00:05 ID
Let's....Take a look. To take a look inside the book. Take a look...
00:24 S1 (Frances Keyland)
Hello and welcome to Hear This. I'm Frances Keyland, and this is the Vision Australia Library radio program, where you can hear some samples of some really great books in the library collection. Today's guest is Maureen O'Reilly, coming in with her usual monthly round up of things, uh, that we're reviewing that have just happened in the library, great events and future up and coming events. I hope you enjoy the show. We're here once again with Maureen O'Reilly talking about stuff happening in the library. And how are you?
01:00 S2 (Maureen O'Reilly)
I am excellent, Frances. How are you?
S1
I'm good, thank you.
S2
Have you had a lovely break over summer, with our beautiful weather in Melbourne?
01:07 S1
I have, it's been very changeable and we're going through a little... cold patch at the moment, which is unusual, but it's going to heat up again, so it's a bit of a roller coaster in Melbourne. Always is.
01:17 S2
I know, but that way we get to have very wide wardrobes.
01:22 S1
Yes. Now I want to recap first of all about the last week, which was a big week, Library Lovers Day - and how did it go?
01:30 S2
It was fabulous. It was a wonderful week actually. We had our Felix Library, which is our young children's library showcase. So Kylie, our children's librarian, ran a webinar where she gave everyone, both parents and educators, an overview of all the resources that are available through the Felix Library at Vision Australia and what they can actually source for their children or their students to have a print disability. And that may be that they're blind or vision impaired. It may be that they're dyslexic. It can be cognitive. It can be physical. So many things that would contribute towards a print disability. And looking at the resources that are available through Vision Australia and how we can support children to have that beautiful love of books, but also the power of literacy.
02:23 S1
It's a beautiful library, the work that's put into the books that children can borrow with all of the sensory components.
02:32 S2
It's just wonderful. So each of the Felix kits has a tactile book with those sensory components. They also have a little toy that relates to the book. So if it's, for example, about dinosaurs, there'd be a little dinosaur toy. They also have a little... audio recording of the book. And that's a very simple device that children can easily play, and it enables them to follow the book, both with their hearing while they're listening to it, and also if they have a degree of sight, they can be looking at the book and then feeling all the tactile components as well, and really creating that initial learning. So there's Braille on there as well, but creating that love of literacy and that's what's really, really important.
03:22 S1
Yeah. Felix Library's been going for a few years. It has been lovely to talk to somebody in their teens who grew up with Felix.
03:30 S2
Oh, that would be so lovely.
03:32 S1
Yeah, and. And how it felt to get that special little suitcase. Tiny little suitcase that would come in the mail and what that felt like.
03:40 S2
Well, we have the webinar which was recorded. So if there's any educators or parents that were unable to attend or weren't aware of it, then they should reach out to the Vision Australia library and we can either direct them to a link, or we can send them an email with a link in it, just so they can know what resources are available to support them.
04:02 S1
Yeah, and that's for children. Usually the age is up to eight, isn't it?
04:07 S2
I think it's 0 to 10, but it's very hard to do it by an actual age because sometimes there are some cognitive, um, developmental delays as well. But as a general rule, we find that mostly the children will fall between about seven zero and ten. Yeah.
04:26 S1
And what else happened last week?
04:29 S2
Last week we had the wonderful privilege of interviewing Emily McGuire, who was just so generous with her time and her thoughts. And I had an absolute ball. I can't believe I get paid to interview these beautiful people. Yeah.
04:45 S1
And she's... her book, Rapture. Did she talk much about that?
04:48 S2
We did indeed. So we did a little bit of an overview of... how Emily got into writing, how she transitioned from newspaper articles and journal essays into actual novels, and then she went from fiction to non-fiction. And then we did a big discussion of Rapture, and it was really it was just fascinating. So, you know, I think I threw a few curly questions at her, which is always nice. And then a couple of times she was like, No, I don't actually agree with that, Maureen. I think it's this. So it was really good. We had a really... interesting debate, I think. Yeah. And the feedback's been really strong. So that's good. I think people did enjoy it.
