Book Review Podcast

What could be better than reading the New York Times Book Review? Or Paper Cuts, the NY Times book blog? Listening to the Book Review podcast, of course.

For the week of October 23, the show covers “Jonathan Lethem, author of Chronic City; Frank Bruni on a new biography of Elizabeth Taylor; Motoko Rich with notes from the field; and Gregory Cowles with best-seller news. [Book Review Editor] Sam Tanenhaus is the host.”

The show started back to April 2006. I may try to point out some gems from the archives in the coming weeks and months. Be sure to share your own discovered gems from here, there or anywhere–in the comments section.

First, I thought I knew everything about music worth knowing. Boy was I wrong. I stumbled across a show, Sound Opinions, that apparently has been around in Chicago for almost a decade. In more recent years, the show was picked up by American Public Media/Chicago Public Radio and is getting national distribution. Fortunately for me, while Atlanta’s public radio station does not carry it, the show fortunately makes podcasts downloadable.

Here’s an excerpt from the show’s “About Us” page:

“Based in Chicago, Sound Opinions is hosted by Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot, two of the finest and best-recognized pop music writers in the nation. In addition, they are the top music critics and dedicated competitors at Chicago’s two daily newspapers, the Chicago Sun-Times (Jim) and the Chicago Tribune (Greg).

Every week, Sound Opinions fires up smart and spirited discussions about a wide range of popular music, from cutting-edge underground rock and hip-hop, to classic rock, R&B, electronica, worldbeat, or just about any other genre you can name.”

At the same time I am well aware that my literature base of knowledge is seriously lacking, so I was glad to find out about a new web-based book show, Titlepage, which launched this past Monday (March 3).

The show is hosted by the former executive editor-in-chief of the Random House Publishing Group, Daniel Menaker. According to David Kelly of Paper Cuts (the New York Times Book Blog), the first show had “four novelists talk about their new works: Richard Price (Lush Life), Susan Choi (A Person of Interest), Colin Harrison (The Finder) and Charles Bock (Beautiful Children).”

Honestly, there’s not enough time in the day to do all I want to do.