Miette's Bedtime Story Podcast
By Miette
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Podcast Description
Lay yourself down to sleep with the soothing soporific of Miette's purr as she reads you the world's greatest works of short fiction, in a style all her own and in a way only she can. World classics, known and unknown literary masterpieces, and modern experimental titles are all represented in what's quickly becoming the most comprehensive (and most saucy) short fiction anthology. Sweet dreams.
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1 |
Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning | It’s been a while since I’ve last read, for reasons whose details I won’t serenade you with, but which have to do with huge, overwhelming, life-changing projects that ultimately will leave me with more time to do this more often (I’ll need a little luck, if you want to drop some in the mail), but which, at the moment, have me submerged and often feeling not unlike drowning (or what I imagine drowning is not-unlike. I’ve never actually drowned.) Then I received an email from Evan Munday at Toronto’s Coach House Books, asking if I had interest in reading from Heather Birrell’s latest collection. Let me assure you now that a response of “WOULD I‽” does not come across to full effect in email if not accompanied by a look of wide-eyed promise and a rare display of teeth (even with the interrobang). Some of you might remember my enthusiasm at reading Birrell’s Trouble at Pow Crash Creek (from I Know You Are But What Am I? a couple of years ago. I promise you that the new collection, Mad Hope, is, impossibly, even more beautifully wrought, more intellectually finely tuned, and more gut-wrenching. You’ll see what I mean when you listen. (Thanks Evan and Coach House for the book. Thanks Heather for the collection. Lest you think this is shilly, I was under no obligation whatsoever to read from the collection. Like most makers of book-derived things on the Internet, publishers send me books all the time, which I often read and sometimes like, but which are rarely suited for the little sanctum I’ve got here. Happy weekend!) | 5/25/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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2 |
Breaking Camp (from Danvis Tales) | If, while listening to tonight’s story, you come to the dialogue and have no idea about what I am talking, you won’t be alone. I staggered across tonight’s author by way of the great Hayden Carruth, whose introduction to Rowland E. Robinson’s Danvis Tales ranks among the most incisive layer-peeling short pieces of literary commentary I’ve read. And I assure you I’ve read a few. He says of the dialogue: Robinson was an instinctive linguist; he understood the value of listening carefully and recording faithfully. And we may say as a matter of course that he applied the same care and fidelity to the larger aspects of his material, syntax, and speech rhythm… … the most telling elements of Robinson’s skill are the least demonstrable, his sensitivity to the syntax and rhythm of colloquial speech. Notice the interplay of long and short breath-units in these sentences, and the mixing of grammatical structures, clause and phrase, different verb moods, and so forth. Only a very complicated chart could reduce all these elements to a form of linguistic analysis, but they are what account for both the verisimilitude and the esthetic liveliness of this speech. The truth is that Robinson’s dialogue, which is the largest and most important part of the Danvis Tales, is invariably better writing than his descriptive and narrative passages in the standard overblown English of his day. So give it a chance, even if you have to suffer through my not entirely successful attempt at the colloquial speech of this time and place. “Folk tales” are not exactly my genre and narrative style of choice, but reading through these has been a welcome reminder of why I should slap myself on the hand with a ruler when I pigeonhole myself this way. And I’d slap you just the same; I care that much. | 3/12/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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3 |
The Night of the Ugly Ones | Sometimes a story catches you by title alone. I have a real soft spot, personally, for "The Night of the" stories, no matter the medium. Hunters, Iguanas, Living Dead, even Comets (to a lesser degree)... all of these things weaken my articulated joints. Tonight's story is no different in that regard, but all kinds of different if those Night stories are your precedents... | 1/31/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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4 |
Illusion by Jean Rhys (Redux) | Sometimes it just kills me how many stories I've read here. A lot, that's how many. And as much as I'm endeared to those earlier lo-fi bootleggy recordings, there are some stories which just aren't served by the lack of quality, and some stories that, after this many years, should be read again anyway... | 1/12/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Indiscretion | You'll have to excuse the fact that this sounds somewhat as if it might have been recorded in a submarine in the icy waters beneath an alien planet; I haven't been around for a while, and my audio equipment was dusty and had been playing bingo in a church basement... | 12/15/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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6 |
The Young Workman’s Letter (Guest narrator: Chris King) | Usually, when I think about this humble little project, it fills me with all kinds of amourpropre. Even when I'm temporarily removed from my own devices (audiotorily speaking), I can't help but self-congratulatorily pat myself backwise (I'm flexible) at keeping the motor of this anthology running. Then sometimes... | 11/11/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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7 |
I Am Awake (Guest narrator: Philip Shelley) | Tonight's guest narrator owns and operates The Devastationalist Manifesto, a project I desperately wish would soon revive itself from its two-year hiatus, and not just because I miss the occasional chance for self-gam-gawkery... | 10/27/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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8 |
The Man Who Lost the Sea (Guest narrator: Shig Vigintitres) | Sturgeon's a presence which should have been established here long ago, and I was grateful beyond expression when tonight's guest reader volunteered to represent him. That said, I was only told there was... | 10/14/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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9 |
Enoch and the Gorilla (Guest Reader: Patrick Scott) | Some of you may remember the sweet sounds of Patrick Scott from earlier Miette Bailouts. When I put out the call for guest readers, he was quick to the case. But Patrick's a busy guy, now that he's a famous filmmaker, and so when you listen to his lustrous interpretation of Flannery O'Connor, you will pick up the occasional whirr of what seems a loud computer fan... | 10/7/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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10 |
Frau Wilke (Guest narrator: Sam Jones) | If you know Sam Jones from various internet outlets, you will be neither surprised nor disappointed that he chose to read Walser for his guest stint here. However, if you know Sam Jones from various internet outlets alone, you might not know... | 9/20/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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11 |
Everything is Green (Guest narrator: George Carr) | The voice you are about to hear is not my own, though today's guest narrator insists his distinctive lilt can be attributed to "equal parts whisky, speed, and diction practice." Which means that it's probably closer to my voice than we'd think at first listen. And so, I would appreciate no murmured speculation on rhinoplastic nasal blockage or testosterone injections on my part. For the next month or two... | 9/14/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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12 |
Order of Insects by William H. Gass | I know, it's been a while. I've been trying to Have A Summer over here, an effort thwarted by an adverse reaction to allergens purportedly getting caught up in butterfly currents on the other side of the world. Either that, or it's the Romantic Lady Writer's Disease, which would be fine by me, inasmuch as any anachronistic way to go down is fine by me. But I do wish it'd forestall another decade. | 8/3/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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13 |
