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IN TOUCH – Books for the New Year

TX:Ìý 01.01.2019Ìý 2040-2100

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PRESENTER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý PETER WHITE

PRODUCER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý LEE KUMUTAT

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White

Good evening.Ìý Audiobooks – are you someone who gets immersed in them or do they just send you off to sleep.Ìý Perhaps I come in to both categories there.Ìý Well love ‘em or think they’re a cop out the audiobook market has grown enormously in recent times so it does seem that the rest of the world is catching up on a media many blind people have been enjoying since at least 1936, when the RNIB Talking Book Library opened on gramophone records.

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And with the festive period out of the way and January’s cold days stretching in front of us it just might be the ideal time for some guilt free listening in front of a nice warm fire.

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Well, we’ve got two guests who will bring you one audiobook recommendation each and will avidly argue for their choices I’m sure.Ìý First of all, Sally Clay is a musical theatre director, singer and pianist, she’s recently appeared as a judge on Â鶹ԼÅÄ 2’s Altogether Now.Ìý And here she is recreating one much loved comedian, Victoria Wood’s most recognisable song.

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Clip – Sally Clay singing Let’s Do It

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And I’m sure, somewhere in the ether, Victoria Wood will be singing along thinking – god, there’s two of me.Ìý That’s Sally and Let’s Do It.Ìý In a couple of sentences what’s your book and why do you love it?

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Clay

My book is Before I Go to Sleep by S. J. Watson and the reason I love it is partly the suspense, the way it kind of – it’s about somebody with amnesia, so the way it kind of unfolds very slowly and kind of drip feeds you bits of information.Ìý But also, just the kind of dynamic between this woman and her husband and how that unfolds throughout the book as well.

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White

Yeah, it’s a fascinating read and listen and we’ll talk about it a bit later.Ìý Also with us is the man who plays this lovable larrikin.

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Clip – The Archers

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The softer side of Jazzer that we didn’t even know was there.Ìý Ryan Kelly of course plays Jazzer McCreary in the Archers, alongside Fallon Rogers which was played by Joanna van Kampen.Ìý

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Ryan, are you a fan of reading through listening?

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Kelly

Yeah, always have been since I can remember, since I was about three I think, only it was story tapes back then and you couldn’t find them anywhere, they were very hard to get hold of.

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White

And what’s your book and briefly why?

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Kelly

±õ³Ù’s The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North.Ìý I loved it because it seemed to have a bit of everything – a bit of suspense, a bit of stuff that makes you think, bit of adventure.

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White

And time travel as well.

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Kelly

Oh absolutely, but it’s just – it’s a very sci-fi type of book, it’s great fun though, it was really good to sort of listen to.

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White

I’m going to chime in, because it’s the presenter’s prerogative, with my own pick.Ìý I’m quite new to listening to books regularly because I’ve always preferred reading them in braille but I’m beginning to acknowledge that listening can sometimes be a bit more convenient.Ìý I’ve always loved hard boiled American crime fiction, going right back to some of the classic writers in the genre like Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, people like that and I’m delighted to see still being brought out.Ìý And I’ve chosen a book by a new writer to me Steve Cavanagh, it’s called Thirteen and I’ll tell you a bit more about it later on.

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But Sally, back to you first, tell us more about your choice.

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Clay

±õ³Ù’s a thriller really.Ìý ±õ³Ù’s about a lady who every time that she goes to sleep she forgets who she is and she wakes up thinking that she is about 20 years younger than she actually is in reality.Ìý And she’s got this whole chunk of her memory missing, she doesn’t know where she is, she goes and looks in the mirror and thinks who the heck’s this old woman looking back at me, that isn’t me.Ìý And gets totally freaked out and bamboozled.Ìý So, her husband, Ben, is having to leave notes for her to enable her to sort of piece together her life and her history.Ìý And throughout the book she creates, with the help of her doctor – psychologist – a journal of her life and what’s happened and it’s all about her piecing together bits of her life and every morning she still has this kind of whole thing going on – you know waking up not knowing who she is.Ìý And it’s kind of resetting but every day she’s drip fed a bit more information.

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White

And what do you think this is really about because it’s very much playing with the idea of memory isn’t it?

