Past Programs
Books - Autobiography - 2007
Let the music do the writing... Read Transcript
16/11/2007
It's that time again -- Christmas is almost upon us, and with it the perennial question of what to give people who might already have everything. We all know at least one...
Well, pop biographies are pretty good stocking fillers. But they can also be more than that.
If you go beyond the glossy autobiographies of huge rock stars like Eric Clapton or even the slightly rougher Slash of the band Guns 'n' Roses, there's a wealth of rock, pop, and hip hop histories that might just be too big for a modest stocking this Christmas. They are histories that place the music in its wider social and cultural contexts.
Zulfikar Abbany has been reading a few, but is still wondering why we feel the need to write and read about the music we love to hear.
Gunter Grass's Peeling the Onion (review) Read Transcript
08/10/2007
Just over a year ago, when Nobel prize-winning German writer Gunter Grass was 78, he revealed that in his youth he'd been a member of Hitler's Waffen-SS. This was a secret he'd kept for 60 years, and its disclosure was understandably shocking for those who'd come to rely on Grass as a kind of post-war moral beacon.
Grass gives an account of his time with the SS in his autobiography Peeling the Onion, and Geordie Williamson has been reading it for The Book Show.
John Lanchester's Family Romance
11/09/2007
In his new book Family Romance, John Lanchester pieces together his parents' histories, their secrets, the shape of their shared life and how their actions and omissions made him who he is.
It tells the story of the family; from his father's devastating wartime separation from his parents during the occupation of Hong Kong to his mother's decision to become a nun and then, after 15 years, quit the convent, change her name, take her sister's identity, and conceal these facts from her husband and son for 40 years.
Jacob Rosenberg - Sunrise West Read Transcript
09/07/2007
Last time Jacob Rosenberg was on The Book Show, it was only a few months ago on the occasion of his winning the National Biography Award 2007 for the first book of his memoirs, East of Time, which also won last year's NSW Premier's Literary Award for Non-Fiction.
Jacob Rosenberg has lived in Australia since 1948. He was born in Poland, the youngest member of a working-class Jewish family who lived in Lodz, a city known as the Polish Manchester because of its textile industry. With the German occupation of Poland, Jacob and his family were confined to the Lodz ghetto until they were sent to Auschwitz. Within a few days of arriving there, he was the only one of his family still alive.
East of Time was a collection of stories of his childhood through to his early 20s. Now at almost 85 he's just published the next instalment of his memoirs; this time it's called Sunrise West.
This book, as Jacob says in the preface, navigates between two worlds; his wartime and postwar experiences in Europe and his subsequent new life in Australia. He says that 'the hallmark of the first world is darkness and light: that of the second hope, and restoration -- but a restoration forever coloured by the past, which cunningly refuses to give up its claim and permeates my days.'
And Jacob Rosenberg joins Ramona Koval on The Book Show.
Ronnie Corbett's It's Goodnight From Him (review)
07/05/2007
Ronnie Corbett, comedic partner of actor Ronnie Barker, has written a warm, personal memoir of the duo's partnership and friendship during the hugely popular British television show The Two Ronnies. Polash Larsen reviews And It's Goodnight From Him: The Autobiography of the Two Ronnies for The Book Show.
Samina Yasmeen reviews President Musharraf's best-selling memoir
03/05/2007
In November last year Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf released his memoir In the Line of Fire. It's a first-hand view of the war on terror in its central theatre, and the full story of the events that brought Musharraf to power in 1999. The memoir is one of the biggest selling books in Pakistan.
Dr Samina Yasmeen is a Pakistani born associate professor in political science and international relations at the University of Western Australia, where she teaches world politics, strategy and diplomacy, and Islam and world politics. Simina Yasmeen has been reading In the Line of Fire, for The Book Show.
Margo Kingston reviews Pauline Hanson's autobiography Read Transcript
30/04/2007
Pauline Hanson is in the media spotlight once again. Not only has she announced that she will contest a Queensland Senate seat in this year's federal election but her autobiography, Untamed and Unashamed, has shot into the top 10 bestsellers list.
Journalist Margo Kingston has been reading Pauline Hanson's autobiography. In 1998 Margo Kingston went on tour with Pauline Hanson on her federal election campaign, and wrote a book about it all called Off the Rails: the Pauline Hanson trip. For The Book Show, Margo Kingston reviews Untamed and Unashamed.
