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By the Book is Ramona Koval's love letter to books and writing, a tribute to the stories that have changed and enriched her life Ramona Koval is one of Australia's best-loved broadcasters, having spent sixteen years presenting 'The Book Show' on Radio National An internationally respected literary journalist, Ramona has interviewed the best writers in Australia and overseas Born to Yiddish-speaking survivors of the Holocaust and brought up in Melbourne, books were Ramona's lifeline from a young age Her mother famously never censored Ramona's reading, even buying her ten-year-old daughter a copy of the Kama Sutra when asked to In 1995, Ramona won the Order of Australia Media Award for her work on Radio National This gorgeous paperback edition is the perfect gift for anyone who loves books Ramona has legions of dedicated fans across Australia Author lives in St Kilda, Melbourne and is a regular guest of writers' festivals all around Australia and abroad
Koval has been praised as a master of the interview genre, renowned for engaging writers in conversations that are incisive, provocative and downright funny. In this collection, she shares the most fascinating interviews from her 2005 book Tasting Life Twice, along with brand new interviews with some of the most important writers of our times.
I looked up the name in the phone book and rang the number. I tried to imagine the conversation that might ensue. ‘Hello? I was wondering if you’re the man who was recently at an auction and asked a woman named Bernadette if I was married and had children and was happy—and if you are, are you my real father?’ Ramona Koval’s parents were Holocaust survivors who fled their homeland and settled in Melbourne. As a child, Koval learned little about their lives—only snippets from traumatic tales of destruction and escape. But she always suspected that the man who raised her was not her biological father. One day in the 1990s, long after her mother’s death, she decides she must know t...
By the Book is Ramona Koval's love letter to books and writing. What is it about reading that we love so much? Why do books make our lives so much richer? Ramona Koval's By the Book is about reading and living, and about the authors that have written themselves into her life: from Oliver Sacks to Oscar Wilde, Christina Stead to Grace Paley. It is about learning to read (and asking her mother to buy her a copy of the Kama Sutra), about love and science (and her childhood ambition to be Marie Curie), about arctic exploration (and her ruminations on what part of a husky she would eat if she had to), about poetry and travel and falling in love. In our book-devouring nation, this is a book for ev...
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we are all just one small disaster away from sinking, and sometimes you only realise when you're gasping for air On a daylight street in Minneapolis Minnesota, a Black man is asphyxiated - by callous knee of an officer, by cruel might of state, and under crushing weight of colony. In Melbourne the body of another woman has been found - this time, after catching a late tram home. The Atlantic has run out of the English alphabet, when christening hurricanes this season. The earth is on fire - from the redwoods of California, to Australia's east coast. The sea draws back, and tsunamis lash out in Samoa and Sumatra. Water rises in Sulawesi and Nagasaki. Bloated cod are surfacing, all along the M...
Stone by stone the basilica was being dismantled in order to be put back together again. Each stone was painted with a number and laid with care onto pallets spread over the ground . . . I kept thinking about those numbered stones. Some purpose began to take shape. I began to wonder if I might re-trace and recover something of my own past, to reassemble it in the manner of the basilica. It was a matter of looking to see if any of the original building blocks remained, and where might I find them. The 2011 earthquake that shook Christchurch to its core led Lloyd Jones to investigate his own foundations and family past. And so begins a quest to revisit what has been buried by a legacy of silence. Piecing together his own memories with clues of what has been deliberately forgotten by his parents, Jones embarks on a journey of discovery – uncovering hardships endured and sorrows kept hidden. Grandparents never spoken of or met emerge from dusty archives as he unearths lives torn apart by tragedy and unspoken mysteries. Like the city that is exposed, Jones must come to terms with a history that is not one he may have imagined. Also available as an eBook
What comfort can an agnostic give people who are suffering or dying? Looking for more meaning in his work, Johannes Klabbers gave up a tenured academic position to spend his days caring for the sick and dying. He trained as a secular pastoral carer in a cancer hospital, and from the patients there he learned how simply talking and listening can provide comfort: from chatting about the football to discussing life's meaning and how one prepares for death. I Am Here is a frank, moving, and sometimes funny record of his encounters. It gives an unforgettable insight into the variety of ways people cope with suffering, and suggests how we can support them -- through caring, through conversation, and by acknowledging that although we may not be able to answer all of life's questions, we can face them together. From one of the saddest places comes this powerful affirmation of our capacity for humane care.
Throughout Bobby Wabalanginy's young life the ships have been arriving, bringing European settlers to the south coast of Western Australia, where Bobby's people, the Noongar people, have always lived. Bobby, smart, resourceful and eager to please, has befriended the settlers, joining them as they hunt whales, till the land, and work to establish their new colony. He is welcomed into a prosperous white family and eventually finds himself falling in love with the daughter, Christine.But slowly - by design and by hazard - things begin to change. Not everyone is so pleased with the progress of the white colonists. Livestock mysteriously starts to disappear, crops are destroyed, there are 'accide...
In this compelling anthology of personal essays, curated by award-winning author Lee Kofman, some of Australia’s most beloved writers reveal, for the first time, powerful, occasionally funny and often heartbreaking stories of significant endings and their aftermath. Graeme Simsion, author of The Rosie Project, shares how he discarded his past – perhaps autistic – self, while comedian Sami Shah writes about his public split from Islam, the religion of his birth. Ramona Koval delves into the bittersweet end to her career at the ABC and Fiona Wright explores how her anorexia has affected her romantic relationships. Whereas Kate Holden suggests that for some, splitting – whether from memorabilia, books or lovers – is unimaginable. Join eighteen acclaimed storytellers in their candid and courageous reflections on the intrinsic human experience of loss and leaving, that acknowledge the price we can often pay for a much-needed end, or new beginning.