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This show is going to be about the authors, about them, about them as people. … I want to know who they are, what their childhoods were like, what’s going on, what happened yesterday, why they’re wearing what they’re wearing, things like that. I want to know what they eat. I want to know what makes them enraged. And I think that if we get to know them as people better, we’ll know better whether or not we want to read their stuff.

… this show is about perpetuating book culture by letting people know who these writers are and by having intimate conversations in which they reveal stuff. That’s the idea. I want candor. Don’t you want candor?

- Brad Listi from the intro to the first of what has now become fifty episodes of his “Other People” podcast

Listi conducts leisurely interviews. Conversations, really. If you’re antsy, they’ll make you antsier. I’m not antsy. They’ve made me happy. In the past few days, I’ve listened to — and appreciated — his interviews of …

* Roxane Gay

* Maud Newton

* Emma Straub

* Jonathan Evison

Evison, it turns out, gets up at 5 a.m. to write. For all of us who wish we managed to get up and write that early, here’s what Evison told Listi:

It’s all about discipline for me and keeping on a schedule because each day I stay on my schedule I just become more and more productive. It’s more like conditioning yourself, like an athlete or something. If I can get up at five in the morning, the first morning I may not really get cooking until 6:45. But like by the seventh or eighth morning of doing that, … I can get there quicker.

remix

Convergences seem to snowball when I read to myself while my kids listen to an audiobook.

Just now, through my ears, this*:

“Amortentia doesn’t really create love, of course. It is impossible to manufacture or imitate love. No, this will simply cause a powerful infatuation or obsession. It is probably the most dangerous and powerful potion in this room — oh yes,” he said, nodding gravely at Malfoy and Nott, both of whom were smirking skeptically. “When you have seen as much of life as I have, you will not underestimate the power of obsessive love …”

And this** through my eyes:

“Shush!” I clamped my hand over her mouth and pulled her down next to me. Our knees rested uncomfortably against the large ceramic pot. The green stalks growing out of it were plastic.

Paul and his friends reemerged. He was chewing gum, and wearing shorts. This is what he would be like, I thought, if we never had anywhere to be, if we were always on vacation. I didn’t care what Laura thought. I wasn’t even in the mall anymore, I was somewhere else. I was in my forties, in my fifties. I was in the grocery store and bumping into Paul. We were exchanging phone numbers, two grown-ups. It happened all the time.

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* from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

** from Emma Straub’s Other People We Married

Found this at Elliott Bay. I struck out when I searched for it at Powell’s in August. Very pleased. The reading that sold me on this book can be heard here. Click for high-res photo

Found this at Elliott Bay. I struck out when I searched for it at Powell’s in August. Very pleased.

The reading that sold me on this book can be heard here.

Skylight Books Author Reading Series

Since I just linked to a Skylight reading, I figured I’d post a link to Skylight’s podcast, where you can hear many more readings. Skylight is in L.A. I’m not. That I know about Skylight at all boosts my opinion of the Internet.

A writer I’d never heard of started following me on Twitter. I Googled the writer’s name and found a reading she’d done at Skylight. I listened to a podcast of the reading. Then, scanning the list of podcast episodes, I found recorded readings by some names I recognized: Emma Straub, Edan Lepucki, Janelle Brown. Seeing Janelle Brown’s name caused me to send the following email to my college roommate:

Um, did I know Janelle was a novelist? Her name, which I hadn’t thought of in ages, came up on a podcast I was listening to.

Janelle, you see, was last spotted (by me, at least) valiantly visiting the affront to the Uniform Building Code that I shared with the recipient of the above email. We called it “the shack.” It is the second-grossest place I’ve ever slept.