Two Gallants by James Joyce | Bloomsday is here again, as you surely know, and as is my ritual, here’s another story from the Dubliners. This is the 7th such reading, and sometimes, the thought of keeping this up for eight more years to finish the collection is one I tend to avoid. But to keep things spicy in the meantime and extend the celebration, I have recorded a hidden bonus track. Now, before you go randomly link-clicking, if you’re offended at all by utter filth, if you think the things that two consenting grownups do with the bodies of each should should only be done with a chorus of angels humming hymns in the background while doves fly overhead, then go elsewhere, please. If none of this is true, go listen to my joyous retelling of a naughty letter from Joyce to Nora. I mean it. FILTHY. I’m warning you. Whatever your kinky streak, happy day. Here’s the Bloomsday collection to-date. | 6/16/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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At the Anarchists’ Convention by John Sayles | I yanked tonight's story from The Best of American Short Stories 1980, a volume edited by the great Stanley Elkin. If you take one look at it, you'll see that 1980, while not considered a boon year for American fiction, perhaps should be. Donald Barthelme, Mavis Gallant, William H. Gass, Elizabeth Hardwick Grace Paley, Peter Taylor, and I'm thinking... | 6/8/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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15 |
The Truth and All Its Ugly | Whenever an internet missive or blip crosses my screen with Kyle Minor's name attached, I open it up in awe of his apparently continual reading and writing and thinking acutely about the finer side of the bookish life. I don't know whether this relentless pursuit of the craft can be had without a truckload of drugs, but I also think the drugs necessary for his task probably haven't even been concocted yet. You could get your brain into top form fast by looking closely at the right 2/3 of his legendary reading list... | 5/9/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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16 |
First Confession | I hadn't read Frank O'Connor's stories in a very long time-- he fell into the gutter of authors I'd studied to a point of boredom as a student, and while I've spent a good deal of my adult life sweeping those gutters and asking absolution from what I've swept up, it took a while to get to him. I'd associated it so closely, in the vast netherlands of the juvenilia of my headspace, with hackneyed Catholic guilt tropes in Comic Sans all the way through... | 4/7/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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17 |
Letter from a Hunchback Girl to a Metalworker | Fernando Pessoa has been a long-standing point of not insignificant fixation in the writerly pursuits of Your Faithful (If Not Schedularly Published) Storyteller, for reasons that will be forehead-smackingly obvious to some of you. As for the rest of you, rather than stand around in the dark, I welcome you to take a guess. Should you want that guess to be educated, | 3/15/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Killer Whales, Susan Daitch | There's a quite decent independent bookstore in the town in which I'm staying this week, a bookstore that will be closing soon for all the usual reasons. I plan to spend a fair amount of time later this morning vulturing my way through this store, and walk out picking my teeth with unsold reading lights and hauling overstuffed bags full of firesale booty that can no way be described as "carrion" no matter how many ways I stretch the metaphor... | 2/24/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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19 |
The Force Acting on the Displaced Body, Christopher Rowe | Are your toes frozen? I hope not. Especially if you're as big of a pansy about the weather as I am. Because the weather knows this about me and is a relentless jerk about this, my revenge is in the form of a seaside adventure story based largely on southern waters. Which is, admittedly, analogous to bringing double your milk money to school and handing one over freely to the big bully. But I don't know how to kick the weather where it deserves to be kicked, so this is the... | 1/28/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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A Woman of Properties, Jack Matthews | Well, here we are having taken yet another circumnavigatory Gregorian tour together, and I hope that you've put away your party hats and crackers and are back to the grind, having disregarded all the unreasonable expectations you made of yourselves for the coming months. Because I have nothing but sympathy: it's too cold to get up and run ten miles and do the laundry and tidy the front garden and write your best auntie a letter every morning. I understand. Stay in bed. Read a good book. Listen to a good story. | 1/6/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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21 |
The Balloon, Donald Barthelme | If you've been listening for a while, you may know that I have an unfortunate habit of whining, incessantly and irrepressibly, in those months when the cold has rendered my extremities indistinguishable from assorted varieties of freezer section meats. It's a problem I've known about, it's one that those around me suffer in kind on behalf of all of you, and it's one that I'd love to kick, if only I inject some lock de-icer into these knees. Maybe anti-freeze would work? | 12/13/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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22 |
The Masque of the Red Death, Edgar Allan Poe | This story is brought to you by a very nice man named Jake, who requested it a while ago, and when I read Philip K Dick instead last week, expressed some disappointment. | 11/23/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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23 |
Roog, Philip K. Dick | I got kicked in the inspiration after that bit of Nabokov (he has that effect), and was determined to give you new stories at least weekly. I'd cleared my schedule to dedicate more time to only these more self-satisfying projects, and then, disaster struck, in the name of green-biled phlegm and rancor of bronchitis. | 11/17/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Vane Sisters, Vladimir Nabokov | It had been some years since I've read any Nabokov, which I can only blame a youthful use of mind-shrinking substances or a two-mile-long to-read list. But recently, I made a full-length audiobook of Dustin Long's Icelander, whose completion set me on a mission. I'm not going to shill Icelander too much (ahem, only five bucks! And I get a piece!), but there was no way for any reasonable person -- or even myself -- to finish it and not start thumbing through the old master's treasures, all of which I've loved plenty at some point or other. You'll see what I mean if you listen to Icelander (ahem: Iambik Audiobooks, who released it, features plenty other Miette-approved titles in its inaugural selection).... | 10/27/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Here Be Dragons, Alfred Chester | The very first words of Gore Vidal's foreword to Alfred Chester's collected stories (Head of a Sad Angel Although it has been my misfortune to have at practically all the noted American writers of the last half century, I did have the great good luck never to have so much as glimpsed Alfred Chester.... | 10/12/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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26 |
