I hope when you were standing on all those lines you had headphones on.
Lives of a Cell N says i'll enjoy, but i think it might be too hard for my little brain, er, I mean might be too complexly organized and factually dense given the circumstances in which I listen to tapes. (And complex books are better in print, so you can go back when you get confused.) Also, it's 1995. Haven't a lot of things happened in cellular research since then? Does that matter?
I don't want to read the Sue Miller. Doesn't mean you can't, but i'll skip that one.
Dubliners I've read twice already and though that recording sounds absolutely wonderful, with a different excellent performer for each story, i am not enthusiastic about reading it again right now, but the version might convince me. If it's at the library.
I wonder if i'm being difficult.
I recently read (let's call 'listening to' 'read,' and only specify if we actually saw print) Guterson's Snow Falling On Cedars. It was a good read, well done, but i have no interest in reading anything by him again for some reason, so, personally, don't want to read East of the Mountains, which is supposed to be less good than Snow Falling, I understand... (Well, "for some reason" is that i think he's an accomplished journeyman writer, but not a first rate writer, so unless the subject itself is fascinating (I found this to be the case with Memoirs of a Geisha), there is no motivation to read him if there's a more thrilling alternative.
The problem with listening to tapes, for me, is that i cant remember proper names unless I see them in print. It's even worse if the book is full of, say, Indian names. Impossible. I guess one could get organized and check out the book and tape at the same time. Yeah, right. I think a lot of my brain cells are completely print-dependent to turn on. They get tickled by a neuron or electrical impulse or chemical or something, but it can't get in and latch on until it answers the Password Question, "How do you spell that?" Do you feel this is a sound neurological analysis? Cellulary speaking?
How about Alice Munro? I love her. I don't know what's at the library in audio. I'll check, if others love her, too. There is a Costco not too far from us but i've never been there. A CD player would increase my options.
And there's Henry James, great and one thing or another on the shelf, I'll check and see what, and i read James long enough so i've forgotten it enough to read it again.
I'll go to the library and come up with some other suggestions. Just because i'm negative about those titles doesn't mean everyone else can't read them. I will just keep listening to Wodehouse, which makes me laugh so much i have to keep turning the tape off. My father was a fanatical Wodehouse fan, and collected all the Wodehouse, and would read and re-read them, laughing uproariously, and i read whatever was in the house in high school; but seeing how many are available at the library got me started on Wodehouse again, and i'd forgotten how supremely funny that writing is, it makes you want to write things down. You can't fully appreciate the verbal humor when you're 16.
But I can't see what a group would talk about with Wodehouse, except to say, "My GOD, wasn't THAT line funny?!"
But listen: Are you actually buying audio tapes? I'm assuming that any audio book i listen to will be from the library.(Because they will order them from the other libraries on request, there is a pretty good choice; and any time we've asked our library to buy a book, they've done it (just asked yesterday for Harry and Tina Come to New York, and the acquisitions librarian called a few minutes ago to say she was ordering it.) (It is a print book, though. They're no fun.)
I rarely buy regular books, unless for some special reason, because N is a book maniac and there is hardly any room to live in this book-storage hovel we call home as it is. (And he sold 5000 volumes a couple of years ago when I INSISTED on not having books piled on the floor downstairs. (Upstairs, which is his, is totally insane. Guests ask if they can peek up there just so they can scream. He shares DNA with the Collyer Brothers. Do you know who they are? Were, I mean.) (We are going to have another purge soon, N promises.)
And I am definitely not going to purchase books on tape. Which, though wonderful, have no satisfying physicality.
I got steroids shot under my Baker's Cyst kneecap today and am still having a steroid high, my friend whose husband has MS and who learned when he was in the steroid-treatment stage what a steroid high was, informed me. She knew i'd had the steroid shot and cleverly identified the delightful mood when she talked to a very happy moi this afternoon. Knowing it's from extrinsic chemicals makes it no less pleasant, I find.
You see how long this post is? The steroids made me do it.
You know world peace? I could bring that about if I weren't hungry right now. |
