First Tuesday Book Club With Jennifer Byrne

10:00pm – Tuesday, November 6 on ABC1

This month, First Tuesday Book Club host Jennifer Byrne and regulars Marieke Hardy and Jason Steger are joined on the panel by the Archibald-winning artist Ben Quilty and best-selling Australian-Irish author Monica McInerney.

The two books being reviewed by the panel are Chloe Hooper’s much anticipated follow-up to 2008′s The Tall Man – The Engagement, and seminal work of post-apocalyptic science fiction The Chrysalids by John Wyndham.

The Engagement is a taut psychological thriller which explores the uneasy relationship between money and love, power and marriage, and the dark side of the erotic imagination.

The Chrysalids is set in a post-nuclear world where any difference or mutation is feared as an offence against God. When his powers of telepathy are discovered the narrator David, along with his sister, cousin and friends, have to run for their lives to the feared Badlands.

This is your last few days to help create the ultimate Australian reading list – 10 Aussie Books to Read Before You Die. Vote for your favourite at abc.net.au/aussiebooks by Friday 16 November.

Jennifer will reveal the ten books on Tuesday 4 December in a special one-hour First Tuesday Book Club.

10:00pm – Tuesday, October 2 on ABC1

This month, First Tuesday Book Club host Jennifer Byrne and regular panellists Marieke Hardy and Jason Steger are joined on the panel by journalist and author Indira Naidoo and musician Dave Graney.

The two books being reviewed by the club this month are the fast-paced and very funny Where’d You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple and James Salter’s sensual tale of an ill-fated love affair, A Sport and A Pastime.

Where’d You Go Bernadette is the story of the anxious, agoraphobic and brilliant architect Bernadette Fox, her precocious daughter Bee and tech star husband Elgie. On the eve of a family trip to Antarctica, Bernadette vanishes and her daughter Bee sets out on a mission to find her mother. Written by Mad About You and Arrested Development screenwriter, Maria Semple, Where’d You Go Bernadette is a light, funny and addictive read.

Released in the late 1960s, James Salter’s erotic masterpiece, A Sport and A Pastime is set against the backdrop of various French country towns and tracks a doomed, but passionate love affair.

Help create the ultimate Australian reading list – 10 Aussie Books to Read Before You Die. Vote for your favourite at abc.net.au/aussiebooks

10:00pm – Tuesday, September 4 on ABC1

This month, First Tuesday Book Club host Jennifer Byrne, and regulars Marieke Hardy and Jason Steger are joined on the panel by acclaimed US author David Vann, and science writer Margaret Wertheim The two books being reviewed by the panel are the award-winning HHhH by Laurent Binet, about the assassination attempt on high-ranking Nazi, Reinhard Heydrich; and George Eliot’s epic Middlemarch.

HHhH is the debut novel of French author Laurent Binet. It recounts Operation Anthropoid, the assassination of Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich in Prague during World War II. It was awarded the 2010 Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman.

George Eliot’s epic is set at the cusp of the Industrial Revolution, and chronicles the lives, loves, foibles and politics of the fictional English town of Middlemarch.

Help create the ultimate Australian reading list – 10 Aussie Books to Read Before You Die. Vote for your favourite at abc.net.au/aussiebooks

10:00pm – Tuesday, August 7 on ABC1

joined on the panel by best-selling author John Birmingham, and award-winning playwright and actress, Kate Mulvany.

The two books being reviewed by the panel are Karen Thompson Walker’s just-released, debut novel The Age Of Miracles, already causing a stir in the publishing world, and Iris Murdoch’s classic The Sea, The Sea, the book which finally won her the Booker Prize when she was in her late 70s.

The Age Of Miracles is a global disaster story as seen through the eyes of an 11-year-old girl. It has an arresting premise – waking up to discover that the earth’s rotation is slowing down.

The Sea, The Sea is about a celebrated theatre director, the flawed hero Charles Arrowby, and a pack of London luvvies who just won’t leave him alone when he moves to a broken-down cottage beside the sea.

10:05pm – Tuesday, July 3 on ABC1

This month, First Tuesday Book Club host Jennifer Byrne, and regulars Marieke Hardy and Jason Steger are joined on the panel by business leader, speaker and author Geoffrey Cousins, and Charlotte Wood, acclaimed author of The Submerged Cathedral, The Children and Animal People.

The two books being reviewed by the panel are Australian Wayne Macauley’s comic novel, The Cook and Wallace Stegner’s elegant evocation of the ties of family and friendship, Crossing To Safety.