05:32 S1
Oh, great. And... so Rapture, her book, is available in the library, of course. As indeed earlier works.
05:38 S2
They are indeed. So there's several of her works that are available in the library in audio - and from memory, one of them is available in Braille as well. And we talk about her first three books, actually, and then we talk about Rapture. And of course, if there's any books that you're interested in and they're not in the Vision Australia Library, you can always put a request through. So you email a request and say, I'd really love to be able to read this book and have access to it through the library...
And really, that is what shapes our catalogue. So I always think of the Vision Australia library as being populated by our members, because obviously we try to make sure our series are complete. So when a new edition comes out in a series, then we'll buy those. But other than that, a lot of it is our members saying, Oh, I love this author. Can we have some more books by her? Or Oh, I read this book. I thought it was amazing. And people say it's very similar to this. Could you get that into the library? So if you want... to have some influence over shaping the catalogue, I really encourage everyone to send through a request for us.
06:53 S1
And what else do you want to talk about today?
06:55 S2
Oh, we should talk about our upcoming events. I'm sure that I did mention these back in December and January, so I feel a bit like I'm repeating myself. So I ask for everyone's forgiveness on that. We had a lovely brand new program that came... onto its launch on Thursday. It's a quarterly program, and Thursday we had Sunkissed Summer book chat with our Vision Australia librarians. So we're very excited when we get to launch new programs. And we had Sarah Bloedorn join us.
And it really is a... review of a whole lot of books that are being read by both Sarah as our Vision Australia library manager, by myself by Vy Nguyen, who's one of the community engagement team members, and then by our Vision Australia library members. So everybody got to contribute a couple of minutes talking about either their most recent read or their favorite read, and it was really designed to give everyone a list of books for their virtual bookshelf, but also to cross off some books to go, Oh, that's not really what I want. No, I'd heard about that. But no, that doesn't sound like me. With the goal that everybody walks away with at least a couple of books that they're really fired up about reading.
08:21 S1
Great idea. Yeah.
08:22 S2
So it's one of the biggest calls that we get to the Vision Australia library is people will phone in and say, Oh, I don't know what to read. I've just finished this series of books or I've finished everything by this author... do you have any new releases? So this is a really lovely way - instead of just getting that, you know, 2 or 3 line presses on the Vision Australia Library catalogue to actually hear people talk about what they liked about it, what they didn't like about it, what they thought was, you know, the best part of it... and hear from real people that have actually read the book themselves.
08:57 S1
Yeah. What a great idea.
08:59 S2
So that will be quarterly. So we'll have another one. I have our autumnal April 1st, and then we'll have a winter one and a spring one as well. So that was wonderful. And we have another brand new... event coming up. So we have a lot of brand new things in this year's calendar of events. And this is our Author Reading. So we have an Author Reading with Jacqueline Bublitz coming up on the 24th of March. And this has sort of come out of a couple of things we do, as you know, our bimonthly In Conversations. And I always run over time because apparently I can't tell the time.
And often the feedback we get is people would have loved to have heard the author read part of their book, and we literally just don't have time. So we thought what we'd do is we'd run a separate series of events where we have the author come in, and we do have a chat to them about, you know, their career, the other books they've written, a little mini interview with them, and then I get to sit back and relax and they do a read from their book, which may be one large section, or it may be two very different sections. So one that's quite tension-fuelled and one that's quite emotive... maybe one that's very much in the beginning when the whole plot is being established and one that's a bit more in the thick of the action.
And it's really a lovely way of people to be able to sit back and hear the author reading their own books, because they're the ones that have got the most passion about those characters or that plotline or whatever. So we're really looking forward to that. And Jacqueline will be joining us on the 24th of March. So... this is a new series, as I said, we're going to have, I think, four throughout the year. So I'm really hoping that people will take a punt on this and listen to us. And of course, they can then put as many questions as they like into the chat and fire a whole lot of questions that our guests.
11:02 S1
Wonderful. How... will people register for that? Just the usual way?
