Desert Island Discs Podcasts

If you don't have the concentration for reading or even Audiobooks; podcasts are a great alternative.
If you have not had the pleasure before, a podcast is simply a downloadable audio programme.  They can be listened to via a computer, tablet or smartphone. You can choose to listen now or download for later listening.
Desert Island Discs was recently described as 'The greatest radio programme of all time' by a panel of broadcasting experts, and has been available as a podcast for over 10 years.  Guests are asked to choose 8 music tracks, a book and a luxury to take to a desert island.
I love, love, love this BBC radio programme and over 2000 episodes are available from 1942-2020.
If I am honest the music does not interest me as much as the brilliant interviews (and due to copyright only very short clips of the musical choices are played on the podcast).  Musical choices often have a story of what the guest was doing or what was happening in their lives at the time, or who the music reminds them of.
The interviewee list is huge,  so whatever your interests there is something for you.  Check out Tracey Emin, Ricky Gervais, Ed Sherran or Martina Navratalova.
Favourite author interviews include Maya Angelo, Tom Hanks, Kate Atkinson, JK Rowling, Marian Keyes, Stephen Fry, Caitlyn Moran, Val McDermid, Mary Berry and Oliver Sacks.

Desert Island Discs is a great inspiration for your reading list - pop onto our catalogue and see if you can find novels, non fiction or a biography about one of the fascinating guests.
Desert Islands discs podcasts are just the the right blend of soothing, fascinating and therapeutic entertainment.
To choose a podcast, go to the website here:
 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5qhJd1byxhTBYbSCFmw580y/desert-island-discs-podcasts 
You can look up guests in the search bar or browse by date.
Happy listening!

Posted by Katrina

Katrina's Top Ten Reads of 2019

Aūe by Becky Manawatu

The Bone People meets Once Were Warriors meets the movie Boy.  Read late into the night with this one; confronting, touching and gripping.

The Wall by John Lanchester

A sadly believable distopian near-future.  Young people must spend two years patrolling the wall around the coast of Great Britain to keep out the 'others', or be cast out themselves.

Sixteen Trees of the Somme by Lars Mytting

Set in Norway, the Shetland Islands and France's Western Front.  The story of two brothers on opposing sides during WW2 and how their young grandson/great nephew unravels past family secrets.  Beautiful and absorbing, I loved it.

Where the Crawdad's Sing by Delia Owens

Set in the marshes of North Carolina between the 1950's and 1970's: an abandoned girl grows up studying the nature around her.  As a young woman she has two relationships, and when one of the young men is found dead she is a suspect. Read it before it is made into a movie.

The Carer by Debborah Moggach

A brother and sister live away from their elderly father and employ a live-in carer.  The carer gets  on so well with their father that they become concerned about her motives.  A juicy plot twist midway through that I did not see coming, this book is food for thought for an aging population.

The Salt Path by Raynor Winn

Biography about a 50 year old couple who lose their farm in a court case and at the same time discover the husband has a terminal illness.  They decide on an impulse to walk the 650 mile coastal path around Devon and Cornwall.

Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan

In an alternative 1980's England Allen Turing is still alive and his research is used to make humanoid robots.  A young man buys an 'Adam' but makes the mistake of letting his girlfriend programme him.

The Natural Home by Wendyl Nissen

You will be off buying copious quantity of baking soda and vinegar after reading this - home remedies and Wendly's amusing descriptions of spending a year living like her grandmother. A stylish update of three previous books.

My Sister, the Serial Killer

Delightfully darkly humourous - two sisters in Nigeria. The beautiful vacuous sister takes a knife on every date, the practical loyal sister cleans up afterwards. 

The Offing by  Benjamin Myers

A lovely gentle story about a young man who goes on a walking trip before he starts work in the mines of Northern England after WW2, He comes across a lovely cottage in a beautiful bay -  inhabited by a wise and unusual woman with whom he develops a delightful friendship.

