One Wild and Crazy Guy!

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Steve Martin, noted actor and comedian, will be among the honorees at the 30th Annual Kennedy Center Awards this evening.

He has written a book about his own life, Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life (2007), which I enjoyed as an audio book. Martin tells affectionately about his life so far and his road to fame. He originally wanted to be a magician, and for years he had magic (and poetry reading!) as part of his act.

Martin has a fascinating and very smart mind, but really I don't know why this should be a surprise. His comedy and acting are clever and easily accessed by almost everyone but especially people around my age, baby boomers who weirdly have things like flower power and air raid drills in our common history. He seems to sum us up, somehow.

It's not a long book. It is succinct. I loved it. And if I have gotten to know Steve Martin at all, I think he is probably a bit bemused by his prestigious honor this evening.

Harry Potter Grows Up

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On a recent road trip I listened to a fraction of the over 21-hour audio book on CD of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows narrated by the incomparable Jim Dale. It swept me away.

Harry and his friends again exhibit their talents and resourcefulness without becoming too "precious". These kids ring true and act like kids everywhere, with maybe a little extra grit and courage. And magic. I refuse to reveal anything except that the ending is very satisfying.

There is, I must admit, a long waiting list for The Deathly Hallows on CD, but don't forget all the rest of the Harry Potter audio books while you are waiting. Refer to my past blog entry, Tell Me a Story and Make The Commute Bearable, for the entire list. 

Jim Dale also narrates other books, such as the Peter and the Star Catchers series, Peter Pan, and Arthur and the Invisibles. Look for more information in a later entry, devoted entirely to this talented man.

Teacher Man

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“On the first day of my teaching career, I was almost fired for eating the sandwich of a high school boy.  On the second day I was almost fired for mentioning the possibility of friendship with a sheep.  Otherwise, there was nothing remarkable about my thirty years in the high school classrooms of New York City.  I often doubted if I should be there at all.  At the end I wondered how I lasted that long.”

So begins Teacher Man, Frank McCourt’s final memoir in his trilogy that starts with Pulitzer Prize-winning Angela’s Ashes and continues in ‘Tis.

In the classroom, McCourt tells stories of his childhood spent in poverty in Limerick, Ireland.  He instructs one class to compose homework excuse notes (“A man died in the bathtub upstairs and it overflowed and messed up all of my homework").  He makes another read cooking recipes to music. 

His lessons may be unconventional, but his students discover the beauty of the English language and learn to always think for themselves. 

Read You Loud and Clear

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Every day at the library, customers check out the newest titles by authors such as Janet Evanovich and James Patterson.  But they aren't just checking out the books. Many seek out these titles in audio book form. I was surprised last week by an article in the New York Times that debated whether listening to a book on cd was equal to reading that same book:

"Dain Frisby-Dart, 40, an avid audio book listener from Trempealeau, Wis., told her book group a few years ago that she was listening to the current selections.  One of the members, a man in his 70s, reacted as if she had been reading CliffsNotes."

The article describes how many of the people who listen to audio books do so in private: in the car, at home, or while wearing headphones. But with book clubs growing in popularity, people's reading - and listening - habits are being made public. 

Neil Gaiman's Stardust

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In all the Harry Potter brouhaha, don't overlook a movie coming out this summer by a fantastic writer, Neil Gaiman. The movie is Stardust, based on the wonderful book of the same name. This is a grown-up fairy tale, with richly spare writing and fantastic imagery.

The story follows Tristran Thorn's quest for a fallen star, which turns out to not quite be what he expected. But then, as we continually find out, things are never quite what you expect in the land of Faerie. As Tristran seeks to fulfill his quest to bring the fallen star to his beloved, he quite naturally finds out whom he really is and what it is that he really wants.

This is again the story of the Hero's Quest, just like Star Wars and Luke Skywalker, The Odyssey and Odysseus, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Dorothy, and so many others, even Harry Potter and all of his adventures.

Stardust is also available as a digital audio book, read by the author.

Neil Gaiman might be familiar to some as a graphic novel author, most notably perhaps being the Sandman series.

Things You Might Not Necessarily Expect to Find Here

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If you go to library school, you'll sooner or later have the conversation about "What if someone comes into the library and asks for a book on how to build a bomb?"  As far as I can tell, the library has no how-to books on this subject, but if it did, the answer is that we would help the customer find it and not question his or her motivation.  

In library school, this discussion will quickly deteriorate to questions like "What if a customer comes in and wants a book about how to make crystal meth?" The library has chosen not to buy books on this subject either, although there are certainly books about the problems associated with meth labs and addiction.  The library's electronic collection, which you can access from home, however, has a government document called Clandestine Methamphetamine Labs.  This 78-page PDF file includes photos, so you can recognize a meth lab if you see one, and compelling reasons why you shouldn't build your own. 

Digital Obsession (with bonus knitting!)

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I got a new toy--an MP3 player!

I've been kind of enthralled with exploring all its little glowing menu options instead of reading books like a good library blogger should.  Thus, I'm having a hard time coming up with a book to write about this time around.  I can however, recommend as an alternative my current passion, which is listening to digital audiobooks every chance I get!

I do have one book recommendation that's pulled directly from my current idee fixe. Knit one, Felt too has a very cute fair isle pattern for a felted cell phone/mp3 player case.  I'm adapting it to fit my player and spending some quality time on the couch with my earbuds plugged in and my knitting in my lap.  What's playing while I knit? Death of a Hussy from Netlibrary, one of the Hamish Macbeth mysteries that the library doesn't have on CD.  Awesome! 

Thomas Harris and Hannibal Lecter

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The Horror Writers Association has announced that Thomas Harris will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Bram Stoker Awards Banquet at the end of March during the annual HWA Conference that will be held in conjunction with the 2007 World Horror Convention in Toronto.

