Reader recommended

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Take a look. Take a look inside the book. Take a look...

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Hello and welcome to Hear This. I'm Frances Keyland, and this is the Vision Australia Library radio show, talking about wonderful books from the Vision Australia Library collection. And we've got some wonderful reader-recommended today as well. Hope you enjoy the show. 

Let's begin today with a couple of lovely reader-recommended from Gina. The first one is Mind Over Matter - the Epic Crossing of the Antarctic Continent. So this is the third book we've had recommended... about the Antarctic, which is exciting. It's... got a bit of a thread. This one is by renowned... travel author Ranulph Fiennes. On the 9th of November 1992, Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Dr. Michael Stroud set out from the Filchner Ice Shelf to attempt the first unassisted crossing of the Antarctic continent. It was to be a journey of epic proportions which captured the imagination of the entire world. When they were finally lifted out, more dead than alive. They had completed by far the longest unsupported journey in polar history. 

Let's hear a sample of Mind Over Matter: the Epic Crossing of the Antarctic Continent by Sir Ranulph Fiennes. It's narrated by Stephen Thorne.

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In the spring of 1990, we struggled over the sea ice some 400 miles north of the Siberian coast. If our Russian advisers proved correct and the fickle Arctic winds held true to form, a northerly drift would force the pack ice towards the pole and help us to reach the top of the world before we starved the previous week, a chunk of frozen flesh had come away from one of my toes. But Mike Stroud, my companion, was a doctor and I trusted his judgment. If the wound's not subjected to further trauma and our antibiotics last, he assured me gangrene will not be a worry in 3 or 4 weeks. 

We might make history to reach the North Pole on foot and unaided by air contact or other assistance, had long been the dream of polar specialists from many countries. A climber's equivalent might be the first ascent of Everest without Sherpas or oxygen. Amongst polar experts, only two journeys ranked as more challenging the unaided crossings of Antarctica and of the Arctic Ocean. On the other side of the world, a group of three Norwegian ski champions had openly declared their intention to reach the pole first, and two separate teams of Soviet skiers were somewhere behind us, having set out, like us from Novaya Zemlya in Siberia... our radio base. 

A Soviet army shack on the island of Sredny was manned by Lawrence Floe and Morag Mo Howell with their Russian friend Sergey Malyshev, only the day before. Mo had managed to make voice contact via a high frequency set and gave us news of our competitors. Kaga and his Norwegians are out of the race. One of them has been airlifted to safety with a frostbitten foot. The other two are carrying on, but their challenge is compromised.

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And that was Mind Over Matter - the Epic Crossing of the Antarctic Continent by Sir Ranulph Fiennes. Ranulph is spelt [spells author's name] and he is a relative of the actor Ralph Fiennes. This book goes for ten hours and 20 minutes. Well... This book may not be for the faint-hearted.... I'm reading here from The Guardian. And this is from an article in 2019 by Leo Benedictus, or 2000-2019, talking about the aftermath. First of all of this... book... 

So Sir Ranulph had... when he got back, Ranulph Fiennes was on the list to have his thumb and a finger amputated. They'd become dead portions due to being in the icy conditions. But he couldn't wait because the nerve pain was pretty constant. So he went out to his deck, a workbench, and removed them with a saw. So thus proving that explorers are either made of very strong stuff or are quite mad... Kirkus Reviews, so this is just... Kirkus Reviews... calls Fiennes' writing... Rather swagger-ish old boy style, but the authenticity of his trip and the brutality of the landscape does come through in this book, and the narrative is laced with excerpts from the diaries of explorers who went before them... 

The review ends with... But for all of his ramrod, ramrod-straight comportment, he does have a sense of humour, tongue often firmly in cheek. It's probably frozen there. Therein lies the success of his story, a desperate, thrilling adventure told with enough drollery to make it believable, and the haughty fines a mere mortal and bully for them. They made it a cracking account of one hazardous march in the classic stiff-lipped style... And that review was in the Kirkus Reviews. Thank you, Gina, for that. It sounds like a cracking read, but not for the faint-hearted, with the accounts of the frozenness of limbs and... how they coped with that during the journey and after.

Continuing on our books of journeys, there is another... title, harkening once again back to the First World War, which was... the whole theme of the show last week. We have The Path of Peace - Walking the Western Front Way. This is by Anthony Seldon - a deeply intimate and inspiring memoir about walking the 1000 kilometre route of World War 1's Western Front by a leading historian. Without a permanent home, a wife or a job, and with no clear sense of where his life was going, Anthony Seldon set out on a 35 day pilgrimage from the French-Swiss border to the English Channel. The writer's vivid account of walking the Western Front Way illuminates the traumas of the First World War, while reassessing his own tumultuous life. 