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Clay

Oh yeah definitely and I think it’s also about – it’s why – what causes these traumatic – these traumatic things that cause the memory to kind of block things out and how does it work and it doesn’t come back in chronological order, it’s kind of pieces and fragments of different kinds of memory that come back to her.Ìý And I think it’s a lot about the dynamic between her and her husband, it’s a lot about the relationships that she has had and how they have affected her and the kind of juxtaposition between her husband now and her husband when she was younger and the things she can slowly remember about him and how he is now.

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White

And it really is one of those books that gradually unwinds isn’t it?

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Clay

Yeah and it is – it gets – it starts off quite slow and I suspect that if you’re anything like me, Ryan, that you would have actually felt – oh god, come on – but actually after – as it goes on it becomes a lot racier towards the end.

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Kelly

It happened without me realising it, I must admit, I was sort of 90 minutes in and I thought do you know what, I love this, for the first 90 minutes I was going come on, come on, come on and then about, I don’t know, yeah an hour and a half or so I’m just – this is really good – and I need to sort of shut everyone up and listen to this properly, put headphones on, you know.

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White

Can I say Sally, in some ways I found it a bit of an exasperating book.Ìý I mean don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy it but it’s one of those books where – I mean, for example, given the premise that she forgets everything each day I started to play this game of thinking has the author got it right, could she possibly have known that, how come she knew that.Ìý Like the first time she woke up I thought, possibly rather stupidly, I thought well if she doesn’t know where she is how can she find the bathroom and then of course I thought oh that’s a blind person’s thought.

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Clay

Yeah that is a blind person’s…[laughter].Ìý Yeah, remember she’s got full sight, that is one of the few things she has retained.

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White

I know but there were things, I thought hang on, has S. J. Watson made a mistake here, wouldn’t she have remembered that.Ìý ±õ³Ù’s really very difficult to get your head round it.Ìý And I suppose the author probably thinks that they can cheat a little bit because memory is so slippery.

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Clay

Yeah and also human memory isn’t – isn’t actually stored in that way, is it, it’s kind of – the human memory is reconstructive, so that does happen in real life doesn’t it, the memory is inaccurate and incorrect.

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White

And we’ve got to be aware of spoilers of course in this kind of programme but it is sort of – there’s an element of crime in all our choices isn’t there, which gradually emerges as well.Ìý But it’s a bit of a moany book, isn’t it?

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Clay

It is, it can be and she’s – and I must say that the female character, she is very – she is a bit of a victim and that’s the one criticism that I had of the book was that she was – it was this poor woman and all these things had happened to her and it’s kind of putting her into a very passive position.Ìý But actually, I think that she does kind of grow into herself as the book unfolds.

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White

What about – they’re important, aren’t they, the voices who read.Ìý Ryan, what did you make of the reader of this?

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Kelly

Oh Susanna Harker?

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White

Yeah.

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Kelly

I loved the narrator, I thought she was great.Ìý Slightly wrong accent if she’s meant to be from London, there was a little bit of a northern brogue in there sometimes.Ìý But it didn’t matter, she just had the right voice for it anyway, it worked for me a treat.

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White

And I take it, Sally, as you picked it you enjoyed her reading of it as well?

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Clay

Well yeah, I mean actually for me I always tend, when I listen to a book, to often kind of overlay whoever’s reading it with my own head voice interpretation of it, without even meaning to, it’s just a thing that happens.Ìý And so I suppose I kind of just get immersed in the content rather than the reader.Ìý Okay, if there’s somebody that I really dislike or if it’s really slow and they’re not getting the inflections right or whatever then I do find it difficult.Ìý But I would say that she was a very good vehicle for whatever it was that S. J. Watson was portraying.

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Kelly

I would agree.

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White

Yeah, and did it have a satisfying ending for you, without telling people what happens?

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Clay

Yes, yeah.Ìý I thought it was good.

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Kelly

Definitely not.

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White

´¡³ó…

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Clay

No, you don’t think so, go on Ryan, come on then.

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Kelly

No, I wanted to know what happened next, I wanted to know what happened when she woke up.

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White

Well yeah, was that deliberate do you think Sally…

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Kelly

Oh it definitely was.

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White

…leaving it, yeah leaving it but very frustrating, you didn’t like it.

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Clay

Oh you see I liked that, that kind of ambiguity, I don’t want to know because – she got up and she washed her hair and whatever, it – no, I think…

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Kelly

±õ³Ù’s just a matter – it’s a matter of individual taste.Ìý I did think that when I thought come on, I thought other people would actually love it.