Harris hasn't written a lot of books, but his fiction is very finely crafted and creepy. He is, of course, recognized for his perfectly written saga of Hannibal Lecter, the compelling psychopath from Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal.

The latest and final installment, Hannibal Rising, is actually the first installment, starting with Hannibal as a young boy in Eastern Europe during World War II. It offers the reasons for Hannibal becoming the way he is.

Harris wrote the screenplay for the movie  at the same time as the novel. Hannibal Rising is available in audio as well as print, and as a digital audio book for download from the Ohio eBook Project. 

Ewwww! You Got Romance in My Suspense Novel!

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I was reading an article some time ago in one of those magazines librarians read (Library Journal, Publishers weekly--sorry I can't remember which one!) and was somewhat interested to read about cross-pollination that was occurring between romance and other genres.  I thought it was a good thing at the time, and thought it might be interesting to come across one of these titles, though I wasn't intrigued enough to seek one out.

Now I'm not so sure.  I'll admit, I was frantically grabbing audiobooks in the last few minutes of my lunch break, and therefore missed the rather telling CD cover of Cover of Night by Linda Howard.  So I was a little surprised by the sudden "blossoming of affections" that happened during the bloody beginnings of the siege (by criminals working for the mafia) of a small mountain town.  I was also very surprised at the end when the male lead's close-quarters and semi-premeditated killing of at least one of the criminals was so blithely accepted by the heroine, despite her having young twins.  Altogether, I found the premise of the plot more amusing than suspenseful, and the "happy ending" chillingly odd, which I'm pretty sure is not what the author intended.  I'm sure there are other novels that blend the genres with ease.  This was just the wrong one to encounter first and unawares.

Paranormal Characters Make For Spirited Reading

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Ghosts and spooky happenings have always been interesting topics for books and stories.

Edgar Award winner Phillip DePoy has created a well-written fiction series about a folklorist named Fever Devlin who returns to his Appalachian roots and whose investigations delve in just short of the paranormal: The Devil's Hearth (2003), The Witch's Grave (2004), and the recent well-received A Minister's Ghost (2006).

Cree Black, Daniel Hecht's fictional paranormal investigator, explores haunted houses and weird happenings in City of Masks (2003), also available as a digital audio book; the series continues with Land of Echoes(2004) and Bones of the Barbary Coast (2006).

Another good ghost story is Jodi Picoult's Second Glance; it is one of those stories with characters and time playing tricks on the reader.

Some other books with a paranormal story line are the International Horror Guild's award winning Fogheart by Thomas Tessier, John Passarella's Kindred Spirit, and Charlie Price's Dead Connection.

Me Versus the Classics

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I've been working my way through the classics of literature on CD as I find them, catching up with all those books I should have read long ago. But I feel I have to be honest and share my defeats as well as my victories here. I am now batting only .330 in my attempts to read James Joyce's Ulysses.  Yes, I've only succeeded once out of three attempts, and even then I was in high school and may have skipped one or two pages.  This time, determined to appreciate it as an adult, I got it on CD--that should have made it easy, right?  Well, this morning I returned the unabridged CD version.  Someone else had a hold on it, and I had only made it to disc ten.

Now, there's a good chance that I'm sleep deprived, so it probably wasn't the best idea to try to listen to this title right before bed.  The fact is, it was a great audiobook.  The narrator had a lovely voice, and of course there was the prose, the fantastic melodious prose.  Well, melodious it was, and I tripped down those notes straight into dreamland, night after night. 

Whiny Guys...Spy?

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In my continuing search for audiobooks to play while quilting or knitting, I often end up listening to books I wouldn't be caught dead reading.  This can be interesting.  Two recent titles that I would have set down after twenty pages if I'd encountered them in print, were actually strangely satisfying on CD. 

William Dufris narrates both Lord Vishnu's Love Handles and The Futurist.  I think he had a lot to do with my sticking with these titles to the end.  For the record, I found the characters in both of these novels absolutely unlikable, spoiled and self-indulgent.  However this narrator has a voice that absolutely personifies the whiny upper-middle-class white guy suddenly cast out of his element, and that's what both these books are all about.

Creepy Stories for Halloween

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We tend to think of scary books at Halloween, and I'll take this chance to promote some of my favorite creepy audio books and reading for any dark night.

The Edgar Allan Poe Audio Collection is read by Vincent Price and Basil Rathbone. Poe's work distills all that is eerie, and these two masters of voice bring the recordings to chilling life.

The Shining by Stephen King is a perennial favorite, good at the movies but terrific as the original book.

Peter Straub's Lost Boy Lost Girl is as creepy as it gets, an excellent read along with its sequel In The Night Room.

And don't forget the Classics: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley; Dracula by Bram Stoker and the wonderful silent film Nosferatu; and even War of the Worlds by HG Wells, which was a written work long before it was performed as a radio play or movie.

Tell Me A Story And Make The Commute Bearable

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Like many working people, I spend about an hour and a half in the car on my way to and from work. Enter my friends, Audio Books. I have passed many a happy commute listening to accomplished readers share books with me.

I greatly enjoyed Thomas Harris's creepy Hannibal Lector trilogy, Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal. I was fascinated by the twists and turns of Maeve Binchy's Tara Road. I laughed helplessly at the antics of Georgia Nicholson in the teen series by Louise Rennison that starts off with Angus, Thongs, and Full Frontal Snogging. I was drawn completely into Diane Setterfield's dark and mysterious 13th Tale.

J.K Rowling's Harry Potter books are fabulous, read by the incomparable Jim Dale. If you start with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and travel through the whole series, you will be set for a long time. Let's see, if I add it up that's almost 95 hours of happiness on your commute!