A brief history off Reading in Bed – a book review Podcast

 

By the time I got to the end of 2017, Spoken Label my first Podcast series was really starting making inroads into the spoken word literature series and it was therefore a major surprise when I got asked to help my partner out with her book review Podcast.

Amanda, my partner had being recording her own Podcast series ‘Amanda’s reading recommendations’ for several months where she reviewed books by herself. However, after a few episodes she decided she wasn’t enjoying doing the session by herself and asked me would I help her out with a relaunch for it called Reading in Bed at the start off 2017.

Reading in Bed as a name came from Amanda where she would be reading books frequently in bed. We set on a simple structure where we agreed to start off with one book which we would review together and do a book separate in review. As all Podcasts do when they are starting off as team is learnt how to work together really recording them together at Amanda’s flat on my phone and Skype neither of them really producing the quality of recording either of us really wanted.

I forget why we went onto Zoom at the start of 2020, I think it was likely because I had just started using it for Zoom and it felt weird I must admit to start with us using Zoom sat in next door rooms to each other in our apartment, but it seemed to work and helped make the Podcast flow a lot easier and helped both of us relax a bit more instead of just staring into my old phone.

What has also helped is getting into a routine and sticking to it really – usually recording it on a Sunday on the first weekend, Amanda sorts out the artwork while I edit the audio together, and she then uploads through Anchor and all of its associated networks while I do the manual uploading to Bandcamp, Youtube, Instragram.

Eighteen months later, I think the Podcast is a really well oiled machine, we usually manage to read three books each a month – sometimes both of us reading the same book and find the episodes are usually around a hour or so – starting each episode (this was down to episode demand it has to be said) providing a summary of what other book projects we have being up to and keeping the chat as lively and fun-based as we possibly can.

I’ve heard it said you can hear in it how much we love each other by the way we tease and torment each other.

And that means the world to me.

Reading in Bed can be found on all of the usual networks including readinginbed.bandcamp.com and is usually available at the start of each month on a free / pay what you want to download basis on bandcamp and stream.

(Originally published on the Sunday Tribune on 18 July 2021)