I first started listening to podcasts a few years ago when Husbeast was away at a conference for work. It was just a few months after we'd moved into our house, and I was surprised by how unsettling I found being alone in such a big space, especially as I love alone time and lived alone myself for five years before we married. But I needed something to put in my ears to disrupt some of the overwhelming quiet, and voila! a podcast listener was born. Since then I have become quite a fan of the podcast, and I subscribe to something like a trillion of them. (I listen to slightly fewer than I subscribe to.) My favorites are ones that focus on books and reading (natch). I'm always on the lookout for more good ones to stick into my listening rotation, but today I share with you my favorites.
Get Booked, Weekly, Thursdays
This podcast is a book recommendation show from Book Riot, hosted by Amanda Nelson and Jenn Northington. Listeners submit recommendation requests detailing the kind of read they are looking for, and Amanda and Jenn provide recommendations and discuss why they think each rec suits the request. This show is my favorite source of book recs with reasons why the books are worth checking out. I always feel like I have a really good sense of whether I'll want to read a book after listening to Amanda or Jenn talk about it, rather than just gathering that someone thinks it's good.
What Should I Read Next?, Weekly, Tuesdays
Hosted by Anne Bogel of the blog Modern Mrs. Darcy, this show is another book recommendation show, but the format differs quite a bit from that of Get Booked. Anne interviews her guests on the show (guests are always big readers, and often have their toe in the book world in some other way as well, as book bloggers, or librarians, or book sellers or what have you), and asks each of them to tell her three books they love, one book they hate, and what they're reading at the moment. She then recommends three books for the guest based on what they tell her. I love this format, and while it's always fun to hear what Anne recommends (and I've added some things to my TBR based on those recs), the best part of this show for me is listening to other readers talk about what they love (and don't love) about books they've read.
Smart Podcast, Trashy Books, Weekly, Fridays
This romance-themed podcast is hosted by Sarah Wendell of the romance review site Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. The show typically features an interview with a romance writer, conducted by Sarah. Occasionally an episode will be in discussion format with several of the "bitches" from the website and focus on a topic of interest to romance readers. I think of this as a sure-thing dose of smart, interesting women to look forward to each week, and listening to this podcast has solidified my slow but steady transmogrification into a romance reader over the past few years (about which, more in a forthcoming blog post).
The Book Riot Podcast, Weekly, Mondays
A bookish news podcast hosted by Jeff O'Neal and Rebecca Schinsky of Book Riot, their tagline is "a weekly news and talk show about what's new, cool, and worth talking about in the world of books and reading," and that sums it up pretty well. Every week Jeff and Rebecca talk about the handful of news stories from the book world that strike them as the most interesting, relevant, fun, or upsetting. This is my absolute favorite source for news about what's going on bookishly. If you tune in, it won't be long before you hear a "Jeff Rant." They are the best.
The Librarian Is In, Weekly (newly!), Thursdays
Hosted by two New York Public Library librarians, Gwen Glazer and Frank Collierius, this show is perhaps the least consistent in its format of my favorites, but it is consistent in its delivery of entertaining and fascinating book and book-adjacent content. Sometimes Gwen and Frank interview a guest (often someone involved in the NYPL system), and sometimes they just chat about books, often recommending one book and one non-book thing to each other. They also play a game where guests read them a passage from a book and Gwen and Frank try to guess where it came from. I always think that section is going to be dull, but then I get really into it, often yelling at my phone what my guess is!
The Tolkien Professor, Drop days of new content varies
Professor Corey Olsen, medievalist and Tolkien scholar, records lectures about all things Tolkien and makes them available through his podcast. There are numerous off-shoot shows (all available by subscribing to The Tolkien Professor podcast) about a range of topics, from the adaptation of The Hobbit into film to Middle Earth-based online games. By far the best content as far as I'm concerned are the lectures about The Lord of the Rings. Those lectures are complete, so if you're interested, you can just go binge them all right now. (What are you waiting for? Go!)
Witch, Please, Drop days of new content varies
Hannah and Marcelle, the hosts of Witch, Please, discuss Harry Potter, largely from a feminist perspective. Over the course of the show, they talk about each of the books and all eight movies (and occasionally something else related to HP, such as real-life Quidditch leagues). The discussion generally has a fairly academic bent, but they do a great job of keeping non-academic listeners up to speed. Hannah and Marcelle always seem to be having an excellent time doing the episodes, and a great deal of humor shines through. Production of new episodes has dropped off significantly, but all the HP primary sources are covered in the available material, so when you get to the end of the eps, you may feel like you wish there were more (like I do), but you won't feel like you've been left hanging.
(Podcast links above take you to the web presence for each show. Invariably, the best way to listen, however, is to subscribe through your podcatcher of choice. If you're looking for a new (or your first) podcatcher, your Google-fu should snag you some good recommendation lists for Iphone and Android. I use Podcast Addict. It does the thing.)
Wednesday, April 19, 2017
Wednesday, April 12, 2017
Anatomy of a Reading Slump
They come along for me once a year or so, the dreaded reading slumps. Suddenly no book is the right book, nothing seems to hold my attention long enough to finish, books I've longed to read disappoint. These slumps often seem to come on without warning, but in truthfulness, it's more accurate to say that they are the warning. My reading life is such a large part of who I am, of how I understand who I am, of how I go about being a human being, that when it gets derailed, I tend to get a little lost. But as I sit here in the beginning of the end of the latest big slump, one of about three in the past five years, it becomes increasingly clear to me that it isn't that the slump leads me to lose my way, but that I wander into the slump because I'd already strayed off the path.
