Hear This 18th July 2025

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Episode Transcript

S1 (00:25):
Inside the book. Take a look.

S2 (00:33):
Hello and welcome to hear this. I'm Frances Keeland and
you're listening to the Vision Australia library show. And today
we have special guest, our library community engagement coordinator, Maureen O'Reilly.
And welcome once again to Maureen O'Reilly, our community engagement coordinator.

S3 (00:55):
Ah, yes. Or the Wizard of the library. The lady
of the library.

S2 (00:58):
The lady of the library.

S3 (00:59):
That sounds does sound very elegant. Maybe that'll be my
new title, The Lady of the mind. You, that's a
little bit like lady of the night. That's not so good.

S2 (01:07):
No, no, but lady of the Lake, you know, sort
of the sword of wisdom being held up to. Yeah. Anyway,
we shall go on. So there's been, um, a couple
of events that have passed, and there's lots more coming up.
Erik Weihenmayer.

S3 (01:20):
Yes, we had Erik last week. It was last week.
It's flown very quickly. He was amazing. We were in
conversation with Erik. We had the gorgeous Dave Tredinnick with
us and he was so inspiring. We had so many
questions that people lodged during registration, which was wonderful because
normally we don't have a lot of advanced questions from

(01:41):
people and just wonderful feedback afterwards. And the recording will
be on the excess catalogue soon. So I really encourage
everyone to listen to him. He's incredibly inspiring.

S2 (01:55):
Did he enjoy his time, do you think?

S3 (01:57):
I think he did. I think we had a lovely,
chatty people and he talked about, well, he's written three books,
so he spoke about his books and writing the books
and his childhood. Whereas normally when you listen to his podcast,
a lot of it is about his accomplishments climbing the
Seven Summits, climbing volcanoes, climbing the Dolomites, kayaking the entire

(02:21):
length of the Grand Canyon. And it's all about those adventures,
which are phenomenal. But I think there was a different
focus on our own conversation.

S2 (02:30):
I'm glad it went well. Yeah. And, um, what's coming up?

S3 (02:34):
Oh, we have so much coming up. I'm feeling tired
just looking at all, but very excited as well. So
we have our accessible reading and writing tools webinar. Uh,
many of our loyal listeners will remember last year we
ran an Accessible Writing Tools webinar, which was hugely successful.
So then we did a bookend with Reading Tools. So

(02:56):
this year we have brought them together, and there's very
much a focus on artificial intelligence and AI and how
that can really assist and empower our clients who are
blind or have low vision.

S2 (03:12):
Yeah, that's the next big, big sort of step, isn't it.
I because you know. Yeah. Wow.

S3 (03:17):
So it'll be really interesting. So I've encouraged everyone on
the event page. I've put last year's recording for writing
tools and technology, and last year's recording for reading tools
and technology so that they can review what was on
the market then, which is all still very leading edge now.
But then this year, we're not going to revisit existing products.

(03:41):
We're really going to focus on what's new, what's developed,
what perhaps was there last year, but has gone leaps
and bounds from where it was. And a lot of
that does pertain to AI.

S2 (03:53):
For people with disability AI, there's just so much potential
for so many different ways of of being able to
use it.

S3 (04:01):
There really is. And look, I'm sure that we could
have a debate over the pros and cons of AI. And,
you know, people can listen to our conversation from the
Melbourne Writers Festival last year with Toby Walsh, who wrote
Machines Misbehaving Badly, which was all about AI. But I
think it's unquestionable that the advantages and the potential that

(04:26):
sits there for people with a disability is really exciting.

S2 (04:30):
Yeah. Okay. What date is that again?

S3 (04:33):
That is on the 31st of July. So that is
an online webinar and that is at 12 noon Australian
Eastern Standard Time. So I really encourage people to come
and see what's new. Have a listen to Kent. I'll
be introducing it. But I'm not even going to pretend
that I know anything. So I will just, uh, introduce

(04:54):
everything and be consistent through the whole program.

