Friday Fancies

I've never been big on listening to podcasts, but over the past few weeks I've been starting to enjoy them. One that I've discovered is The American Edit, which focuses on various designers, businesses, and entrepreneurs who are trying to build new made-in-America brands. It's very tied into the "slow" anything movement, the reviving interest in where clothes and products come from and how they are produced, and the focus on quality over quantity. On a completely different note, there's also Song Exploder, which features interviews with bands breaking down one of their songs note by note. There's something strangely thrilling to me about hearing, say, a piano melody that I had never noticed before isolated from a song and hearing about what went into recording it. And continuing with the musical theme, I've also been enjoying exploring the archives of the BBC's Desert Island Discs, which asks famous figures to choose eight songs, one book, and one luxury item to bring with them onto a desert island. Although I'm not sure if this one is technically considered a podcast, it does comprise nine decades worth of archived episodes (I'd particularly recommend the Barbara Pym episode, and the Tom Hanks episode is unsurprisingly delightful).

A view of my newly rearranged desk (more on that soon).

Please do let me know if you have any favorite podcasts--I'm eager for recommendations! In the meantime, here are a few recommendations of my own.

F. Scott Fitzgerald is so often associated with the East Coast or Paris, but his Midwestern roots run deep.

Judy Blume is a bookseller!

A bookstore blind date.

Awful Library Books highlights some of the funniest, strangest, and most outdated books that get weeded out of libraries.

London's biggest bookstore basically sounds like it's the size of a mall.

And this might just be the best tribute to Shakespeare you'll ever see--highly worth watching!