I finished the Earthsea season of Shelved By Genre recently and it’s an incredible piece of work — it really deepened my appreciation of the context and blemishes of a series that I already loved. What do you think makes for a good, I don’t know what the real term would be but let’s call it a “bibliography podcast”? Quality of research, background of hosts, chemistry of hosts, consistency of approach to the material, embrace of the medium, ?? Having done these type of shows for quite a few years now, do you feel like you’ve learned any concrete things about what you want to do and what you don’t want to do (what “works”) in the making of them?
thank you! i can only talk about this from my own perspective, because i think a lot of this varies with object, method, and situation. the common link for all the shows i do in this vein is that i try to take the thing seriously. to me this means being measured but vhonest about what it is i'm looking at and how i feel about it, considering what works for me and what doesn't, and trying to give a good reason as to why, all while also thinking about the work as something that arose in context. i have some acquired skills from grad school that help here, like how to do research and things like that. but across the shows my ethos is to approach texts seriously as they present themselves, no matter how much extracurricular reading i actually do. i'm lucky to have cohosts who feel similarly and an audience who likes to listen in.