that's kind of
Speaker 11: where the Jackie Collins thing came from. But for pleasure,
Speaker 11: I read much more widely than that. I'm very, very
Speaker 11: fussy with romance reading this kind of reading, I think
Speaker 11: because it's my job a little bit. But I quite
Speaker 11: like crime fiction, love a bit of fantasy. I'm reading
Speaker 11: another book which is like a kind of retelling, Nettle
Speaker 11: and Bone. It's like a fantasy, kind of fairy tale retailing,
Speaker 11: which is quite good.
Speaker 1: And last question before I let you go, did you
Speaker 1: watch the adaptation of Rivals, the Jilly Cooper book and
Speaker 1: what did you think of it?
Speaker 11: I loved it. I'm thrilled they're doing a second season.
Speaker 11: I think they've really lean into kind of the eighties
Speaker 11: nostalgia of it, actually adapting it also from modern twenty
Speaker 11: twenty four sensibilities. There's these books can be problematic and
Speaker 11: some of the lingering, especially the eighties ones, the racism.
Speaker 11: They're quite homophobic in some ways, so it's nice that
Speaker 11: they've managed to kind of make something that's palatable in
Speaker 11: twenty twenty four on the TV show. And yeah, it
Speaker 11: just it looks like what these books may make me imagine.
Speaker 1: That's the Paul saying that's enough. Jilly Cooper talk.
Speaker 4: Perfectest, Thanks hates.
Speaker 12: I dis finished of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel Garcia.
Speaker 1: My Kids.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I really, I really love my kids. And the
Speaker 12: only thing I haven't read by him is Love at
Speaker 12: the Time of Cholera, And then I found that in
Speaker 12: a book library the other day, So it looks like
Speaker 12: it's all meant to be.
Speaker 4: What is it you like about his books?
Speaker 12: He's so primal, He's so like it's so raw, like
Speaker 12: like visceral, you know, like the way he talks about
Speaker 12: emotions and people's relationships and things like that. But that's
Speaker 12: and I guess of see this saga, you know, it's
Speaker 12: like everything turns back into herself and stuff like. That's
Speaker 12: really nice. That's my take.
Speaker 1: I love it. Are you guys big readers or is
Speaker 1: it something that you only get to give over to
Speaker 1: like summer sitting.
Speaker 4: Around I read, he said.
Speaker 8: He said.
Speaker 12: He also three, I work at readings a conflict of interest,
Speaker 12: and we've got.
Speaker 1: To journey over there, and we've got an editor over there,
Speaker 1: and yeah.
Speaker 12: I think I yeah, I think I saw a mean
Speaker 12: about a long time ago about monkey Grip and the
Speaker 12: circular when you come to the pool, and therefore a
Speaker 12: part of the original that's on.
Speaker 1: In the there is there is a circle happening. We're
Speaker 1: all kind of subject to the cliches of literature. That's fine,
Speaker 1: it's a healthy thing. I haven't seen a monkey grip today.
Speaker 1: I did see someone reading Ghana when I was here
Speaker 1: last week and I was like, all right, what do
Speaker 1: you want? Yeah, yeah, I loved it. Yeah this season.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 13: My partner works for Anguin and she got it from
Speaker 13: three months time to pull some strings and arrived like
Speaker 13: forty five minutes before we went out for like my birthday.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's pretty good.
Speaker 13: It's pretty good.
Speaker 5: And Helen, I'm floming and Helen lives nearby and so
Speaker 5: we see her around a bit.
Speaker 1: Ah, that's pretty good. You guys, Thank you. You really delivered
Speaker 1: on the Melbourne vibe. Yeah, okay, I think I have
Speaker 1: pested enough people for the day.
Speaker 4: Microphone away, Time for a dip when we come back.
Speaker 1: 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 1: On read This, each and every one of them an
Speaker 1: unmitigated delight. We couldn't be more grateful to them for
Speaker 1: their company, for their generosity and their wisdom. And you
Speaker 1: can catch up on the archive of those episodes anytime.
Speaker 1: That can be your company on the long road trip ahead,
Speaker 1: or maybe when you're cleaning the house after you've gotten
Speaker 1: rid of the relatives and you're munching on leftovers, and
Speaker 1: not just hours of excellent listening to the Read This archive,
Speaker 1: but once you're done, you can go to the audio
Speaker 1: version of the books we discussed. You'll be spoiled for choice.
Speaker 1: So if you need one more recommendation before the year
Speaker 1: is done, maybe there's a Christmas gift you've forgotten, maybe
Speaker 1: you're just thinking about your own book list for those
Speaker 1: days off. We've invited some of our supremely well read
Speaker 1: guests from this year to offer their advice for summer reading.
Speaker 9: Hello, my name's Briany Doyle and it was wonderful to
Speaker 9: be a guest of Read This in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 9: the year of novels that are both thought provoking and titillating.
Speaker 9: So my recommendations for the summer are The Safe Keep
Speaker 9: by Yale Van der Wooden and All Fours by Miranda July.
Speaker 9: I say pick the first if you want racy historical content,
Speaker 9: and the second if you want to stay in the
Speaker 9: racy present. Both are queer, smart page turners with important
Speaker 9: social implications for a summer that will be hot yet
Speaker 9: deeply engaged. I hope you enjoys.
Speaker 12: Bruce Pasco and my favorite book for the year was
Speaker 12: Time's Monster by Priyasatia.
Speaker 8: This is a work of genius. Hi, my name's Melanie Chang.
Speaker 8: And last Christmas, I was engrossed in Yumna Kasab's book
Speaker 8: The Lovers. I just adored it and I would love
Speaker 8: to be encountering it again for the first time this
Speaker 8: summer holiday. It is fable like magical, but it was
Speaker 8: also brimming with truth about love across the life cycle,
Speaker 8: good and bad. I just think Yumna is one of
Speaker 8: the smartest writers working in Australia today. I highly recommend it.