Helpmate, Ben Greenman | Not long ago, I found myself in the unfortunate position of being deeply ensconced in a marvelous book while on a crowded public transportation system. “Nothing unfortunate about that, Miette,” you’ve said. I heard you. The unfortunate thing was that the title of the book, when viewed from across a subway car, can seem offensive. And was seen as offensive, based on the shuffling and shifting and awkward faux-coughing that I only noticed later. Which reminded me that a month or two prior, I was reading this in one of the world’s most busily trafficked airports. Which also offended lots of people, visibly, but I didn’t care. The book was too good. I don’t have any other such books in my Leaning Tower of Books to Read Soon, but now I’m a little saddened by that. There’s something powerful in reading a double-take-inducing book. Even if people find it foul or offensive (but then again, I’m one who hasn’t minded being considered either of these things. So here’s my plea to you for the day. You know the movie trope involving the geeky comix kid, the one we learn is a geeky comix kid because he tucks the comic book inside his school book? I’m looking some equally offensive book titles, into which I can sandwich the actual books I’ll be reading. Unless those offensively titled books are good, in which case I’ll just add to my Tower. Any ideas? Meanwhile, Ben Greenman’s book doesn’t have an offensive title, unless you’re poised to do nothing. It, however, should be read all the same. TECHNICAL NOTE: my megafancy headphones developed a bad case of psoriasis during the editing of this piece, so the sound quality may itself be offensive. Hopefully not too much… hopefully. | 8/23/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Disappearing | It's that time of year, my dears, where I'm about to head off to foreign parts for what's known in various circles as "vacation," "holidays," or "days spent without LCD bathing." I can't believe it, either, actually, and am not sure I'll be able to pull off things like "relaxing" and "not having much of anything to do," which have only existed as very high level concepts in my foggy head. And there are so many things lined up when I return that I'll probably never ever take time off again, which could be good for you, if your ears are burning. I'll do the big reveal of a few of those things as soon as I return... | 7/23/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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28 |
A Small Circle of Friends | I know; this is two posts in a row that make direct mention of ladies' underthings. I have three very good reasons for this: | 7/7/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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29 |
After the Race | Looking at the Bloomsday readings I've done to date, it's evident that my written prefaces have become some absurd equivalent of squealing fangirlish bra-tossing. I may (OR MAY NOT) be an excellent bra-tosser with perfect aim and pitch, and we all know that Joyce wouldn't be one to have a problem with women's undergarments tossed his way. But my first exposure to Joyce was in a sleepy little black shoebox theatre, where a troupe of mild-mannered turtlenecked barnstormers read from Dubliners from a stage decorated with high stools, and where I, underexposed and underage, had too much to drink and fell asleep... | 6/16/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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30 |
Sex and/or Mr. Morrison | A disclaimer for you on this happy June that will become self-evident soon enough: I love this story. I could read it a thousand times over and give you a thousand different insights. I love it in the peepish and borderline obsessive way its narratrice experiences love. Love it, in its own words, "as a mouse might love the hand that cleans the cage, and as uncomprehendingly, too, for surely I see only a part of him here." ... | 6/2/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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31 |
In the Avu Observatory | A few days ago, I took a little trip to Toronto, where the jazz singers scat to sheet music, where wine is poured long before noon, and where the best booksellers refuse to serve the likes of me. While there, I spent a day in rooms full of brainy people as obsessive as I am about books and reading and great literature and using technology in the service of all these things. That's right: me, your Miette, dropped down in the middle of Booknerdville. Must I even mention that it was terrific? ... | 5/18/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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32 |
Sono and Moso | Last week's New Yorker magazine included a series of letters written by Saul Bellow to other writers. I've often thought epistolary exchange between writers to be the most nettly of writing, both the most effusive and the most sincere, the most pretentious and the most vein-splittingly self-conscious. It's hard | 4/29/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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33 |
The Butterfly | I've been wanting to read James Hanley to you for a couple of months now, ever since he was reintroduced to me a few months ago while I was yearning for a bathematic submergence in a foreign hotel. | 3/28/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Fifth Story | I read recently about toxic bread in a sleepy French village, about mass hallucinations and the newly revealed hypothesis that the CIA was responsible for covert LSD experiments. Apparently, the same thing might have happened in the subways of New York. And suddenly, so much is explained, especially as pertains to cockroach-squashing memories. These days, when the shadows on your computer screen start doing some sort of cold Finnish tango across the monitor, maybe you should refrain from thinking you work too hard, and just sit back and try to enjoy it. Storytime! (N.B. OH! And if this story doesn’t keep you sated until next time, you really should go and see my friends at Revolving Floor, where I’ve put voice to microphone on a glorious Lilithian poem by Amy Meckler. Get over there.) | 3/16/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Sir Henry | I have a good excuse to spare you my blathery scrawl about the show-stopping beauty in this story -- the hot cats at Electric Literature have done so in a flashier way, and before you even tap the PLAY button on your baubly mp3 players, you ought to watch this: | 2/27/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Trojan Horse | Sometimes I think you haven't lived until you've been given the shoulder by a drunken horse in a bar. Other times I think the very stuff of life happens from being the drunken horse in a bar. But usually, it has to do with neither of these things, and I'm fairly certain that none of it would be worth the slightest damn if there was no Queneau to neigh by. | 2/10/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Sorrel Colt | The other day I was walking through a blistering, blustery, blinding-white below-zero snowstorm, cursing the day I decided not to live on a Caribbean island, and doubly cursing the day I decided not to be born with antifreeze for blood. Because if I had been born with antifreeze for blood, I'd probably have other alien characteristics as well, such as the ability to launch an anvil from my hand that I could drop on the head of the person walking in the snowstorm next to me when that person proclaimed: "at last! This is what January is SUPPOSED to be like." | 2/1/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Gregory | So, I know very little about the author of tonight's story. He has no Wikipedia page in any language that I can gather, one used copy of an out-of-print collection of stories available in English (that I can cursorily find, anyhow), and a slight dusting of a presence in literary anthologies, including one in which I dusted off this. In fact, the only thing I'm certain of regarding tonight's author is that I really ought to attempt to learn basic Greek pronunciation if I'm going to crack at anything like this again. | 1/12/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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DiGrasso | Oh, aren't we lucky!? A double-bluffed, double-dipped, double-headed dose of Isaac Babel. When you've had a listen here and discover that you're still running low on your recommended daily serving of Babel, you might head here to find a new recording of an old reading of another one. | 1/6/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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40 |
On Hope | I can think of nothing more apt for the rounding-out of a year than a fleeting little fable on outplaying inevitability. If you're anything like me, Inevitability is one collector you've managed to send off-course at least once this year, and that itself is cause for champagne. Happy New Decade to all, but especially to those who continue to believe relentlessly in the potential of literature. | 12/22/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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41 |