This most recent slump comes at a time when I'm a bit floundery in other aspects of my life--should I apply for that job? is the puppy ever going to have less energy than the average mid-sized sun? just how many short story ideas can my brain throw at me at once rather than focusing on the novel I'm trying to draft?--and it materialized in the form of some thirty books started and abandoned somewhere between page twenty and page one hundred. Thirty books abandoned over the course of three months, and twenty-two finished. The number finished is roughly on par with normal for me, but the number abandoned is high. I'm not one of those readers who finishes everything she starts on principle--I will leave a book behind without (much) regret if it isn't sufficiently pulling up my socks--but I more often abandon books with intent, and most of those within a few pages (which is usually enough to know if a book is the right one for the moment). To leave behind book after book past page one hundred is a sign that something is, if not wrong, then at least out of the usual.
I've tried all kinds of strategies over the years to interrupt a slump: try some nonfiction (the often stronger sense that someone is actually talking to you can be helpful); listen to an audiobook (frequently makes me a happier slumper, but rarely actually helps me get over the inability to get truly stuck in to an eyeballs-in-pages read); string together a few light, non-taxing books (sometimes helpful; sometimes just makes me crazy that I can't even get through ding-dang fluff); read something short (...can't even get through something ding-dang short); just stop worrying about it and watch some TV or something (I have seen some really excellent television this way, though I've never known it to really address the problem at hand). None of these really works because they are all bandages. They keep me from bleeding on things, but they don't actually heal the wound.
I cannot be me without reading a lot. That's part of who I am, and the restoration I feel after a good hour or two of uninterrupted reading helps me be fully me. But reading cannot be all of me. Sometimes I think I ask too much of my reading. In times of increased stress or uncertainty, I want it to be all things to me. I search for The Perfect Book, the one book that will be salve for whatever ails me, the precise tome whose voice, characters, style, sentences, and story will be just right, just the thing. It is no accident, I think, that I buy too many books while I'm in a slump. When all else is not precisely as I might like, I look in my reading for the ideal, gathering in as many books as I can, as that ideal must be in one of them. And in the process I forget to (or forget how to) allow myself to enjoy the act of reading, the process of it, the work of it. For it is not just restoration that I find in reading, but a making of self. The reading is not, however, the whole of that work. Much of it must go on outside the pages of a book, outside, even, my head. And when I try to narrow that work down to just the one thing, just the one thing I know, have always known, with great certainty, is the most reliable piece of that work, it is a narrowing in the fullest sense, and I get tangled up without enough room to carry on.
The slump is an outward sign of that tangling up. It is a rebellion against my attempt to put too much value on what should be only a single piece of a whole. The tricky part is in not holding so tight to that one piece that I haven't enough strength in my grasp to reach beyond it.
This most recent slump comes at a time when I'm a bit floundery in other aspects of my life--should I apply for that job? is the puppy ever going to have less energy than the average mid-sized sun? just how many short story ideas can my brain throw at me at once rather than focusing on the novel I'm trying to draft?--and it materialized in the form of some thirty books started and abandoned somewhere between page twenty and page one hundred. Thirty books abandoned over the course of three months, and twenty-two finished. The number finished is roughly on par with normal for me, but the number abandoned is high. I'm not one of those readers who finishes everything she starts on principle--I will leave a book behind without (much) regret if it isn't sufficiently pulling up my socks--but I more often abandon books with intent, and most of those within a few pages (which is usually enough to know if a book is the right one for the moment). To leave behind book after book past page one hundred is a sign that something is, if not wrong, then at least out of the usual.
I've tried all kinds of strategies over the years to interrupt a slump: try some nonfiction (the often stronger sense that someone is actually talking to you can be helpful); listen to an audiobook (frequently makes me a happier slumper, but rarely actually helps me get over the inability to get truly stuck in to an eyeballs-in-pages read); string together a few light, non-taxing books (sometimes helpful; sometimes just makes me crazy that I can't even get through ding-dang fluff); read something short (...can't even get through something ding-dang short); just stop worrying about it and watch some TV or something (I have seen some really excellent television this way, though I've never known it to really address the problem at hand). None of these really works because they are all bandages. They keep me from bleeding on things, but they don't actually heal the wound.
I cannot be me without reading a lot. That's part of who I am, and the restoration I feel after a good hour or two of uninterrupted reading helps me be fully me. But reading cannot be all of me. Sometimes I think I ask too much of my reading. In times of increased stress or uncertainty, I want it to be all things to me. I search for The Perfect Book, the one book that will be salve for whatever ails me, the precise tome whose voice, characters, style, sentences, and story will be just right, just the thing. It is no accident, I think, that I buy too many books while I'm in a slump. When all else is not precisely as I might like, I look in my reading for the ideal, gathering in as many books as I can, as that ideal must be in one of them. And in the process I forget to (or forget how to) allow myself to enjoy the act of reading, the process of it, the work of it. For it is not just restoration that I find in reading, but a making of self. The reading is not, however, the whole of that work. Much of it must go on outside the pages of a book, outside, even, my head. And when I try to narrow that work down to just the one thing, just the one thing I know, have always known, with great certainty, is the most reliable piece of that work, it is a narrowing in the fullest sense, and I get tangled up without enough room to carry on.
The slump is an outward sign of that tangling up. It is a rebellion against my attempt to put too much value on what should be only a single piece of a whole. The tricky part is in not holding so tight to that one piece that I haven't enough strength in my grasp to reach beyond it.
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