11:08 S2
Yes. If they go into the Vision Australia library, which is visionaustralia.org/library, and they scroll down to the What's On section, and you will see all of our upcoming events would be there. So these events are all live and they're online via Zoom. And people can either just listen and enjoy or they can type... questions into the Chat or even at the registration time, they can submit some questions for the author as well. And then we have our first... writing course for the year. So we love our writing courses.
And our first one is being facilitated by the gorgeous Andrea Rowe. We had Andrea in last year. She did a children's fiction writing course for us because she's a very famous children's author, and this one is very much about getting creative with fiction writing, and it's writing from the senses. And I think her approach is really going to resonate with a lot of our members. So it's not about children's writing per se. It's about channelling all the senses around you and painting this beautiful picture on the page, but not just a visual picture. Something that you know, has smell and taste and sound and everything to it.
12:32 S1
And that would be, when you're writing, I guess that can be sometimes quite hard to know how much to put in of that sensory information into your books. And people write in all different ways. So that's a really interesting approach.
12:44 S2
It is. So that will be a wonderful writing program for us to launch with. It will run online and it's for an hour and a half, and there are four sessions starting on the 4th of March. So Andrea is is an incredibly generous presenter, so I'm sure everyone who registers will really enjoy the course.
13:07 S1
Terrific... and what have you been reading at the moment? I don't want you to give your summer sun kissed reads away, but...
13:13 S2
No, no, I have to convince... I have been convinced... I have to confess, I've been very, very busy. So my reading has been restricted to Emily McGuire's Rapture. So I was reading that for our In Conversation. So now that I'm finished there, I'm actually having to decide which one of my Christmas books I'm going to be reading, which is a bit embarrassing when we're halfway through February already. But I do have a collection of books from Christmas, so...
13:43 S1
I think a lot of people do. And also just after the holiday season anyway, because you have the time to go to bookshops or op shops and just like browse. So yeah, there's usually a bit of a pile.
13:52 S2
And it's really nice because I'm just a couple of them are authors, I don't know, and a couple of them also genres. I don't normally read so much, but I'm a bit excited about that because Rapture is historical fiction and it's set in the ninth century. And I don't feel bad saying this because I did tell Emily I looked at that and was like, Oh, ninth century historical fiction... that's just not me. I hated history at school. I'm going to get lost. I don't understand the background and it was nothing like that.
I got totally absorbed and she took me on this beautiful journey back in time. And you didn't even notice that it wasn't the current world that you're living in. It was so beautifully written. So I'm now feeling that I need to branch out and not be so narrow in saying these are the genres I like, so I'm going to venture out.
14:44 S1
Wonderful. Wonderful news. Yeah, I've been reading lately, and this is a library member recommended this book. It is The Ministry of Time by Kellyanne Bradley. And it's a sort of science fiction-type book or speculative fiction. It's about, what if some people from history were brought into the present? Just ordinary people, not famous people. And but it would have to be because they were going to die anyway. So they've got someone from the plague years in... London. They've got somebody who was fighting in the 1700s in a battle that was, you know, people were decimated. So that's kind of like the premise... and it's fascinating. Yeah.
15:30 S2
Oh, that's really interesting. You wouldn't want to read it while you're half asleep at night, though.
15:34 S1
No, that's the trouble. You know, I kind of do. And then I drift off, and then I have to go back and... yeah, but then... so books can sometimes last me some.. a long time. Yeah.
15:43 S2
I do tend to have to reread the last page or two that I'd read the evening before, because I don't think I was really awake.
15:49 S1
Yes. And I find that has to be a discipline, because if I leave it for more than three days, the book stays unread. That's a discipline for me.
15:57 S2
So the last thing I wanted to say, which I have said before, but, you know, we have different listeners. Every month is a reminder for all of our... families that may have children with a print disability or your younger demographic of the audience. Listening to our show that we have all of the... VCR, which is the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, English and... English as a Language books in the Vision Australia Library. Similarly, we have the Queensland Assessment Authority books, and we have a lot of the English, English literature and English as a Language text for the other states throughout Australia.
So for our VCE students who are doing year 11 and 12, which is a difficult year for everyone, including their parents, I would like to say... we just want to support them as much as we can. So I really... am proud that we have got all of the English and English Language books, and we are also working through the process of getting for future years all the English literature books into the catalogue as well, so that any of those students have all the resources that they can possibly have to succeed in this really difficult year.