Emmy Moore’s Journal | There was a time when I was little (and I was so cute, and so little!) when I wanted to be Jane Bowles. I was obsessed with the puppet show, unhealthily so, though thinking back now, I can't think of any self-respecting adult who'd have introduced such a cute little thing to it. | 12/19/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Interior Castle | I'm more than a little eager to introduce this bit of Jean Stafford-- in fact, the last time I was this eager, I was about to jump out of an airplane, an activity I was undertaking using age-faked identification, which was, to the best of my memory, the only time I've ever vomited directly onto the feet of an airplane pilot (the pilot then said this wasn't the first time his feet had taken ablutions this way). And wait, I don't mean to conflate Jean Stafford with my own underage retching. | 12/2/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Bound Man | My friends, a confession: I am a sucker. Little stray kittens and musty books and vegetably steamed dumplings.... these things were basically made for me. And stories like this belong on the list of things for which I'm a true sucker, and by "like this" I don't necessarily mean Austrian (though I don't mean "decidedly not Austrian" either). And I don't necessarily mean the sort of story that plucks your arteries and uses them to serenade you corrido-style. Although, again, I don't have anything against that either.... | 11/19/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Pool of the Stone God | For those of you who will not be spending the weekend dressed scandalously and behaving just as badly, or scaring young children, or throwing personal hygiene product in the trees of your enemies, ... | 10/30/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Adventure of Prince Florizel and a Detective | It was recommended some time ago by a guy named Alex that I read the entire four-story cycle of The Rajah's Diamond, and it is a request I'll perhaps fill someday. I'm in the throes of a mini Stevenson obsession right now, so it seems the proper and selfish thing to do. But for now, I wanted to warn you that as an aperitif, what I'm offering here is, in fact, the last story in the cycle. | 10/21/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Trouble at Pow Crash Creek | It's probably one of the better things in life -- right up there with creative breakthroughs and lasting love and the slurp of streetside oysters -- to have one's hat tipped to new and great authors. In my case, it doesn't happen often, because I'm finicky and discriminating with my own tastes, or as others have said, snotty. Some of my closest friends, in fact, have sworn never again to share enthusiasm of their own discoveries, for fear of my response. I'm not proud of this.... | 10/7/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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I Stand Here Ironing | So I have this tendency, as you may have noticed, to take a sharp left at matters of personal divulgences, which is a difficult thing to pull off today, given the severity and somber-ity of a story like this one. But so, okay, here you go, three very revealing facts about my own self to accompany a story of introspect and plaintivity and other words existent and non-: | 9/22/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Space-Time for Springers | Can I tell you something about my speculative fiction habits? Of course I can-- this my barroom restroom wall and the red marker's in my slimy mitt. Here's the thing: I just love stories about sentient animals. I can't get enough of talking dogs or super-intelligent rats or telekinetic polar bears-- this is the stuff of unconditional love. | 8/24/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Doctor’s Heroism | Well, I've been reading some unavoidable news about Death Panels and baby killing nazi zombies terrorizing in the Norwegian mountains and all sorts of incessant catfighty nastiness which I suppose our world can take, given that it's really all pretty hopeless, when confronted by the threat of health care. Or zombies. | 8/14/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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An Unbeliever | The other day I was lying in the woods, on a hammock on a mountaintop, reading aloud to young people, and wondered, for a second, why there was no professional job market for reading aloud on hammocks to young people, why there isn’t a real market demand for just such a role and why imagined salaries for such work wouldn’t rival those of morally questionable military contractors or knee-breaking thugmasters. And of course, what happened next was obvious: my bliss at the hammock and the mountain and the good book and the eager young people were corrupted, and for a split second I was Don Jenaro, an unbeliever and a nasty harridanny crank. Here’s the quote I came back to when we climbed down the hill: There had been times in his youth, in the ardor of young manhood, when he had cherished ambitions to be somebody great and important. He had not succeeded in surpassing a decent mediocrity. But in this assured, deep-rooted, indestructible mediocrity he had the satisfaction of thinking about those who struggled, those who had a faith, an ideal, a political, social, or artistic belief for which they strove, for which they suffered privations and anxieties – and which perhaps they never saw realized. I mean, it’s enough to force even the likes of to shut the valve off and get back to reading affectionately to the children. On a mostly unrelated note, one of the top authors in Miette’s Preferred Podcasted Authors Network here, Bart Midwood, has a new project in the works that I can’t help but pass along. Do add word of The Francophile to your Myface Twitty Bookmarks Feeds and if you’re in the area we’ll go see it together on opening night. | 8/5/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Feathers | Oh ladies! Oh men and oh boys and girls, the sexiest man alive is BACK. Patrick has been threatening to start up Patrick's Bedtime Story Podcast, and with a voice this smooth, he might have to do it, much as I'd miss his occasional guest posts here. I'll warn you that there's an outburst of laughter in the middle of this that I didn't have the heart to cut out, and also that he does a killer bird caw, and that Olla's voice is a little on the saccharinely fey side. It's that good. | 7/9/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Hollow | Breece D'J Pancake was brought to my attention only a couple of years ago, one of those writers who didn't leave a whole lot left behind for us to gluttonously swallow, and one who was willing to grab the short story by the balls of its form and steer it where he wanted. In his forward to the collection of Pancake's stories, James Alan McPherson quotes from a letter he received from Pancake: | 7/1/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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An Encounter | I'm so excited about Bloomsday that I'm sharing the love a day early this year. In fact, I was so excited that I almost went ahead and read all the stories from Dubliners that I haven't yet done for you, but then it hit me that I'd have to move forward next year with my plan to do Ulysses in its entirety. And, well, I don't know if I have the pipes for that yet. And I don't know if you have the perseverance to listen to me indulge the Joyce itch. | 6/15/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Sailor-Boy’s Tale | Twice now I've sat down to read something from Isak Dinesen's Winter's Tales , and twice when pawing through for a good story, I've ended up spending hours re-reading the stories in here, to the point of distracted negligence, but to the point of great self-satisfaction nevertheless. One day I'll just relent and read them all to you, but that'd be a big project, and if you're anything like me, you're already running on the fumes of big projects. ... | 5/31/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Silver Hilt | Okay, okay, you all keep asking for me to read writers you know, and I keep dipping into the well of obscurity to pick up writers you've never heard of. I know! I'll read the writers you know, maybe, but you have to tell me which ones you want to hear. And until you do, I'm just going to continue to flip over rocks and turn up amazing archeoliterary pearls like this. Do you know this story? Probably not. Should you listen anyway? Yes, if you want your socks knocked right off your feet. | 5/11/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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A Game of Catch | It's always a little weird to me to read a sports story, with idioms like "burning one in" that are just so far removed from my patois that I can barely even get my mouth to go in that direction. And it's equally odd to try and project teenage boy-speak, because it's been quite a while since I've taken an interest in the mannerisms of teenage boys. But it's