Book Soup podcast

On Wednesday night, the good folks at Book Soup in West Hollywood hosted a reading and q&a of my book Neutral Milk Hotel's In The Aeroplane Over The Sea. Thanks, Kelly and Louis, for such a warm welcome.

This was the first time I've taken this material on the road--albeit only ten miles from home--and I found that it was quite emotional to read these highly charged paragraphs out loud, and to connect with people who feel so passionately about the music. I felt energized at the time, exhausted next morning.

The bookstore annex was packed with a kind and attentive audience, including KXLU's Peter Choyce, Black Dahlia scholar Larry Harnisch, historic preservationist John Arroyo, This is Burning Man author Brian Doherty and Craig Ceravolo.


I read excerpts spanning the whole of the book, and finished by playing a recording of Jeff playing "Little Birds"--which I was surprised to discover almost no one in the room had heard before. I think everyone was pretty stunned by it. Then I took some questions and signed folks' books. The bookstore was happy, because 25 people bought 30 books. And I signed another couple dozen, in case you want to stop by Book Soup soon and get one for yourself.

My sweetheart Richard documented the evening with photographs and in this podcast, where members of the audience share their experiences with Aeroplane and what it continues to mean to them.

I hope we'll have another podcast to share from the Vroman's reading on March 25, but in the meantime, if anyone reading this would like to make their own MP3 podcast along this theme, please host it for free on ourmedia.org and email me (at amscray @ gmail . com) when it's live. I will put links to your podcasts up on the webpage dedicated to the book.