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I have never gotten into audiobooks. I have commuted to work by bus fairly consistently for the last 20+ years, and have listened to music, watched DVDs, done cross-stitch, crocheted, read and slept, but for some reason I've never seriously tried to get into an audiobook. An online friend uses them all the time when she's in her car, but I think I would find it too distracting to be paying attention to the road and to the book.
I used to walk everywhere (not then having a car), but a round of foot problems and the acquisition of a car contributed to break that habit. Resuming walking is the best thing I could do for myself, and yet I haven't been able to get into the habit again. I sort of hate purposeless walking. It's easier when my housemate walks with me, but her job has her standing in steel-toed shoes for a good part of the day, and she's usually not up for it when she gets home. This was even worse when I had a job since I didn't get home until 5:30, which in winter is well after dark, plus hello, winter, cold. When I was employed, I had emails to myself set up 4 times a day to tell me to get up and take a walk twice around the floor. It was boring, but only took a few minutes and gave me a chance to stretch and wake up a little.
It's fall now, and probably not the best time to start a walking regimen, but all my damn jeans (and future work slacks) are too tight since I've been off work. So I've been to the library and found a few audiobooks by authors I like. Unfortunately, there wasn't one of Robert McCammon's Swan Song, which I've been working on in paperback for a month now and have barely just begun. But I did find an Anne Perry William Monk mystery, an Elizabeth Peters Vicky Bliss mystery, and a Colleen McCullough novel about the studious Mary Bennet from Pride and Prejudice. I was surprised to see how many interesting books on disc the local library actually has. I can revisit some old favorites (a couple of Ngaio Marsh's) or get some new knowledge (History buff Silentsgirl will be pleased to know that I am eying Jeff Shaara's To the Last Man -- but good God, I don't even know if I can lift that set unaided! I'd rather start with one of his Civil War books, but didn't see any there.) The thing is, each disc is an hour or more, and most books are at least 7 discs, so I may run out of oomph before I run out of book!
So today I got out my Discman, a fresh battery and some headphones, and loaded it with the first Peters disc. I'm planning, after lunch with a friend in the adjoining city, to stop on the way home at a large county park and walk some of the paved trails there (not wanting to have to concentrate on footing and plot all at once). I'm hoping that if I find enough varied places to walk, that will combine with the audio to offset the boredom of purposeless walking. I'm also hoping to manage 1 disc a day, but I don't know if my sedentary-lifestyle back and hips will allow me that.
- Location:home, but headed parkward
- Mood:
determined - Music:the sound of Barbara Rosenblatt's voice
I don't think I've ever specifically cut anybody from my list of friends over something political. I do have strong feelings about social issues and politics (I am a left-winger BTW), and I do tend to gravitate to people who feel as I do. That way, when we argue, we're really just ranting on the same side so there are no hard feelings. I do have a friend or two with differing views, and in those cases we do try to steer clear of the subjects we know we can't agree on. And even though I do like these people, I do think differently about them because of their views. It's like when I found out that Tom Selleck, who I found cute, funny, charming and generous by all accounts, was a Republican. From that day onward, I used "for a Republican" as a modifier when praising him. I couldn't figure out how such a perfect creature could be so misguided.
And frankly, I still can't. ;-)
So anyhoo, I am beefing up my Associated Content input by posting my old college papers -- I'll post original content at some point, but there's an end-of-month bonus incentive I'm trying for so am going with old stuff for now. I've earned $5.50 for posting 2 papers, and if people go to see them I earn like $0.015 a hit. I'm relatively certain that these papers are of no interest to anybody but me circa 1972, when they were written, but here are the links to them if anyone wants to give me a penny and a half - I swear there won't be a quiz.. BTW, when I look at this stuff now, I wonder who the genius was who actually knew this stuff -- it's long since been schoosted out of my memory. We're pretty much supposed to spam any of our social networking sites, blogs etc. with these links so this is step 1 in that. Thanks!
<br> <a href="http://www.associatedcontent.com/a
<br> <a href="http://www.associatedcontent.com/a
Yes, they DO sound riveting, don't they? Wait until I put up my 17-page paper on the poet Richard Wilbur...
