I haven't written about books since school started back up, but I'm still plugging away at the 52 Books in 52 Weeks challenge, and am currently on book #49. woohoo!!
When I look at my list I want to categorize the titles into tidy groups by genre, because I'm somewhat smugly satisfied by all the different kinds of books I've read. Then I see the 10 or more Janet Evanovich books and think that I cheated in this challenge by devouring those books like a guilty pleasure snack. But balance is the key, and I definitely have balanced the fluff with some good stuff.
These aren't exactly formal genres, but the categories I see in glancing through the list.
Fluff
Janet Evanovich's books, all except #s 2 and 3 and the newest title.
Timeline by Crichton (my 14yo son and I both heartily disliked it)
State of the Union by Brad Thor (fluff for men that I started reading when bored at the beach)
Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. (never finished it after the bad guy died -- noetics, schmoetics)
Leopard Unleashed (a pure, guilty pleasure read which leads to the next category....)
Historical fiction -- some of which are also very fluffy
Vivaldi's Virgins (about the girl's orphanage where Vivaldi taught)
Jane and the Genius of the Place (a mystery with Jane Austen as the sleuth!)
Dreamers of the Day (Paris Peace accord after WWI)
Gurnsey Literary and Potatoe Peel Society (kind of, sort of historical fiction)
Physik Book of Deliverance Dane (also kind of, sort of...)
The Reader (read the book instead of seeing the movie -- seemed appropriate)
Science most of which I wouldn't have read except my 14yo son urged me to read them
The Pluto Files by Neil De Grasse Tyson
Death by Black Hole (same author as above)
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
Classics
Northanger Abbey
Persuassion
Emma
Candide
The Iliad
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The Good Earth
Once and Future King (is that a classic?)
Memoirs/autobiographies
All My Edens by Pat Welch (a local gardening guru)
Maria Tallchief: America's Prima Ballerina
Home by Julie Andrews
The Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson
History
The Man Who Loved China (about Joseph Needham)
In the Footsteps of Genghis Khan
Gengis Khan - a biography
The Lost City of Z (I liked it so much I'm assigning it to my son next spring)
The Right Stuff
Other good books, including some sci fi:
Dune (I had never read it!)
Dune Messiah (gave up on the Dune series after this one)
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (had to re-read it before the movie came out)
Life of Pi (one of my favorite books of the year)
Garden Spells (maybe this is fluff)
Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert Heinlein
And finally
Non fiction
The Big Year (about fanatic birders)
To See Every Bird (part memoir, part biography of the author's dad, also about obsessed birders)
Catapult: Harry and I Build a Seige Weapon.
I'm surprised not to find a long list of mysteries as that is what I've mostly read in recent years, but they just didn't appeal to me for some reason.
Showing posts with label 52 books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 52 books. Show all posts
Monday, November 2, 2009
Monday, June 29, 2009
Adventures with audio books
I started listening to Sword in the Stone while commuting to a gig that was a 40 minute drive from my house. I really enjoyed it because it is so whimsical, so random as my teen sons would say. I can see why JKRowling counts it as an inspiration for her writing. It kept reminding me of the Harry Potter books.
I did not know, however, that when TH White decided to compile his Arthurian books, including Sword in the Stone, into The Once and Future King, that he edited and even rewrote big sections of each individual book. This fact set me up for a major case of befuddlement!
One afternoon when I was home and listening to Sword in the Stone, I drifted off to sleep. I could remember that Arthur was learning to be an owl with Archimedes, and when I started to regain consciousness he was in a giant's castle and King Pelinore was looking for his toothbrush. I wondered what on earth I had missed, but thought, no worries. I'll just re-read the section from our print copy of Once and Future King and continue on with the book.
Only problem was I couldn't find any mention of giants or toothbrushes. I started thinking maybe I had dreamed it all.
The next time I had a chance to listen to it, I started once again at the owl part of the story and once again started drifting off to sleep just as the episode with the giants was starting. Aha! There really is a section with giants, I thought. But the next morning when I once again flipped through the print edition I couldn't find it! I was beginning to think I was losing my mind. I was further perplexed because I also couldn't find in the audio version a section I had seen in the print edition where Arthur has an adventure with storks.
I was a perplexed. Puzzled. Befuddled. And a little worried about the state of my mind.
Fortunately my ds was also listening to Sword in the Stone, and I had told him about my confusion and questionable state of mind. He finally caught up with me in the book and was able to reassure me that there is indeed an adventure with giants, that King Pelinore had indeed been looking for a lost toothbrush! Hallelujah, I wasn't crazy! He was confused that there should be a chapter featuring storks, and was adament there hadn't been one.
I finally looked it up on Wikipedia and learned about the differences between the original Sword in the Stone and the version of it in Once and Future King. What a relief! The Naxos company, for some unknown reason, decided to produce an audio version each original book rather than the entire Once and Future King.
I have also learned that when my eyes start getting heavy to use the "sleep" function on my iPod dock so it shuts down after 15minutes!
I did not know, however, that when TH White decided to compile his Arthurian books, including Sword in the Stone, into The Once and Future King, that he edited and even rewrote big sections of each individual book. This fact set me up for a major case of befuddlement!