Reviewed by Katrina

The Sixteen Trees of the Somme by Lars Mytting

This novel had been recommended to me by several people as a fabulous read, and it did not disappoint. An interesting hybrid of historical fiction, contemporary fiction and family thriller; The Sixteen Trees of the Somme is compulsive reading.

Edvard Hirifjell grows up in rural Norway knowing that his parents died in mysterious circumstances in France when he was three years old, and that he himself disappeared for a few days at the same time. His great uncle Einar may know more details, but he is estranged from the family and never spoken of.

Edvard lives a contented and comfortable life with his grandfather Sverre on their isolated farm. Because his grandfather fought on the German side of the war in Russia; and his great uncle worked for the Resistance, a family feud as well suspicion from the locals who suffered under the Nazi’s haunts the Hirifjells. A beautifully crafted coffin made by Einar arrives for Sverre years before his death; leading Edvard to suspect Einar may still be alive somewhere and have the answers to his questions about the death of his parents.

A burning need to find answers to his family history and an unusual missing inheritance takes him to the Shetland Islands (once Norwegian territory) and his great uncle’s last known residence. In the Shetlands Edvard meets the mysterious Gwen, and together they piece together the past; each not trusting the other with the whole truths of their respective family histories. Their journey takes them to the WW1 battle grounds of the Western Front, and they begin to understand the significance and story of a small woodland in Somme. The tension builds and the whole story is beautifully interwoven.

The Sixteen Trees of the Somme is translated from the Norwegian. Lars Mytting has written the unlikely yet internationally successful non-fiction book Norwegian Wood, about the Norwegian art of wood stacking, (wood also plays a major part in the Sixteen Trees of the Somme as you may gather from the title).

This cleverly plotted and beautifully crafted novel is highly recommended.

Reviewed by Katrina

Catalogue link:  The Sixteen Trees of the Somme

Normal People by Sally Rooney

‘It’s different for men, she says.
Yeah, I’m starting to get that.’

Normal People is an insightful and fresh novel about a poignant relationship set over a period of four years; featuring a young couple who seemingly can't live with or without each other.

As teenagers Marianne and Connell meet because Connell's mother cleans Marianne's family's large house in Western Ireland. Marianne is an intelligent loner, while Connell is bright and popular, but from a 'bad' family.  They keep their relationship a secret at Connell's request, before it all goes horribly wrong.

The couple keep meeting over the years, firstly at University where their roles are reversed; as Connell struggles to fit in and make friends due to his impoverished background, while Marianne emerges swan-like as an attractive and popular scholar. They have relationships with a series of ‘normal people’, a group neither Marianne nor Connell feels they belong to.

Normal People is easy-to-read and yet the two main characters are complex and I cared about what happened to them. This novel could easily have become a cutesy boy meets girl/loses girl/wins girl back story; but Sally Rooney is much too clever for that. Mariane has to overcome the darkness of her brother’s violent bullying, exploitation on the internet, and her own masochistic tendencies; whilst Connell has struggles with depression.

Normal People was longlisted for the Man Booker prize and at 28 years old Sally Rooney is the youngest ever winner of the Costa award Book of the Year. The Costa award honours English language books of writers based in Britain and Ireland. The Costa Award Judges said: “A trailblazing novel about modern life and love that will electrify any reader.”

Normal People is a sharp social commentary of contemporary times and Sally Rooney is currently writing the screenplay for the BBC television adaptation.

Reviewed by Katrina 

Catalogue link:  Normal People

The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story by Hyeonseo Lee

“One of the main reasons that distinctions between oppressor and victim are blurred in North Korea is that no one there has any concept of rights. To know that your rights are being abused, or that you are abusing someone else’s, you first have to know that you have them, and what they are.”
― Hyeonseo Lee

Have you ever wondered what life is like living in North Korea?
The Girl with Seven Names gives an astonishing and horrifying insight into the world Hyeonseo Lee grew up in, and the ordeals she survived when she left North Korea at the age of 17.

