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Jennifer Byrne: Book Slut
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Jennifer Byrne: Book Slut

April 29 2008

First Tuesday Book Club, ABC TV, every month on the first Tuesday at 10pm, then re-played the following Sunday at 4.30pm

Jennifer Byrne is more excited than usual: she is talking about her favourite topic and how she came to spend her birthday with three of her favourite writers: Ian McEwan, Paul Auster and Peter Carey.

Byrne’s relationship with books and authors is passionately enthusiastic and bubbles over with pleasure in the printed word. And that’s on a quiet day. Basically, there’s almost nothing she wouldn’t do for a good read. She’s really a bit of a book tart – wouldn’t she agree?

”It’s true!” she laughs uproariously. “I am. I’m a book slut. Total. I LOVE books, and their authors. I’m virtually a stalker when it comes to writers. If I can, I haunt their public appearances before I get to talk to them.”

Byrne is one of Australia’s most recognisable TV faces and radio voices yetshe started her career in print, as a cadet with The Age in Melbourne. Amazingly, that was back in 1972 and as was the way in those days, she covered all the rounds during her training and thus knows a lot about a lot. Then she specialised: environment and planning were her beat for a while before she moved beyond to features and editorials. A hint of things to come can be found in her co-editorship of The Age’s Monthly Review, a literary lift-out which was, of course, monthly.

A bit of world roaming can be added to the mix: San Francisco for The Age, then London and Fleet Street before the big switch back to Australia, to television and to household name status with 60 Minutes. All the time, however, her passion for books and writing bubbled along in her private life.

”Yes, no matter what I’m doing, I’ve always got books on the go,” she says. And that has slowly but surely brought her to the point where she now happily has ensconced herself: as host of ABC TV’s First Tuesday Book Club.

For those who were taken aback by the appearance of the book program, the signs were there to be found in her long and wide-ranging career: she was no ordinary Channel Nine chick. For starters, despite occasional eccentric forays into the colour charts, she’s not blonde. She’s also seriously smart, widely read and acutely able as an on-screen presence. As the ABC’s stand-in presenter for The 7.30 Report and Lateline, she showed no fear in stepping into formidable shoes. Foreign Correspondent took her to extraordinary places and stories and she also popped up on radio, when not smiling into a camera lense.

Also in the CV, but now almost forgotten, is a stint as publishing director of Reed Books; she also wrote the popular (and award-winning) “Lunch with …” column for The Bulletin. And all the time she was a hopeless secret bookaholic. Secret, that is, if you missed her occasional book reviews and features.

Books and Byrne finally came together on television – where she is an ebullient, unselfconscious natural – with My Favourite Book, the show where Australia (well okay, ABC TV viewing Australia) voted for our favourite books of all time (see the box for the top 10). And that sort of naturally segued into what she freely admits (at Bookaholics Anonymous meetings) is “my dream job” – hosting the First Tuesday Book Club.

”It’s not only about books,” she says. “It’s the writers and this one (tonight’s program) is really special. They’re such different writers: Ian McEwan is English, Paul Auster is a New Yorker and Peter Carey is Australian, but they’re such good friends and it makes a very different program.”

Jennifer Byrne: Book Slut

The three were visiting Australia in the wake of Adelaide Writers Week and Byrne stalked and cajoled and finally got them all together.

It was unbelievably thrilling,” she says. “I knew their work inside out – how it’s changed over the years – and I was intrigued as to how they would be together: Auster is not so well know here but his work is conceptual and cool and brilliant and he’s sooo good looking (as David Malouf said to me); McEwan is tough – conflicting tales of carnality and sexuality; Carey has lived in New York for a long time now, which is how Paul Auster came to Australia, and we all know his work.”

For Byrne, what was fascinating, aside from realizing and seeing three old friends having a good time together, was their personal concerns and very ordinary fears.

“Often you’ll see authors in panels or at events and you wouldn’t really have an idea whether they know one another or not,” she says. “So that’s why I was so keen to do this: three mega writers, three different cultures and real friends. And when you have Ian McEwan saying of Peter Carey, ‘That man. I’d have won two Bookers but for him!’ and they’re laughing and joking. It’s just not that austere books thing.

”And Ian McEwan says ‘no matter what the sales are or what the prizes are, I have a voice behind me saying – you can’t do this, who are you kidding’ – and they’re all nodding and saying, ‘yes that’s right, but you just don’t dwell on it’.”

So, join Miss Jen for her birthday bash with three literary giants, some very good talk, some jokes and some insights – including the revelation that they’re ordinary people who happen to know they’re fortunate enough to earn a crust doing what they love to do. But it’s still bloody scary.

Top 10 Favourite Books as voted by viewers

1. Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
3. The Bible – various contributors (that’s what it says!)
4. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
5. Cloudstreet by Tim Winton
6. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Book 5) by JK Rowling
7. 1984 by George Orwell
8. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
9. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
9. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
10.A Fortunate Life by AB Facey

 

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