Free Podcasts for Christmas

...just in case you're interested.

Amplify’d from www.guardian.co.uk

Short stories podcasts: 12 tales for Christmas

Philip Pullman
Philip Pullman. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe

Saturday's an exciting day for us in the audio department. We're launching our new series of podcasts, but podcasts with a difference. We've invited some of the country's top authors to read us their favourite short story by another writer. So you'll hear Philip Pullman reading Chekhov, Rose Tremain reading Yiyun and William Boyd reading JG Ballard, and then discuss why they chose those particular stories.

We're running 12 of these from Saturday every day until Christmas. But it's been a project that we've been working on since the summer, when the Guardian's Review editor Lisa Allardice came up with the idea. She says: "We're familiar with audio books, but with writers choosing their favourite story they bring something of themselves to the reading.

Producer Tim Maby was surprised at how authors are now so used to reading aloud they even move the microphones to where it best suits them: "Anne Enright, for instance, likes to hug it." Tim says Rose Tremain commented that all writers like showing off, while Philip Pullman revealed he loves talking in to a mic.
these recordings really show why podcasting is so much better than radio: they will remain on our website and on iTunes and be a resource for people forever. You don't have to be sitting next to your wireless at a certain time to catch them.

Saturday 11 December: Philip Pullman reading The Beauties by Anton Chekhov

Sunday 12 December: William Boyd reading My Dream of Flying to Wake Island by JG Ballard

Monday 13 December: Anne Enright reading Fat by Raymond Carver

Tuesday 14 December: Colm Tóibín reading Music at Annahullion by Eugene McCabe

Wednesday 15 December: Margaret Drabble reading The Doll's House by Katherine Mansfield

Thursday 16 December: Jeanette Winterson reading The Night Driver by Italo Calvino

Friday 17 December: Rose Tremain reading Extra by Yiyun Li

Saturday 18 December: Julian Barnes reading Homage to Switzerland by Ernest Hemingway

Sunday 19 December: Tessa Hadley reading The Jungle by Elizabeth Bowen

Monday 20 December: Helen Dunmore reading My Oedipus Complex by Frank O'Connor

Tuesday 21 December: Ali Smith reading Conversation With My Father by Grace Paley

Wednesday 22 December: Helen Simpson reading The Kitchen Child by Angela Carter

Each podcast will be published at guardian.co.uk/books
Read more at www.guardian.co.uk