So here's the reason I haven't gotten any unemployment yet:: Unemployment either (a) doesn't know if this constitutes self-employment (which is what the first lady I talked to said) or (b) knows it's self-employment but is questioning if it renders me ineligible to hold a daytime job! So anyhow my benefits are being held until a determination is made, possibly for 3 weeks or so -- always what I want to hear while living on air. Yesterday I received a questionnaire about it that was hard to figure out how to respond to -- it assumes you have an actual business so a lot of the questions are about "who works for you" and "what are your business hours." After calling for some guidance, I ended up typing up a separate sheet explaining that (a) the job can be done any time and thus it and a full-time day job aren't mutually exclusive, and (b) thus far the job has averaged about 4 hours a week and thus ditto. Now it's in the hands of the bureaucrats and oh, joy, there's a federal holiday a-comin'! The good news is that apparently self-employment income doesn't detract from your unemployment amount -- you have to report that you were self-employed but they don't prorate the unemployment because of it. Which sounds kind of odd, since in theory you could make $1000 freelancing but still get all your unemployment for that week. I've arranged for a small monthly distribution from one of my IRAs to beef up my monthly income -- one of the very few advantages to being more than 59.5 years old.
Just as an aside, searching for jobs and other revenue-enhancing activities is really time-consuming and soul-draining.
- Location:living room
- Mood:
cranky - Music:some old movie in the background
Yesterday as I drove home from work, still giddy from the contact high of watching, with a large roomful of happy, proud and infinitely relieved co-workers, as Barack Obama assumed the office of President of the United States, I popped in one of the well-worn, highly eclectic mp3 mix disks my housemate (for the most part) and I have made through the years. It was pretty much a random pick, just one that we hadn’t heard in a while, and one of the two that I had compiled myself.
How appropriate -- and surprising to me, since I wasn’t thinking in these terms when I chose it -- that the first cut is “America: The Dream Goes On,” sung by John Denver at a Boston Pops Fourth of July celebration in 1985. The song was composed by the Pops’ own John Williams, who knows his way around a symphonic score and it all shows in this song. And Denver, with his pure, soaring voice was the perfect choice to sing it. Here’s a link to a recording of it (although the sound is disconcertingly out of synch with the video):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDXYk35y4fI&feat
and here are the lyrics:
http://musicby.jw-music.net/lyrics.php?a
John Denver, despite his aw-shucks corny image, was a humanitarian and an environmentalist, and even as I burned the song to that disk I was saddened that John, who died in 1997 during the humanitarian-and-environmentalist-friend
So today, when this lovely song with its message of our country’s resilience and perseverance surprised me on Howell Avenue in South Milwaukee, I lost it. Sat there in my car, cranking the volume and crying like a fool. For the first time in years, this song didn’t sound like something from a bygone era that made me sad, about John Denver and about our country. It sounded like it was written yesterday, with the new hope and new purpose that Barack Obama brings to our country and to our lives specifically in mind.
Somewhere, John Denver is grinning.
- Mood:
contemplative
I'll remember the war(s), the economy, the undermining of civil liberties, the paranoia, the creation of the extreme uberclass and the extreme underclass, the corporate greed, the obscenity that is nearly every aspect of the Iraq war, from its very raison d'etre to the bogus contracts. I'll remember the heartbreak of 2004 when we thought for sure we were rid of him. I'll remember the tinfoil-hat morons of the right pushing their personal exclusionist agendas down the throats of all of us, and W's complicitness in letting this happen. I'll also remember those courageous members of the right who spoke out against it. I'll remember that half the people of New Orleans are still living in squalor and he has done nothing, and I'll remember the "bailout" with no accountability.
I'll remember the anti-intellectual bias that has blocked stem cell research and other vital and life-saving scientific endeavor. I'll remember the lack of interest on the part of the government in any but oil-based energy, and I'll remember the widespread rape of the environment to further that agenda.
In an hour, a new day will dawn for our country, and all these things, which are now a way of life, will swiftly become memories, and lessons to us on how not to choose a president.
