Parra Pods – Non Fiction Reads for Summer

Posted on 26 January 2020 by admin

Episode 28: Non-fiction Australian Reads for Summer

This summer has been a particularly challenging one for the Australian landscape and with Australia Day upon us, there are a number of great books that demonstrate just how vast this land is, how diverse and rich is its history.

Join Katherine and Nisa for the third and final episode of the ‘Summer’ series of podcasts.

Books mentioned in this episode include:

Buckley’s chance: the incredible true story of William Buckley and how he conquered a new world / Garry Linnell. Penguin Random House, October 2019.

Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the birth of agriculture / Bruce Pascoe. Magabala Books, June 2018 [earlier published as Dark Emu: Black Seeds: Agriculture or accident in 2014]

Young Dark Emu: a truer history / Bruce Pascoe. Magabala Books, June 2019

Tracks / Robyn Davidson. Bloomsbury, November 2019.

Macquarie Atlas of Indigenous Australia / Bill Arthur and Frances Morphy. ANU, ABS and Macquarie Dictionary, August 2019.

Parra Pods – Fiction Reads for Summer

Posted on 13 January 2020 by admin

Episode 27 – Fiction Reads For Summer

Join Katherine and Nisa for the second of our ‘Summer’ episodes.

It has been a great year for fiction lovers, but here are a few of the titles that resonated with Katherine and Nisa.

‘Damascus’ by Christos Tsiolkas an historical novel, but with a take on St Paul of the early Christian Church like no other. Visceral, transformative, brutal & beautiful.

To change the pace totally, we review Sally Rooney’s debut novel, ‘Conversations with Friends’ and her second novel, and twitter sensation, ‘Normal People’. She brings her signature style, spare prose and insightful psychological acuity to the exploration of the lives and loves of that most intriguing of generations, the millennials.

Finally Ian Mc Ewan’s ‘Machines like Me’?, this is speculative fiction of the top order, its themes range from artificial intelligence, what constitutes consciousness and the formal demands of the haiku poem. Darkly humorous, its most compelling theme is “moral choice”

Fiction titles discussed include:

Damascus by Christos Tsiolkas, Allen & Unwin 2019.

Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan, Jonathan Cape/Vintage Publishing 2019.

Normal People by Sally Rooney, Faber and Faber 2018.

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney, Faber and Faber 2017.

Parra Pods – Media Companies & #metoo

Posted on 16 December 2019 by admin

We hope you have enjoyed listening to Parra Pods this year.

We wish you a happy & safe holiday season.

Katherine & Nisa

Episode 25 – Media Companies & #metoo

In 2018, two publications shared the Putlitzer Prize for Public Service: The New York Times, for reporting led by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, and The New Yorker, for reporting by Ronan Farrow.

In episode 24, Katherine and Nisa chat about the books based on their respective reports. They are:

She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement / Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey. Bloomsbury, September 2019.

Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators / Ronan Farrow. Fleet (Little Brown), October 2019.

Parra Pods, Identity

Posted on 11 November 2019 by admin

Episode 24 – Identity

Mass human migration in modern history has made identity such an interesting and complex thing, at least we think so!

In this episode join Katherine and Nisa as they discuss two Australian books that focus on ‘Identity’, with a sideways dip into the ‘On’ series of books published by Melbourne University Press.

Some of the books discussed include:

On Identity by Stan Grant, Melbourne University Press, May 2019.

Arab, Australian, Other: Stories on Race and Identity – Randa Abdel-Fattah and Sarah Saleh (eds), Picador, May 2019.

On Freedom by Tory Shepherd, Melbourne University Press, June 2019.

On Artists by Ashleigh Wilson, Melbourne University Press, May 2019.

HAPPY LISTENING!

Nisa & Katherine