springtime, and nothing's more appropriate than boys and baseball. So here's a little bit of both, no matter how much "burning one in" seems like the last thing you want a teenage boy to do. | 4/20/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Burning City | Boy, I sure am all kinds of flushed with the Scandinavs these days. Maybe it's my compassion for others plying their way through long cold winters, or maybe it's my assertion that gravlaks is a flawless food, or maybe it's just what they're willing to pay for a beer is a most resonant sacrifice. Or maybe they're just loaded with great writers. But if you had to lay a fresh twenty on what countries would sit atop Miette's Trove of Literary Masters (and god knows you should let me in on such a bet were you to place one) you'd win big by betting all on Nordic. | 4/7/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Madame de Luzy | Tonight’s story came from one of several boxes of books that were recently given to me by a stranger, someone apparently vying for the title of Miette’s Best Friend. And as I mention when reading tonight’s story, this alone makes today one of the best days anybody’s had, in a good long while (if not EVER). There are some real treasures here, among them, a wilderness guide from 1979 written not by an enthusiastic back-to-the-land trailblazer, but by a wondrously grizzled mind capable of gems like this: At this point, I’d like to throw in a few words about the bright blue, red, dazzling yellow, and orange fabrics used in outdoor clothing, pack bags, and tents. Millions of hikers and backpackers wearing these gaudy colors are turning the wilderness into one vast Coney Island. You look out across a magnificent forested valley. Not a sign of humans anywhere. No? Look again. Over on the far side is a trail, and suddenly you see it — a moving bright red spot, followed by another, and then another, four altogether. It looks like a line of red ants marching along single file. Your vision of the vast wilderness is ruined. Had these hikers been wearing forest green, brown, or russet clothes and packs, they would never have been seen at that distance. When you enter an established campsite, what do you find? Maybe dozens of tents so brightly colored that they practically knock your eye out. This colorful practice is a relatively new phenomenon. The old idea was to wear colors and live in tents that blended and harmonized with the greenwood. I don’t understand these brightly colored “environmentalists.” They must be colorblind! Of course, if he’d written this today, he’d be condemned for his impolitic prejudice against the colorblind. Know that I’m reprinting this passage for stylistic and training purposes ONLY, and by no means think that the colorblind population is incapable of selecting forest-appropriate outdoor clothing. | 3/25/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Three Letters… and a Footnote | This is on the lighter end of Horacio Quiroga’s stories, which (of those I’ve read) tend to have more to do with death and desolation than the streetcar indiscretions we’ve got here. But it’s March, and I’m springing forward and bringing you with me, merrily because there’s no unsightly wad of money in our pockets to weigh us down, by hook or by crook. Which is just to say, the best way to enjoy this one is on the portable music player of your choice, while skipping through a jasmine field with a ribbon in your hair. | 3/9/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Various Miracles | More Canadian Short Fiction? You damned well bet– just check the calendar. On that note, I’m starting to think Carol Shields herself is somewhat of a miracle. For starters, look at this, from an interview on Canada as a landscape for writers: “We’re not big on heroes, either. The concept of heroes is alien. And I think that’s a very telling piece of our national ethos – no one deserves to be better than anyone else.” If I didn’t already secretly pine for Canada on an almost daily basis, this tips the scales to metric. And here’s another quote, which (for any Carol Shields scholars) I’d love to find in its original context and in full: “I’m concerned about the unknowability of other people…. That’s why I love biography and the idea of the human life told or shown. Of course, this is why I love novels, too. In novels, you get to hear how people are thinking. That’s why I read fiction.” In my (not nonexistent) experience, fiction is worth loving as it brings the reader insight into what an author must think is unknowable about people, which is often extremely dissimilar to what I find unknowable about people. But I think the gist is there. A disclaimer: You should know that this is the story that opens the collection of the same name. You should also know that the stories in this collection, while not mutually dependent, are definitely mutually more fascinating. Which is just a tip that if this is your cuppa, you should run out and snag yourself a copy, and read every last one. | 2/24/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Boat | Canadian Short Fiction Month continues, as promised, with a story that seems obviously designed to be delivered from the lips straight to the ears. There’s so much beauty tucked away in here of the sort you wouldn’t necessarily see on the page, unless you read to yourself with one of the voices in your head. Critically and academically, it’s the opening of this story that tends to get the most attention. But there’s an incredible rhythm throughout (the magnificence of which I likely don’t give justice), and it’s the ending that really got the chills going in this reader. I’d say more, but that’d spoil it. And for those who are here on academic assignment, you shouldn’t take this as any sort of criticism against the value or impact of the opener — listen to your teachers or professors. The opening is worth study. But listen through to the end (yes, it’s almost an hour long). It also makes prominent use of the word GALUMPH, a word that doesn’t see nearly as much usage as it deserves. Coincidentally, when out for a woodsy walk this morning, my co-perambulator noticed a set of tracks in the snow and noted that they likely belonged to “something large, galumphing.” And following so closely on the heels of my reading, left me all kinds of tickled. So we walked on, me in galumph-appreciative reverie, and stumbled upon a dead porcupine. I’m not sure if that was an omen or, more importantly, what it has to do with galumphing. | 2/16/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Orchard | If you’re reading this before listening to the podcast… and you know, I have no idea whether you read or listen first, or if you just read, or just listen, and find yourself lost on those rare occurrences where I can hold a thought long enough to prattle BOTH orally and epistolarily about it… but anyway, if you are, reading, and you also listen (but haven’t yet), and you’ve followed all this so far, then I’ll have to announce to you that, thanks to an email from an intrepid and observant listener (and/or reader; I don’t know), it has come to my attention that there aren’t enough Canadian authors represented here. Now, when this was first revealed to me, my knee started jerking and I impulsively wanted to hurl out BUT WHAT ABOUT Mavis Gallant! And Morley Callaghan!! But then I realized… that’s two names out of a BUNCH, and it’s about time I do something about it. And so, welcome to Canadian Short Fiction Month… yes, beginning almost half a month behind. For starters, I thought Mr J’s lovely comment deserved another school-age-worthy meditation courtesy of Ernest Buckler. And next? Send me the Canadian authors you’d have me read, and I’ll see how many I can get in. And if there are other groups under-represented, you should send them too. You can leave a comment, as always, or email me at miette (@) miettecast (.) com. The more you send, the more I’ll try to read this month, even with a throat full of (audibly detectable?) mucus. Deal? For Canada! | 2/12/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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It Was | I was sitting here eating little sugary hearts with terms of endearment printed on them. They’re pretty popular with the young people, and surely you must know them: cheap things, sort of disgusting in the way that totally fructosified food product is, but sort of terrific for the same reason. And besides, they’re candied hearts, which can’t be that bad. But I stopped to take a look at some of the platitudes printed on them, and proceeded to eat a U GO GIRL, two yellow EMAIL MEs, a GET REAL, a surprising amount of AWE SOME bits, and topped it off with a GOT CHA. Now, I don’t