When waiting in line at the bank becomes surreal: an argument for listening to fiction and poetry on one's Ipod

[Sergei Dovlatov]

I was exercising yesterday and listening to David Bezmozgis read Sergei Dovlatov’s short story “The Colonel Says I Love You” on my Ipod.  I downloaded the story from The New Yorker free fiction podcast, where they give different writers the opportunity to comb the New Yorker archives and choose a story to read for the program.  I wondered if other Bathtub people, or non-Bathtub people who read this blog, listen to writers reading different things as they go about their daily lives, during downtime?  I bet you probably do.  If not, then why don't you?  That's not meant as criticism; I'm genuinely curious about whether or not this is my own peculiar tendency, or something that a lot of other people are also doing.

So, my thought was to make a thread on the website and list the places I usually go to find short stories and poetry to listen to (or other things), and mention one of my recent favorites.   If folks comment on this thread with a recent favorite thing to download of theirs, or a place they like to go to find Mp3s of short stories, interviews, fiction, flash fiction, etc., etc., I will come back and copy/paste what you post into this thread.  Maybe this could become some kind of resource?  I used to have a list sort of like this on my old blog that died when I moved to China.

Here are the usual places I lurk and download things to put on my Ipod:

The New Yorker's free fiction podcasts.

The Poetry NewsHour with Jim Leher free podcast:

The massive PennSound archive of free Mp3 downloads of different poetry readings and conversations.  (This is an amazing project, and, I think, deserves wide-ranging support).

Poetry's sound & podcast archive

Ubuweb's Sound archive of sound poetry and all types of sound art, historical and contemporary.

The Itunes Meet the Author podcast (sometimes there are really interesting interviews here)

Two Three things I really enjoyed listening to this week:

"The Colonel Says I Love You" by Sergei Dovlatov

Patti Smith reflecting on Jim Carroll, who just passed away.

Jim Carroll reading his poem "Heroin", publised first in the Paris Review, in 1969.

(William S. Burroughs and Jim Carroll)