00:30 (Theme) S1
Let's take a look... You take a look inside the book... Take a look...
00:49 S2
Hello and welcome to Hear This. I'm Frances Keyland, and you're listening to the Vision Australia Library radio program. On today's show, we have Maureen O'Reilly, the library Engagement Coordinator, talking about some of the events that are coming up in the library. So I hope you enjoy the show. Hello once again, we're in the studio with Maureen O'Reilly with some great library events and also recapping some highlighted moments from the past month. Hi.
01:21 S3
Hey. How are you, Frances?
01:23 S2
I'm good. Thanks. How are you?
01:23 S3
I am very, very good today. I have a coffee in front of me and that always makes me happy.
01:29 S2
So last month... the last month has gone through so quickly to see you again here. So. Yeah. How have things been going?
01:37 S3
Oh, well, it was a great month. It was really, really busy. We've had a heap of programs and events in the library, but most recently we had our beautiful In Conversation with Candace Fox, and I think we spoke about that being an upcoming event last month. Yes. So I really encourage all of your listeners to go on to the XS catalogue and to find the In Conversation podcast, because Candice was just incredibly generous. She was generous with the insight into herself, into her writing, with her time, really chatty. It was a wonderful hour that actually ended up being about an hour and 20 because apparently I can't tell the time.
02:21 S2
Oh, that sounds wonderful. Sounds worth every every minute. And so people got a chance to ask some questions.
02:29 S3
And yeah, they did. And I was very proud of myself. I didn't have any slip-ups to let people know what was going to be happening in High Wire. And it's very hard to talk about a book, particularly a crime fiction book, and not give away anything. And Candace's book is full of so many twists and turns and unexpected plot developments. So I was very nervous I'd accidentally say something - and it is live, so I'm sure I would have been just cut to pieces if I'd done that to our poor listeners.
03:00 S2
Oh well done, well done, and thank you, for those who out there... Maureen gave me her copy of High Wire, which I'm really excited to read. And I did play a small sample of it last week, and... told people about the podcast. So well done. So thank you.
03:17 S3
Oh, and our library and our radio team were amazing. The book was only released on the Thursday prior, and they had it up on the Vision Australia Library catalogue... It was accessible in Daisy and ready to go. The day before our in conversation, so that anyone that listened to us talking about it was able to download it. So I was very, very grateful to our team for that.
03:41 S2
Yep. And there's plenty of Candace Fox books in the library collection as well. So you don't just stop at High Wire, go for the whole lot. Mm. And what else... is recapping or something coming up and...
03:54 S3
Yeah. Well, it's been such a busy year, and I cannot believe we're more or less reaching the end of it, because what we have coming up next week is our final writing program for the year. And I can remember when I started looking at the calendar and there were so many. So we do... it's close on 25 or more programs and events a year in the library, and that doesn't include the children's library events and programs. And we're down to our last one for writing. So we have our Road to Publishing. So the theory is, if you've done our short story writing, or our children's book writing, or our memoir writing, that you can take those lovely skills... that you've learnt, put together your manuscript, and now look at the publishing at the end of the year.
04:43 S2
Oh, wonderful. That sounds like a lovely way to end the year off. But also, if you do have a manuscript, you know, over the summer months might give you some tips on... being able to refine it to that publishable point.
04:58 S3
Definitely. And look, in all honesty, I think many would say that writing the manuscript is possibly the easiest part actually. Then editing it and refining it and changing it and getting it ready for publishing is actually the really, really tricky part.
05:15 S2
That would be very daunting for for people who may not have dipped their toe in that area.
05:21 S3
And we have the lovely Nadine Davidov, who is a freelance book editor who's had extensive experience with a number of publishing houses and also teaches a number of universities. And she's going to run the course for us. So I really encourage anyone that's thinking about publishing one of their pieces of writing to come along. It's all online, and really, Nadine is a wonderful resource. I think we're very, very fortunate to have her. So that commences next Tuesday the 15th, and it's three sessions, so it's nice, short and punchy. And it will run on Tuesday the 15th, 22nd and 29th of October. And that's from 1:30 to 3 p.m. in the afternoon. But our West Australian and Queensland - Northern Territory listeners need to remember that that's daylight saving time.
