Get your bookworm on with a rotating roster of, um, bookworms. Including Jenna Todd & Suri Reddy from Time Out Bookstore, bringing us a different book to talk about each week.
Kiran brings in the Best Illustrated Book, Best Typography, Best Book as well as the People’s Choice, Tatau: A Cultural History of Samoan Tattooing by Sean Mallon and Sebastien Galliot. A truely beautiful book.
Jenna is beaming over one of the books shortlisted for the Man Booker International 2019 prize, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk. The book has been translated from Polish and mixes your classic crime novel with thought-provoking ideas, injustice against marginalised people, animal rights, the hypocrisy of traditional religion, belief in predestination, getting away with murder and a few laughs, Jenna reckons.
Kiran's absolutely raving about a new collection of short stories, Sweet Home by Wendy Erskine. Nothing like a good written dialogue and some in depth character studies to get you stuck into a book. Highly recommeneded by Kiran.
Jenna's got a weird one (in a very great way), Bunny by Mona Awad, a novel that's very relatable for the high-school-female-friendship model. Jenna didn't read the back before she dived into this one, and she was very pleasantly surprised. A black-comedy, that takes a dark twist and apparently will hook you from the beginning. Nice one.
Kiran pops up to the studio to talk about the winner of the 2019 International Booker Prize, Celestial Bodies, by Jokha Alharthi. The novel is set in the village of al-Awafi in Oman, where it follows the narratives of three sisters, Mayya, Asma and Khawla. These women and their families witness Oman evolve from a traditional, slave-owning society slowly redefining itself after the colonial era. This book is the first of it's kind to be transalated out of it's original language to English and Kiran adores it.
In light of the new series of Handmaid's Tale, Jenna thought The Farm was a fitting match. The novel tells the story of Mae Yu, the woman who runs Golden Oaks - a luxury retreat transforming the fertility industry. That's right, a dystopian social commentary about surrogacy. Yikes.
Kiran's talking short stories this week, and reckons they are on the rise. After reading Being Various, edited by Lucy Caldwell, she's got some top picks and new authors to look out for. Including stories from Sally Rooney, Eimear McBride, and Belinda McKeon.
Jenna joins us with a controversial book this something, the 'creepy' book by Moby, Then It Fell Apart. Jenna was a big fan of Moby's first auto-biography but this one hasn't quite had the same effect, and after causing a stir with Natalie Portman, André 3000 and Lana Del Ray, is this worth a read?
In light of Auckland Writer's Festival, Kiran brings in a weighty one this week, Merchants of Truth - Inside the War for Control of the News by Jill Abramson. After Jill Abramson spoke in Auckland this month, Kiran reckons this is a good deep dive if you're interested in the media landscape and the changing world of current affairs and news. A good one for the news team, eh?
Jenna has just finished up at the Auckland Writer's Festival, and is still digesting it all, so today she's reviewing Ruby Porter's Attraction, which was launched on Saturday. Attraction tells the story of a road trip through Aotearoa, the significance of the land we live on and colonial history, and the shifting of relationships in the narrators life. As this story weaves through past, and present, Jenna reckons this is one very relatable novel that you don't wanna miss out on.
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