have that intimate a history with these candies, but I know they’ve been around for a while, and evidently the endearments have changed over the years. But GET REAL and GOT CHA seem more for bleeding hearts, not those of the more sugary variety, and I wondered if someone in the candy factory was trying to tell me something. Which didn’t stop me from eating the entire bag. Or thinking that had Zukofsky gotten a job coming up with things to print on candied hearts, I’d probably eat a bag every day. | 1/28/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Hyannis Port Story | I was talking to the resident genius here about false memories and the publishment thereof, when an idea emerged, an idea with such potential for industry salvation that there’s no choice but to document it here, in the interest of knowledge open-sourcing, or whatever. The idea involved all these made-up memoirs floating about these days, and what a shame it is that they all have to be disparaged, refunded, yanked from shelves or production processes, and so on, especially in times of economic struggle. The idea is to take a fraction of the shelves of the Memoir section at your local bookstore, and refashion them into an entirely new genre: the Memwasn’t. Or the Fauxmoir. Whatever. The name’s beside the point. But, think it over. It can be an inspiring game for authors, coming up with the most sensational, most unbelievably believable fake memoir imaginable. And at some point, there will be more and more of these books, and maybe no shortage of great ones, and people will be ardently buying and reading them, and the language will evolve and what we know as Fiction will be known as Memwasn’t (or whatever), and we can have stimulating arguments about Literary Fauxmoirs vs Genre Fauxmoirs, and we’ll all be happy again, and rolling in no shortage of books. So there you have it, for any underemployed marketing brains just waiting for an idea to get you back in the game. All I want’s a credit at your awards speech. And to read all your fake memoirs… make em scandalous. | 1/12/09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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In Dreams Begin Responsibilities | Well, pilgrims. It’s that day once again when the poisoned blankets of history are celebrated with turkey and squash. And I want to get all excited with you about Delmore Schwartz, and rave a while about how you should be able to listen to the rhythm of his narrative with an almost painful wistfulness for the days when poets were rockstars (even poets with given names like Delmore), and I’d love to get enthusiastically and prattily didactic about the structural inventions in this story and where they allowed fiction “to go” and so on etc ad blatherium. But then I remember: it’s That Day Once Again, and if I get you all excited about a story you might just suffer from some sort of post-tryptophanic hemorrhage before getting to the pumpkin pie, and that would be a disaster. So maybe instead you should just sit back, undo the button on your bluejeans (but, uh, not in -that- way) and have a quiet listen. | 11/26/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Specialist’s Hat | So it was decided that I needed a table, but in thinking about the sort of table I might need, for the purpose the table would serve, it was further decided that the table needed to have certain bench-like properties. A hybrid, as we say in these times. The problem is, as you may have heard, money in my country is not worth very much these days and table-benches are beyond my budget, and while there’s a new president whose first order of business, as you may have heard, will be to give me a new hybrid table-bench, I know better than to rely on economies and politics, and I went and gathered what I needed to fashion it myself. Now, I’m not the handiest of people, and I’m actually fairly dangerous when put in front of power tools and sharp edges and, you know, screws and such, but I built the damned thing, which grew increasingly complicated from the initial idea of Top and Legs, to include such delicate bench-like features as Rabbited Feet and Lots of Slatted Inserts and Dependence on Measurements, and no shortage of other over-ambitious features for an unhandy sort. But it’s built. It’s wonky as all-hell, and if you’re ever over at my house and I invite you to sit on it, it can probably be safely said that I’m not your biggest fan. But it’s built– it’s my civic duty to let you all know that, wonkily or not, I’ve done my civic duty. And now it’s time to sit back and read more stories. | 11/11/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Quilt | This was going to go up during Banned Books week, but then I got a nasty visit from Uncle Rhinovire, and then there was the trip to the Akvariet and then it hit me that neither a short story nor the oral presentation of one qualify, really, as a “Banned Book,” although for reasons that will become evident, this story has been pretty broadly banned (read: it errs on the side of racy). But that said, I’m happy to take your vote on what our young heroine saw beneath the quilt. A hint: I’m pretty sure it was not, in fact, an elephant. | 10/21/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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To the Open Water | As I noted in the whole wide verbal megillah setting up tonight’s reading, I’m taking great issue with the Wikipedia entry on tonight’s author. Here, again, is the first sentence, with my call to fix it: Jesse Hill Ford (December 28, 1928 – June 1, 1996) was an American writer of Southern literature who produced one good novel (Mountains of Gilead), one popular novel (The Liberation of Lord Byron Jones) and a host of mediocre works entirely at odds with his public posturing at the heir-apparent to William Faulkner. – Wikipedia Entry on Jesse Hill Ford And maybe that’s true, beats me. I mean, I’ve gotten the impression that he wasn’t necessarily the mowing-the-lawns-of-the-elderly sort of gregarious, in character anyway. And I don’t know enough about his writing to know if the above is true or not. But in the interest of improving the accuracy and objectivity of the world’s knowledge (which, I suppose, is the point), I’m drawing your attention there now. Hopefully we can resolve this before it becomes a full-on obsession, before I start the Jesse Hill Ford Credibility Restoration PAC, or somesuch. | 9/27/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Spring | But in order to be mad scientists, first we had to learn how to be normal scientists. It’s funny, imagining John Fahey sitting in a hotel rampantly scrawling. Not because he’s so otherwise voiceless, or should relegate his expressiveness to the steel-stringed style, or other reasons fascistic or idiotic. He’s just one of those guys one imagines (if the “one” doing the imagining were “me,” admittedly) never to have put down his guitar for anything other than a whiskey glass or a pee. You just don’t get that good if you have to stop to put it down. So it’s nearly impossible to think of him not only putting it down, but picking up a pen long enough to get good at that too. And he was pretty good– listen for the mad scientist bit, partially quoted above. In fact, if he and I were teenage girls, I might have to start a jealous fight with him over this. And tonight’s super special Feel-Better-Just-For-a-Minute (or Feel-Even-Better-if-You’re-Already-Feelin-Okay) soundtrack by the author, but let’s keep it between us, okay? | 9/19/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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When I Was Miss Dow | This story was brought to my attention a few months ago, making its way inbox-ward on the anniversorry of my trip down Amniotic Lane, timing not unintentional. Now, I would share with you my thoughts on why this was selected as a Birthday Story, but that would involve psychographic profiling of the sender’s right eyebrow and a frame-by-frame comparison of my genuflection style to that of the author. And that’s just for starters. In other words, not nearly as fun as speculation, and besides, I’m not about to give you all the information you’d need to know to perform such a task. But I will ask you this: have a listen (and keep your jaw taped up off the floor — this is a good one) and a think about it, and see what comes up. It could be worse, after all. We could be discussing politics. | 9/7/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Of Angleworms and Others | So it’s summer right now, if you’re with me hemispherically. Although if you were to zoom in a little closer you’d see that in some places, we’re tying up that chapter, it’s cooling down, and that means it’s