06:10 S2
Oh of course.
06:11 S3
Yes, we like to do that to everyone in Victoria. Just confuse them when they're doing national events. So 1:30 daylight saving time.
06:19 S2
And what else is coming up?
06:21 S3
Well then after that we have our Treat Yourself for Halloween. So Treat Yourself is a bimonthly gathering that we have of lovely book lovers from the library. You don't need to have a PhD in literature. It's really just coming and chatting about the books that you like and the authors that you enjoy reading. We have a Halloween-themed Treat Yourself on October 31st in the evening, in the hope that it might be a bit spooky for those of us that have a plethora of horror stories to share.
06:53 S2
How great! I love that I've just been reading or listening to the library's copy of Rosemary's Baby Classic Horror, written in 1968, but it's still it's not dated at all, and it's really creepy.
07:06 S3
I actually find that the older, I suppose you'd say classic, horror stories are actually much more powerful often, because I think there was a lot more restrictions in terms of the blood or the gore that you could talk about. So they had to be much more creative with their writing and the suspense that they created and actually building up that image in people's minds rather than telling them precisely what it looked like. The same applies with films. If you look at the current horror films, which honestly, I can't watch, I just I can't do it. But if you go back to the the classics, if you go back to Psycho and Birds and so forth, they're to me, they're way more powerful because they encourage your imagination to actually conjure up images of what's happened. And that can be far more vivid than anything that's displayed on screen.
08:00 S2
Yes. And it's a little bit more more dimensional. A lot of horror is is is very singular dimension. It's like shock, horror on the faces, whereas you don't see the thought process of where am I going? You know, what is my journey as an actor in this role? There you go. Yeah.
08:17 S3
Well, I hope that people come on a journey to Treat Yourself with this. That is our 8 p.m. on October 31st, and that should be a lot of fun.
08:24 S2
Yes, that sounds great. And the last author event for this year is an exciting one.
08:30 S3
It is. It's Monica McInerney. Monica is actually on sabbatical in Dublin, so she's getting up at some ungodly hour of the morning to join us. We are having an in conversation with her on the 27th of November, so that will be our very lasting conversation for the year. And we have so many of Monica's books in the Vision Australia library. So Monica hasn't... had a new release come out for a little while. She says she's taking long service leave after writing for many, many, many years. So we'll be discussing a really lovely big range of her books that she's put out.
09:07 S2
Oh, great. That'll be a really nice way to end off the year, I think so.
09:11 S3
And I think Monica's work is really popular with a lot of our... library members because it covers such a wide genre. So it's not just the crime fiction or the horror, and it really is, to me, just a beautiful... way of getting absorbed in a story. And it's very relaxing. And it's... lovely.
09:37 S2
Yeah. Good holiday read too. Yeah.
09:40 S3
Good bedtime reading. I would suggest Highway is not good bedtime radio. And so that is on the 27th. And that's a little bit later than normal. That's at 6 p.m. daylight saving time, which means that Monica doesn't need to get out of bed at about 4 a.m., which is what we're looking at in the beginning. But it's also nice because then our Vision Australia community who work or have other commitments in the afternoon, are actually still able to join us live.
10:09 S2
Yeah. And even though things are podcast and things like that, sometimes it's really nice to join a live event, even though you know it's going to be available afterwards just to be part of the moment. Yeah.
10:18 S3
And we will have the chat function open so people can ask questions. I actually have to confess that I think a number of our readers who are very, very passionate fans of Monica, will have read more of her books than I have. So I imagine that... Q&A field will be filled with very, very insightful questions.
10:41 S2
Oh, I hope so. I'm sure it will. Yeah. And is there anything else?
10:45 S3
There is. There is a new one that popped up on our calendar and I'm very excited about this. So on the 6th of November, we have our Discover the Latest Reading Tools and Technology. Now I need everyone to cast their minds back. We did... I want to say it was early August, maybe the 1st of August... we did a webinar which was Accessible Writing Tools and Technology, and it was the first time we'd run it and it was hugely popular, so we had well over 100 people who were online with us live. And then we also had in total, it would have been 50 people attending in person in Kooyong in Victoria, Parramatta in New South Wales and Cooper in Queensland.
