2ser Book Club Podcast Por 2SER 107.3FM arte de portada

2ser Book Club

2ser Book Club

De: 2SER 107.3FM
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 The 2ser book club is a weekly exploration of writing new & old. Join Andrew and Tess as they review books and get into the issues that makes reading so much fun. Arte Historia y Crítica Literaria
Episodios
  • Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s Listen Layla

    Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s Listen Layla
    Mar 15 2021
    Yassmin Abdel-Magied’s Listen Layla absolutely grabbed me with it’s combination of deep questioning and heart on its sleeve social conscience. Yassmin Abdel-Magied is a Sudanese-Australian writer, broadcaster and social advocate. She trained as a mechanical engineer and worked on oil and gas rigs around Australia for years before becoming a writer and broadcaster. She has published a memoir, Yassmin's Story, as well as a book for younger readers, You Must Be Layla. Layla Hussein is a precocious inventor. At just fourteen Layla has helped steer her school team to the international Grand Designs Tourismo being held in Germany. With the holidays ahead and invention of her mind, LAyla is blindsided when her Grandmother falls ill and her whole family must quickly pack and travel to Sudan to be with their family. Layla can’t support the team from halfway around the world, but can she really just give up her dreams to nurse her sick Grandma? I think it’s a truism that adolescence is a time of questioning. I’m pretty sure I’m still working through some of the big questions that first occurred to me as a teenager. And that’s what makes LIsten Layla so engaging. In Layla, Yassmin Abdel Magied, opens up the door to questions of personal and social identity, belonging and responsibility. These are questions that we don’t always do well discussing as a nation, with our beer soaked jingoism more often than not getting in the way of true openness and debate. Through Layla we are exposed to the destabilising notion that identity is not some label you wear but an ongoing discourse between aspects of yourself. At home in Brisbane Layla has her friends and her inventing which is opening up her world. Yet she also must deal with her difference; as she catches the bus, or just attends a school meeting she is reminded that others see her differently to the Australia they want to believe in. Arriving in Sudan Layla finds she is not quite Sudanese enough for people either; her Arabic is accented and her passionate attitude is destined to see her get into trouble as she discovers Khartoum is not Brisbane. Listen, Layla is set against the Sudanese uprising of 2018/19 that saw pro-democracy protesters overthrow the repressive military government through non-violent civil disobedience. Abdel-Magied uses this historical backdrop to great effect highlighting the intergenerational attitudes and underscoring the power of youth. Within this space Layla is forced to confront her reality and consider the wider world she lives in. It’s powerful to consider the challenges to identity and questions of responsibility that Abdel-Magied sets out. With almost half of Australian’s either born overseas or with a parent who was born overseas our national identity cannot simply be summed up by lamingtons and vegemite sandwiches. As Layla confronts her commitment to the Sudanese revolution she in turn questions what is her responsibility to first nations people when she returns to Brisbane. These aren’t questions that are limited to adolescence and Listen Layla is a timely reminder that in the face of injustice there is always work to be done. Listen, Layla is technically YA but as I always end up saying; this is a book for everyone, full of ideas and questions that we can all benefit from considering.
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    5 m
  • AB Endacott's Mirror Mirror

