There are special pleasures in reading with a net-connected computer handy. Often, when I’m reading a fun book, I’ll use the net to look up references and research side topics. If the book is recent, you can often find online book tour interviews. So, when I was reading the Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand, I found this NPR interview. Readng The Birth of the Mind by Gary Marcus, I found this radio interview.
The radio interviews have only the highlights and greatest hits of the book. But it gives some context to the book, to hear Menand’s reflective tone and Marcus’ cascading enthousiasm.
Somebody needs to aggregate this stuff for podcasting purposes.
Although NPR carries so much of it that I guess not a lot of aggregation is needed — scrape Fresh Air and a couple of other shows and you’ll probably have most of the A-list upper-middlebrow authors covered…