S2 (04:59):
Alright, that sounds very exciting and fascinating. Yeah, it.

S3 (05:03):
Is, and it's a busy day, the 31st of July,
because we also have something which is a little bit
less on the technical side, we have our cozy winter
book chat with the Vision Australian Australia librarians. So we
have the gorgeous Marnie, who's our senior librarian, who is
joining us for our quarterly book chat about, uh, wamani

(05:27):
will review two newly released novels. So. And her selected
genre is very much detective, uh, and mystery. So she
will talk about, uh, two novels, their authors, what those
authors have written before, what she liked about the books,
what she didn't like about the books, why she'd recommend them, uh,

(05:50):
or whether she thinks that you should actually save your
time and not bother. Okay. So that'll be great, then.
V will also be reviewing, uh, new release book he's
read recently. And then we pass the microphone over to
our wonderful library members. And they each get to do
a book review of something that they've been reading. And again,

(06:14):
it doesn't have to be a new release. It doesn't
need to be, you know, an entire thesis on the
technical elements of it. It's just, you know, did you
like this book? What did you like about it? Would
you recommend other people read it? And the theory is
that when we get to the end of our hour
chatting about books, that everyone will have a list of

(06:35):
books that they'd like to read. And then a list
of books that perhaps they'd like to cross off their
reading list. Yeah. Uh, if you don't want to contribute,
then you don't need to, because every book reviewer does
need an audience. So we're very happy for people to
come along and just listen.

S2 (06:51):
Yeah. What a great. I love that, um, that segment.
I've attended a couple and they're great fun.

S3 (06:56):
I know they really are. And it's very accessible. You
don't need to have a literature degree. You don't need
to be a librarian. And it's wonderful to be able
to actually chat to the Vision Australia librarians. Herrings?

S2 (07:10):
Yes, yes. And nobody puts you on the spot. Nobody.
So you never feel under pressure?

S3 (07:14):
No, not at all.

S2 (07:15):
You can sit back there and just listen.

S3 (07:17):
And even if you are the person that says no,
I do want to talk about my book, then, um,
excuse me? They don't get, um, interrogated afterwards. You get
your couple of minutes of fame where you get to talk,
and then we move on to the next person, so
you don't have to worry that you're going to have
to defend yourself.

S2 (07:36):
And what's next?

S3 (07:37):
Uh, and then after that, we have our author reading. Now,
this is another new program for this year. So the, uh,
quarterly book chats with our librarians was new and our
author reading was new. So back in the start of
the year, we had, uh, Jacqueline Bublitz join us. And
in August, we have Chloe Adams joining us. Now, you

(07:59):
may not know Chloe. She's a brand new author. Uh,
her debut novel has just won the Penguin Book Fiction
Book of the year, and it is very, very exciting.
I think it'll really resonate with a lot of our
library members. So it's based post World War Two in
Hiroshima with the Allied occupation forces. Um, and it's about the,

(08:24):
I suppose, the, the, the tensions and, um, contradiction of
having those, uh, expats living this wonderful life of picnics
and parties and so forth in Japan contrasted against the
Japanese people trying to recreate their lives and move on

(08:45):
from the trauma of Hiroshima and so forth. And then
the conflict that poses for this one young woman that
is based in Hiroshima with the Allied occupation forces. Wow.
So it's a really interesting time in history that I
don't feel gets discussed a lot. And it when you
look at historical fiction or non-fiction, it really doesn't tend

(09:09):
to focus so much on that post war. Japan. There
is a lot about post war Europe still. Yeah, but
really not so much in Japan. So I think it'll
be really, really interesting. So the author reading is a
little bit like an in conversation. So we'll have a
chat to Chloe. We'll talk about the journey that led

(09:30):
her to writing this debut novel. We'll have a chat
about the novel, which is called The Occupation. And then
Chloe will treat us to a 20 minute reading live
reading of her novel. So she may do one long segment,
or she may do two different parts of the novel.
It's really very much up to her. And then we'll

(09:51):
have a bit of a Q&A of questions that our
library members have put into the registration forms, or they
can put it into the chat as well. Yeah. During
the session.