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Clay

Yeah, no, I really liked that.Ìý You know the film Inception, it’s kind of that bit at the end, you’re not sure what’s going on next and you’re not sure what’s going to happen, sorry I’m going off on one now.

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White

And of course, this was made as a very successful film as well, wasn’t it?

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Clay

Yeah, I haven’t actually seen the film yet, I keep meaning to go – to go and get it but I haven’t seen it.

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Kelly

Nicole Kidman wasn’t it?

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Clay

Yeah, that’s right.

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White

So, a strong recommendation from Sally on that one and we will give some more details at the end of the programme and they’ll be on the website.

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As for my book, as I said, it’s called Thirteen.Ìý ÌýI mean it is hard boiled crime fiction, I’d be the first to admit it’s got all the classic clichés of such books – an indestructible hero whatever they do to him; unfeasibly large consumption of alcohol by just about everybody, even more than Jazzer I think; more plot twists than a scenic railway; oh and it’s got a thoroughly amoral psychopath as well.Ìý But what I love about Cavanagh, the author, it’s very tightly written, deeply ingenious I think and a clever plot which you don’t always get in this kind of fiction.Ìý

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Raymond Chandler, who’s probably my favourite of all, was notorious for not understanding his own plots and when people asked him what was happening there, he said – I don’t know – he said – if you get stuck just put a man in a room with a gun in his hand.Ìý But Cavanagh is much more inventive than that, I think.Ìý

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And I’ll explain a bit about the whole Thirteen business because the clue is in the title.Ìý ±õ³Ù’s not a spoiler because you know what’s going on in this book right from the start because everybody tells you, we hear from the psychopath and the defence lawyer and so forth.Ìý And the issue is not who’s doing what but how they’re going to do it and will it work.Ìý The basic premise of Thirteen is that the psychopath kills people more or less at random but then frames people he doesn’t like and then gets himself on the juries trying the case, if necessary by eliminating the odd juror in order to be sure of getting the verdict he wants.Ìý ±õ³Ù’s just a brilliant idea right from the start and I’m not aware of anyone else who’s done it, people can correct me if I’m wrong.Ìý I think it’s likely to be a very successful series and one of the things it’s really good on is juries and how they can be influenced.Ìý This will give you a bit of an idea.

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Clip – Thirteen

Three really is the magic number, it holds some kind of important place in our minds and we see it all the time in our culture and daily lives.Ìý If you get a call from a wrong number once, well that’s just life; if you get the same call from a wrong number again, that’s coincidence; if you get a third call you know something is going on.Ìý The number three equates to some form of truth or fact in our subconscious.Ìý It is somehow divine.Ìý Jesus rose on the third day, the holy trinity, third time lucky, three strikes and you’re out.Ìý Prior made three promises, he said the word guilty three times, he said the word three, he held up three fingers, the rhythms and cadences of his speech revolved around the number three.Ìý I’m not going to speculate, I’m not going to theorise, I’m going to show you the truth.Ìý This case is about sex, money and revenge.Ìý Even the structure of Prior’s speech was built around that number.Ìý First, he told the jury he was going to tell them three things.Ìý Second, he told them three things.Ìý Third, he told them what he’d just said.

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Ryan, are you into this type of crime fiction?

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Kelly

Yes, I must confess I haven’t finished it yet, I’ve still got about an hour to go, so do not spoil it.Ìý I’ve not read any Steve Cavanagh before but it sort of has a Raymond Chandler/Thomas Harris aspect about it too, you’ve got the lovely descriptions of the way the psychopath is doing things.Ìý And the narrator’s just right for it too.

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White

Sally, I mean you haven’t finished it either but you claim you’ve got an excuse, don’t you?

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Clay

Yeah, I’ve got two young kids, so that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

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White

Fair enough.Ìý But do you – do you enjoy this kind of – particularly the American genre but are you into crime fiction?

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Clay

I do like crime fiction, I’m not going to say that I’m aficionado, you know, it’s not something that I generally read, although I’m very open minded about what I read, so I definitely will finish it and I think it’ll be a shame not to know what actually happens.

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White

Just before we move on to the last book, I’m quite curious about how you read, where you read and what else you do when you read.Ìý Sally first.

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Clay

Going down to the shops, or whatever, I’ve got my kiddy on my back and I’ve got my audiobook in one ear and then she’s asking me questions about whatever’s going on in the other ear.

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White

And what about you Ryan?

