Something Old, Nothing New: Obscure Musicals: KEAN

Something Old, Nothing New: Obscure Musicals: KEAN

Poetry in my mind speaks of Shakespeare plays ( not really poetry?), Robert Frost's poem on fog, Robert Burns' "..Grow old along with me...", "The Song of Hiawatha" and that's about it. But as I have enjoyed reading works by authors Christopher Hitchens liked as mentioned in his writing and interviews, I decided to look up poems by James Fenton, one of his inner circle. I was rewarded with not only lovely accessible (to me) poems but their audio versions read by James Fenton himself :

 http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=5580.

I don't say I'm hooked or will seek out much more, but I am more open to new poetry than I was before.

Which are my favorite books?

This is a question that is often asked and it sounds reasonable but it is not easy for me to answer. Since I have 3 hours  per day on my commutes to and from work, I read many books, So many, that I forget either what they were about or if I even read them. That doesn't prevent any of these as being among my favorites. In fact I had forgotten to list "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell" bySusanna Clarke, but it was one of my favorites.

Of course when I can recall lines from the book, as in the line in "The Lacuna" by Barbara Kingsolver where the character Frida Kahlo  praises  young self doubting Harrison Sheppard saying he definitely is a writer .."I see a boy who chews off the ends of his fingers and bleeds ink.”, I would say  is it is one of my favorites.

Now I feel that any book where I think about the characters after I finish reading it  is one I really liked. That includes books I felt I did not really like while reading them. Is that contradictory? Well, I guess it will take some more writing in this blog to help me clarify this. Or not.

Special Audiobook

April 20 will see a memorial service held in NY City for the late Christopher Hitchens. I have seen a few people on my train rides to and from work reading his memoir "Hitch-22" and I  told one of them to get his audiobook. It is read by Hitchens himself, and to me the book would be quite less a read without Hitch's voice. I take the liberty of calling him 'Hitch'  after having listened to so many of his friends such as Ian McEwan, call him that in the many videos I watched of them commenting on Hitchens,

In fact before I ever hear of Hitchens, I had already become an admirer of author Ian McEwan, who was, I later learned, one of Hitch's closest friends and have listened to many of McEwan's audiobooks. I recommend them all! 

Through Hitchen's book and my subsequent casual research into his life, I became interested in reading books by other authors who were mentioned by Hitchens. So I read (listened to) books by Julien Barnes, Salmion Rushdie and Martin Amis. And then by Kingsley Amis (Martins father, and renowned author).

So this is another way I find my audiobooks -  friends of authors I like. Each book or author seems to lead to another.

Just found 2 books

My hobby these days is trying to find good books to listen to. I look at book reviews from the NY Times, the Guardian, NPR and of course, Amazon, and my success rate, that is, the percent of books I start listening to that I actually finish, is about 80 per cent. I find if I don't actually pay for the book I am more likely to stop after an hour if I feel I don't like it. Life is too short and there are so many books.

Of course I feel a bit guilty, not finishing ( or even getting half way through) "Midnight's Children" by Salman Rushdie or "Wolf Hall" by Hillary Mantel. They are universally acclaimed novels so I should like them, especially because they are Booker Prize winners, which I usually like. Sometimes I do go back to them, so, maybe, someday.

I just looked in my desk drawer at work and found Graham Greene's "Brighton Rock" (8 CD's) and Thomas H. Cook's "The Quest for Anna Klein" (10 CD's). I am now converting each set to an mp3 file to listen on my iPhone. These were obtained from my public library.

So I always have a couple of books readyl.

OK, off to pop disc 2 into my computer for conversion.

Today's read

I just passed the middle (disc 7 of 13 discs) of "Any Human Heart" by William Boyd. It is essentially a man's life story told as entries in his diaries from 1923 -1975 or so. So it is a bit sprawling and slow but very pleasant to listen to, since the author and the narrator are both British. I like the introspection of the character and the variety of his life situations. I get a sense of how he felt in school, Oxford, of course, as a writer in the 20's, and then as minor spy during WWII. The writing is witty and natural.

As an aside, I purchased this audiobook through www.Audible.co.uk, and it is not available at Audible.com (the US branch). I just browsed www.Audible.co.uk and found a few more books I would like to read that are not available in the US. I am curious if anyone else has purchased audiobooks from the UK.

I love audiobooks

I inadvertently deleted my first post. I t continues: which was offset by my least favorite, "Love is Eternal" about Abe Lincoln's loves.

Be that as it may I have rediscovered the joys of reading through audiobooks. I know there is a view that listening isn't reading. I suggest you try an audiobook of a book you love.