Let's hear a sample of The Path of Peace - Walking the Western Front Way by Anthony Seldon. It's narrated by Gordon Griffin.

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The first afternoon is still warm. My plan is to be walking northwest along the front in the first half of the day, which means the sun will be mostly on my back. But walking to day north and starting out at 4 p.m., the sun is on the left side of my face. To my west lies the low mountain range of the Vosges, to the north the flat plains of Alsace, and to my east the southern tip of the Black Forest, cradling it the mighty Rhine. The first of the seven rivers that will be my touchstones on the walk. My route never allows me to see it. But for my first hundred kilometers, the Rhine is a constant companion. I can sense it and smell it almost, and can never forget its pulsing urgency. 

The Rhine, indeed, was the ever present unconscious shadow of the Western Front for four and a half years. It was never within sight of the fighting, but never beyond its sounds. It mirrors the fronts. Length 1036km from the old Rhine Bridge at Constance in the Alps, till at the Hook of Holland. It expires into the dark oblivion of the North Sea as the Western Front runs north through Alsace. It mimics it flowing north from Baal. Then, as the front wheels northwestwards, so too does the Rhine, both travelling urgently onwards in search of the sea. I'm never happier on the walk than when I am beside a river. Always on the move, always lifting my spirits and urging me on.

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That was The Path of Peace - Walking the Western Front Way by Anthony Seldon. Anthony is [spells name]. That book goes for nearly 13 hours, and in The Guardian from November 2022, they write... In 2012, the author was deeply inspired by a letter a young but soon to be killed officer called Alexander Douglas Gillespie had sent his parents from the Western Front, and this described his dream of creating a commemorative path after the war along no man's land, all the way from Switzerland to the channel. After that, he wrote, he hoped to send every man and child in Western Europe on pilgrimage along that Via Sacra, so that they might think and learn what war means from the silent witnesses on either side. 

Seldon set out to set up a charity to realise this dream and a very difficult one, he explains. Given that far less than 1% of the lines of trenches remained, with the rest ploughed over to restore working farmland. All profits from this book, when it was sold, would go towards publicising and hopefully getting a start on this, what he called the Western Front way. And the Guardian says... He has a historian's enthusiasm and sharp eye for spotting and recounting good stories, many from the battlefields he is passing by. And the review ends, With the results of his walk and his publicising of it, the route through Belgium is now fully marked and open for walkers, though progress in France has been slower. 

And another one by Gina, another book which was published to great acclaim years ago. It is The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey. Thank you Gina. This is an exploration of the life and times of Australia's most enduring folk legend, Ned Kelly and his gang. Using Ned Kelly himself as the powerful narrator of this novel, written for a daughter he will never see. This is a heartrending story of a young boy growing up in grinding poverty, and of a young man defiantly resisting the wealth and power of those who wish to destroy him. It is a novel, evocative of time and place, and of the class-ridden society that was colonial Victoria in the 1870s. Let's hear a sample of The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey. It's narrated by Francis Greenslade.

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Now, were your poor grandpa's poor racked body finally granted everlasting title to the rich soil of Avenal? And your grandma left free to reveal her passion for the Duffy Land Act once again. There were now no one to contradict her or call her a fool. Certainly not us children. We knew the Quinns had gotten 1000 acres at Glenmore on the King River, and that is what we wanted too. Even Dan, who were the most distressed by our father's death in the hot summer evenings following the burial, my mother gathered her brood about her. It were not Cuchulain, Andrew and Maud she talked of now, but the mighty farm we would all soon select together. 

She said we would find a great mountain, river and flat, so rich no plow were needed. We would plunge our hands into it and breathe the fertile, loamy smell and be neighbors with our aunts and uncles once again, and break wild horses and sell them, and grow corn and wheat, and raise fat, sleek cattle, and all the land beneath our feet would be our own to walk on from dawn to dusk, ours and ours alone. We did not talk about our father, knowing our very excitement were an insult against his memory, and his soul were within each soul of ours, and would be for every moment of our lives. And there would never be a knot I tied, or a rabbit I skun, or a horse I rode that I did not see. Those small eyes watching to see I done it right. 

There were 60 hard crab hold miles between Avenal and my aunts, Kate and Jane. The very small children rode in a borrowed car together with our chooks, in baskets and pots and pans and blankets and axes and hoes and two bags of seed. My mother sitting up on the bench, driving with baby Grace at her breast. We older ones had charge of the cows and dogs. It were our job to catch the pig when he escaped, though he never minded on account of we was goin to a farm. Doubtless my mother had the same idea, but when we finally arrived at the township of Gretta, we discovered our uncles had been put in jail, and the aunts and all their children was living in a de-licensed hotel.