Welcome to America's Renaissance!
- Location:work
- Mood:
ecstatic - Music:"God Bless America"
I LOVED Harry Chapin. I loved his music and I loved the person he was. When I heard about his death from a heart attack I mourned for days.
The death of Jim Henson also hit me hard. Such a good, funny, generous man gone so senselessly.
Finally, John Denver. I had been a huge fan in my time both of his pure, soaring voice and his drop-dead cheekbones, but the growing difficulty in getting a decent seat at his concerts combined with a feeling that some of his later stuff was a little generic had made my enthusiasm fade somewhat. But I was deeply sorry when he died, because he was a very good man. There is some comfort in knowing that he died doing something he loved, but it was still a sad loss.
- Location:work
- Mood: contemplative
- Music:"Mr. Tanner," "The Rainbow Connection," "The Eagle and the Hawk"
Via TCM and Tivo I've been trying to expand my film horizons, recording films I wouldn't ordinarily seek out for one reason or another. One of the latest of these was "The Unknown," with Lon Chaney and Joan Crawford, part of a Lon Chaney mini-marathon in honor of Halloween.
Silent film isn't my first love, and I need to be in a certain mood to fully enjoy it. In the case of "The Unknown," it was shown late at night, well past my bedtime with work the next day, but once I started watching it, I couldn't take my eyes away. I think it was the "train wreck" kind of can't-look-away.
I knew of Chaney's reputation as an actor who could transform himself amazingly from role to role. I've seen clips of his work in "Phantom of the Opera," and I had just seen a bit of "The Blackbird" which TCM showed the same night. In that film, Chaney scrunches up his entire right side to play a crippled bishop who is in actuality an able-bodied crime boss. It was impressive, and I'm sure it was a Herculean feat to maintain the position during filming.
"Herculean feet" would be a good way to describe Chaney's character in "The Unknown." He plays a circus knife-thrower named Alonzo the Armless, who of course does everything with his feet. He worships the circus owner's daughter, Nanon, played by Joan Crawford in sultry-gypsy mode. She in turn has big googly Crawford eyes for Malabar (Norman Kerry), the dashing weight-lifter, but is tired of men pawing her, so has a pathological detestation of any man's touch. Malabar truly loves her, but continues to mess up by trying to embrace her. In these amorous missteps he is erroneously advised by the unhelpful Alonzo, who figures he has the edge on any "handsy" guy.
There's just one hitch: Alonzo really does have arms. He's on the lam after strangling someone with his bare hands, one of which has a very disconcerting and distinctive double thumb. His only confidant is the dwarf Cojo, who laces and unlaces the corset under which he hides his arms. The circus owner sees him, and Alonzo is forced to strangle him as well. Nanon, the witness, sees only the killer's hands, one with a double thumb.
After the owner's death, the circus disbands, with Malabar, Alonzo, Cojo and Nanon all taking up residence in the town. The friendship grows among all of them, and at one point Nanon hugs Alonzo. Afterwards he is ecstatic, only to have Cojo advise him never to let Nanon touch him like that again -- she'll be able to tell he has arms, will see that double thumb and won't forgive him for killing her father.
The dejected Alonzo sits down to try to think it through. He pinches the bridge of his nose in concentration, then lights a cigarette and throws the match away -- all with his toes. Cojo begins to laugh, because at this moment Alonzo's arms are unbound. In glee Cojo says, "You've forgotten you have arms!"
To anyone who's seen Tod Browning's masterpiece, "Freaks," the next step is all too predictable. Alonzo goes to a doctor who owes him something, and has his arms amputated. We are spared the details, only that he is away for several weeks. In the meantime, Nanon has been taking long walks with Malabar, who has been careful to keep his hands to himself. By Alonzo's return, she's realized she's foolish to have been afraid of Malabar's touch, and they happily announce their engagement. Alonzo, thwarted and no longer in possession of his usual weapons, tries to kill Malabar by sabotaging his pulled-apart-by galloping-horses act. He fails and is stomped to death by one of the horses. A happy future is nonetheless in store for Malabar and Nanon. The End.