17:18 S1
Yeah. And while you welcome educators and people from schools to inquire at the same time, it has to be the student that joins the library. So you can't join as a school.
17:28 S2
That is correct. That's right. But we are welcome to, are very open to working with the schools so that we can support them. And I would say as a VCAA, the curriculum assessment authority, because they're the ones that actually work with us literally two years out, giving us lists so that we can have all the books out there for them. So if it's any of the schools, I really encourage you to either reach out directly to us or via VCAA or the Queensland Curriculum Authority, and the students are also very welcome to contact us directly. And as you said, it has to be the students who are members because the library is purely for people with a print disability.
18:11 S1
Thank you so much, Maureen. It's lovely to have you in again.
18:14 S2
And it is so nice to be here.
18:16 S1
Yeah, and we wish you all the best for the next week, next month and we'll see you in March.
18:23 S2
We will, next month. That'll be a quarter of the way through the year. That's a bit terrifying.
18:27 S1
Oh my gosh. Yes. Let's not think about that. Let's not think about Easter. Oh, I've said the word. Oh, dear. No.
18:33 S2
We have a lovely Easter break in March, so that'll be nice.
18:36 S1
All right. Thank you.
18:37 S2
Bye, Frances.
18:43 S1
Once again, very good to have Maureen in the studio talking about a library events. So coming up on the 24th of March will be the In Conversation. The author reading that, Jacqueline Bublitz is going to be giving off her latest novel, Leave the Girls Behind. We have it in the library, and this is the synopsis.
You can run from your past, but not from the girls left behind. 19 years ago, Ruth Ann Baker's childhood friend was murdered by convicted killer Ethan Oswald. Haunted by what happened, Ruth has long been convinced that Oswald had other victims, but no one has ever believed her. After dropping out of college and failing to prove her serial killer theory, Ruth is bartending when she hears that another young girl has gone missing from her home town. With Oswald now deceased, she begins to suspect he had an accomplice, a partner in crime who is still active today.
Crossing the globe from New York to New Zealand, Ruth unlocks parts of herself that she hasn't dared to revisit, bringing her perilously close to three different women. The deeper she delves, the more she can't shake the feeling that one of them knows the truth about her childhood friend, about the missing girl, and perhaps most dangerously of all about Ruth herself. Let's hear a sample of Leave the Girls Behind by Jacqueline Bublitz. It's narrated by Stephanie Cannon.
20:12 S3
Ruth Ann Baker is having an unremarkable day for the 26 year old New Yorker. Unremarkable looks something like this. She gets out of bed before 10 a.m. she does not worry excessively about her dog wrestler dying. She just worries a small, helpful amount. She does a quick tidy up of her apartment and eats the right food at the right times a bagel for breakfast, a salad sandwich for lunch. She drinks three coffees, none of which make her overly jittery, and she does not grab at her stomach when looking in the mirror, nor hate any part of her body excessively.
She completes the requisite amount of steps for herself and for wrestler, and she does her breathing exercises, talks briefly to her Uncle Joe on the phone, ignores a call from her mother and communicates with her father exclusively through emojis. She watches a half hour documentary on climate change at 5 p.m., and times her wallowing after ten minutes to worry about the state of the world. And then she puts her hair up in a messy bun and gets ready for work. The walk to Sweeney's Bar will take her ten minutes the way it always does, meaning she'll be right on time for a shift the way she always is.
There is nothing remarkable about her day at all. No cause for concern until her cell phone begins to beep loudly just as she drops it into her bag. Living in Manhattan, Ruth is used to wailing sirens, to honking horns and sudden booms that make you jump. But the noise emanating from the bottom of her satchel has a different tone. There's an insistent, high pitched urgency to it. She scrambles to retrieve the phone, her fingers brushing over the tiny stun gun disguised as lipstick and the can of deodorant that's really mace until she finds it. Just as the beeping stops.
And now she understands why that sound seemed to reverberate all around her. She has been sent an automated emergency alert, one that would have echoed throughout the city and beyond. Ruth feels her stomach drop. It's a notification about a child abduction.