S2 (10:05):
Lovely. And what date is that again?

S3 (10:06):
That is on the 11th of August right. So that
will be online. And anyone that isn't familiar with our
author reading scene, we've only done one before, can always
go on to the excess catalogue and have a listen
to our one that we did earlier in the year
with Jacqueline Bublitz.

S2 (10:23):
And that some author readings. Is that okay?

S3 (10:26):
And it's a podcast.

S2 (10:27):
Yeah. Lovely. Okay. What other exciting events?

S3 (10:31):
Well, after that we have our next in conversation. So
having just, um, had Eric come and visit us, um, online,
we will have Robbie Arnaud. So Robbie is a, uh,
highly awarded Australian author. Uh, he has written many, many books.
But we are going to take Robbie all the way

(10:52):
back to his debut novel, which is flames. So that
may seem a little bit odd, because he has got
a newly released novel that's doing exceptionally well, but flames
is actually on the VCE English list this year, so
we would like to support our VCA students and actually
have our in conversation with Robbie with a focus on flames.

(11:15):
So I'm sure we'll move on and chat about some
of his other books as well. Yeah, but of course
we welcome everybody to it. It's not going to be
sort of a boring English class. Not that I found
English class is boring, but it'll be a conversation with
Robbie talking about his writing again, the journey to writing
his different books and motivations behind his books, but with

(11:38):
a focus on flames as well.

S2 (11:40):
Fantastic. Yes, I know he's written quite a few books,
and that's exciting because I don't think I know much
about him. The name is really familiar. Um, but. So
that'll be lovely.

S3 (11:49):
Well, Robbie is based in Tasmania. He lives in a
beautiful part of Tasmania. He's actually just had a baby out. Well,
his wife, not him. And, uh, flames is written with
the Tasmanian landscape very much as a backdrop to the story.
And it is a very complex story. But among other

(12:11):
themes that weave through it is that, uh, colonisation of Tasmania. Um,
there's also environmental themes about the damages to the environment there.
And then there's also a lot of, um, complex discussions
of grieving and death and so forth, which actually makes

(12:33):
it sound very depressing, but it's not. It's an amazing novel.
And it's also interesting, too, because he has had a
highly accomplished career, and the novels that he's written subsequently
have been incredibly successful. So it's actually interesting to go
back and look at how his writing has evolved and
where he started, because often we just focus on the

(12:55):
new release and move on to the next best thing.

S2 (12:58):
Yeah, well, that sounds great. And anything else coming up,
we do.

S3 (13:02):
We have a not a little we have a, um,
children's Book week coming up for our little people. So
it is our bedtime story time on the 20th of August.
So we love a good little pajama party. So we're
encouraging all of our younger library members to don their
favorite pajamas and to join our children's librarian, Kylie. And

(13:27):
Kylie is going to read a very special Book Week
celebratory book because it is Book Week's 80th birthday. So
it's an octogenarian, which, as I said, is a little
bit like being an octopus, but without the tentacles. So
Kylie is going to join us to read the Australian

(13:49):
Picture Book of the year. So I can't actually tell
you what book she's reading, but I can tell you
that it will be highly awarded and I'm sure it
will be amazing.

S2 (13:59):
Well, that sounds lovely.

S3 (14:00):
And no bedtime story is complete without lullabies. So there'll
be lullabies, there'll be pajamas. There'll be a Be fully
accessible reading, with Carly describing the beautiful pictures throughout the book.

S2 (14:13):
Okay, and what date is that again?

S3 (14:15):
That is on the 20th of August at 6:30 p.m.
Australian Eastern Standard Time. So that will be huge fun.

S2 (14:23):
Yeah. And, um, anything else coming up?