Speaker 8: You won't be disappointed.
Speaker 13: I'm Robbie Natt and my summer reading recommendation is Deep
Speaker 13: Water by James Bradley. My Loyal Lila, my name, We
Speaker 13: Need Done. And I'm the author of Dirt Porn Islanders.
Speaker 13: My summer reading recommendation is The Tribe by Michael Muhammad Ahmad,
Speaker 13: who is my dear friend. The Tribe, in its anniversary edition,
Speaker 13: which was published this year, is about members of a
Speaker 13: small Muslim sect who fled to Australia just before the
Speaker 13: Civil War in Lebanon. So it really is a book
Speaker 13: that speaks to our times, despite the fact it was
Speaker 13: published ten years ago. What I really love about The
Speaker 13: Tribe is that it focuses on three generations of an
Speaker 13: extended family, as seen through the eyes of one of
Speaker 13: its youngest offsprings, a child named Banni Adam. So The
Speaker 13: Tribe is short and sweet and perfect for summer reading
Speaker 13: of Fatu 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, Knuku dah Rook, and
Speaker 14: what I'm looking forward to diving into this summer is
Speaker 14: appropriately a trilogy, and that's 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 8: A happy summer to you.
Speaker 1: Too, what a treat. A big thank you once again
Speaker 1: to all our guests from this year. One of the
Speaker 1: reasons this show is so much fun to make is
Speaker 1: that the best writers are always terrific readers themselves. It's
Speaker 1: the books we love, the stories behind them, the authors
Speaker 1: we love, and the stories they read themselves. So just
Speaker 1: to finish up for a different flavor of summer, there's
Speaker 1: a poem that I go back to this time of
Speaker 1: year without fail. It's by the late glorious genius John Clark,
Speaker 1: who put together a collection called The Even More Complete
Speaker 1: Book of Australian Verse. The book took us its central
Speaker 1: conceit the idea that the world's great poets were all
Speaker 1: actually Australian and they're best understood through that lens. It's
Speaker 1: both an absolutely pitch perfect literary satire, but also they're
Speaker 1: gorgeous poems in their own right. The John Clark version
Speaker 1: of Dylan Thomas. He calls Dylan Thompson and introduces him
Speaker 1: as a martyr to the terps, who often woke in
Speaker 1: unfamiliar circumstances and attempted to catch the speech rhythms of
Speaker 1: the sea. Here's John reading that poem. I think it's glorious.
Speaker 2: A child's Christmas in Warnabull. One Christmas was so like
Speaker 2: another in those years around the seatown corner now that
Speaker 2: I can never remember whether it was one hundred and
Speaker 2: sixty degree in nineteen fifty three or whether it was
Speaker 2: one hundred and three degrees in nineteen fifty six. All
Speaker 2: the Christmases roll into one down the wave, roaring, salt,
Speaker 2: squinting years of yester boy. My hand goes into the
Speaker 2: fridge of imperishable memory, and outcome salads and sunburned lotions,
Speaker 2: the brief, exuberant hiss of beer being opened, and the
Speaker 2: laugh of wet haired youths around a zephyr six, the
Speaker 2: smell of insect repellent and eucalyptus, and the distant, constant,
Speaker 2: slowly listless bang of the flywire door and resting on
Speaker 2: a fore micer altar waiting for ron. The biggest pav
Speaker 2: in the world. A magic pav, A cut and come
Speaker 2: again pav for all the children in all the towns
Speaker 2: across the wide brown bee humming trout fit, sheep rich
Speaker 2: two horse country, and the ants always the ants in
Speaker 2: the kitchen on the black and white photographed beach of
Speaker 2: the park, playing out the rope to a shared childhood
Speaker 2: court in the undertow and drifting, and some numerous uncles
Speaker 2: wondering occasionally why they weren't each other, coming around the
Speaker 2: letterbox to an attacking field in the test match and
Speaker 2: being driven handsomely by some middle order nephew, skipping down
Speaker 2: the vowel flattening pitch and putting the ball into the
Speaker 2: tent flaps on the first bounce of puberty.
Speaker 4: That's it for another year of read this.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for your support and enthusiasm for
Speaker 1: the show in twenty twenty four. It's been an utter
Speaker 1: delight to bring you conversations with our favorite writers from
Speaker 1: all around the world. A special thank you to our sponsor,
Speaker 1: the AAR Group. They came on board midyear and with
Speaker 1: their support the show remains possible. And thank you also
Speaker 1: to everyone here at Schwartz Media from Murray schwartzdown the
Speaker 1: whole time. Couldn't be more supportive and more inclined to
Speaker 1: have a chat about what they're reading in the kitchen.
Speaker 1: Thank you all the read This team is small, but
Speaker 1: indefatigable and utterly tireless. Clara Ames makes the show what
Speaker 1: it is. Anything you like about the show that's Clara's work.
Speaker 1: Anything you don't like is because I insisted in a
Speaker 1: meeting and we made the wrong choice. The wonderful Travis
Speaker 1: Evans does the mixing and Zalton Fetcho provides the original compositions.
Speaker 1: Head of audio Sarah mcviee was the brains behind the
Speaker 1: show in the first place and continues to be an
Speaker 1: amazing support.
Speaker 4: Finally, don't forget.
Speaker 1: To subscribe, rate review on all your podcast apps. Share
Speaker 1: those episodes Willy nearly turn it into the cultural juggnal
Speaker 1: that it deserves to be. For now, though, we're gonna
Speaker 1: have a little lay down, probably with a good book.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next year.