Jennifer Byrne
Met with some initial scepticism, the First Tuesday Book Club returns for a second season. Jennifer Byrne talks about her "dream job" with Resli Buchel
By Resli Buchel
"I take books home like a spider to mate"
Is it hard to make a television show about books? I think it's much easier to do movies. I would make the obvious point that The Movie Show runs once a week, we run once a month. Books are not highly televisual, and it's taken a while to work out how to do it. Things like those little 30-second cheesy clips, and the brightness of the set, these are all a way of dealing with the fact that it's not intrinsically a visual thing, it is a talk show. Look at it this way: it could be worse, it could be about sculpture.
Discussion of books can become highly intellectual. How do you make First Tuesday Book Club accessible to everybody? We call it a book club, but it's really a readers' show, not a writers' show. There are down sides to it, and they all come from the fact that books are not easy to do on telly, but... it's the best way I can think of, to make it lively, to make it accessible, and to make it about something we all share, which is the joy of reading, as opposed to just that one book or the other, which we may or may not have read.
Are books and reading as big a part of your life at home as they are at work? I'm a huge library user and I am familiar with the inter-library loan. I'm a member of two libraries - they know me on a first name basis. I tend not to read there though. I take [the books] home like a spider to mate... I take my little books under my arm and I run home. But I love buying books too. We have a ridiculous number of books. It's one of the blissful things about this job that you can go up to a publisher and say "I'd like to read this book," and they know you're being serious about it, and they'll send it.
Is it true that you said being the host of First Tuesday Book Club is your "dream job"? I will give the absolute honest answer about this, which is that I have never used the phrase "my dream job" once in my life. I actually don't go around talking like that cause it makes me look like a complete jerk. But, I think Foreign Correspondent was a brilliant job, and I think 60 Minutes was a sensational job, and I loved being at The Age, and I've been bloody lucky... I've worked bloody hard and I've been bloody lucky. I loved being in publishing... so I've been incredibly fortunate to do what I love.
So what's next on the agenda for Jennifer Byrne? Well, I've volunteered to sign a 50-year contract but [the ABC] won't take me up on it. They seem to think I wont make it! But there's always something... I've just come back from doing something for the government with Gallipoli for Anzac Day. I do these things - some of which are paid, many of which are not - and I do what I enjoy. I'm now a true freelancer. I was joking of course, but I did say "I'll sign for 50 years". I want to be there for as long as I can be, I believe in it... I believe in books. They are an article of faith with me, so I'll be there as long as they want me.
Catch First Tuesday Book Club on ABC1 at 10pm on Tuesday 3 June.
Jennifer Byrne's favourite books
The Road, Cormac McCarthy 2006
“It’s my favourite book at the moment, and it’s a very odd favourite because it’s so dark…but I am deeply in love with, and I remain under the spell of ‘The Road’. I read it the Christmas before last, and I still think about it a lot.”
Pan Macmillan Australia $22.95
Cloud Atlas, David Steven Mitchell 2003
“A genius book. Brilliantly conceived, wonderfully written… each chapter is a different genre, so there’s an adventure story, there’s a noir detective story, a nuclear thriller… and there’s a plot which links them all.”
Hodder General Publishing $24.95
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte 1847
“It’s a forever favourite.”
Penguin Books $9.99