A Lovely Australian Book Group Every Month on the ABC

On the first Tuesday night of each month our ABC has a wonderful half hour book show that runs from 10:00 -10:30 pm.  It is hosted by Jennifer Byrne who I always find to be a really vivacious and passionate book lover.

Her regular guests are Jason Steger who writes about books in the Melbourne Age newspaper and who I admire greatly as well as Marieke Hardy who I absolutely love. Marieke can polarise people more than probably needed but she is a young intelligent, quirky reader and good friends with the other two. I know Simon of Savidge Reads adores her as he often mentions her in his blog.

Each month they review a modern novel and a classic novel chosen by one of the guests. In addition to Jennifer, Jason and Marieke they have two additional guests that change from month to month. They are almost always authors and are usually Australian authors and they tend to bring in writers who are participating in literary festivals happening around the country at any given time.

On the Tuesday nights other than the first one of the month Jennifer often interviews an author and I have watched some excellent half hour interviews with Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan and Ian Rankin to name a few.

The best part about this program is it is played on ABC's iView service which means people around the world (as far as I know) can access the program.

Their web page can be found here.

Their August reads to be discussed on Tuesday 6th of August will be:
The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud for the modern book and the more classic book will be Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman.

I am hoping to read at least one of these books in time for that program if I get my hands on them.

I hope anyone that enjoys a fun filled half an hour television program with good humour and interesting books will have a look. Better than that, make yourself a cup of tea or coffee, fire up the web page, sit back and watch the program.