The Tuesday Morning Show with Alex Hyndman Hill
The Tuesday Morning Show with Alex Hyndman Hill is broadcast live on Radio Logan 101FM and on the iHeart Radio app. Catch up with the interviews and best bits here. We talk about everything from mental health to relationships and family.
The Tuesday Morning Show with Alex Hyndman Hill
Exploring the Literary Universe with Jane Sullivan: Book Clubs, Reality TV and famous author encounters
This week we are joined by Jane Sullivan, one half of the epic Books With Bec & Jane Book Clubs. Jane shares her insights on Kate Morton's riveting historical mystery, Homecoming, and dishes her thoughts about Nima Brown's debut novel, The Shot.
We also talk about Alex's embarrassing encounter with the one and only Trent Dalton as we discuss his skyrocketing success and the much-anticipated Netflix adaptation of his book, Boy Swallows Universe.
Alex and Jane talk self-care and the power of a good book on this week's Tuesday Morning Show.
For support or advice contact the National Alcohol and Other Drug Hotline 1800 250 015
We are going to chat now to Jane Sullivan, who is on the line, hopefully, if I got this right. Good morning, jane.
Jane Sullivan:Good morning Alex. How are you?
Alex:Hooray, I got it right. I'm really good. Thank you for coming on and chatting with us. We had such a huge response last time. You were on the show with Jason and I on the Thursday morning show, but I just had to get you back on to talk more books. Now you run a book club with Bex Barrow. Tell us about the book club again.
Jane Sullivan:Well, our birds of a feather book club is the friendliest, most inclusive book club for grownups in Australia. We actually have over 1500 members who dial in every month to our online meetings where we chat about great new release Australian fiction, and I'm going to talk to you about some of my recent favourite reads, one of which we've done with our book club last month.
Alex:Amazing. Yes, I am reading it at the moment, homecoming, and I haven't finished it, which is not a surprise to you. I'm sure it's a big old book, but it is amazing, it is a big one.
Jane Sullivan:And look, kate Morton never disappoints. Her first book was a worldwide bestseller of the Shifting Fog, and she just continues to go from strength to strength. There's billboards of her in the tube stations in London. She's a huge New York Times bestselling author. But her latest one, homecoming she has written really since her own Homecoming to Australia during the pandemic. It's a historical mystery and it spans kind of two time periods, the late 1950s and then modern day, and it's a family mystery. There's a tragedy that takes place in a small country town in South Australia and it's just brilliant, I think.
Alex:What do you think about it? So far? Absolutely loving it. It drew me in straight away. The journalist in the Homecoming back to Australia was like, oh, this book's about me, but no, I love it. And the tragedy at the start I was like but I won't give anything away. If you haven't read that, do go and grab it, because it is fabulous. And I just need to make more time to do my instant reading. As you've taught me all about, I need to have my book here so in between songs I can read a few pages.
Jane Sullivan:I say, look, it's so easy to reach for our phone these days. Now we all find ourselves like doom, scrolling mindlessly when we have a spare five minutes in the day, and I've just really got into the habit of taking a book with me everywhere so that I can get in some you know, 10 or 15 minutes reading here and there. And I tell you what, if you want another great book as an absolute page turner, I have just finished, literally yesterday, a brand new book by an author called Nima Browns. It's her first novel and it's called the Shot Now for look, I shouldn't be admitting this, but I am a fan of reality TV.
Alex:No shame.
Jane Sullivan:No judgment.
Alex:Love it. Oh, we lost her. We lost her. We lost her on reality TV. Jane, come back to us. I don't know what happened. We'll try and get Jane back. Hopefully she's still on the line and she's just muted me with her ear. Sometimes I do that, sometimes that happens.
Alex:But I was going to talk to Jane about a mutual story. That's not embarrassing for her, it's embarrassing for me. We were at an event together and a guy came up to say hi to her afterwards and I'm looking at this guy going I know you, I know who you are. And as I walked off, I realized who it was and I turned around and started going oh, I can't wait for your new book. We've got to read it, jane. Are we going to read it? Are we going to read his new book? And like I was just gabbling and so embarrassed and poor Jane just looked at me. I messaged her afterwards. I said I'm so sorry. I was just fangirling, like if I'd met Justin Bieber or Ed Sheeran or Brad Pitt. I was just fangirling over Trent Dalton. Trent Dalton was at an event with us and.
Alex:I realized who he was and I couldn't stop gabbling. His new book is out in October and I can't wait for that. I'm going to try and get Jane back, but I'm going to play a bit more music for you. She's still there, but I don't know what happened. I probably did something. It's normally me and all the gremlins in this desk. We are getting a new desk. I look forward to that. All right, we'll be back soon. I have fabulous news I have Jane back. It wasn't either of us. Look, she didn't make a mistake. I didn't make a mistake. The internet went down and apparently the phone is in charge of the internet now. Hi, jane.
Jane Sullivan:Hi Alex, I was really starting to think that you didn't like my book review.
Alex:I love your book reviews. I'm so sad that we only got halfway through talking about the shot and I started gabbling on about Trent Doulton. Look, I can talk about.
Jane Sullivan:Trent Doulton endlessly as well. He really is the darling of the Brisbane literary theme. His book Boyfollows Universe was just an absolute game changer, I think, for Australian writing and I'm so excited for the release of his next book, lola in the Mirror, which comes out in October. And in fact, did you know that they've also wrapped filming on Boyfollows Universe? It's going to be on Netflix next year.