One afternoon when I was home and listening to Sword in the Stone, I drifted off to sleep. I could remember that Arthur was learning to be an owl with Archimedes, and when I started to regain consciousness he was in a giant's castle and King Pelinore was looking for his toothbrush. I wondered what on earth I had missed, but thought, no worries. I'll just re-read the section from our print copy of Once and Future King and continue on with the book.
Only problem was I couldn't find any mention of giants or toothbrushes. I started thinking maybe I had dreamed it all.
The next time I had a chance to listen to it, I started once again at the owl part of the story and once again started drifting off to sleep just as the episode with the giants was starting. Aha! There really is a section with giants, I thought. But the next morning when I once again flipped through the print edition I couldn't find it! I was beginning to think I was losing my mind. I was further perplexed because I also couldn't find in the audio version a section I had seen in the print edition where Arthur has an adventure with storks.
I was a perplexed. Puzzled. Befuddled. And a little worried about the state of my mind.
Fortunately my ds was also listening to Sword in the Stone, and I had told him about my confusion and questionable state of mind. He finally caught up with me in the book and was able to reassure me that there is indeed an adventure with giants, that King Pelinore had indeed been looking for a lost toothbrush! Hallelujah, I wasn't crazy! He was confused that there should be a chapter featuring storks, and was adament there hadn't been one.
I finally looked it up on Wikipedia and learned about the differences between the original Sword in the Stone and the version of it in Once and Future King. What a relief! The Naxos company, for some unknown reason, decided to produce an audio version each original book rather than the entire Once and Future King.
I have also learned that when my eyes start getting heavy to use the "sleep" function on my iPod dock so it shuts down after 15minutes!
Friday, March 27, 2009
Audio books
My 14yo loves listening to books. Always has. He can't get enough of them, re-listens to his favorites over and over. He listens while building legos or drawing, he listens while just hanging out. His working vocabulary was impressive at an early age, due largely, I think, to his hearing the words in use from his audio books. When he was 8 he was correctly using words like "affronted" and "resolutely". His syntax varies depending on his current favorite author as does the rhythm of his speech. He currently is sounding like Bill Bryson, and what is even funnier is that his older brother, who hasn't heard those audio books, is picking up on it and now is sounding like Bill Bryson too.
I really enjoy audio books, too, though I'm not able to listen for the endless hours like my son. I like how a good narrator can bring a story to life with different voices for the different characters, or how their phrasing can clarify the meaning of a sentence or paragraph. I like that hearing a book aloud, or for that matter, reading a book aloud, prevents you from being an impatient reader and skipping past the descriptive paragraphs or tedious expositions to get to the action.
The only problem with them is that you can't dog ear a page, or underline a particularly striking sentence. You can't stop and look at how that striking sentence is constructed, or stop to think about it's deeper meaning -- the narrator just carries you on to the next page, the next plot point.
I just finished listening to Northanger Abbey, and found myself laughing aloud quite often. The narrator was fabulous, but I need to get a print copy and find some of those sections that made me laugh. For instance, there was some very astute satirical commentary by Austen -- I don't think it was in the dialog -- about the perceived attractiveness of women who act dumb, or are dumb or stay uninformed on purpose. I was driving the car and laughing when I heard this bit, but I need to find it again to get the quote right.
I'm also reading aloud The Lord of the Rings to my 14yo, and am amazed at how much more I am getting out of the books by reading them aloud. I read them when I was a teen, but I've only re-read my favorite sections since then, and I had no idea how much I was missing such as plot points and characters. All that geographical detail still bogs me down, though! We're having a good laugh, too, over the biblical sounding language in the 3rd book. "And lo! Aragorn did crush the athelas. And the scent filled the room filling all hearts with gladness." Or something like that -- it gets to be a bit much!
I really enjoy audio books, too, though I'm not able to listen for the endless hours like my son. I like how a good narrator can bring a story to life with different voices for the different characters, or how their phrasing can clarify the meaning of a sentence or paragraph. I like that hearing a book aloud, or for that matter, reading a book aloud, prevents you from being an impatient reader and skipping past the descriptive paragraphs or tedious expositions to get to the action.
The only problem with them is that you can't dog ear a page, or underline a particularly striking sentence. You can't stop and look at how that striking sentence is constructed, or stop to think about it's deeper meaning -- the narrator just carries you on to the next page, the next plot point.
I just finished listening to Northanger Abbey, and found myself laughing aloud quite often. The narrator was fabulous, but I need to get a print copy and find some of those sections that made me laugh. For instance, there was some very astute satirical commentary by Austen -- I don't think it was in the dialog -- about the perceived attractiveness of women who act dumb, or are dumb or stay uninformed on purpose. I was driving the car and laughing when I heard this bit, but I need to find it again to get the quote right.
I'm also reading aloud The Lord of the Rings to my 14yo, and am amazed at how much more I am getting out of the books by reading them aloud. I read them when I was a teen, but I've only re-read my favorite sections since then, and I had no idea how much I was missing such as plot points and characters. All that geographical detail still bogs me down, though! We're having a good laugh, too, over the biblical sounding language in the 3rd book. "And lo! Aragorn did crush the athelas. And the scent filled the room filling all hearts with gladness." Or something like that -- it gets to be a bit much!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