    AB Endacott's Mirror Mirror
    Mar 12 2021
    A B Endacott’s Mirror Mirror is a mini-book, an essay on the importance of narratives and a fabulous look at our world as storytellers. First up Mirror Mirror gives us reason to celebrate because it is the first offering from a new publishing house Debut Books. Against all odds it seems the Australian publishing industry managed to grow during Covid which is a stunning testament to how powerful and important stories and reading have been in our lockdown experiences. Sucha healthy industry should be fostering independent publishers and that’s exactly what Debut Books is. The mission of Debut is to foster unique Australian stories and so I’m pretty excited to see what they’ve got coming. Mirror Mirror is compact offering at under one hundred pages but it punches above its weight in big ideas. The imagery of the title explores the role of stories in reflecting our society. There’s also an interesting sleight of hand in that it also takes in the ways we as storytellers inhabit those stories and often can come to inhabit our own reflections. I don’t want to get too theoretical early in the morning but this is really where storytelling and narrative theory gets interesting. Endacott looks at the story of Cinderella, exploring the various iterations of the fairy tale back to their folklore origins. In the ways the story has been told we can see cultural values reflected. From connections to nature, to the necessity or even desirability of violence in meeting out justice. Cinderella takes us to Disney and their control of a huge market share of storytelling across the world. What does it mean for one company and presumably one company line to hold so much power over the stories that you grew up with and are perhaps now sharing with your kids. AB Endacott asks these questions in a relatable way and her conversational style guides the reader through some tricky points of theory to help us see why stories matter. And if you’ll indulge me for a sec I want to reinforce that point about stories and the way they are told being oh so important… Cast your mind to some of the biggest news stories in Australia at the moment. So much of what we are discussing depends on who gets to tell the story and whose story will be listened to. The right to tell stories and the right to be heard has never been equally shared in our society. Too often the most powerful have assumed their right to tell the dominant narrative and for it to be listened to unquestioned. But we should be asking about which stories and why. What do the stories we follow tell us about who we are as a culture. Check out Mirror Mirror on the podcast
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    4 m
  • J.P. Pomare’s Tell Me Lies

    J.P. Pomare’s Tell Me Lies
    Mar 1 2021
    J.P. Pomare is a regular guest on my show Final Draft in part because he is so damn prolific but more importantly he writes compelling, pacy thrillers that have the effect of glueing you to your chair turning pages till the last gripping moment. Last year Josh and I spoke about his incredible thriller of life in a cult In The Clearing. It delved into the psychology of belonging and how people are indoctrinated by a set of ideas. And that’s the other incredible thing about J.P. Pomare’s books; they leverage fascinating stories to explore ideas that are all too relevant to our world. J.P. Pomare’s latest novel is called Tell Me Lies, and you might be able to guess from the name that this has a lot to say about the ways we live in a world that constantly confounds our ideas of truth. Margot is a successful psychologist; thriving practice, beautiful family and an academic interest in antisocial personality disorder. On an otherwise uneventful night Margot is woken by the sound of broken glass. The family escapes through their open front door to see flames blooming from Margot’s office window. Someone has firebombed their house! All these events quickly pile on Margot in the book's opening. Margot’s worsening personal situation is interspersed with transcripts from a mysterious trial playing out in our periphery; someone is lying and has betrayed trust leading to a death… Throughout all this Margot continues to see her patients; one, a student whose academic career is under threat for writing papers for profit, another the moderator of horrifically graphic content for a social media platform and finally a young woman so chronically addicted to picking the wrong guy she cannot see the danger she is in. When her clinic is also firebombed Margot must confront the possibility that one of her patients might be behind the violence. Tell Me Lies confronts the difficult reality of how we respond when we know someone is lying. It’s a fascinating conceit and one that is ultimately flipped on the reader as we are drawn ever more tightly into MArgot’s first person narration. Compelling stories told well have a way of convincing us they are real. How far into a tale must you get before you find yourself invested in its outcome? Every day on social media we are encouraged by politicians, media outlets and friends to play amateur psychologist on the myriad personalities that filter through our feeds. When stories contradict we believe we can tell the truth from the lies but how do we know? Tell Me Lies is a gripping story, drip feeding information and challenging us to solve the mystery ahead of Margot. As we dive deeper we find we it harder to separate the stories we are hearing from what we want to believe and even as we find ourselves shouting at Margot that she’s got it all wrong there’s more twists to come. I read Tell Me Lies in just a few sittings. It’s popcorn reading with caviar ideas (I absolutely should not do metaphors!) This one’s a must for lovers of psychological crime If you want to discover more J.P. Pomare joined me on Final Draft and you can check that conversation out on the podcast
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    4 m
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