time to read you some Tove Jansson. Now, I was going to read you something from the Moomins, but it’s not quite as charming when removed from the illustrations of big Moomin innocently bent-over butts. Or rather, it’s just as charming, but I’m hopelessly unable to convey Moomin-butt-drawing charm by voice alone. And besides, the Summer Book is pretty archetypal for changing-tree times. As much as bonfires and maybe as much as the Shrimp Song that Townes van Zandt sang. Any other absolutely perfect end-of-summer stories? I’m in a wood-fire mood. | 8/21/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Show-and-Tell | In the two days since first reading of tonight’s story, I’ve been deeply ensconced with this idea of show-and-tell, to the irrational (read: batshit) point of showing-and-telling the objects comprising the contents of my desk to the various beasts kicking about the place, or showing-and-telling one runty waterlogged piece of the garden to another. And then waking from that little spat of brain damage to the discovery that… well, maybe I’d missed the point entirely. | 8/10/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Fun With Your New Head | A couplefew nights ago, catatonic with fatigue after a couple days of travel, I found just the right pace of entertainment watching my cat chase a furry little squeaker all around the place. My conscience wouldn’t let me object– it was nature’s way and the mouse deserved whatever was coming to it, after all… but my sense of rectitude couldn’t allow me to stay for even the chance of a bloody climax, so when the mouse was good and hidden, I went up to bed, with no idea who’d win. The next morning, having forgotten about the whole scene thanks to a night of Thomas Disch dreams, I made the coffee and fed the cat, whose breakfast made its way back up several minutes later. And right in the middle of the mess was the cutest slick brown fur, with tail still mostly undigested. Despite the fact that I had to clean it up, I was so proud. | 8/1/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Self-Contained Compartment | During a trip by car I noticed a guy on the phone in a parking lot frantically trying to start his car, a kid really, a kid in trouble, just laying into the ignition while the engine was turning halfway over which indicated, to my limited capacity for automotive troubleshooting, that maybe his vehicle was flooded. Now, given that it’s superhero-movie-season, I asked to assist anyway, even though I -knew- it had nothing to do with the battery. I asked if he needed a jump, because where logic ends, blind altruism begins and I thought it’d be a good thing, to make somebody’s day, get him on the road again. So I offered the jump which was accepted, and pulled up beside him and got the cables and gave it a good effort, though it was doomed, pathetic really, as his under-hood ineptitude evidently rivaled mine own. Which is to say, it was worthless. And I couldn’t get the brake set right and was parked on a backward incline — or maybe a decline — in any event so I had to keep gassing to keep up the appearance of being idle, all the while trying HARD not to look like the idiot who can’t use the brake, much less get another car started. And I’m not sure what I did end up looking like that night, but I’m fairly certain that it wasn’t confused with superheroics, and that it was clear to a discerning passerby, even if that passerby were to have been the subject of tonight’s story. | 7/16/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Pukey | “But when it thinks, I feel like vomiting.” With these words, it is clear that if Nigel Dennis were still around I’d be his groupie. I’d start the FaceBook Club and make mashups on Youtube for him and disguise myself as an editor at Rolling Stone Magazine to obtain his personal email address, which I would then use in ways the word “subterfuge” can only begin to imagine. And when I web-two-dot-ooh’ed the Nigel Dennis article in the Wikipedia and tag it up, the index would indicate that Nigel Dennis writes about obscene bile-spewing puking beasts kept as pets because that’s what people do, and at this, you would join my Nigel Dennis FaceBook Club and we’d all order matching t-shirts. I -know- you would. | 6/29/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Eveline | Were I a listmaker, and perhaps I am, you would be the warm recipient of many reasons to be grateful when the internet goes for broke on Bloomsday. This list, were I to make one, would include the subcategories: FOR ME and FOR YOU. Topping the FOR YOU list, were such a thing to exist, might be an extended two-day belated story from Dubliners, a way of bloody-marying your hangover into oblivion. And in the FOR ME column of our imagined list, not in the treasured top slots but up there, would be the gift of Joycean spam upon a digital reemergence: boltmaker stippled scrapy heartedness burgoo overplentiful unended hydrophobous. | 6/17/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Cask of Amontillado | So I read in the news today about the Indonesian macaque monkeys who’ve learned to successfully catch fish, and how exciting this is for biology, and how it’s a living and breathing example of the adaptation of a species to its conditions and environment, and really it was all astonishing stuff to read. But for some reason all I could think was that these monkeys are capable of catching fish with their bare hands, and in the modern on-demand way we’d expect of them, when it takes me hours of unraveling knots and tying knots and waving a stick around in the water before, if I’m very very lucky, I manage to land anything more than ingredients for a muck-and-weed juice drink. And then I snapped out of it and thought: huh, jealous of monkeys. Well, why not? In other news, a killer thunderstorm knocked the power out twice before settling into the atmosphere needed for Poe regaleritics. | 6/11/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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A Rose for Emily | So, my "identity" was stolen recently. And not for the sake of sordid members-only internet sites or international travel or a weekend of Spitzering other scandalous activities that, if you're going to have your identity stolen, would constitute Theft in Style. No, my identity was used to buy clip art and stock photography and website services, which is about as exciting as cutting school to go and get a root canal, sneaking out of the house late at night to mow the lawn next door. You get the picture. So a personal note to identity thieves in training: when you're done with me, at least return me with a few heavy anecdotes and a thrilling punked-up haircut. OK? | 6/1/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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A Note on the Camping Craze That is Currently Sweeping America | Fishing season began early this year for your Miette, with the streetside discovery of a freshly abandoned goldfish with wonky telescopic eyes, in its bowl and with a note reading: Free Fish! Please Give Steve Buscemi a good home. And of course I did. I found an exceptional home for him, a home where he’s given all the love and post-traumatic care that he needs, and maybe even such environmental niceties as filters and plastic sunken ships. And I mention this now not out of gratitude to his new clan, although that’s there in spades, nor out of self-congratulations for my successful act as adoption supervisor, though, you know, I felt pretty good about the rare chance at a good charitable act. But on the off-chance that the noontime hot-sidewalk abandoner stumbles across this page, you little s**t, do send me an email so I can say a few inappropriate and depravedly nasty words to you directly. Anonymous tips will not be prosecuted. But something good came of it, in that it’s a more natural anecdotal segue than I’m used to. (This a second-hand mic, a little poppier than usual, back next week purring into the usual devices) | 5/2/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Truth or Consequences | After a week of muscle-burning manual work and long long drives, some of us settle in with a nice cold beer. For others-- maybe like me, who's to say -- it takes more that that... way more, maybe, to relax muscles as sore as these and attempt to put together nerves which have been plucked to the bone. For that reason, perhaps it's best to just shut up and read (if you're me) or grab a beer and listen (if you're you) and maybe write the Pulitzer committee about considering a Podcasting category. | 4/18/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Last Class | All week I've been wanting to read this to you, waking up more excited