Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Books on tape
Jacob and I drive a lot. Most days we go back and forth to school a couple times - half an hour at least each way. Trips to San Francisco and Stanford are longer.
So we listen to books, mostly on tape, sometimes CD or iPod: classics (Candide, To Kill a Mockingbird) funny ones, (Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy, Kurt vonnegutt, Bartimaeus), Mysteries (Sherlock Holmes, Dorothy Sayers, Tony Hillerman, Laurie King) and uncatagorizable ones(the Diamond Age). You can order them online at the San Mateo Public Library and they deliver them to the branch of your choice.
Today we finished Cannery Row, a book I always assumed I'd already read, long ago in some English class. I didn't expect much beyond the pleasure of reading about a familiar place, but I had never read it and I was bowled over.
I think Jacob was too.
There are some books that are simply better read aloud, and this was one of them. The narrator is Jerry Farden, and he was terrific.
The suspense got so bad sometimes, I couldn't stand it and had to turn off the tape - and all that was at stake was whether a party came off. My friend Sue, who hates suspense, often reads the last chapter of a book first so she doesn't have to worry about what is going to happen. For the first time I think I understood.
At the end of the book, one of the great chacters, Doc, reads a poem.
I looked it up - it's a translation from an ancient Sanskrit poem, published in English as Black Marigolds. It is beautiful.
Here's a link to the poem, but you might want to listen to the whole book:
Black Marigolds
So we listen to books, mostly on tape, sometimes CD or iPod: classics (Candide, To Kill a Mockingbird) funny ones, (Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy, Kurt vonnegutt, Bartimaeus), Mysteries (Sherlock Holmes, Dorothy Sayers, Tony Hillerman, Laurie King) and uncatagorizable ones(the Diamond Age). You can order them online at the San Mateo Public Library and they deliver them to the branch of your choice.
Today we finished Cannery Row, a book I always assumed I'd already read, long ago in some English class. I didn't expect much beyond the pleasure of reading about a familiar place, but I had never read it and I was bowled over.
I think Jacob was too.
There are some books that are simply better read aloud, and this was one of them. The narrator is Jerry Farden, and he was terrific.
The suspense got so bad sometimes, I couldn't stand it and had to turn off the tape - and all that was at stake was whether a party came off. My friend Sue, who hates suspense, often reads the last chapter of a book first so she doesn't have to worry about what is going to happen. For the first time I think I understood.
At the end of the book, one of the great chacters, Doc, reads a poem.
I looked it up - it's a translation from an ancient Sanskrit poem, published in English as Black Marigolds. It is beautiful.
Here's a link to the poem, but you might want to listen to the whole book:
# posted by Ann @ 9:53 AM 
