Eclectic Readers discussion

In this episode, we chat a little about cross-genre books and then dig deep with Lev Grossman's novel The Magicians.

Hi guys! Let us know what you think of this episode, we took a lot of your concrit to heart, but don't be afraid to give us more!

<3

I finished up the podcast this evening, and now I keep thinking of Julia singing *I wanna be where the magicians are* and Quentin singing *There must be more than this provincial life!* hahaha, anyway, that's it for now. If I have any really deep thoughts I will make sure to post ;)

Meredith wrote: "I finished up the podcast this evening, and now I keep thinking of Julia singing *I wanna be where the magicians are* and Quentin singing *There must be more than this provincial life!* hahaha, any..."

That is amazing and disturbing at the same time.

Guys, I'm so sorry! We mentioned a link to a blog in the Show Notes, but it isn't there, so here it is:

http://scatteredpaper.blogspot.com/20...

It's a really interesting outlook on the book that one reader shared after Lev Grossman visited his book club.

Also here's a link to Little Parachutes, which of course we discussed, but forgot to link: http://www.littleparachutes.com/

We'll do better in the future, promise!
ETA: The magic of internet means they'll be going up on Sunrise Robot soon, but they're here in the meantime.

I still want to review content on all the podcasts but my laptop crashed so that's further postponed.

Here are a few thoughts on this podcast though:

1) Why the censoring beeps? Maybe the "maturity rating" wasn't established upfront but considering that some of our book choices lean toward adult content, I was unpleasantly surprised that adult language was bleeped out. If we choose to have an open discussion about the books, then either we opt to speak without cursing at all or we let all the f bombs drop. Sorry if that seems so all or nothing, but in the same spirit of my anti-book banning perspective, if you dont like a book/podcast, then dont read/listen.

2) I've been brushing up on my podcast experience and taking note of elements that I liked from other podcasts. Wondering if there was room to add time at the end to actually share any comments or feedback you've received. You ask for listeners to reach out but I'd love to hear any thoughts you receive.

3) This last point is one I've been trying to articulate just right. In the past, I mentioned that sometimes there are long tangents. In no way do I want to stifle the free flowing concersation but I wonder how to mitigate the tendency to go off (like the Gone Girl bit in last podcast). Are questions shared and thought through before recording? I wonder if that would help lead the discussion back on track.

Those are my two cents. I had other thoughts on the actual content but unfortunately I didn't comment on that at the time I listened.

Thanks again for doing this! Hope my comments are somewhat useful.

I'm on a phone so I can't be verbose, but I did want to quickly mention the censoring. if we don't do that then itunes will categorize us as 'explicit'. and I think that will limit listeners more. content will remain intact, we just have to be careful of the strong language.

Kim wrote: "I still want to review content on all the podcasts but my laptop crashed so that's further postponed.

Here are a few thoughts on this podcast though:

1) Why the censoring beeps? Maybe the "matur..."

Hi Kim,

So I'm going to have the opposite problem of Sue and I've going to be super verbose. Hope that's okay! :-)

As far as 1 & 2 go, some of that is not under our control as hosts, but about other standards we have to meet. Like Susan mentioned, the bleeping is an iTunes imposed standard. We either bleep or we're explicit. We haven't censored any actual content, nor do we plan to (we had a long discussion about this back when we first started recording), so no worries about that. It's just about keeping the language clean. So we're an "adult" podcast, but not an "explicit" one. The bleeps are very noticeable this episode in particular because we were less careful about our word choice and so there's a whole bunch of them. Oops. :-)

When it comes to listener feedback, the goal is for us to focus on the books and reading aspect during the actual show, and make the feedback personal between us as hosts and the listeners themselves via social media. That's why we really encourage Goodreads, Twitter, and iTunes feedback so we can respond. And we try to be really good at responding quickly and thoroughly whenever possible! And we do take everything everyone says into consideration and we talk about all feedback extensively (even if it's just a little comment)!

Which brings us to 3) We did hear you about the tangents and we noticed them too (I actually timed the Episode 6 one because it felt so long to me). We have always talked about the book and the questions beforehand (which can actually contribute to tangents, we've found, oops!), and planned out the discussion as well. It's a lot about practice, since we only do this monthly. But we're trying to cut them down, and I think we were really successful in doing that in Episode 7. I know we all really want the show to be interesting and fun for people to listen to, so if you have more ideas or found something that we missed in Episode 7, just keep telling us. We'll keep working on it.

And that was a lot of words, so if you made it to the end of this post, lots of love to you! :-)

Now that I'm in front of a computer with a belly full of delicious french breakfast foods, Jeannette has said everything I was thinking. =D

I did want to add a couple of things:

With listener feedback, along with everything Nette said, I think the episode will be a lot longer. It's already hard for us to keep the show at an hour (which is a good thing!) but we either have to really extend our time or cut stuff to stay at an hour. But we can always talk about books more on social media!

With tangents, we found that we went on more tangents because we were talking about something before recording. And we'll even mention something we talked about before recording and realized, listeners might not know where that came from. It's a fine line, but we'll keep at it!

I totally get the itunes explicit criteria and the beeps make sense now. Maybe I was taken aback by how many more beeps there were this time so it seemed "new" to me.

I definitely agree that addressing listener feedback on the show would be time consuming. But sharing a short tweet shoutout or a quick positive itunes review that you received would be a nice addition in the future.

I look forward to episode 7! If I could just finish '100 Years of Solitude' already.

Appreciate the clarifications!

Meredith wrote: "I finished up the podcast this evening, and now I keep thinking of Julia singing *I wanna be where the magicians are* and Quentin singing *There must be more than this provincial life!* hahaha, any..."

So, you liked/didn't like it? lol Circle one.

Kim wrote: "I still want to review content on all the podcasts but my laptop crashed so that's further postponed.

Here are a few thoughts on this podcast though:

1) Why the censoring beeps? Maybe the "matur..."

I think 1 &2 have been answered, but as for #3 on this podcast is the first time I shared my questions and research in advance. We didn't do that so much in Ep 8 though - but we had JUST had the discussion. Maybe you can compare the two and let us know if you think the questions brought more of a consistent flow to the podcasts. We love the feedback!

Tara, I thought it was good, but I would probably have to listen a second time to really give a full critique. The part with the Disney songs was really funny so it stuck out in my memory :)

I agree with Tara, if you want to know more about magic outside the world Brakebills keep reading the books! :-)