than the trashman on the day-after-Christmas, and running into my.... uh... recording studio (read: three paces from the bed) to see if it's quiet enough... | 4/4/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Binoculars | A saw a sign the other day while out on a drive, a sign that said this: Frost Heaves. And I almost had to stop and compose myself, because I was so deeply distressed by the fact that frost can't heave in private (and I'm not a histrionic sort of girl), and saddened that a frost's heave has to be announced clearly for any old a*****e who happens to be driving by... | 3/25/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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A Handful of Dates | The question that's been asked a few times of me now: why don't I read more African writers? Actually, it's been asked more than a few times... enough times, in fact, to warrant the sort of qualifier most accurately described as MANY. | 3/20/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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In a Hole | It's confusing, the name of tonight's author, right? I mean, the better known writer sharing this name didn't bother with a middle pseudonymous initial, and there's a slight tweak to the surname, but we readers would be none the wiser, push-to-shove, and would settle back with a cup of tea and upperclass accent. | 3/12/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Lonesome Road | A mildly embarrassing problem when getting under way with tonight's story, confessed in full in these lines: when I first sat down to read it to you this evening, I got caught on a raft in a sea of lexical continental drift, and over and over I stammered out the title only to have it read "Roadsome Load." No kidding: again and again. | 2/28/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby | As I lay writhing on my sickbed I was catching up on my milehigh stack of unread periodicals, and made my way to an article about one of the leading competitors for an upcoming race for a high position of public office in the country in which I'm living. Because, you know, there aren't many articles written about this, which is surprising, because from the sound of things, the race for this public office is not of no importance.... | 2/19/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Lawyer Kraykowski’s Dancer | A few days ago I was driving down the street behind a car which, as was warned by prominent display of rooftop sign, was being operated by a Student Driver... a sign which really wasn't necessary, given the stammering mid-intersection braking and sideview-mirror clipping taking place all the way down the road, and I had this great idea that it'd be a real public service - a true exercise of civic duty - if other drivers could collectively contribute to driving lessons, by driving like raving lunatics around students, just to get them on their toes and on the lookout. | 2/4/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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From the Mouths of Buildings | A message from the author of today's story: Do you ever wonder as you are reading a story, or hearing one, such as on a podcast, for example, what or whom has inspired a particular story? Picture this: imaginary "directions" or "instructions" for a story that the author creates-- after the story has been written--or told. Imagine that these "directives" led to this story--which in actuality they did not--well at least the author had no idea of any directives of any sort when the story came into being. | 1/29/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Youth, Beautiful Youth | Returning soon with a much-awaited all-new MBSP. Leaving you with a mightylong one to hold you till (the longest yet in one sitting, I think). For Dream, remembered always, and loved even longer. | 1/7/08 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Fedya Davidovich | HEY, Internet, I want to tell you all about Earideas. Wow, that sounded a little snake-oily- let me try that again: | 12/14/07 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race | I was thinking about the last story I read to you, and thinking it’d be nice if other events of this variety, the sort of events that are difficult to explain to small children, were similarly reimagined. And not just on a large scale, either. I’m talking about The Pulling of My Wisdom Teeth Considered as a Jaunt Through a Daisy Field, or The Love Affair Between Gravity and my Ceiling, Considered as a Synchronized Swimming Spectacular. And here’s another. | 12/4/07 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Passion Considered as an Uphill Bicycle Race | I hope those of you celebrating All Things Autumnal are settling into it well, the roast fowl and the hot cacao and woodfire smoke for dessert, and, well, you know the picture I'm aiming for here. It does wonders to the general countenance, I think: | 11/28/07 | Free | View In iTunes |
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Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? | I read in the news yesterday that television writers here in the U.S. have gone on strike, and that because of the strike, everybody's arms are collectively thrown up in a great wide panic, because nobody knows what's going to happen on Charmed and because there's nobody to script the next great Wardrobe Malfunction, and this sounds like very bad news indeed and I was sorry to read it. | 11/9/07 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Bell Tone | At times during my podcastressing career, I have stumbled upon authors about whom I know very little, and have been fortunate to find that you, resourceful mariners of the Internet's belly, have proven yourselves well worth your collective avoirdupois in gold and other fine metals, and for that, I thank you. | 10/25/07 | Free | View In iTunes |
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The Lady of the House of Love | Andrea was kind enough to suggest and supply a sufficiently Halloweeny bit of ghoulishness to reconcile the setback of temporary lack of access to mine own troves. In the hopes of exponentially increasing the sympathy factor, let it be known that in addition to being without books, the chief operating offices of Miette's bedtime have been largely internet-free for the past weeks, in what would, under normal circumstances, | 10/12/07 | Free | View In iTunes |
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96 |
The Fly | While settling in and to avoid the appearance of mothballs, here's another Mansfield. And while this isn't the first time we've rocked her boat, she's a voice so nice I'll read her unspliced. | 9/17/07 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
97 |
I See You Never | Last night, I was thinking of what to write to you today while starting to doze off just prior to handing over the wheel. I woke up with one of those Holy Mother I'm Dozing Off kind of starts, and, as I was now more alert than usual during this leg of the trip, I made the sad discovery that what I'd read as the Bikini Avenue Exit was actually something far more G-Rated, and significantly less scandalous. | 8/27/07 | Free | View In iTunes |
| Total: 97 Episodes |
Customer Reviews
Justifying the concept of podcasting
I am in love with this woman. Not just because she sounds gorgeous or knows exactly what books i need to read, but because she's found the perfect use for podcasts. she tells bedtime stories, simply and beautifully. And she tells great stories, and does so perfectly. I listen every night, and they all bring sweet dreams.
Astounding Voice with an AWSOME British (or European type) Accent
She has an enchanting, soft and beautiful voice reading enlightening stories with poetic spins on them. This is great to fall asleep to.
Finally with Good Audio!
I tried this podcast some time ago but just couldn't go with it because the audio had the quality of something made with a handheld tape machine. But when I came upon it again recently, there had been a major upgrade in the sound quality. The host does a great job selecting short stories, and provides the sort of access to the form that a Norton’s might – although she avoids the ‘usual suspects’ of short fiction such anthologies usually feature. Great way to discover new authors - who may be dead a few hundred years. She has a lovely reading voice, (Northern England is my guess) and understands the stories, so that the style and flow of the author’s written language comes across along with the content – all of which is now accessible (to me anyway) thanks to the broadcast-quality audio. Very enjoyable podcast.
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