This year, I decided to do away with that dogshit resolution everyone makes about eating right and getting in shape, and decided to spend my time in a more constructive way.
I got some pretty serious heckling about the fact that I never found time to read. Between a full time job and three college classes at night, I didn’t really feel like doing anything but watching television and sleeping. But as someone who really does love to read (unfortunately I can’t do it three or four pages at a time on the can ::ahem!::), I took heckling to heart, and started picking up some audio-books** to occupy the spare minutes in my day (driving, groceries, laundry and the like.)
**Side note: The audiobooks of course then sparked the now-legendary debate of what is technically “reading”… if I’m allowed to say I “read” a book a listened to… issues of academic snobbery… and of course Beth’s clever compromise of calling it “Ristening” (ever the diplomat!) Nothing’s ever easy, is it? But whatever, I took the NEW heckling and used Ed’s guilt at having teased me to open an Audible.com account. I win
So in January, I decided instead of promising myself that I was going to go to the gym three times a week and eat ridiculous salads and only drink, I was going to read/listen to a book a week. 52 books in a year, to make up for the paltry 13 from the year before. I was already off to a good start: When I left my job at the end of July 2008, I never turned on the television while I was home. I was finishing/editing a book at the time, and found that the best use of the quiet in the house was to write and read. I took a break from the job hunt to read “Love in the Time of Cholera” (I’d had it hanging around ever since I fell in love with the movie “Serendipity”) and looked up 5 hours later, wondering why I was hungry and why it was getting dark out.
I did a little thumb through my Goodreads list yesterday and realized that by month end, I will be a good 7 books ahead in my goal! Woo! If I can wrap up my current shorter selections, The Cellist of Sarajevo and Let the Right One In, House of Sand and Fog and maybe fit in a few quickies on my 100 Classics list (Camus’ The Stranger is only like 150 pages) then I should be a 41 by the turn of the calendar page.
I thought today of accelerating my goal to 100 books… but then I’d have to quit my job.
Hmm… actually…
The List So Far (parentheses denotes in-progress):
(House of Sand and Fog)
(The Cellist of Sarajevo)
(Let the Right One In)
The Sun Also Rises
Mother Night
Candide
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Pillars of the Earth
The Strain (The Strain Trilogy, Book 1)
The Painted Veil
The White Tiger
The Sociopath Next Door
The Road
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Little Bee: A Novel
Beloved
Crime and Punishment
The Catcher in the Rye
Dexter By Design (Dexter, #4)
The Trial
1984
Girl, Interrupted
Three Case Histories
Madame Bovary
Fool
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
Nights in Rodanthe
Anointed: The Passion of Timmy Christ, CEO
Never Let Me Go
Brick Lane
The Rose Variations
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Everything Is Illuminated: A Novel
Girl with a Pearl Earring
Eat Pray Love
Billy Budd
The Virgin Suicides
Brave New World
Waiting for Godot
Because last night was so nice, and my bed was so warm, and my week was so long, I decided to write my Friday night blog post this morning.
“Upanishad” is the Hindi word for the scriptures that make up the essentials of the Venanta (the teaching of oneness with the universal being, or Braman.) It means “To sit at the feet of the master” and refers to the traditional way of teaching, the master passing on knowledge to the student by speaking the daily lessons. Books were produced by hand and so were considered priceless, kept well guarded by the temples. For this reason, lessons were passed from generation to generation of monk orally. The advent of the printing press obviously greatly improved the dissemination of information, and the oral tradition died out.
I made the argument recently that audiobooks were just technology picking up where the oral tradition left off. I catch a bit of flack about listening to them, but besides the fact that I can fit 45 minutes to 4 hours a day of “reading” into my schedule, I really enjoy listening to a good audiobook! I can listen to a book while filing at work, driving in my car, doing the grocery shopping or the laundry. Sometimes I just come home and decompress with my headphones on after work, or before I go to sleep.
What a lot of people miss by ragging on audiobooks, is that there is a connection not only to the story, but to the voice of the speaker. I have favorite narrators, just as I have favorite musicians or songs. There’s something soothing about the connection to the speaker that makes the experience unique.
I started thinking about this yesterday as I started “Beloved” by Toni Morrison. It’s narrated by Morrison herself, and while the story itself is gorgeous so far (I’m about 3 hours - or 60 pages - into the story), Morrison’s narration is incredible. Her voice has a buttery, soothing quality, and no one could read the book as well as its creator. Here’s a clip of Toni Morrison discussing her first days of writing, a step on the path that would take her to both the Pulitzer and the Nobel.