Jim Piepszak and Damien McMorrow presented for us and they're both presenting from a position of lived experience. But probably more importantly, they are amazing experts with a wealth of knowledge into accessible technology. So the feedback was phenomenal. So we thought, well that's a Writing Tools, We Are Library. It made perfect sense to do a bookend. So we have squeezed in the Reading Tools one before Christmas.
12:01 S2
Wonderful. And that's the 7th of November. Did you say the sixth? The sixth. Yep. Okay.
12:07 S3
So that will be for an hour from 1 to 2 p.m. And for those of our listeners that actually joined us for the last one, very similar format. So I'll be introducing Jim and Damo. They will run through a number of different... reading devices, looking at the pros and the cons and really the different price points that they're in, the accessibility, the complexity of them, they're really going to go through a sample from each of the different types. So we'll have daisy players, desktop readers, magnifiers with speech and also wearables. And then they'll focus on one example of each of those.
And we will also this time have the question function open in the zoom. So we welcome everyone to send through questions. Last time we had the questions submitted prior to the event, and I had pages of questions which we really struggled to get through. So this time we're going to leave a little bit more time for the Q&A as well. That's a good, good idea. And we really, really encourage anyone that can to come in for the in-person element of it. So what that will mean is that you come into either... Kooyong, Coorparoo or Parramatta. We'll have a lovely room set up where you watch the webinar on the large screen, same as anyone would be watching it at home.
But at the conclusion of having watched the webinar, will then walk you through to the Vision Store, and our Vision Store staff and our accessibility team will be there to give you live demonstrations of the products that were discussed, and also to have a discussion with you over what would be best suited to your particular needs, and then actually demonstrate other products which we might not have gone through in the webinar, which would be more suitable. So not everyone obviously can come in to attend in person. But if you can, that capacity to be able to then go to the Vision Store and have live demonstrations, I think would be great.
14:16 S2
Yes, yes. Nothing like getting your hands on something and having a go. Yeah.
14:20 S3
So we've positioned it at the start of November because that actually gives us time. If people come in and if you come in with some family members or carers or your partner and you think this would be a great Christmas present, it also leaves time that people can order it and it will arrive by Christmas, which is also nice because it means that people can have these new reading tools for their lovely summer relaxing reads.
14:47 S2
Yes, yes. So yeah, to do all the research and everything and have a lovely summer with new technology that may be really enhancing.
14:55 S3
Well that's it. One of the things we said with the Writing Tools was that people often have had a slow deterioration of their vision, and they don't realise that because they've come up with a lot of coping mechanisms, that there's some wonderful technology out there that can actually make a massive difference to them, because that deterioration is slow and progressive often. So you just keep adapting rather than actually looking at what tools and technology are out there to help you.
Yeah, but then the other side of it that often happens is that people have an amazing resource that they use, which they may have invested in 10 or 15 years ago. And at the time it was brilliant and made this amazing difference to their lives. But they don't realise that technology is actually advanced so much in the last five, ten, 15 years. And there's now other devices out there that would actually be so much better for them and much better suited if their vision has deteriorated since then, or even if their vision has stabilised, the technology has improved.
16:07 S2
I remember when a lot of our accessible features on iPhones and things like that, or accessible ebook readers were phenomenally expensive. Is it still the case or is the market more flooded now? So the prices? It's not such a high end price range.
16:24 S3
I think you'll find that on the whole, for most things that there is a lovely range, a price range. So some of the things are still quite expensive once you start getting up into the very, very high technology of some of the wearables and so forth. But one of the things that Jim and Damo discussed in the last webinar that we did was they would make recommendations on certain products that fell within a particular range, and they'd say, this product is actually, you know, the most superior. This one's fantastic. However, it is so much more expensive than this one. And really the difference isn't substantial. So you're going to get a tiny little bit more features. So it is better. But the price point is actually not proportional to the additional advantages that you get.
So they're quite pragmatic. They talk about not just what the product can do but also then they look at, well, do you need it to do all of that? So most people perhaps only need it to do 70% of that. And there's a product that does that which is actually half the price. So they talk about things from quite a pragmatic viewpoint.