S3 (14:26):
Well, we have another writing course, which is on the horizon.
So we're currently in the midst of our family history course,
which is just wonderful with Jonathan Butler. Uh, and that
was booked to capacity. So I really encourage people, if
they're interested in our next writing course, to make sure
that they secure a spot early. Uh, and we are

(14:48):
bringing back the gorgeous Emily Maguire to do this course
with us. So our loyal listeners will remember that Emily
was in conversation with us on her latest book, rapture,
back in February on Library Lovers Day, which was Valentine's Day.
And she is going to run for us. A I

(15:09):
suppose you'd call it an introductory writing course. So it's
finding your story, finding your voice, and it's a hands
on writing workshop. So it's very much, um, about helping
people find the stories that are hiding in plain sight,
discovering ways to supercharge your imagination, and overcoming that fear

(15:32):
and self-consciousness when it comes to putting those first words
on the page. So Emily has had many, many, many
years of mentoring and coaching and running writing courses. So
she's highly qualified and incredibly, um, enthusiastic and energizing. So

(15:53):
I think she'll be great for all those people that think, ah,
I really want to, but they just need that push
over the edge. I think Emily's what you need.

S2 (16:01):
Great. I think so, too. Yeah. Um, she's a great
novelist and yeah, she is.

S3 (16:06):
And she was shortlisted for the Stella Prize, um, on
her latest book. So she definitely has a, um, a, uh,
a portfolio of very strong works behind her. So we'll
call that a testimonial to her abilities.

S2 (16:23):
Yeah. Good on you. Yeah. And, um, what are you
reading at the moment?

S3 (16:28):
I'm reading The Occupation, so. Oh. You are. I get
to be a very, very privileged person because it's not
actually released yet. Um, so I had this same little
gloat when, um, Candice Fox's high wire came out. Yes.
So I have a little pre-release copy because I can't
interview someone about their book when I haven't read it.

(16:50):
So I'm very, very lucky.

S2 (16:52):
Oh, that sounds lovely.

S3 (16:53):
And I'm really, really enjoying it.

S2 (16:55):
Oh, good. All right. Look forward to getting that in
the library as well then. Yeah.

S3 (16:59):
But for people that want ideas on what to read
until the occupation does come out and it will be
in the Vision Australia catalogue once it is released. We
have got the Miles Franklin Award shortlist, which is up
on our website. Okay, so I really encourage people to
have a look. It is an amazing selection of Australian

(17:20):
female writers and there is a shortlist of six. And
we have given a little pieces of each of those books.
We've also given a background story to the actual award,
where it came from, who's won it before? And we're
all eagerly awaiting the announcement of the winner on the
24th of July.

S2 (17:41):
But soon. Yeah, okay.

S3 (17:43):
It is really soon. So we've only focused on the shortlist, though.
The long list is a phenomenal group of writers as well.
But we wanted to give a little bit more of
an in-depth prices of the books.

S2 (17:54):
Yeah. Oh that's great. Where can people find that?

S3 (17:57):
That is on the library website. So if you go
to Vision Australia. And if you scan down the homepage
to page to the news section. You'll see all our
news articles. So there's a news article on the Miles
Franklin Award, which is our most recent one. There's one
on the magazines that are available in the Vision Australia catalog.

(18:20):
There's one on Naydock week. We did a beautiful reading
list for Naydock week, and you can go back. And
the wonderful thing about reading lists is that none of
them age. So we have reading lists there that are for, um,
International Women's Day. We have ones for Anzac Day. We
have one that on biographies and autobiographies, because that's always

(18:44):
a very popular genre with our readers. Uh, we ran
one in summer, which was all about travel. Um, so
to enable everyone to vicariously travel the world in summer, uh,
so there's a lovely selection. There's coming of age books
that's in one of the reading lists. And even if

(19:05):
the reading list is two years old, I mean, the
books are still in our catalog and they're still amazing books.

