Year / 2005

by Edward Champion

Roundup

  • Bush and Alberto Gonzales have now come out for greater coyright laws. Gonzales wants serious jail time for intellectual property offenders. But what he isn’t telling you is that, in light of the fact that he advocates torture, he wants to throw all teenagers who downloaded last week’s episode of The O.C. into a CIA-funded gulag. We all know who the real criminals are, don’t we?
  • A.L. Kennedy didn’t exactly kill at the comedy club. (via ElegVar)
  • For fuck’s sake, please stop giving Danielle Steel money.
  • So are these folks in Reno really turning to self-publishing because they can’t wait two years? Or because they are amateurs who fear rejection?
  • Chinua Achebe has called for Nigeria to speak in its mother tongue, preaching against “language colonialism.”
  • Proving that the Welsh often come up with batshit crazy ideas, there is now a 3D talking head of Dylan Thomas reading “Do not go gentle into that good night” on loop. It was employed during the Dylan Thomas Festival. The idea apparently was that a bigass talking head would somehow get young people more excited about poetry. However, great attention was paid to Thomas’s facial niceties. Too bad that there isn’t any video online.
by Edward Champion

Literary Podcasts

[2010 UPDATE: Please note that the below list has become outdated. In May 2010, I prepared an updated list of literary podcasts that is more reflective of the present landscape. I’m leaving this post unmodified so that anybody who wishes to track the podcast scene in 2005 has a resource.]

Like Maud, I’m finding it difficult to keep track of all the literary podcasts. The latest publishing company to enter the fray is Penguin, with the Penguin Podcast. This makes Penguin the second big publisher after Simon & Schuster. (And of course, there’s also Moby Lives Radio.) Personally, I’m waiting to see if Richard Nash will throw his hat into the podcasting ring.

Here’s a rundown of all the literary podcasts I’m aware of — some of them culled from The Millions. If anyone has any to include, please feel free and let me know and I’ll add them to the list.

PODCAST-SPECIFIC:

PUBLISHERS:

AUTHORS:

  • Cory Doctorow: Thanks to the Creative Commons license, his works are now available in podcast form.
  • Scott Sigler: Sigler reads his novel-in-progress, Earthcore.

FROM RADIO:

If you have any more, please let me know and I’ll add it to the list.