What is considered a relatively comfortable life to a North Korean is mind-boggling: Hyeonseo’s Kindergarten featured a classroom wall painted with a mural of a North Korean soldier simultaneously impaling an American, Japanese and South Korean soldier with his rifle bayonet. Hyeonseo’s ‘Uncle Opium’ made a living illegally dealing drugs – supply was plentiful as state laboratories made high quality heroin to sell abroad to raise foreign currency. Also at the age of seven she witnessed her first hanging; these happened regularly and in this instance the soldiers used a railway bridge as gallows.

Hyeonseo’s family lived in a northern town, beside a river bordering China. One day Hyeonseo decided to visit the town across the frozen river, naïvely wanting to visit her relatives whom actually lived four hours drive away. The result was that she was then unable to safely return home and she had inadvertently defected, causing much trouble for her family then not seeing her mother for 12 years; as well as having to change her identity many times so she could stay in China and eventually South Korea.

Hyeonseo often regretted her defection over the years and dreadfully missed her family as well as feeling extreme guilt (she eventually devises a plan to try and get her mother and brother out also). She was also shocked and disbelieving upon learning that much of the propaganda she had grown up with was incorrect. North Koreans literally believe the Kim Dynasty members are living deities and that North Korea is the greatest nation on earth.

This is an informative and well-written memoir; it will make you feel very lucky.

Reviewed by Katrina

Catalogue link: The Girl with Seven Names

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay

I was swallowing my secrets and making my body expand and explode. I found ways to hide in plain sight, to keep feeding a hunger that could never be satisfied — the hunger to stop hurting. I made myself bigger. I made myself safer.

This extraordinary memoir gives a timely reminder never to judge another human being by their appearance, with or without knowledge of their life experiences. Roxane Gay is an American writer who has written several books of both fiction and non-fiction, and is prolific on social media networks as well as being the first black woman to write for Marvel comics.

In Hunger, Gay documents her life as a morbidly obese woman. She deliberately overate as a self-protection strategy after being raped at 12 years of age by a group of boys, one of whom was well known to her. At the beginning of Hunger, Gay reveals she weighs over 260 kg as she checks in (and then is treated so badly she leaves) for gastric banding surgery.

Gay describes in heart-breaking detail the symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder which she has suffered from since the rape. These surface when she has lost weight, leading to self-sabotage as the thought of being of ‘normal’ weight and therefore seen by society as more attractive and desirable, are too much for her to bear.

At times I found Gay repetitive; but I do wonder if this was used as a deliberate stylistic tool to reiterate her relentless pain of trauma and judgement.

I was interested to watch Roxane Gay on a YouTube clip talking about her books. She is incredibly engaging, softly spoken, full of humour, articulate and intelligent. And then I read the comments section. Big mistake. Just vile and distressing (not all of them, but sadly most of the comments by males). These are the kinds of comments Gay has had directed at her all of her adult life, and yet with grace and wisdom Gay gives us all life lessons:

Living in my body has expanded my empathy for other people and the truths of their bodies. Certainly, it has shown me the importance of inclusivity and acceptance (not merely tolerance) for diverse body types.

Reviewed by Katrina

Catalogue link:  Hunger

The Word for Woman is Wilderness by Abi Andrews

After reading lots of biographies and psychological thrillers I was looking for something a little different; and The Word for Woman is Wilderness is just that.

In Abi Andrews' first novel, 19 year old Erin decides that if Bear Grylls can embark on all sorts of exciting adventures so can she (even if Bear Grylls did not have to deal with a Mooncup).  Ignoring the fact she knows nothing about said wilderness and has been living a sheltered existence with her parents in suburban England, she sets off for Alaska by land and sea.

Even on those documentary channels that do programmes on whole families homesteading in the wilderness the woman is always Mountain Man’s wife, never, ever Mountain Woman, just an annexe of the Mountain Man along with his beard, pipe and gun.

Erin records her experience on video along the way for a future documentary, and often this novel reads like non-fiction.  The author Abi Andrews drew inspiration from the actual documentary of  Christopher McCandless who lived off the grid in Denali National Park in Alaska (and tragically starved to death).  Unable to take the journey to Alaska herself due to study commitments and wondering how different this journey would have been for a woman, Andrews wrote about it instead.