The thing is: this movie lost me right at that nose-pinch. While I'm not a scholar of silent films, I've seen enough of them that I'm used to and not bothered by the olde-timiness of some of the acting conventions, and I understand the need to convey worlds through visuals alone. And I realize that the nose-pinch was meant to reinforce just how completely Alonzo had forgotten his arms. But for all the obvious agility and hours of preparation on Chaney's part that must have gone into this role, there's just something about doing hand-things with your feet that's just….wrong. The knife-throwing (somewhat unconvincing at the throwing end and obviously an early special effect at the receiving end) and the business with the cigarette are sort of acceptable, because those are things you would expect an armless person to learn how to do under the circumstances. But the nose-pinch was just too surreal and, in a scene filled with angsty drama, too damn droll. I can envision one of the great comic actors of the era using it to great effect.
- Location:work
- Mood: amused
- Music:Toecatta and Fugue
I'm new to Robert McCammon. I bought a copy of Swan Song years ago, wanting something with the epic sweep of Stephen King's The Stand -- but somehow I never got to it. Subsequently my housemate, Gail, read it and then more McCammon, including Speaks the Nightbird, and recommended them. Thus why I'm just getting around to reviewing a 6-year old book.
Its two volumes spin an entertaining and page-turning tale of human greed and evil (like we need more of THAT these days!) amidst the terrible period of the witch hunts in colonial
Magistrate Isaac Woodward and his young clerk Matthew Corbett are en route to conduct a witch trial in the settlement of Fount Royal in the
The characters are textured, the settings vivid, the evil pervasive. Speaks the Nightbird is a great read for a chilly day by the fire -- but lacking that, it made my daily bus commutes fly by, and actually made me turn off the tube for some late-night reads.
The cool thing is, there is ample provision left at the end for Matthew's story to continue -- and it turns out that McCammon's latest book, The Queen of Bedlam, does just that. A third Matthew Corbett book is scheduled for this year.
- Location:work work work
- Mood: thoughtful
- Music:"The Ballad of Jimmy Durante" by The Blanks (don't ask me why)
I just read Michael Moore's Mike's Election Guide 2008. It's unfortunate that the only people likely to read this book are the already-fans, because in a few compact pages it summarizes (and backs with figures) the many injustices that are rife in this country, and has some really well-considered suggestions to fix them.
It's interesting to read this book as a relic of "the good times" three months ago. As it went to press, we had only bailed out the likes of Bear Stearns to the tune of $250 billion or so, and the nightmare that is Sarah By Gum Palin wasn't even a blip on the radar. If the events of the past month had been available to Michael, it might have been a much longer book.
Michael assumes that Barack Obama will be our next president, and offers him directly ten things he should do his first week in office. One of them is to make it a crime to profit from health care. Another is to reinstate the draft -- but this time, draft only the scions of wealth, which should end the war in a hurry as the offspring of the profiteers are put at risk. (Yes, the numbers are there -- there are almost as many draft-age rich kids as there are troops in
He would also like to see, at 12:01 pm on January 20, 2009, an actual perp walk from the White House. He would like to see Bush, Cheney, Rove, Condi, the whole bunch of them, led out in handcuffs, shielding their faces with their jackets, under arrest for crimes against their country. This will almost certainly not happen, just as the "Impeach" sticker on my bumper will not happen, but I dearly hope that this crowd will be held accountable for the grievous harm it's done to our country.
He also lists 30 Republican Congressional seats that are up for re-election this year that he feels the Democrats can take. I hope he's right. He doesn't list Paul Ryan of
To prove that Mike has a great sense of humor, he has pre-excerpted quotes from the book for the right-wing media to use against him. The point being that with enough ellipses, you can "make" anybody say anything.
Opinions about Michael Moore are vastly divergent, usually depending on which side of the fence you're talking to. A conservative friend considers him "an entertainer" and that's about the best I've heard him called by that side. In my opinion, he's a true hero and a great patriot. He sometimes acts in outlandish ways which put his credibility at risk, but it's always to prove a point, and it's always, always for the sake of the struggling little guy.