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And that was The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey. Peter is [spells name]. And that book goes for 11 hours and 45 minutes. It was added to our collection in 2007, and in a fairly recent review, or recent compared to when the book was published. This is from 2020, in The Guardian by Caro Llewellyn. She writes... In Carey's take on the enduring Australian myth, the odds stacked up so highly against everyone, your heart gets broken on every page. The True History of the Kelly Gang was published in 2000 and was awarded the 2001 Booker Prize. 

And this novel is credited with changing the perception of Kelly forever, she says, the true history... True History is a tough book. The language is tough. The people are tough. The relationships are even tougher, as is the land and the life. Carey's book on Kelly had been brewing a long time... Caro writes in an interview in the Paris Review. He said he was 19 and just discovering literature when he first imagined a book about Ned Kelly... I was reading Joyce, and at that time I read the Jerilderie Letter, a letter written by Ned Kelly in a town where he was robbing a bank. 

... It's a very Irish voice. I know it's not Joyce, but it does suggest, even to a 19 year old, the possibility of creating a poetic voice that grows out of Australian soil that is true to its place and hasn't existed before... So thank you, Gina, for those two recommendations... the one on the Antarctic and this one, two very different books, but are both challenging in their own ways. 

The next recommendation is from Anne. Now, many people who are members of the library, and many people who, um, just ring Vision Australia, for whatever reason, will have talked to Anne. I'm absolutely sure she has a beautiful American accent, very dulcet. And I worked with Anne for many years and still see her from time to time. Anne recommended reading Lolita in Tehran - a Memoir in Books. So another non-fiction, this is by Azar Nafisi. 

In Iran in the late 90s, Azar Nafisi and seven young women, her former students gathered at her house every Thursday to discuss forbidden works of Western literature. Shy and uncomfortable at first, they soon began to open up not only about the novels they were reading, but also their own dreams and disappointments. Their personal stories intertwine with those they are reading. Azar Nafisi also tells her own story. Let's hear a sample of Reading Lolita in Tehran a memoir in books by Azar Nafisi. It's narrated by Laurel Lefkow.

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In the fall of 1995, after resigning from my last academic post, I decided to indulge myself and fulfill a dream. I chose seven of my best and most committed students and invited them to come to my home every Thursday morning to discuss literature. They were all women. To teach a mixed class in the privacy of my home was too risky, even if we were discussing harmless works of fiction. One persistent male student, although barred from our class, insisted on his rights, so he neemah read the assigned material, and on special days he would come to my house to talk about the books we were reading. 

I often teasingly reminded my students of Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and asked, Which one of you will finally betray me? For I am a pessimist by nature, and I was sure at least one would turn against me. Nasreen once responded mischievously, You yourself told us that in the final analysis, we are our own betrayers, playing Judas to our own Christ. Manah pointed out that I was no Miss Brodie, and they... well, they were what they were. She reminded me of a warning I was fond of repeating, do not, under any circumstances, belittle a work of fiction by trying to turn it into a carbon copy of real life. What we search for in fiction is not so much reality, but the epiphany of truth. 

Yet I suppose that if I were to go against my own recommendation and choose a work of fiction that would most resonate with our lives in the Islamic Republic of Iran, it would not be the prime of miss Jean Brodie or even 1984, but perhaps Nabokov's invitation to a beheading or better yet, Lolita.

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And that was reading Lolita in Tehran - a Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi. Azar is [spells name]. This memoir was originally published in 2003. Once more in... The Guardian, there is a review by Paul Allen from 2003. He calls it... A rather wonderful book, very moving... And some of the books that these women discuss are The Great Gatsby or Lolita, of course. Henry James's Daisy Miller. So a few books are discussed. The classes that she writes about lasted from 1995 to 1997, when Nafisi left for the United States. Thank you, Anne, for that lovely recommendation. 

The next book is one that people have been waiting on, phenomenally popular when it came out. It is called Yellowface - all one word, Yellowface by R.F. Kuang. Authors Juniper Haywood and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars, but Athena is a literary darling, while Jun is a nobody who wants stories about basic white girls. Jun thinks so. When Jun witnesses Athena's death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse - stealing Athena's just finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese labourers during World War One. 

So what if June edits Athena's novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song, complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? This piece of history deserves to be told, whoever the teller. That is what Jun believes, and the New York Times bestseller list agrees. But Jun cannot escape Athena's shadow, and emerging evidence threatens her stolen success. As she races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves. Let's hear a sample of Yellowface by R.F. Kuang. It's narrated by Helen Lazar.

