Hello everyone and Happy Christmas! I’m Jenny Wheeler, the host of the Joys of Binge Reading, and this is our last episode for 2020… As we did last year, we’re taking a break in January to refresh and renew ourselves. As many of you know, I’m in New Zealand, and as a country we pretty much shut down post Christmas and head for the beaches and forest – which we call bush….It’s like a whole nation goes on holiday together… I’m going to be spending time relaxing in my little 1975 Sprite Major caravan - yes the ones with the cute rounded windows – in a field with fantastic views over the Coromandel coast, now and then going down the hill for swims in the gorgeous sea waters there –like swimming in champagne. Here we are in the hills above Whitianga on a New Zealand summer holiday!!! (Family members visiting from Aussie!) But before I pack up for the year, I wanted to round out things by first thanking you all for sticking with us this year. The Joys of Binge Reading has grown this year – it’s lovely to see it. And we’re getting lots of fantastic authors on to talk about their work, and I can promise more of those next year. For this end of year episode I thought I’d take a look at the shows that have attracted the biggest audience – the people that for whatever reason more of you tuned into - over the last twelve months. The difference in the numbers listening to these guests compared with many of the others – are sometimes small – and it's true that I get a great pleasure out of every single author I talk to – but these are the ones who’d make the “Top Ten” if we were doing one… Authors come from four corners I was thrilled to see where the author came from seems to make no difference to popularity - the spread of author nationalities between the US, Australia, New Zealand and the UK is pretty evenly shared– so you’re a pleasingly global lot!! So instead of having just one voice on the show, you’ll be hearing from ten or more…And as usual, if any of these snippets spark your interest and they are a show you missed out on, there will be links in the show notes to make it easy for you to find them and tune in – so there’ll be plenty of new people to keep you going over the break. The shownotes for this episode can be found on the Joys of Binge Reading .com, or you can find us on the Binge Reading Facebook page. I’ve taken the dates December 1, 2019 to December 1, 2020 as the period we’re looking at for obvious reasons – December 2020 isn’t over yet. 2020's year's most popular episode I’m proud of the fact that we’ve now got 150 episodes on the Joys of Binge Reading, and I think every one of those authors are fantastic. However, taking that period, there was one author who stood head and shoulders above the rest in terms of the number of people who tuned in to listen to him – and that was Martin Walker – author of the much-loved Bruno the police chief mystery series, set in Perigord, France. Martin Walker at home in Perigord - a delicious world. Photo, courtesy NY Times. Before he turned to writing French mysteries, Martin had a formidable career as a diplomatic correspondent on top UK newspapers. He shared some highly entertaining stories about his days working as a correspondent in Thatcher's England, Gorbachev's Moscow and Clinton's Washington, but you’ll need to head over to his episode to hear those. The wonders of Perigord So, what was it that made him chuck in such a fascinating glamorous career?
No transcript available.
POWERED BY BLUBRRY