The Word for Woman is Wilderness is a Millennial feminist take on nature and travel writing.
Let's be honest, the main character Erin irritated me at times (because I am old), but this did not detract from an original, well researched and timely  novel.  Erin shares with the reader a stream of consciousness on all sorts of issues; nuclear arms, history, writers, nature, psychology and indigenous rights.

If this sounds all too serious rest assured there is a lot of wry humour in these musings also, with  sub-heading like: More space where nobody is than where anybody is; and:

Chivalry isn't dead, men just get sick of ungrateful b*****s (my stars not the author's as she endures unhelpful mansplaining on why she should not be travelling alone).

All in all an absorbing and insightful wilderness read with lots of fascinating ruminations.

Catalogue link:  The Word for Women is Wilderness

The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn

The Woman in the Window is an unputdownable debut psychological thriller with similar themes to the famous Hitchcock film Rear Window.

Anna Fox is an agoraphobic psychologist who drinks too much and fills her days giving on-line advice and watching her new neighbours the Russells through a camera zoom lens.  She has a husband and child who live elsewhere; for reasons that become clear later in the book.
The new neighbour, Jane, comes to Anna's rescue when she ventures outside and is overcome by a panic attack. Some time later Anna is sure she sees  Jane with a knife in her chest, through the window of the Russells' front room.
The police are called and find no evidence of Jane and tell her that Mrs Russell is elsewhere and safe.
Days later the mother Mrs Russell appears: a completely different woman. Anna is seen as an unreliable witness, due to her mental health issues and her drinking habit.

To add to the Hitchcock association, Anna is a film buff with a preference for black and white film noir. She also belongs to an on-line chat group for agoraphobics where she uses her skills as a psychologist to help others as well as receiving support from fellow agoraphobics.

Author A.J. Finn (a pseudonym for Daniel Mallory) is an experienced editor for William Morrow  Publishing Company.  He has clearly been paying attention to how to write a stunning thriller with lots of satisfying twists, and a nail-biting ending.

The Woman in the Window is a real page-turner and even though the title annoyed me (so - just put girl or woman in the title and people will think of Gone Girl or Girl on the Train, right?)  it is one of the best examples of this genre I have read for a while.

Reviewed by Katrina Hinton

Catalogue link: The Woman in the Window
Catalogue link ebook:  The Woman in the Window

The Trauma Cleaner: One woman's extraordinary life in death, decay & disaster by Sarah Krasnostein.

...Sandra is at once exactly like you or me or anyone we know and, at the same time, she is utterly peerless.

I think it's fair to say this biography blew my mind.

Sandra Pankhurst is an Australian woman whose business specialises in cleaning up hoarders homes, death scenes, methamphetamine labs and any other grisly scenario you can imagine. Sandra is very good at what she does and is a fascinating character. Her strength lies in the compassionate way she deals with her clients; especially the hoarders who often have heart-wrenching stories and are present while the cleaning team tackle years of collecting and decay.

Sandra began life as Peter, a little boy who is adopted and then starved, neglected, and abused by his new family. Peter grows up, marries, and has children, before beginning a new life as a woman.

Sandra spent time as a Les Girls performer in Melbourne and self-funded her gender reassignment surgery. She worked as a prostitute in mining towns, and later as a funeral director (who married the owner of the business). Her abusive upbringing  and her experiences as a trans woman, as well as sexual, physical and emotional abuse she endured during this time, have left inevitable scars.
It seems as though Sandra is healing her many personal traumas through her empathy towards her clients and the transformation of horrific physical spaces.

Alternate chapters in The Trauma Cleaner detail Sandra's personal history and experiences; and her Trauma Cleaning clients.  Both topics are interesting enough to stand alone as a book, together they are riveting, if not sometimes difficult, reading.