Blackly funny and deliciously satirical, The Cook feeds our hunger to know what goes on in the kitchen, while skewering our culture of food worship. At Cook School, Zac dreams about becoming the greatest chef the world has seen. He has dreams of a future, of escaping the dead-end, no-hope lot of his fellow cooks. He thinks he’s taken his first steps when he becomes house cook for a wealthy family. But when his promised future looks unlikely to eventuate, Zac is forced to reassess everything. Sweet turns sour and ends in bitter revenge.

Crossing to Safety has, since its publication in 1987, established itself as one of the great American novels of the 20th century. Tracing the lives, loves, and aspirations of two couples who move between Vermont and Wisconsin, it is a work of quiet majesty, deep compassion, and powerful insight into the alchemy of friendship and marriage.

Help create the ultimate Australian reading list – 10 Aussie Books to Read Before You Die. Vote for your favourite at abc.net.au/aussiebooks

9:55pm – Tuesday, June 5 on ABC1

This month, First Tuesday Book Club host Jennifer Byrne, and regular panellists Marieke Hardy and Jason Steger are joined by guests American Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jeffrey Eugenides and British author Dame Stella Rimmington.

The two books being reviewed by the panel are Philip Roth’s tenth book, The Ghost Writer, and Erskine Childers’ spy classic The Riddle of the Sands.

The Ghost Writer tells the story of Nathan Zuckerman, a young author invited to spend an evening at the home of the great Jewish-American writer E.I. Lonoff. While there, he meets a young woman who may or may not be Anne Frank, and the lines between fact and fiction are provocatively blurred.

The Riddle of the Sands, written in 1903 has been called the first example of the modern-day thriller.

Carruthers, a minor official in the Foreign Office is contacted by an acquaintance, Davies, who asks him to join in a yachting holiday in the Baltic Sea. He arrives to find that Davies has a small sailing boat, not the comfortable crewed yacht he expected. Davies gradually reveals that he suspects that the Germans are undertaking something sinister in the German Frisian islands.

Don’t forget to help create the ultimate Australian reading list – 10 Aussie Books to Read Before You Die.

Vote for your favourite at abc.net.au/aussiebooks

10:05pm – Tuesday, April 3 on ABC1

First Tuesday Book Club host Jennifer Byrne, and regular panellists Marieke Hardy and Jason Steger are joined by two terrific guests from this year’s Perth Writers Festival.

Glen Duncan author of the devilishly clever and downright gruesome The Last Werewolf and the remarkable author of The Female Eunuch Germaine Greer join the club to discuss George Orwell’s prophetic and terrifying vision of totalitarian hell – 1984.

The new release book is Jeanette Winterson’s heartbreaking but slyly funny memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal.

This episode will mark Professor Greer’s third appearance on the show. She’s never failed to ignite the passions of the panel and this episode is no exception.

10:00pm – Tuesday, December 6 on ABC1

Tuesday, 6 December 2011 Welcome to the First Tuesday Book Club’s annual one-hour summer celebration of books and reading.

Joining the club to talk all things summer reading, are special guests, Chair of Sydney Writers’ Festival, Sandra Yates, and John Birmingham, the blogger and bestselling Australian author of He Died With A Felafel in his Hand.

First up for discussion is How I Became A Famous Novelist by Steve Hely, a book that has been described as a ‘razor-sharp evisceration of celebrity culture and literary fame’. Young readers let us know what is hot on their book list this year before the clubbers turn their attention to what books they’re planning to take on their summer holidays and great gift ideas, before tackling the question – what was the best fiction book of the year?

10:00pm – Tuesday, December 6 on ABC1

Tuesday, 6 December 2011 Welcome to the First Tuesday Book Club’s annual one-hour summer celebration of books and reading.

Joining the club to talk all things summer reading, are special guests, Chair of Sydney Writers’ Festival, Sandra Yates, and John Birmingham, the blogger and bestselling Australian author of He Died With A Felafel in his Hand.

First up for discussion is How I Became A Famous Novelist by Steve Hely, a book that has been described as a ‘razor-sharp evisceration of celebrity culture and literary fame’. Young readers let us know what is hot on their book list this year before the clubbers turn their attention to what books they’re planning to take on their summer holidays and great gift ideas, before tackling the question – what was the best fiction book of the year?

10:00pm – Tuesday, November 1 on ABC1

Welcome to First Tuesday Book Club. Host Jennifer Byrne, and panellists Marieke Hardy and Jason Steger are back to explore the world of books; from prize-winners to blockbusters, hot off the presses new releases to much loved classics.

Joining the club this month are British author of The Psychopath Test and The Men Who Stare at Goats; Jon Ronson and Julia Baird to discuss the Pulitzer prize winner, A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, and Oscar Wilde’s short story The Happy Prince.