22:19 S1
So that was a sample of Leave the Girls Behind by Jacqueline Bublitz. Jacqueline is [spells author's name]. And that book goes for 9.5 hours. And of course, if you want to read Jacqueline Bublitz's first novel, which had great acclaim, that is Before You Knew My Name.
Another mystery set in New York, the book that I mentioned that I was reading... this was actually recommended by Bob from Canberra - thank you Bob - and it is The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. There are several ways to tell a story. A boy meets a girl, the past meets a future. A finger meets a trigger. The beginning meets the end. England is forever. England must fall. A civil servant starts working as a bridge, a liaison, helpmeet and housemate in an experimental project that brings expatriates from the past into the 21st century.
This is a science fiction story in a London safe house in the 2020s. A disorientated Victorian polar explorer chain smokes while listening to Spotify and learning about political correctness. This is a comedy during a long, sultry summer as the shadows around them grow long and dangerous to people. Fall in love against all odds. This is a romance. The Ministry of Time is a novel about Commander Graham Gore, who lived in about the early 1800s to through to about 1847, and a woman known only as The Bridge.
As the relationship turns from the strictly professional into something more and uneasy truths begin to emerge, they are forced to face the reality of the project that brought them together. Can love triumph over the structures and histories that shape them? Let's play a sample of the very beginning of the book in which the narrator, The Bridge, is being interviewed for this job of being a caretaker of somebody that's going to come back from the past. It's narrated by Katie Long.
24:45 S4
The interviewer said my name, which made my thoughts clip. I don't say my name, not even in my head. She'd said it correctly. which people generally don't. Baths. I'm Adela, she said she had an eye patch and blonde hair. The same color and texture as hay baths. I'm the vice secretary of. Have a seat. This was my sixth round of interviews. The job I was interviewing for was an internal posting. It had been marked security clearance required, because it was gauche to use the top secret stamps on paperwork with salary bands.
I'd never been cleared to this security level, hence why no one would tell me what the job was as it paid almost triple my current salary. I was happy to taste ignorance. I'd had to produce squeaky clean grades in first aid, safeguarding vulnerable people and the Home Office's life in the UK test to get this far. I knew that I would be working closely with a refugee or refugees of high interest status and particular needs, but I didn't know from whence they were fleeing. I'd assumed politically important defectors from Russia or China.
Adela, Vice-secretary of God knows what, tucked a blond strand behind her ear with an audible crunch. Your mother was a refugee, wasn't she? She said, which is a demented way to begin a job interview. Baths? Yes, ma'am. Cambodia, she said. Yes, ma'am. I've been asked this question a couple of times over the course of the interview process. Usually people asked it with an upward lilt, expecting me to correct them because no one's from Cambodia. You don't look Cambodian, one early clown had said to me, then glowed like a pilot light because the interview was being recorded for staff monitoring and training purposes.
26:45 S1
And that was a sample of The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. So Kaliane... [spells author's name]. I'm actually in the middle of this book and really enjoying it. It does have some sex scenes in it, so just be aware of that. But, it's such an intriguing idea. A Guardian review by Lisa Allardice from the 11th of May 2024... and here, sorry, here is the correct pronunciation for Kaliane, it's actually pronounced kalian... Kaliane, which means darling in Cambodian.
She calls it... A time travel romance-cum-sci-fi comedy set in near-future London. She says... The novel fizzes with smart observations about the absurdity of modern life, while taking on the legacy of imperialism and the environmental emergency. And the character of Lieutenant Graham Gore is based on the real historical polar explorer of the same name, who did perish during an Arctic exploration in the 1840s.
Thank you for joining us on Hear This today. I'm Frances Keyland. Thanks to Bob for his recommendation. And do please keep them coming in - they're always such a joy to read. And as you see from today's... novel, there's so much to discover. If you would like to join the library or discuss some books, you can ring them on 1300 654 656. That's 1300 654 656. Or you can email the library@visionaustralia.org - that's library at Vision Australia dot org. Hope you have a lovely week ahead of you and we'll be back next week with more Hear This.
