10pm Tuesday, 01 April 2008

First Tuesday Book Club is ABC TV's nationally televised book club.

Hosted by Jennifer Byrne, it brings to the screen the pleasures that draw millions of clubbers worldwide with their shared love of reading.
Debating the merits of tonight's two books are regulars Marieke Hardy and Jason Steger plus television and radio bad boy John Safran and award-winning crime writer Michael Robotham.
Books featured on the program:
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
It is 1996 and renowned book conservator Hanna Heath receives a phone call in the middle of the night. She is told of a precious manuscript that has been recovered from the ruins of the Bosnian War. Shooting has only just stopped in war-torn Sarajevo and though reluctant to leave the safety of her Sydney home, Hanna realises she cannot pass up the opportunity of a lifetime. She's been asked to restore the Sarajevo Haggadah - a beautiful and priceless medieval Hebrew text, which retells the story of Exodus.
Hanna discovers a series of tiny artefacts in its ancient parchment and binding - an insect wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, a white hair and missing clasps. She becomes determined to unlock the Haggadah's secrets and miraculous survival story.
The book follows the journey from the manuscript's creation in Muslim-ruled medieval Spain, its escape from Venice's Inquisition book burnings, and the Nazi occupation of Sarajevo through to the 1990s when Muslim librarian Ozren Karaman braved enemy shelling to rescue the Hagaddah.
Liar's Poker by Lewis Michael
Liar's Poker is an insider's account of Wall Street during its heyday in the mid-1980s, and an expose of one of the most profitable and powerful firms - mortgage bond trading firm, Saloman Brothers. The book chronicles, in self-deprecating detail, the young author's unlikely ascension in just two short years, from art history graduate, to trainee with Salomon Brothers, then lowly trading floor 'geek' and eventually becoming one of the rich and powerful 'big swinging dicks' on Wall Street.
First Tuesday Book Club will be repeated on ABC2 - Sunday, April 6 at 7pm