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The night I watch Athena Liudi were celebrating her TV deal with Netflix off the bat. For this story to make sense, you should know two things about Athena. First, she has everything. A multi-book deal straight out of college at a major publishing house, an MFA from the one writing workshop everyone's heard of, a resume of prestigious artist residencies and a history of awards nominations longer than my grocery list. At 27, she's published three novels, each one a successively bigger hit. For Athena, the Netflix deal was not a life changing event, just another feather in her cap, one of the side perks of the road to literary stardom she's been hurtling down since graduation. 

Second, perhaps as a consequence of the first, she has almost no friends. Writers our age, young, ambitious, up and comers just this side of 30 tend to run in packs. You'll find evidence of cliques all over social media, writers gushing over excerpts of one another's unpublished manuscripts. Losing my head over this w.i.p. Squealing over cover reveals. This is so gorgeous I will die. And posting selfies of group hangs at literary meetups across the globe. But Athena's Instagram photos feature no one else. She regularly tweets career updates and quirky jokes to her 70,000 followers, but she rarely adds other people. 

She doesn't name-drop, doesn't blurb or recommend her colleagues books, and doesn't publicly rub shoulders in that ostentatious, desperate way early career writers do. In the entire time I've known her, I've never heard her reference any close friends but me. I used to think that she was simply aloof. Athena is so stupidly, ridiculously successful that it makes sense she wouldn't want to mingle with mere mortals.

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That was a sample of Yellow Face by R. F. Kuang. So it's just the initials R and then F, and then kwang is [spells name]. And that book goes for 8.5 hours. This book was originally published in mid 2023. And just reading from Wikipedia here, they call it... A satirical novel... And the book was described as... A satire of racial diversity in the publishing industry, as well as a metafiction about social media, particularly Twitter... And Twitter plays an important part in spreading rumours, outing and all sorts of things in this novel. 

It is inspired by her own experiences as an Asian American author... being told her appeal is largely or entirely due to her being a token author, and this is the publishing industry that has given her this feedback. Her literary agent on reading the first draft was hesitant about the project and attempted to dissuade Kuang from pursuing it further due to its content being seen as as an attack on the publishing industry. But they, she insisted, and they continued the project. 

The Guardian wrote... Kuang delivers a hugely entertaining account of a brazen literary heist. The New York Times gave the book a positive but reserved review, calling it... Viciously satisfying, but on the nose and overly blunt... NPR reviewed Yellowface positively, calling it... A well executed, gripping, fast-paced novel... It did win some terrific awards in 2023. It won the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Fiction, Waterstones Book of the Year, it was shortlisted for, and it won the British Book Award in 2024. Also, this particular audio version was shortlisted for the Best Audio Book for 2024. So it was up for an Audie, Audie Award, as they're called. 

Just a reminder to everybody about the upcoming Melbourne Writers Festival. And there are still some tickets that have been set aside for members of the Vision Australia Library if they would like to attend the event with Kate Grenville. And this is on the 9th of May, from 6:00 in the evening till 7:00, and there are still some tickets left if you want to head down. I know Jean is coming and I'll be there. I'm looking forward to it. Kate Grenville is an amazing writer. This is also live streamed, so guests may also attend via live streaming. As has been for the last few years, the Vision Australia Library are proud sponsors of this year's Melbourne Writers Festival.

And we're honoured to host this award-winning author as she discusses her latest novel, Unsettled - a Journey Through Time and Place. So join Kate as she ... [?]... discusses this deeply personal memoir of family legacies, truth telling, and reckoning with what it means to be on land that was taken from other people. Intertwining her family's history with the broader story of First Nations peoples dispossession and displacement, Kate considers what it means to be descended from people who are on the sharp edge of the moving blade that was colonisation. She speaks about historical facts and historical fictions, writing challenging histories, and confronting the ghosts of the past. 

Kate will be in conversation with Daniel James, a Yorta Yorta Melbourne-based writer and broadcaster. So it's a free event and there are tickets left, but only at this stage for people who are members of Vision Australia Library. You'll need to register. To register for the live stream event or to attend in person, feel free to contact Vision Australia library, which is Vision Australia library.... Vision Australia Library Australia. Or you can call 1300 654 656... 1300 654 656. 

Thank you for joining us on here this today. Thank you to Gina and Anne. If you would like to join the library, the number as I've already just mentioned is 1300 654 656... 1300 654 656. We would love your recommendations. We would love you to join the library and add your voice to the community. Simply by joining and borrowing books, you give the library a voice. Have a lovely week and we'll be back next week with more Hear This.