Whereas I used to listen to books on tape while I did my housewifely chores, I recently found something else that's a lot of fun. Maybe you all knew about this long ago.
Ed Champion, host of the Bat Segundo Show has audio interviews via podcast with more than 500 writers, humorists, musicians, film-makers, etc Crime writers Ariel S. Winter, Charlie Huston, Megan Abbott, Laura Lippman, Ian Rankin and Duane Swierczyncki are in the archives along with humorists like Amy Sedaris and Dave Barry, film-makers like Mike Leigh and Sarah Polley, interviewers like Dick Cavett and musicians like Bonnie Tyler. There are also essayists and topics of interest examined.
What makes these comprehensive interviews work so well is that Ed has read the book. And not just a writer's current book but their previous ones. He is able to ask interesting and probing questions and get people to talk about their process, their influences, all of the things that you wished someone would ask. He is able to draw from an encyclopedic knowledge of literature for these interviews.
I especially enjoyed the interview with Laura Lippman done after her most recent book (AND WHEN SHE WAS GOOD), with Claire Messud after THE WOMAN UPSTAIRS, with Stewart O'Nan after LAST NIGHT AT THE LOBSTER and with Aimee Bender after THE PARTICULAR SADNESS OF THE LEMON CAKE. But I am still at the beginning of the archives.
If you like hearing writers talk about their books, I highly recommend THE BAT SEGUNDO SHOW.
15 comments:
I'll be listening to THE BAT SEGUNDO SHOW, too. Katie and I just watched the first three episodes of ORPHAN BLACK On Demand. Love it! We'll watch another bunch of episodes tonight. Thanks for the recommendation!
Season 2 is already filming!
(Sigh. Having already pushed ORPHAN BLACK on my own blog to no apparent response. People still puzzled about how to see BORGEN after about fifteen pointers--no exaggeration, iinm--to the Link TV pages, for those outside of Los Angeles, who can see it on KCET, or San Francisco, who can see it overnights on KRCB, or who have Dish or DirecTV.)
I've tried BAT SEGUNDO in the past, but his manner put me off. He does get some good people on the show, though, no question.
Todd, I had ORPHAN BLACK on my radar after reading your posting. Patti's recommendation just tipped the balance. So many shows, so little time...
KCET is now having a marathon of the first season of Borgen on their website, so you can catch up on it from the beginning for a limited time. I did find it initially confusing myself, since when you clicked on the Marathon, you weren't really there yet. But now that a few shows are up there, it seems straightforward enough.
Here's that page.
Another good book podcaster is my friend Rick Kleffel. He too actually reads the book, and the range of his interest is amazing. His website is here.
Thanks, Seana!
My pleasure.
Link TV: Borgen season 2; Borgen season 1
And, for some vintage writer interviews, Don Swaim's raw feeds for the CBS Radio series Book Beat
Bookwaves, on Pacifica Radio...I'll be listening to the Richard Matheson episode soon...not so much to the David Sedaris...
My library has purchased BORGEN so I can watch in on DVD, which I greatly prefer than computer viewing.
That's cool...though I thought (erroneously?) your current setup allowed you to pull webby stuff into your new tv...the streaming video is very comparable to DVD in image quality.
We probably can but unless it's on netflix, we haven't figured it out. You can lead a horse to water, but....
Thanks, Patti - I hadn't heard of this before. And I'm always glad when the interviewer in a show like this has actually read the book!
I somehow ended up on their email list and have listened to a few programs.
He's dumped some of the cutesiness he was engaging in some years back, but in the intro to the Lauren Beukes episode manages to smugly mischaracterize the nature of the hassle with Mike Resnick, if only slightly and in a popular way, and blame Barry Malzberg for the problem as well, over their column in the SFWA BULLETIN (they mentioned that editor/publisher Ray Palmer had hired editor Bea Mahaffey because he thought she was cute, apparently a fact, and that she went on to prove herself as an editor anyway; when another bit of criticism over perceived sexism on the part of the woman editor of the BULLETIN was extended to their observation, Resnick particularly went ballistic, though Barry wasn't about to apologize for making a factual observation about another, rather maverick man's decision and motives in 1950. But when "Segundo" immediately and randomly lives down to my expectations, driven by previous exposure...sigh.
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