12 Stories for Christmas

Ooops, wrong Chekov

Nice idea from the Guardian. The books editor called up twelve of his mates contacted twelve prominent authors and asked them to read their favourite short stories. There's a series of 12 free podcasts you can listen to on iTunes or on the Guardian's home page. I listened to the first one, Philip Pullman reading Chekov, and it was great. A strange minimalistic story about a chap seeing a pretty girl on a train, which reminded me of that bit in Citizen Kane where Kane's buddy is wistfully talking about a girl he saw once for a few seconds on the Hudson Ferry and can't stop thinking about her half a century later.