On most days, you can find me blasting my iPod in the car. I have a bit of a commute to get to work and back so music makes the time in the car tolerable. Lately though, my focus has been all over the place and the frantic beat has been a bit of a distraction.

So…

I decided to listen to the literature podcasts that I had subscribed to. The thing is, those podcasts, for whatever reason never updated with newer ones so when Jennifer Schuessler mentioned that The Lost Symbol was #1 on the bestseller list, I glanced down only to discover that what I was listening to was from this time, last year!

At first, I was irritated. I cursed my iPod. After I got it all out though, I was sort of charmed by the mention of these books. For the most part, these books escaped my radar or I actually made the effort to add them to Goodreads and then promptly forgot about them. I do that all the time.

It occurred to me how much changes in a year’s time. I don’t know how publishers deal with the never-ending cycle of books and then add to that the trends we’ve experienced with e-readers. How many e-readers are out there now? Several and more than one version of each. One of the podcasts I listened to discussed Vook. Do you remember when vooks came out? Do you use them?

If I think back to my reading tastes from last year, they are quite different than what I enjoy now. True, I still learn towards literary fiction but I’ve been loving dystopian fiction too and years ago, it was not a genre I would have given a second thought to. Coincidentally, it’s not a genre that was discussed in any of those podcasts from a year ago either.

It’s been discussed before but I’ve never been clear on what drives trends when it comes to reading. Do publishers push certain genres or do readers, through their purchasing habits, dictate what appears on the shelves? I imagine it’s probably a bit of both.

Listening to these dated podcasts has been refreshing though. I mean, if the book was great back then, why wouldn’t it be now? Needless to say, I will be adding a few more books to my TBR list.

Oh, and if you have any literature podcasts that you’d like to recommend, please let me know. Currently, I subscribe to the ones noted above, plus Nancy Pearl and the Seattle Public Library.