With a career in literary journalism that spans 17 years, including Radio National’s Books and Writing program, and later, The Book Show, writer, journalist and broadcaster Ramona Koval’s literary expertise is well established. In By the Book: A Reader’s Guide to Life, she delves into the books that have shaped her life from childhood to present day.
Within its pages, Koval details those books which have made a lasting impression on her, interspersing her literary comments with snatches of details from her personal life. Like most of us she can recall defining books – what they meant and the impact they had. Koval devotes her writing to opening up an enticing reading journey, throughout which we are treated to her sharp-minded articulations on the books she has devoured.
Koval ensures that this volume does not simply become a list of good books, nor is she reliant solely on fiction. She takes different genres that have appealed to her, or not, over the past years and reflects on their impact. Honestly, and with a light comedic touch, she reveals that being so worldly and widely read by a young age did not stop her falling in love with husband number one, who was her ‘own version of Charles Bovary’. A knowledge of Flaubert can only go so far.
Koval’s enthusiastic voice is pronounced in the chapters featuring her love of books on adventure, travel, and survival; a love initially sparked by a library’s volume of Robinson Crusoe, and later encompassing a humorous meeting with the second husband of ethnographer Margaret Mead, at New Zealand a barbeque. She reflects on the value of travel reading, posing interesting questions for her own readers. When travelling, should you read books related to where you are, then reflect on the points of difference between your own eyes and those of the author whose words you are reading? Or do you reach for books that allow for pure escapism?
Koval’s ‘romantic Dr Zhivago vision’ is attributed as the reason why she found herself being led by team of seven Alaskan huskies into the depths of Algonquin State Park, Canada. Here Koval intertwines her own experiences with what she has previously learnt from her ‘adored polar explorers’, encompassing seminal works by Fridtjof Nansen (Farthest North) and Roald Amundsen (The South Pole). Koval’s reflections on how reading these books prior to her expedition shaped her reactions to the landscape around her, and how she viewed the huskies they relied upon, are intriguing.
Koval furnishes By the Book with excerpts from her own experiences as a literary interviewer, sketching her encounters of authors such as Roger Penrose, recipient of the Wolf Prize for physics, and Oliver Sacks, ‘a bear of a man’ who insisted on the presence a thermometer as they conversed. Why a thermometer? To alert interviewers to his ‘strange response’ should the temperature exceed 65 degrees.
Honesty resounds in these pages. Many book lovers, with small sighs of relief, will identify with Koval’s admission that some books defeated her. Even though she felt she should, she just didn’t connect with them.
By the Book reveals an avid reader, both inquisitive and intelligent, who devours a plethora of genres with passion, enthusiasm and a thirst for knowledge. Full of wonderfully quotable lines perfect for any book lover, each chapter provides numerous gems as Koval turns towards her book shelves and shares with her readers the way their contents reveal her journey through life thus far.
Rating: 4 ½ stars out of 5
By the Book: A Reader’s Guide to Life
By Ramona Koval
Hardback, 250pp, RRP $29.99
ISBN 9781922079060
Text Publishing
