Listening

It’s summer, and so I’ve started reading The Hobbit to the kids before bedtime. Even the youngest is entranced, her imagination exploding with hobbits and dwarves. I love to read beautiful writing, well-crafted sentences, dramatic passages, poetic phrases. It’s a joy; and as a writer, I try to learn something from the work, even as I say the words aloud to the captive audience of my children.

My parents read to us before bed, and I loved it. As soon as I got to college and learned about author readings, I was entranced! What a joy to hear the words of beloved writers spoken aloud. Similarly, I love audiobooks–to sit or walk or drive and listen as the stories come alive. It feels decadent, because I’m doing none of the work, just listening to the luscious words and watching the pictures in my mind’s eye.

Recently, I’ve been on a short story kick, so I looked up short story anthologies that were available as audiobooks. I wanted to share two that I really enjoyed. The stories are excellent and well-narrated:

The Best of Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine, a “super-duper triple issue, comprised ten key selections (most of the contents, actually) of FSF‘s September issue and the forthcoming double October/November issue” 2003. All very different, there are some real gems in those issues, including stories by Gene Wolfe, Joe Haldeman, Terry Bisson, and more.

Naked City, edited by the wonderful Ellen Datlow, includes stories by Peter Beagle, John Crowley, Ellen Kushner, Jeffrey Ford, and so many others. Maybe it’s from growing up in Chicago, but I love stories that feature cities as characters or integral backdrops, and this anthology has a fantastic range of responses to the “naked city.” I enjoyed all of them, but I think my favorite may be Delia Sherman’s “How the Pooka Came to New York City.”

While not a short story, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Neil Gaiman’s newest novel The Ocean at the End of the Lane (which recently reached #1 on the New York Times Best Seller List!)

I already had the pleasure of reading the novel (you can read my Goodreads review here), but I was especially looking forward to hearing it read.

If you have attended one of Neil’s readings or listened to an audiobook that he narrated, you quickly get the music of his voice in your head. I think that it gets to the point where you can read the words and hear him there in your mind’s ear, because he is as much a storyteller as he is a writer. In words and performance, he knows how and when to build tension, to make you feel unexpected and conflicting emotions, to surprise you, to scare you, and to create a genuine empathy for characters who come to life in brilliant dialog.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is one of his finest so far, and I could not wait to hear Neil read it aloud. I was not disappointed. It’s wonderful. If people loved the novel, they will cherish the audiobook, because the intimacy, honesty, and raw nostalgia of this mythic, yet very human, tale are even more compelling when listening to Neil’s reading.

xxo

A Good Story Can…

pass time,
open doors,
shift paradigms,
introduce unforgettable characters,
temporarily chase away stress and sadness,
hold the imaginations of three small children during a long car ride to and from school.

For the last two weeks, mornings have been a bit brutal—waking the kids at 6 to leave at 7 and arrive sometime before 8 (when school begins). It’s a 45-minute commute to school from the apartment (as we count down to the closing on our new house).

Our family grew accustomed to long walks and stroller rides during our time in Frankfurt’s Westend (when we opted not to have a car). However the kids are not used to long car rides. Long plane rides? Yes. Car rides? No.

We usually do a lot of singing, seat-dancing, and I-spying to pass the time in the car. In preparation for school, however, I decided to buy a few children’s audiobooks for the 30-45 minute drive.

While we have been reading to the kids since they were tiny (we’re currently reading Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden), I wasn’t sure how the audiobooks would be received.

They were a hit!

We began with a set of Dr. Seuss stories, and we’re now nearly finished with E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web. This version has White reading his book, and although I’ve read Charlotte’s Web countless times, I think I’m enjoying the audiobook as much as the kids (especially my oldest).

I am surprised at how difficult it is to track down kids’ audiobooks. Does anyone else listen to kids’ books on cd?

We have a few more weeks until we close and move in to the new house. Any audiobook suggestions?

One Book

“Walden is the only book I own, although there are some others unclaimed on my shelves. Every man, I think, reads one book in his life, and this one is mine. It is not the best book I ever encountered, perhaps, but it is for me the handiest, and I keep it about me in much the same way one carries a handkerchief – for relief in moments of defluxion or despair.” (White in The New Yorker, May 23, 1953)

A friend recently invited me to be interviewed on a new literary site (info to come later). He asked me a bunch of questions about reading and writing. When thinking about the answers, I wanted to look back at books I own, but I couldn’t find many of them. Right now my books are scattered around the world, and I feel slightly unsettled because of this.

Some of my books are en route from Germany. Others are in Chicago, while others are in storage. I don’t like having them in three different places.

This got me thinking about beloved books and the above White quotation.

I would have to say that the most constant literary touchstone for me over the last 15 years has been Louise Glück’s First Four Books Of Poems.

Other books have moved me greatly and have shaped my writing and thinking more, but I find myself returning to the poems in this collection again and again like comfort food for thought.

So I wonder, what’s your “one book”?