I recommend Mike's Election Guide 2008. It'll make you laugh, it'll make you cry, it'll make you madder than hell.
- Location:Work
- Mood: hopeful
- Music:George Haas singing selections from The Kingston Trio Songbook
- Location:work
- Mood: satisfied
- Music:"Mamma Mia" -- it's been in my head for days
Okay, I lifted this off my friend Silentsgirl's page and it looked fun and I'm bored and I don't often get to talk Books, if you can call these ramblings talking Books. So here's my version of the reading list.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (Erm, this counts as ONE book?? Come on, have you SEEN Order of the
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (see comment re Harry Potter, above) (I have read MANY of the works of Shakespeare, some of them even NOT in an English Lit class)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot (I've read this 3 times, one of them by choice)
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnet
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Okay, so I've read a third of 'em. More than I'd have thought, actually, given that my tastes are low and popular, tending toward series detectives like those of Elizabeth Peters, Janet Evanovich and Jonathan Kellerman. However, I was also an English major in college and several of the bolded books were read under duress and only barely remembered. I do likes me my Austen, though, having read each of her books a couple of times, and I read quite a bit of Dumas after seeing the wonderful film adaptations of The Three Musketeers by Richard Lester in the 70s (and the subsequent Dumas TV adaptations starring Richard Chamberlain). I have read Rebecca a number of times as well.
I'm a little surprised that there are almost none of the other books on the list that I feel compelled to want to read. If I had two or three more sets of eyes and another couple days in every week, sure, I'd give them a shot, but as it is I have a huge backlog of really intriguing-looking books I just haven't been able to get to yet. These include several Kellermans, some Anne Perrys and Elizabeth Peterses I've fallen behind on, some Stephen King (who did not make this list but who tells a ripping yarn -- I've read The Stand thrice, once in its incredibly long and rib-crushing edition), some Jasper Fforde, and some nonfiction including a biography of Buster Keaton and several other movie and theatre biographies, some courtesy of Silentsgirl, and Eric Larson's followup to The Devil in the White City, Thunderstruck, which intertwines the lives of Guglielmo Marconi and Doctor Crippen. I'm also rereading the Potter books and trying to keep current with Oprah magazine, which is a full-time undertaking in itself when your only real designated reading time is on the bus home from work for 45 minutes (in the morning, I'm usually still too groggy).
The one entry I did italicize is His Dark Materials. I've heard this may be the way to go for those of us in Potter withdrawal. We'll see, eventually. I should actually revisit Tolkien, in the aftermath of those brilliant movies, but I'm not sure I have the strength....plus, my copies are the original US paperbacks from the 60s, and they might not be up to the challenge of my backpack.
Interesting list but not the hundred I would have picked, partly because I'm not that familiar with some of the newer stuff -- Byatt, Rushdie etc. Like I say, low and popular tastes. I am pleased to see Cold Comfort Farm on the list. I love this book, and would probably love it even more if I knew more of the literary genre it harpoons.
I'd have liked to see more science fiction (or speculative fiction, if you prefer) on the list, not only because it's a genre I've enjoyed in the past but also for pointers toward something I might like to read in the future. I'm always holding out for a hero -- I like swashbuckling, I like Big Causes, I like guys in tight leather pants. For several years I've been (albeit passively) on the lookout for a nice sci-fi/fantasy series I could get wrapped up in. It has to be bigger-than-life but not all laughably pompous. When I was a kid I LOOOOVED Robert Heinlein, but for me his best books were the ones aimed at kids. The adult books, while well-written, struck me as kinda, well, smarmy in their treatment of adult themes. Of his books, I prefer that things like The Star Beast and Have Space Suit, Will Travel over Stranger in a Strange Land. They're sweet and funny and not terribly deep but involving nonetheless. I also loved Andre Norton's young-adult science fiction/fantasy. She could do adolescent-outsider-comes-into-his-own better than most anybody.
This feels a little like an essay, and I have no good conclusion. But thanks, Silentsgirl, for giving me material for my first actual, gulp, blog entry.
- Location:work
- Mood:
bored - Music:the sound of law being parsed