Alex:Oh, I can't wait for that. I heard something about that and I heard that he is huge in America. I heard a story about someone from America has read his book Love Stories and when they came to Australia all they wanted to do was go to Brisbane and go and sit in the spot where he wrote Love Stories, and that's how huge he is. That's I mean we're going to have to start a petition or something for a statue of him there, because already that's it, that's a tourist spot where he wrote that book. Yeah, it's huge apparently.
Jane Sullivan:Yeah, it really is, and he has this ability to write so beautifully, both fiction and non-fiction because I love Love Stories as well and in fact, it was the book that we used to launch our Birds of the Feather book club, and he came along to our Zoom meeting and he was just so gracious and so generous with his time and it's really. Yeah, he's a wonderful writer. I'll read anything that he releases, absolutely.
Alex:You're good. Yes, I can't wait for his next one. Yeah, and I've never seen him again. I will try not to be too fangirling. Next time I'll try and play it a bit more cool.
Jane Sullivan:Play it cool. Play it cool.
Alex:I can't promise. Actually it's not going to happen is it? Right, we were talking about the shot by name. Is it Namor Brown?
Jane Sullivan:Namor Brown. Yeah, that's right. So she is a journalist, but this is her first novel. She's written for the Guardian and she's worked on reality shows before and I think it was her experience working on a reality show that inspired her to write this book.
Jane Sullivan:So I don't know how much of the blurb that you got before that I was talking about, but basically it's about a young woman. She lives in a small town in Florida in America and she has her heart broken on graduation day. Her boyfriend goes off to bigger and better things, moves out of the small town they live in and she sort of feels like she's wasting away in this small town and she's offered the opportunity to go on a reality show and have a total body transformation TBC, literally from top to toe, to be made into a different person and then have a shot at winning her ex back. And it's about reality TV. It's about how we see ourselves, the importance of what's inside versus what's outside. But it is such a page turner and there's amazing twists and it also probably goes into the ethics of what ends up on the cutting room floor when they're editing a reality show, because I'm sure you can imagine, we've all watched the Bachelor and the Bachelor. We know that those characters are totally constructed.
Alex:We watch it for the villain and the villain afterwards says I don't know why it was the villain. I'm a nice person. I'm like, yeah, you signed up for it, Absolutely.
Jane Sullivan:So I think it's a great book for anyone who wants something that's really fast paced and edgy. I think they'll love this book. The Shot by Nima Brown.
Alex:Oh, I love that too. And I've got another one on my nightstand the Secret Life of you. This is another one.
Jane Sullivan:Yeah, this is something a little bit different. We're going to read this. We're reading this this month in our book club and it's a nonfiction by the writer Kerry Sackville. I don't know if you've read her earlier book, which is called the Life Changing Magic of a Little Bit of Mesh, which I could totally relate to, and this one is called the Secret Life of you how a Bit of a Loan Time Can Change your Life, relationships and Maybe the World. Now, this I'm finding really interesting, because I don't know about you, alex, but I am never alone. I have four kids, I run two businesses, I have a reasonably hectic social life and I am very rarely on my own and when I am, I'm often distracting myself. Maybe I'm watching TV, reading a book, looking at my phone. I'm never alone with my thoughts and Kerry really explores what it, how important it is to sometimes be alone, to look inside to out in a world. What about you? Are you ever alone with your thoughts?
Alex:No, same Two kids, two dogs, husband, crazy house writing books. Actually, I do find myself alone, but not with anything but my, but a very long to-do list. I try and go for a walk with the dogs, but I tend to have, you know, a podcast or an audible book in my ears, so I probably do. It's probably another thing on the list of to-dos that I need to do, which is just stop for five minutes and be alone and meditate. I do try and get to yoga, but it's with other people, but I suppose that's that's alone in your head, I suppose.
Jane Sullivan:Yeah, it is, and I think that's what she's writing about. Like, I feel like she writes about how we all kind of flaunt our busyness these days like a badge of honour, like whenever we give ourselves the opportunity to just slow down and take a moment for ourselves. And in fact, I think that's one of the great things about our book club. I know that we're reading a book and perhaps not being totally alone as she carries encouraging. But that idea of doing something that's not to tick off an item on your to-do list, you know, I think everything feels like we need to achieve. There always has to be an outcome. We never tend to do anything, even things like exercise. You know we're doing it for an outcome, aren't we? We're not doing it just for the joy that we might feel in that moment.
Alex:So it's definitely a really interesting book. Yeah well, I look forward to reading that when I finish home, coming by Kate Morton. And for people who do want to join, I know that the book club runs year to year and you do have a lot of members and it's for adults as, and there's a couple of kids ones as well. But if people want to join or people want to get involved, where do they go?
Jane Sullivan:They can follow us on Instagram or Facebook at atbookswithbeckandjane, or if they just go to the website bookclubsau, they can find out all about our kids teams and twin book clubs and our grown-up book club birds and a feather. We really want to be, you know, we want to take on Reese's book club and Oprah's book club. We want to be the, the biggest Australian book club so we can have lots of great conversations about books and create a real community of readers, dreamers and thinkers.
Alex:Oh well, you're absolutely doing that already. So congratulations again on the book club. I love it and encourage everyone out there to go and check it out and do something for yourself. It is a very, very good thing to do. Like a selfish thing, I'm going to have my time alone and read my book and go into a different world where there's no laundry, there are no to-do lists, no one has to go to the supermarket and think about dinner. Just read your book. It's great for you.
Alex:Thanks, jane have a lovely day. Thanks, alex, see you soon. Bye.