Hope to write more about the festival for here and Crimespree Magazine, but for the moment I wanted to discuss our adventures in audio books.
Six hours up, six hours back.
We took eight audio books out of the library.
Book One: Hardball, Sara Paretsky-and it took a lot of talking to persuade Phil to start with this one.
"Didn't we do her last time?" he asked.
I overlooked his unfortunate wording and said, "No, that was Sue Grafton." Okay. We are ten minutes into the first of the tapes and it begins to skip, slows down, acts up. We give it several tries, wipe it off, then give up.
Book Two: A GOOD FALL, Ha Jin. Phil liked a novel by him some years back. The first story is a real dud about a woman whose sister is selling her kidney to buy a car in China. Np payoff and not very interesting. Maybe in Chinese? The second is about a guy who is unnaturally attached to his parrot. Nothing much happens. We give up on Ha Jin.
And needing a laugh, we turned to David Sedaris. Who tells us a story about his sister and her parrot. I have never really approved of the way Sedaris uses his family (boy, could I write bone-chilling stores about my family if I wanted to) and the story wasn't all that funny and we were darn sick of parrots, so we moved on.
Book Four: Walt Disney by Neal Gabler. We listen to Walt's life for forty minutes but when he has already conquered the world of animation and is not yet twenty two, we give up in despair at our lot. Plus you really do need visuals to make the point here.
Book Five: WINNER. We stumble into GET REAL by Donald Westlake and enjoyed this book for the rest of our trip. We still have a couple CDs left and Phil doesn't want to play them at home. He says when he listens to something on the CD player at home he needs to read-and that doesn't make sense. So I may never finish Dortmunder but it was an awful lot of fun for the trip.
Now for an added treat, here is my poem about parrots. Circa, 1998
The Marketplace in Haarlem
In Haarlem, an old man jostles ahead
jabbering excitedly to the large and
tattered bird on his bony shoulder.
The bird responds in scolding tones
and an argument breaks out between them
with the bird having the last word.
So facile in this twosome in their fit
that the man's head lolls preternaturally
leftward to oblige the plumage. His gait,
shaped too by this association
is nearly a jig. He is furthered hindered
by a shabby canvas chair which he fretfully
unfolds in the cobbled square, tipping his shoulder
for the bird's descent. The weekend market
is conducted under plastic pitched against
the coming rain, and the pair watch this Saturday
ceremony together as if it has been staged
for nothing less than their shared enjoyment.
Now you can see why I switched to fiction because this is clearly a story and not a poem.
8 comments:
Um...why can't you listen to the CDs on your own?
And these days, there's plenty of poetry in paragraph form...
David Sedaris has been funny approximately once in my ken...with an offhanded comment expressing his frustration at his inability to pick up French. Otherwise, yet another guy who confuses archness with wit, and slathers it on.
And as I didn't quite say, I like the poem.
Well thanks. It was published in a Michigan State publication.
We are joined at the hip. Didn't you know that?
As a man who wears earphones fifteen hours a day, I'm still not quite seeing the problem...
We listen together to our earphone less CD player. Also watch the same hotly debated TV shows and movies. Doesn't everyone?
This is why you have to take several books on tape/CD when traveling. I've had similar experiences to yours.
As you and Phil experienced, audio books are a bit of a crapshoot. The listening experience is completely different from the reading experience.
The only thing wrong with GET REAL is that it was the last of the Dortmunder books. Every time I remember that, I could cry. Otherwise, fun book. I recently listened to the Dortmunder gang's attempt to steal some collectable cars in THE ROAD TO RUIN, and I have to admit there was one place I laughed so hard I almost had to pull over and park.
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