Tuesday, May 08, 2012
More Books on Tape
Finished Fountainhead awhile back & had meant to complete my review. Obviously Roark's decision to help Peter was a plot contrivance, just so he'd blow up the building & be able to deliver his (Rand's) speech. Howard was too smart not to realize that a government project would be subject to the whims of various bureaucrats. Fountainhead is the type of novel that books-on-CD was invented for. Once Gail began a self-justifying speech, the next track button on the steering wheel justified its invention.
Slaughterhouse Five. Another novel I hadn't read since high school. What struck me first was how short the novel itself is. A book can be printed with lots
of
space
so seem to be longer, but that's not possible with audiobooks. Here, the book only took 5 CD's and that includes the author's intro, which took almost the entire first CD. The final CD ends with an interview/dialogue on the penultimate track (must have been from 2003 since Kurt mentions the director of Slaughterhouse Five having died recently); the final track shows what creativity can be done with audiobooks - Kurt read the famous section about a war film being seen in reverse (believe that a scene from Gravity's Rainbow was an implicit criticism of that scene - nice thought, but every bomb destroys that fantasy) with overlaid club music. Overall enjoyed the book, but must consider it a novella masquerading as a novel (same with To Kill a Mockingbird).
Call of the Wild - clearly a novella. Only lasts for 3 CD's, and the first bit is a brief bio of London. This book clearly showed the vagueries of memory. The only scene that i recalled from the entire book was Buck's fight with the other dog for dominance - Buck's successful attack is to fake for the shoulder and bite the front legs to break the bones. Otherwise, it was truly contrived to have that owner give him up & the final owner die from an Indian attack, just so Buck can have no human ties & answer The Call of the Wild.
Ulysses - last chapter only. Best taken in small doses - perhaps while reading along with the book.
Now if my queue position for Jobs would only increment a bit quicker from its current 122, I'd have another book to blog about.
Slaughterhouse Five. Another novel I hadn't read since high school. What struck me first was how short the novel itself is. A book can be printed with lots
of
space
so seem to be longer, but that's not possible with audiobooks. Here, the book only took 5 CD's and that includes the author's intro, which took almost the entire first CD. The final CD ends with an interview/dialogue on the penultimate track (must have been from 2003 since Kurt mentions the director of Slaughterhouse Five having died recently); the final track shows what creativity can be done with audiobooks - Kurt read the famous section about a war film being seen in reverse (believe that a scene from Gravity's Rainbow was an implicit criticism of that scene - nice thought, but every bomb destroys that fantasy) with overlaid club music. Overall enjoyed the book, but must consider it a novella masquerading as a novel (same with To Kill a Mockingbird).
Call of the Wild - clearly a novella. Only lasts for 3 CD's, and the first bit is a brief bio of London. This book clearly showed the vagueries of memory. The only scene that i recalled from the entire book was Buck's fight with the other dog for dominance - Buck's successful attack is to fake for the shoulder and bite the front legs to break the bones. Otherwise, it was truly contrived to have that owner give him up & the final owner die from an Indian attack, just so Buck can have no human ties & answer The Call of the Wild.
Ulysses - last chapter only. Best taken in small doses - perhaps while reading along with the book.
Now if my queue position for Jobs would only increment a bit quicker from its current 122, I'd have another book to blog about.