S2 (19:11):
Yes, and sometimes books get a lot of fanfare, and
then they're wonderful books. But then the next books come along.
So these lists remind you of, oh, that was a
top seller. And that was a really, you know, acclaimed.
So yeah.

S3 (19:23):
And we get a lot of phone calls from our
clients who will say, oh, I've just finished reading this book.
I don't know what to read. Have a look at
the reading list. There's about seven different pages with about nine, um,
articles on each page. Most of them are reading lists.
So you can go back and you're sure to find something.
And if you find it hard to choose, I think

(19:46):
it's always a little bit safe to look at things
like the Stella Prize, uh, reading list, uh, the Miles Franklin,
the Booker Prize, uh, the Indie awards. Like, there's so
many there. So if you don't trust your own judgement,
you can trust the people that make a living out
of doing that.

S2 (20:04):
Yeah. Lovely.

S3 (20:05):
Now, the other thing that's on there, only because I'm
looking at it right now for those of our parents
or grandparents that aren't so sure about this, um, online
book reading by Kylie. How can a book reading be accessible?
We have the recording of our national Simultaneous Storytime that's

(20:25):
sitting on that news page, which is about Tinker the
Truck Cat. And that is amazing. And there's a video
there that you can play and you can listen to
that anytime with your children, your grandchildren, anyone you like.
And it is a beautiful story. And Kylie is just
a born actress, like, she reads so beautifully and she's

(20:48):
actually dressed up as a cat, which is all very lovely,
and she describes every image that's up there. And it
will give you, I suppose, a taste of what her
children's book week, uh, bedtime storytime will be like.

S2 (21:02):
Yeah. Lovely. Oh, thank you so much, Maureen, for coming
on again.

S3 (21:07):
I love coming on. It's one of my favorite times
of the month.

S2 (21:10):
Yes. And sometimes we miss, like a week. We're a
week out from when we arranged. But it's always a
joy to come in and speak to you.

S3 (21:16):
I think it keeps everyone on their toes.

S2 (21:18):
Yeah, yeah. And it's so informative. My mind is already
going buzzing with everything that's coming up. So thank you
so much.

S3 (21:25):
Not a problem, Frances. Thank you for having me.

S2 (21:33):
Thank you to Maureen for coming on to the show. Again,
it's Maureen O'Reilly, community engagement coordinator here. And she mentioned
a couple of really interesting events, the accessible reading and
writing tools. What's new and how can artificial intelligence benefit me?
And that event is on the 31st of July, 2025,

(21:53):
starting at 12:00 and going till 1:00. I thought I'd
play a sample of this particular book. This is called
mastering AI A Survival Guide to Our super powered future
by Jeremy Kahn. The debut of ChatGPT on November the 30th,
2020 was a watershed moment in the history of technology.

(22:15):
We stand on the threshold of a new age, one
where content of all kinds, even software itself, will be
conjured seemingly from thin air with simple conversation. In a
culture fraught with misinformation, mastering AI pierces through the thicket
of exaggerated claims, explaining how we arrived at this moment

(22:35):
and mapping the likely long term impacts on business, economics,
culture and society. This potent technology will have. Let's hear
a sample of mastering AI A Survival Guide to our
Super Powered Future by Jeremy Kahn. It's narrated by Russ Bane.

S4 (22:53):
In the spring of 2020, in a vast, windowless building
the size of 20 football fields on the plains outside
Des Moines, Iowa, one of the largest supercomputers ever built
crackled to life. The supercomputer was made up of rack
upon rack of specialized computer chips, a kind originally developed
to handle the intensive work of rendering graphics in video games.

