Aside from the first link, the next few are dead (the worldcat one and the pg. 52-60 one), so I’m basing this off of the rest of the links. The scan also had quite a bit of noise, which made it somewhat hard to read, but I managed to get through it. Plus, I obviously haven’t read the whole book, so I may be missing some important context.

Personally, I was not a huge fan of the book. My biggest gripe was probably that it was in a graphic novel format, which seems somewhat strange to me when it’s an informative book talking about audio as a medium. The main issue I had with the format was that it kept going into anecdotes and examples, over and over again, rather than explaining a concept, providing the example, and then moving on. It just seemed somewhat repetitive and had unneccessary information, such as surrounding the conversations that Radiolab has when they produce their episodes. If the book were for entertainment, then the quips may be appropriate, but as an informative book I personally would like to get the information I want relatively efficiently.

I do understand why Abel may have done it in the graphic novel format, though. Podcasts are generally conversations between multiple people, not just the host and the listener, so having a graphic novel allows for conversations to take place, and make it easier to visualize for the reader. The format also allows readers to see situations that hosts may put themselves in to improve the story, such as when Abel talked about interviewing the flight attendant. However, given that podcasts force listeners to visualize what the host describes, it does seem a bit strange to visualize scenarios for the reader in a book about audio storytelling.

Some takeaways would include that storytelling is an incredibly involved process, and often involves a lot of revision to get a compelling story, and that storytelling is not always linear time-wise, but can go forward in different orders depending on what is interesting.