Sunday 16:00-16:30, repeated Thursday 16:00-16:30, except first Sunday in the month when it is replaced by Book Club.
Open Book spotlights new fiction and non-fiction, picks out the best of the paperbacks, talks to authors and publishers, and unearths lost masterpieces.
This week
30 March 2008
Jo Brand chooses her five favourite books; Sarah Hall, Robert Macfarlane and Rachel Seifert on the literature of armageddon; Julia Donaldson, award winning writer of the Gruffalo, on telling stories to your kids.
Jo Brand Stand up comedienne and novelist Jo Brand talks to Mariella Frostrup about her five favourite books and how they relate to her own experience of life, her former job as a psychiatric nurse and her interest in the world around her.
Moments of Reprieve by Primo Levi. The Faber Book of Reportage ed. by John Carey David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. In the Springtime of the Year by Susan Hill The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell.
Jo Brand has herself written 2 novels: Sorting Out Billy and It's Different for Girls
The literature of Armageddon Twenty five years ago the threat of nuclear annihilation spawned a literary genre. In the 21st century the causes of potential global cataclysm may have changed from nuclear to ecological but the threat is still perceived to be there, so how are today’s generation of writers writing about current fears. Sarah Hall whose own award winning book The Carhullan Army depicts a dystopian England, much of which is under water, Rachel Seifert and Robert McFarlane talk about the literary underbelly of Armageddon then and now.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs Children of the Dust by Louise Lawrence Z for Zachariah by Robert C O’Brien
Julia Donaldson on children's story telling. Creating Stories For Your Children by Ronny M Cole (Hay House Publishing) is out this week, marking World Storytelling day. Award winning author of The Gruffalo Julia Donaldson gives her own tips on how to make up stories for your children and reveals how she gets the ideas for her own work.
A complete list of Julia Donaldson books can be found on the booklist