(23:14):
More than 10,000 of the chips were yoked together, connecting
with high speed fiber optic cabling. The data center belonged
to Microsoft, and it cost hundreds of millions of dollars
to construct. But the supercomputer was designed to serve the
needs of a small startup from San Francisco that at
the time, few people outside the computer science field known

(23:36):
as artificial intelligence, had ever heard of. It was called OpenAI.
Microsoft had invested $1 billion in OpenAI in July 2019
to gain access to its technology. As part of the deal,
Microsoft promised to build this supercomputer for the next 34 days.
The supercomputer worked around the clock training one of the

(23:58):
largest pieces of AI software ever developed. The software could
encode the relationship between 100 and 75 billion data points.
OpenAI fed this AI software text more than 2.5 billion
web pages collected over a decade of web crawling, millions
of Reddit conversations, tens of thousands of books, and all

(24:19):
of Wikipedia. The software's objective was to create a map
of the relationships between all of the words in that
vast dataset. This statistical map would allow it to take
any arbitrary text sequence and predict the next most likely word.
By doing so, it could output many paragraphs in a
variety of genres and styles that were almost indistinguishable from

(24:41):
human writing. OpenAI called the software GPT three, and its
debut in June 2020 stunned computer scientists.

S2 (24:50):
And that was mastering AI. A Survival Guide to Our
Superpowered Future by Jeremy Kahn Jeremy is j e e
j e r RMI. Caan is k a k a h.
That book is for eight hours and 20 minutes. And

(25:11):
the other event that's happening in August 2025. So the
22nd of August will be Robbie Arnott discussing his award
winning novel with library manager Sarah Bloedorn, flames, which has
been described as a mesmerizing, beautiful and enchanting novel, one
that explores themes of death, grief and family. Um, and

(25:32):
as uh, Maureen mentioned, set in the dramatic Tasmanian landscape.
And it's on the VCE English text list for 2025.
In flames. It starts with a fisherman hunting for tuna,
his sidekick, a young seal as fast as Quicksilver, a
relationship forged in blood and fish meat. Let's hear a

(25:52):
sample of Flames by Robbie Arnott. It's narrated by Henry Nixon.

S5 (25:58):
Our mother returned to us two days after we spread
her ashes over Notley Fern Gorge. She was definitely our mother,
but at the same time she was not our mother
at all. Since her dispersal among the fronds of Notley,
she had changed. Now her skin was carpeted by a spongy,

(26:18):
verdant moss and thin tendrils of common filmy fern. Six
large fronds of tree fern had sprouted from her back
and extended past her waist in a layered peacock tail
of vegetation. And her hair had been replaced by cascading
fronds of lawn coloured maidenhair. Perhaps the most delicate fern

(26:39):
of all, this kind of thing wasn't uncommon in our family.
Our grandmother had reappeared a few days after her ashes
were scattered into the north, facing straight at Hawley Beach.
She'd been sporting a skirt of cowry shells, a fishhook
in her tongue, skin of shifting sand, strands of kelp

(27:00):
for hair and a large green lipped abalone suckered into
the back of her neck. As she approached a group
of terrified fishermen, her wrinkled arms outstretched. And the sound
of crashing waves swirling out of her salt rimmed mouth.
Our great Aunt Margaret had also returned not long after
her ashes had been poured over the family farm down

(27:23):
at Bothwell, when she'd wandered back into her living room.
She immediately started shedding sheets of paper bark all over
the carpet, while an ornate crown of Bluegum branches burst
from her head, and the furred tail of a Bennett's
wallaby flopped out from beneath her dress. And our cousin
Ella had been spotted a week after her ashes were

(27:44):
given to the high scraping winds of Stacks bluff, with
a speckled body of dolerite and an iced face of
hard sky. She strode into her former school and marched
slowly through the grounds, leaving a trail of snapped frost
behind each fallen step.

S2 (28:00):
That was Flames by Robbie Arnott. Robbie is r o
b I r o b I. Arnott is a r
o t r o t. That book goes for seven hours.

(28:25):
Thank you for joining us on here this. And thank
you to everybody that listens to the show and gives
such fabulous feedback. If you would like to call the
library to join, find out what other books there are.
Explore your choices. You can always call 1300 654 656. That's 1300 654 656.
Or you can um email library at that's library. Have

(28:52):
a lovely week and we'll be back next week with
more here this.