17:39 S2
That's great.
17:39 S3
I mean, I know my iPhone can probably launch a space shuttle and pretty much I text on it, I call and I take some photos, and that's all, which does my children's head in, because they would love my phone because I think it's better than theirs. But, you know, that's all I use it for. Yeah. So I think the same can be said for a lot of technology. Most of us are under utilized. What's there, which is fine. But in that case, if there's something that would provide the same level of service and product and is at a very different price point, perhaps that's all that you need.
18:15 S2
Yeah, very good points made there. Thanks, Maureen.
18:18 S3
Okay.
18:19 S2
So yeah, next week... or next month. First of all, I should just squeeze in a little question. What are you reading at the moment?
18:25 S3
I have to confess that I have a very bad answer that says nothing. So I finished High Wire on, I think, the Monday before our in conversation, and since then it has been manically busy at work and manically busy at home. So I haven't started reading my next book yet. So I have a couple of things on my bookshelf, and I'm just looking at them and deciding which one I'm going to launch into next. Okay, what about yourself? What are you reading?
18:58 S2
Oh well, Rosemary's Baby and now, of course, thanks to you, I've got the High Wire to to launch into. And the narration sounded really good in the, in the little audio snippet of our libraries... part of it. So yes, I'm... well set up. So a little bit of listening to Rosemary's Baby and a bit of reading the print of High Wire... I keep I'm going to call it Haywire, but it's High Wire.
19:19 S3
So it refers to an... unknown unmarked road that cuts straight across Australia. So it's the shortcut, if you will, from the west to the east coast or back and forth, doesn't really exist. Well, that's... I did mean to ask her but I spent too much time online searching to see whether or not it really exists. And my belief, after searching and searching and searching in the ever faithful Google, is that it actually doesn't.
19:50 S2
Okay.
19:51 S3
But I did mean to ask Candace, and I must admit, that was one of the questions that I ran out of time for. So from what I can gather online, it doesn't exist.
20:01 S2
Okay. What a great invention then. Yeah.
20:04 S3
Mm. Oh, so many. Sometimes I worry about the way Candace's mind comes up with things.
20:11 S2
Yeah.
20:12 S3
But I think actually, in hindsight, having said that I'm not sure what I'm going to be reading next, I think it's going to be... Monica McInerney book. Oh yeah. Because there's quite a few that I haven't read, so I need to be across a few more. Yeah.
20:28 S2
Well thank you Maureen. Lovely to talk to you. And as usual, and thanks for filling us in on the library and what's going on.
20:35 S3
Oh, no, it was lovely. And I shall chat to you again in November.
20:44 S2
I'm going to play a sample of Rosemary's Baby, the book that I mentioned that I've been listening to. Wonderful narration from the library and such a classic horror book. It's by Ira Levin, and the synopsis is... Rosemary Woodhouse and her struggling actor husband, Guy, move into the Bramford, an old New York City apartment building with an ominous reputation and only elderly residents. Despite Rosemary's reservations about the neighbors, the Castevets, her husband starts spending time with them.
Shortly after, Guy lands a plum Broadway role and Rosemary becomes pregnant and the cast of it start taking a special interest in her welfare. And as the second Rosemary becomes increasingly isolated, she begins to suspect that the Castevets circle is not what it seems. Let's hear a sample of Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin. It's narrated by Regina Regan.
21:42 S4
The Castevets' door opened and Mrs. Castevet was there, powdered and rouged and smiling broadly in light green silk and a frilled pink apron. Perfect timing, she said. Come on in. Roman's making vodka blushes in the blender. My, I'm glad you could come, Guy. I'm fixing to tell people I knew you when had dinner right off that plate. He did? Guy Woodhouse in person. I'm not gonna wash it when you're done. I'm gonna leave it just as it is. Guy and Rosemary laughed an exchanged glances. Your friend, his said, and hers said What can I do?
There was a large foyer in which a rectangular table was set for four with an embroidered white cloth plates that didn't at all match, and bright ranks of ornate silver. To the left, the foyer opened on a living room easily twice the size of Rosemary and Guy's, but otherwise much like it. It had one large bay window instead of two smaller ones, and a huge pink marble mantel sculptured with lavish scrollwork. The room was oddly furnished at the fireplace end. There was a settee and a lamp table and a few chairs, and at the opposite end an office like clutter of file cabinets, bridge tables piled with newspapers, overfilled bookshelves and a typewriter on a metal stand.