I finished “Crime and Punishment” yesterday morning on my way to work. It was loooong… 25 hours, for an unabridged translation of about 560 pages. But it was well worth it, a classic for a reason. The audio version is narrated by George Guidall, who could well be the most prolific narrator out there. There’s a good reason for this. He has this wonderfully gruff, basso voice that warms you right up. I’ve listened to “The Gunslinger” by Stephen King and now “Crime and Punishment” by Fyodor Dostoevky, and both were long but very enjoyable because of the narrator.
Of course I can’t miss mentioning my very first favorite narrator, Nick Landrum. I first became acquainted with his work on the Dexter Series, and although he said he loathes it, his voice really is perfect for the role. It’s quiet, steady cadence lends itself well to the inner monologue of Dexter Morgan, friendly neighborhood serial killer. Landrum has also recorded other titles. I’ve listened to both “The Virgin Suicides” by Jeffrey Eugenides (listen to a sample here), “Sweet and Vicious” by David Schickler. Both were wonderful books, and Landrum’s voice added to the experience.
I’m not saying that every audiobook is for you, or that even these narrators are guaranteed to be your cup of tea, but if you’re one to turn your nose up at audiobooks because you feel like they’re corny, or that you won’t be able to “get into” the story, or that you feel like it’s cheating to say you’ve “read” a book that you’ve listened to (ahem, EDDIE), then take it from me: give them another chance. You just might find that you can fit more stories into your schedule, and that you really enjoy the connection to the story that a good narrator can give you!
My blog posts are starting to resemble rebel-party communiques, written in the dead of night by the feeble illumination of my computer screen, usually after writing a paper of some variety, grocery shopping (which got done at 9:30pm!) and finding a few spare moments to bust chops with the love of my life.
I just climbed into bed and ducked under the covers to read a few pages of “Dexter by Design” when Ed whimpered in his sleep “Did you do a blog post today?”
“Damn it!”
I slinked from beneath the sheets and dragged myself back out to my trusty computer to rattle off a few lines. I don’t really have anything to talk about, so I guess time crunches are my topic of the night. I just passed in an annotated bibliography for one of my courses, and got the shaking finger of disapproval from the electronic upload site because It was “Past the due date” at 12:09am. I emailed it to the teacher directly, with a few wise-cracks about burning the midnight oil to draw his keen eye away from my penchant for late-night cramfests.
So, in the spirit of cramming everything into my day at odd angles, like packing for a vacation at gunpoint… I realized today that with the schedule I keep (full-time job, two classes, writer, and an apparent addiction ot Na:::Whateverthehellitis:::Mo’s, (Nanowrimo, Nablopomo, Script Frenzy… I think I’m going to start “National Pie Baking Month” for June.. what do you think?) that I often have to choose between writing and reading because there just isn’t time. Even writing this post is guaranteeing I wake up a shattered wreck in the morning… my co-workers know that talking before coffee = death. They understand.
Which brings me to my latest way of jamming extra stuff into my life. For a while I’ve been doing most of my “reading” by audiobook. I listen to them in the car for the morning and evening commute, sitting in my car snarfing a sandwich at lunch. I actually listened to my current selection tonight while grocery shopping. How’s that for multitasking!
I get no small amount of teasing my audiobook love… Ed contents he doesn’t count it as reading… Beth calls it “Ristening”… I used to get a fare amount of well-intentioned jibed that I didn’t make time to sit down with an ACTUAL book, and not do any of the other things I have to do. I got a fair amount of crap for being an English student who has no time for anything but assigned books. So this year I decided “Hell, you know what? They’re right!” and made my new year’s resolution to read/listen to a book a week this year, no matter what I had to do to accomplish it. I love to read, but got away from it in my working years because there just isn’t enough time. I’m not one of these people who can read two pages at a time and be satisfied. I read “The DaVinci Code” in a single eight-hour sitting. During my job-hunt last year, I was at home one afternoon and cracked open “Love in the Time of Cholera”, finally looking up five hours later realizing I was getting hungry. I’m a marathoner when it comes to reading, so I hadn’t been making the time to do it. But that changed this year.
What got me back into reading in a big way, was writing my first novel in 2007. I wanted to be a better writer, and nothing will hone your skills by immersing yourself in the writing styles of lots of other authors. I started saying to hell with the dishes and the laundry while I was writing, and then editing, and now that’s sort of carrying over into my reading goals for the year. My house looks like it belongs to that flaky writer chick from the remake of “The Stepford Wives”, and my fridge varies between a black hole and a science experiment- but damn, I’m on my 20th book of the year, I am editing at lunch, reading in the bath, shopping at the end of the night, and blogging way the hell after my bedtime.
Some people know how to turn a dollar into two. I can turn an hour into three.
About the author
I’m a writer, artist and degenerate internet addict. I have a day job only to keep the lights on and the internet working. I’m not always PG, but I’m always A+ (not to mention humble.) Please do not try to make me think before coffee. It will only end in tears.
