Listen Up: The Bat Segundo Show

Recently I have been spending more time trying out literary podcasts.  They are easy to download on my phone and they are fun to listen to while gardening.

One of my favorites is The Bat Segundo show.  From their website:

The Bat Segundo Show is a cultural radio program devoted to quirky and very thorough long-form interviews with contemporary authors, idiosyncratic thinkers, and other assorted artists. Guests have included John Waters, John Updike, Stephen Fry, Marilynne Robinson, Karen Russell, David Lynch, Weird Al Yankovic, Robert A. Caro, and more than 500 others. Follow Your Ears is an investigative radio program committed to original inquiry and the pursuit of a specific subject through several angles. A new Follow Your Ears episode is released every month. The remaining weeks are devoted to Bat Segundo. New shows are released every Tuesday.

The show recently returned from a short hiatus, and is now back better than ever.  What I like about this show is the interesting conversations the host is able to coax out of the guests.  The "quirky" description above it very true.  Often when an author hits the book promotion circuit, you end up hearing the same sound bites over and over. Not on Bat Segundo though. You will hear your favorite authors like you never have before.

Also, I appreciate the professionalism of the show.  This is not a two people in the basement talking about books show.  It is professionally produced by professions from the radio world.

Take a look at the guest archive and try out a show featuring your favorite author or don't forget to suggest the show to a patron.

Remember, leisure reading is about more than just suggesting a specific book to the reader in front of us.  Those of us who work with leisure readers need to remember that readers like suggestions for other things they might enjoy.  I regularly suggest TV shows, movies, nonfiction, apps, websites, and podcasts to patrons.  Readers Advisory is about letting the patrons know about new and interesting things they may enjoy, things (authors, websites, movies, etc...) that they would not know about without our help. They can find out what the next Sue Grafton title is on their own (they are going in alpha order for goodness sake), but have they heard Grafton talk about her process and books she likes?  They can here.

You can access this podcast through their website or subscribe for free on iTunes.