Writing the Story of Your Life, with Carmel Bird (festival forum repeat) Read Transcript
20/04/2007
Novelist Carmel Bird in conversation with Ramona Koval at last weekend's Writers At Como festival in Melbourne, with handy advice and inspirational references about how to go about writing your own memoir.
(First broadcast 23/2/2007)
A memoir between two cultures, with Liza Dalby (repeat) Read Transcript
19/04/2007
We explore the art of writing across cultures; between contemporary Japan and the United States and ancient China, through the memoir of anthropologist Liza Dalby. East Wind Melts the Ice is a collection of her personal reflections organised according to the ancient Chinese Almanac -- a calendar of the seasons which had a major influence on Japanese literary culture.
Liza Dalby has been in Australia for the Perth Writers' Festival and is speaking to the Book Show's Sarah L'Estrange.
(First broadcast 27/2/2007)
Bill Bryson: The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (repeat)
17/04/2007
Another chance to hear the much loved world-wide humorist, travel-writer and science communicator Bill Bryson speak about his memoir of growing up in the 1950s, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid.
Here's his description of his new book:
So this is a book about not very much: about being small and getting larger slowly. One of the great myths of life is that childhood passes quickly. In fact, because time moves more slowly in Kid World – five times more slowly in a classroom on a hot afternoon, eight times more slowly on any car journey of over five miles, and so slowly during the last week before birthdays, Christmases and summer vacations as to be functionally immeasurable – it goes on for a decade when measured in adult terms. It is adult life that s over in a twinkling.(First broadcast 5/2/2007)
Life writing, trauma and healing
13/04/2007
How healing is it to write personal stories of trauma about very intimate subjects like child abuse, neglect and incest – and then to publish them? This may sound like a heavy subject, but these painful stories are often tales of survival. Might this explain why they're so popular with readers and why they're flying off the bookstore shelves?
In today's panel discussion we take a deeper look into the issues around traumatic life writing. What are the ethics of revealing all, what are the risks, and is it therapeutic?
Miranda Seymour's memoir of obsession: In My Father's House Read Transcript
01/04/2007
In her new book In My Father's House: Elegy for an Obsessive Love, Miranda Seymour turns her considerable powers of observation, research and language to a story close to home, indeed the story revolves around her home and the obsessive love of her father, George Fitzroy Seymour, for a house called Thrumpton.
Miranda Seymour's memoir of obsession: In My Father's House Read Transcript
29/03/2007
Miranda Seymour joins us to talk about her memoir, In My Father's House: Elegy for an Obsessive Love. Miranda Seymour has written novels, children's stories, and several works of non-fiction including literary biographies of Henry James, Robert Graves, Mary Shelley and Ottoline Morrell. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Society of Arts, and is a Visiting Professor at the University of Nottingham Trent.
In her new book In My Father's House: Elegy for an Obsessive Love, Miranda Seymour turns her considerable powers of observation, research and language to a story close to home, indeed the story revolves around her home and the obsessive love of her father, George Fitzroy Seymour, for a house called Thrumpton.
Life of an anthropologist: Edie Turner
28/03/2007
Edith Turner, or Edie as she prefers, has travelled the world with her husband, the famous anthropologist Victor Turner. They've been studying pilgrimage, healing rituals and rites of passage in Zambia, Sri Lanka, Ireland, Alaska and England - where they're both from originally.
Edie continued travelling and studying after her husband's death, and is an anthropologist in her own right. Edie has gathered all her amazing experiences, like taking part in shaman rituals, in her autobiography Heart of Lightness: The Life Story of an Anthropologist.
The Book Show's Sarah L'Estrange spoke to Edie Turner in a studio at Virginia University, USA.
National Biography Award winner: Jacob Rosenberg Read Transcript
28/03/2007
The National Biography Award 2007 was announced last night, and the winner, Jacob Rosenberg, joins us on the program this morning. Jacob won the prize for his book East of Time, which also won last year's NSW Premier's Literary Award for Non-Fiction.
Jacob Rosenberg has written a number of books, both prose and poetry, in English and in Yiddish, his first language. This latest book is a collection of stories he has carried in his head for a long time, stories from his childhood to his early 20s.
Jacob Rosenberg has lived in Australia since 1948. He was born in Poland, the youngest member of a working-class Jewish family. The family lived in Lodz, a city known as the Polish Manchester because of its textile industry. With the German occupation of Poland, Jacob and his family were confined to the Lodz ghetto until they were sent to Auschwitz. Within a few days of arriving there, he was the only one of his family still alive.