Writer Sarah Krasnostein is also a lawyer and met Sandra at a seminar for forensic support services. She was fascinated by Sandra's story and the two became close over the four years she spent writing the book and attending jobs with Sandra. Her writing is sometimes a little clunky, but this ultimately does not matter as Sandra's story speaks for itself and completely held my attention.

A truly amazing woman with an amazing life history. Highly recommend.

Reviewed by Katrina

Catalogue link:    The Trauma Cleaner
ebook:  The Trauma Cleaner

I See You by Clare Mackintosh

I See You  is a clever little psychological thriller.
Zoe Walker lives in London with her new partner and two grown children.  She travels to work by tube daily; same route, same carriage, same spot.
One evening she is shocked to see her photograph in the classified section of a paper another passenger is reading, with a web address and a phone number.
More photographs of women keep appearing and some of the women are assaulted or murdered.
It conspires that someone is selling details of these women's commuting details, to those who may want to meet them for dating purposes, or something much more sinister.
Police constable Kelly Swift is very interested in the case; which becomes increasingly more complex and terrifying.
Zoe becomes  afraid for her own safety and paranoid about who may be following her or may have given her details to the site.
A precautionary tale about survellence.

Claire Mackintosh is an ex-police officer and I will be seeking out her first novel I Let you Go.

Reviewed by Katrina

Catalogue link: I See You

Oxygen by William Trubridge

I now knew that freediving was my passion and my path. I relished the idea of dedicating myself to it, of giving over every aspect of myself in the quest to redefine human aquatic limits.

Be warned – reading this memoir will make you unconsciously hold your breath as you imagine diving to depths of 100-plus metres on a single breath of air.

William Trubridge is a multi world-record holding freediver and he is the current world champion – his deepest dive to date is a staggering 102 metres without the aid of flippers.

The reader gets the feeling this man should have been born with gills; such is his affinity with the ocean. William literally grew up on the ocean; leaving his birthplace of England with his parents and brother when he was a baby, and sailing around the world for most of his childhood before the family settled in Hawke’s Bay.

Trubridge seems to have just the right temperament for an elite sportsperson; single-minded, passionate, dedicated and driven to improving his performance. William practices yoga and has used yogic breathing techniques to his advantage whilst free diving. His relationship with the underwater world seems almost spiritual at times.

Free divers can experience alarming (certainly to me – one can only sympathise with his poor mother!) side-effects from lack of oxygen. Called ‘The Samba’ within the sport, divers sometimes experience involuntary shaking and jerking upon reaching the surface of the water. Briefly losing consciousness when surfacing is sometimes another ill-effect; although ‘safety divers’ are present. Trubridge describes the tragic death of a fellow diver who did not regain consciousness and the effects on himself and the free diving community.

I would highly recommend anyone reading Oxygen look up YouTube videos (including a piece by the American 60 Minutes television programme) of some of William’s dives. Although he describes his dives in the book in great detail, the video footage is amazing and gives you a real appreciation of the skill and dangers involved in this sport.

Oxygen is an in-depth and interesting memoir about an elite sportsperson and his life.

Posted by Katrina

Catalogue link: Oxygen

The Break by Marian Keyes

If, like me, you have not read a Marian Keyes book for years (like 15), prepare for a treat and the perfect summer read. In a recent interview Keyes expressed delight and surprise that her books are read outside of Ireland. In fact the very Irishness of her books is a huge part of their appeal and her thirteenth novel is no exception.

The main protagonist in The Break is Amy, who lives in Dublin with her husband Hugh, two teenage daughters and sometimes her brother's daughter whom she treats as her own. Amy co-owns a small PR business with a couple of friends and has a close and sometimes fraught relationship with her eccentric four siblings and ageing parents.

Amy’s husband Hugh suffers a couple of bereavements in a short space of time and is reeling from grief and depression. He announces he needs some time out - six months of travelling and freedom with the promise of returning to family life at the end of it. What could possibly go wrong, I hear you ask?