Between the two ends of the room was a 20 foot field of brown wall to wall carpet, deep and new looking, marked with the trail of a vacuum cleaner. In the center of it, entirely alone, a small round table stood holding life and look and Scientific American. Mrs. Castevet showed them across the brown carpet and seated them on the settee. And as they sat Mr. Castevet came in, holding in both hands a small tray on which four cocktail glasses ran over with clear pink liquid. Staring at the rims of the glasses, he shuffled forward across the carpet, looking as if with every next step he would trip and fall disastrously.
23:46 S2
And that was a sample of Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin. Ira is [spells author's name]. Other books in the collection by Ira Levin... and Rosemary's Baby was made famously into a movie with Mia Farrow playing Rosemary. But he's also written The Boys from Brazil, which was another really successful film in the 70s - a group of aging but loyal Nazis are planning the deaths of 94 Sexagenarian men in Europe and North America. And at the centre of the plan is Doctor Josef Mengele, Auschwitz's Angel of death. And that was made into a famous movie with Gregory Peck and a few other really top actors.
He's also written This Perfect Day, which is a futuristic exploration of a society in the near future, which totally controls and represses all of its members. And in this time, genetic manipulation has taken place to make everyone of equal height, skin color... and A Kiss Before Dying - a classic, chilling portrait of a brilliant young psychopath who gets away with murder.
Rosemary's Baby was published in 1967. It was the best selling horror novel of the 1960s and was the catalyst for a horror boom. Ira Levin was born in 1929 and died in 2007. Levin interestingly said in 2002, I feel guilty that Rosemary's Baby led to The Exorcist and The Omen. A whole generation has been exposed, has more belief in Satan. I don't believe in Satan, and I feel that the strong fundamentalism we have would not be as strong if there hadn't been so many of these books. Of course, I didn't send back any of the royalty cheques! Another of Levin's novels was The Stepford Wives, famously made into a movie as well.
And we have time for another book. Well, the congratulations really to the author Han Kang. Han Kang has won the Nobel Prize for literature this year. Han Kang was born in South Korea in 1970. She's best known for her novel The Vegetarian. We have The Vegetarian in the library collection, and I'll play a sample of it.
Jung Hye and her husband are ordinary people. He is an office worker with moderate ambitions and mild manners. She is an uninspired but dutiful wife. The acceptable flat line of their marriage is interrupted when Jung hye, seeking a more plant like existence, decides to become a vegetarian, prompted by grotesque reoccurring nightmares in South Korea, where vegetarianism is almost unheard of and societal mores are strictly obeyed. Yeong hye's decision is a shocking act of subversion. Let's hear a sample of The Vegetarian by Han Kang. It's narrated by David Thorpe.
26:33 S5
Before my wife turned vegetarian, I'd always thought of her as completely unremarkable in every way. To be frank, the first time I met her, I wasn't even attracted to her middling height bobbed hair, neither long nor short, jaundiced, sickly looking skin, somewhat prominent cheekbones. Her timid, sallow aspect told me all I needed to know. As she came up to the table where I was waiting, I couldn't help but notice her shoes, the plainest black shoes imaginable, and that walk of hers neither fast nor slow striding nor mincing. However, if there wasn't any special attraction, nor did any particular drawbacks present themselves, and therefore there was no reason for the two of us not to get. Married.
27:22 S2
And that was The Vegetarian. And once again, congratulations to Han Kang. Her first name is Han. Han and Kang is Kang Kang. And that book goes for six hours and ten minutes. Thank you so much for joining us on here this. And thanks to Maureen O'Reilly for all of her exciting news and her enthusiasm for the library. If you would like to find out any more about what Maureen has spoken about today, or if you'd like to recommend books for the Vision Australia Library show here this you can always ring 1300 654 656. That's 1300 654 656. Or you can email the library at Vision Australia dot org... that's library@visionaustralia.org ... Have a lovely week and we'll be back next week with more Hear This.