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Kelly

On the train, outside, while I’m doing the dishes, just anywhere I feel like it really.Ìý I drive the wife mad at night because I always put an audiobook on before I go to sleep and if she’s generally asleep before me that drives her insane.

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White

But can you – you see listening to these books I have regularly gone to sleep, it’s not that I didn’t like them or – I went to sleep during me own, the one I loved.

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Clay

Yeah, I’ve done that quite a lot as well.

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White

±õ³Ù’s been claimed on my headphones by the producer that I fell asleep in the office listening to them as well.Ìý That may or may not be true.Ìý Finally, Ryan, your book.

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Kelly

±õ³Ù’s The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August.Ìý It starts off with the fact that he remembers being here before, so to speak, and he’s actually able to put things right that he did wrong the first time or the second time or the third time, first 14 times.Ìý So, it’s got everything, it’s got a little bit of science fiction, a little bit of crime, as Peter said about all the books, and lots and lots of suspense.

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White

±õ³Ù’s funny, isn’t it, there’s a theme here isn’t there because I mean the heroine, if that’s what she is in Sally’s book, she keeps living the same kind of day and that’s in a way what happens in your book Ryan.

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Kelly

Yeah, absolutely, yeah.Ìý But it’s a whole life.Ìý But it’s – I just – I loved it, it was really intricate.

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Clay

I loved it as well.

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White

Tell us why Sally.

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Clay

What I really liked about it was the fact that it wasn’t taking itself too seriously and it would jump in and out of these kind of musings, these philosophical musings, but then it would kind of go on to take the mickey.Ìý He meets this Thai guy, how he explains to Harry that he’s going to kill him, but it’s in such a roundabout way and it’s so funny, I was just sitting there absolutely laughing my head off.Ìý And her metaphors are absolutely second to none, they’re brilliant.

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White

Ryan?

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Kelly

The end part, where things are coming to a crunch, was the part I liked.Ìý I don’t want to spoil it because everyone should read this book but…

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Clay

Yeah, they should, they definitely should.

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White

Well that’s a very strong recommendation.Ìý Can I ask you both – because now there is quite a diversity of audiobooks, but I’m just curious to know where you pick your books from.Ìý Sally?

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Clay

Well actually I got my copy of Harry August from RNIB Overdrive, the digital downloadable form of the Talking Book Library.Ìý I use Kindle, I use books that have been scanned in by friends and then like edited but I’m too lazy to do that.Ìý Plus with two children how could I possibly find the time.Ìý

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Kelly

Absolutely.

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Clay

But anywhere I’ll listen with synthetic speech.Ìý I listen using a computer, just anything.

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White

Just about any way you can.

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Clay

Yeah, yeah.

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White

What about you Ryan?

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Kelly

I like voices I’m afraid, I’m a bit picky.Ìý Synthetic speech, because I use it to learn lines with, when you’re sort of listening to a book with it you think hang on, am I still at work here, you know.Ìý ±õ³Ù’s also – it’s like listening to the scanners at the supermarket or Alexa.

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Clay

Oh, it is actually, of yeah.

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Kelly

There was an advent calendar, ask me to read The Night Before Christmas, I asked it to read The Night Before Christmas for the first four lines and it went off – I can’t be coping with this voice, it tries its best but it’s still a robot, no, it doesn’t work for me.

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Clay

But it’s really slow though, I mean you know I tend to listen to my speech pretty sped up, so that it’s kind of – I don’t really notice that it’s speech.

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White

And that doesn’t spoil it for you – speeding it up?

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Clay

No, I mean if I had it too fast I think I wouldn’t be able to process, I mean I’ve only got one brain cell at the moment that’s not used up with childrearing – that’s what I’m going to keep plugging, I’m going to keep milking it, you know.

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White

You’ll never guess this guys but Sally is a mum.

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Kelly

Has she’s got two kids?

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White

I think so.Ìý Look, thank you both for some great selections and I’m sure you’re going to add to people’s enjoyment of 2019 with all that.Ìý All the books we’ve mentioned can be found on Amazon Audible and do tell us what you like to read and how you like to read it.Ìý You can email us at intouch@bbc.co.uk, you can call our actionline on 0800 044 044 and you can listen to this programme again on Â鶹ԼÅÄ Sounds.Ìý That’s it from me, Peter White, producer Lee Kumutat and our book worms – Sally Clay and Ryan Kelly.Ìý Happy New Year.