The Break is more than an escapist read. Keyes deals with some serious issues, such as Alzheimer’s and the archaic Irish abortion laws. She also writes with humour and has a realistic take on modern family life. The Break is long enough to develop rounded characters and a plot you care about (or be infuriated by).

For me The Break was a great read after some very dark fiction. Just the thing for your mid-life crisis.

Posted by Katrina

Catalogue link: The Break

My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent

Powerful, brilliant and shocking, this is one of those books that stay with you long after you finish it.

‘My absolute darling’ is what domineering and deeply flawed Martin Alveston calls his 14 year old daughter Turtle; whom he has brought up alone since the death of his wife.
Martin is a hard man; teaching his daughter how to use a gun with skill, fend for herself in their dilapidated home and run wild in the beautiful wilderness of the Northern Californian coast. He is convinced the world will end soon and mostly shuts himself off from modern life.

However we experience the world through Turtle’s narrative. She struggles at school, shuns people her own age, and surreptitiously visits her alcoholic grandfather (who is estranged from her father).
Turtle’s life changes when she helps two clever and playful High School students Jacob and Brett, who are lost in bad weather in the forest. This friendship opens her eyes to how other people live and she begins to question her father’s authority.

The flora, fauna and landscapes in My Absolute Darling are lovingly and beautifully described; enough for me to look up images online of the Mendocino Coast with it’s verdant forests and rocky coastline.

This is Gabriel Tallent’s first novel. He grew up near the Mendocino coast and spent eight years writing My Absolute Darling. He began writing while in his final year of University, homesick for his ‘free range’ childhood in the wilderness.

A warning: graphic abuse is depicted in this novel; and I admit to putting the book down for a couple of weeks thinking it was not for me. I am glad I picked it up again; it is unforgettable and ultimately a novel of coming of age and rising above adversity, mixed with elements of a gripping thriller. Turtle’s character in particular is mesmerising; vulnerable yet tough, you just so want her to succeed and thrive. My Absolute Darling reminds me of a rural version of the award-winning A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara; which was one of my favourite reads from last year.


Reviewed by Katrina

Catalogue link:  My Absolute Darling

The Chinese Proverb by Tina Clough

An old Chinese proverb states that if you save someones's life you are then responsible for that person.

Hunter Grant, an ex-soldier, is staying at his basic bach in Northland when he finds an unconscious young woman in the bush during a storm. Gradually it is revealed that the girl, Dao, has run away from a man she calls Master, and has been enslaved for some time.  Master is a drug trafficker who is desperate to find Dao as she knows too much information about him.  By association Hunter is in the firing line as well, and takes matters concerning Dao's safety into his own hands using his knowledge as an international security consultant. If you are unconscious and in trouble in the middle of the New Zealand bush it would seem that Hunter Grant would be the best possible person to find you (kind of like having Bear Grylls sitting beside you when your plane goes down).  Although in many ways Hunter and Dao are polar opposites, they share experiences of psychological and physical damage; Hunter from the Afghanistan war and Dao from years of enslavement and the death of her parents.  Three women  help in Hunter's quest to keep Dao safe: Hunters old army friend Charlie, and his two sisters. Hunter's dog Scruff is  also an endearing character in his own right.

This is a great pacy story with interesting relationships, good characters and gripping suspense.

Tina Clough is a Hawke's Bay author who has previously published Running Towards Danger and the Girl Who Lived Twice. She was born in Sweden, married a New Zealander and also works as a translator and editor of Swedish medical research papers. Clough's last book Running Towards Danger was set in Hawke's Bay and also dealt with a young woman in distress being pursued by criminals,although in a very different way.

The Chinese Proverb provides an interesting view on how a person copes with changes in society after having no contact with the outside world for many years.   For the first time Clough writes from a  male perspective, which she manages with aplomb.

For those of you who say you don't like reading New Zealand authors:  a) shame on you, and b) Clough's crime novels have more depth than many of her international peers works, and are all the more authentic for having a New Zealand setting.
Recommended.

Reviewed by Katrina

Catalogue link:  The Chinese Proverb