Podcasts, Audiobooks and "Coraline"

After the recent discovery of GOOD podcasts, I have fallen in love all over again with my iPod. I had played with them before a few months back, right before Apple introduced them to its music store, but they were only mildly amusing and not worth the trouble. A few weeks back, though, I listened on my iPod to a lecture series on Poetry given by Jorge Luis Borges at Harvard, and it left me hungering for more. I wanted more philosophy, more literature, more history. It is hard these days to have the time to sit down and enjoy a good short story or magazine article. I used to devour them, but these days I only make time for headlines and short newspaper articles. No more philosophy, anthropology, archeology, or all these things that I also enjoy reading about. Thus I set out to find other audiobooks like the Borges lectures.

My first find was the Stanford iTunes sites, where I discovered the podcast of the "Philosophy Talk", the radio show that "questions everything, except your intelligence" (they are good with slogans - on their website: "cogito, ergo blog"). Although they are short and usually superficial, they have provided a good Philosophy fix for me. I later found the Nature podcast, produced by the journal, and with excellent content about all the other science - biology, geology, astronomy, even some anthropology and paleontology. It is definitely my favorite thus far. I will look for more like it when I have more time.

I am also having a good time listening to my Audiobooks, which have make the 3 hours commute to the Nevis Lab in NY a very pleasant trip.

I am currently "reading" Coraline (not a misspelling), by Neil Gaiman (the author of "American Gods" and "Sandman"), and it is a surprisingly good book. Surprising because its subtitle is "A Fairy Tale", and it seems to be children's book. The problem is, I still don't know if this is children's book or not. On one hand, the story is centered around the adventures of a little girl, and told in a manner that would appeal to little girls. This is specially effective in the audio version, because the author narrates the book as if he was reading a bedtime story to hildren, including silly names and funny noises. On the other hand, Neil Gaiman uses the exact same style present in his Sandman comics, a twisted yet easy plot, with obscure yet rich and vaguely familiar mythology, and a subtle horror or nightmare hidden in childish things. This is a very "Neil Gaiman" book, with a feel much closer to Sandman than American Gods. To me it shows the skill that Neil Gaiman has of creating stories that aren't simply about magical things, but told from a magical point of view - in this case, from a little girl's point of view.

But if you plan to start listening to Audiobooks, or would just like to read some Neil Gaiman, I highly recommend "Anansi Boys". It is the story of the sons of Anansi, an African God that emigrated to the United States, and that has just died. It is a very funny book, and a departure from the usual Neil Gaiman style. It reads a little like a Douglas Adams novel, although it is about magic and mythology rather than science fiction.