reading – 100 of the Greatest Books Read and Reviewed

Audio books and reading

There are a lot of ways to consume books these days. I still have a preference for the old fashioned style of paper and text but then reading electronically has tremendous benefits especially when traveling. It is very easy to throw a couple of books onto a Kindle/Nook or some other reader and certainly much easier that packing War and Peace and Middlemarch into your carry on luggage!

However the other important way to appreciate books is via audiobook. This may seem like cheating. It’s not really reading in the strictest sense but I love audiobooks for a number of reasons:

Convenience – sometimes one doesn’t want to read or it is impossible to do so. The classic for me is car journeys. Even 15 minutes in the car provides the time to reacquaint oneself with a story. I tend you put audiobooks on my phone and I can pipe it through the car audio and away we go. Obviously there are other opportunities such as the treadmill or walking the dogs where losing oneself in a book definitely makes time pass faster
Story telling – most of the readers, at least the readers of classic fiction, are actors. Often they are well known actors but always they bring a great deal of life to the story. They use voices for the characters, they have great inflection and nuance in their story telling and this really brings books to life. I am not sure how easy I would have found Don Quixote to complete without an audiobook
Encouragement to read – There is definitely enjoyment in the printed word. There is nothing to stop you reading a book you have previously listened to. The two genres are so different they both add to the overall experience
Widening your reading time – personally I normally have at least 2 books on the go at any time; one that I am reading, the other that is on audio. It is perfectly possible to read two stories at once (we tend to follow multiple series on TV for example) but it makes it easier when they are in two different formats
Speed – not all of us are speedy readers. I have tried to follow the lead set by Tim Ferris on speed reading and it has helped a little, but still, listening to a book may well be faster than reading it. Right now I am listening to Bleak House and the audio is over 48 hours long. I know it would take me longer to physically read this complex book than that!

There are, of course, some cons to audiobooks and this is what I have found:

It feels like cheating – It really isn’t reading in the strictest sense
It can be hard to follow plot nuances – in books with complex plots and a multitude of story lines and many characters (Dickens is the classic example) it is sometimes necessary to flip back in the narrative and re-familiarize oneself with these details. This is much harder to to on an audiobook
The reader is all important – some are better than others, but generally they are all very good and it is a matter of personal taste. I wouldn’t want to listen to a reader for 48 hours unless I was enamored with their reading style.
Cost – Axis 360 audiobooks can be a little more pricey than written text but if this is an issue, one can often take audiobooks from the library these days using the application which I strongly recommend and use frequently.

I highly recommend audiobooks – they drastically reduce your reading downtime! There are a couple of sites I recommend although there are a many options and they are worth perusing. These are the ones I tend to use:

Audible – this is an Amazon company and you can access their books from the main site too

audiobooks.com

Both offer free trials and free books to get started!

Struggling with imagery, metaphor, allegory etc

I have long been an avid reader of nonfiction. Such books have a great deal to teach us about history, society, thought etc. but often times, they are fairly straightforward. Histories of particular events are of especial interest to me, as they place the reader in a given time and, as LP Hartley famously opined: “The past is a different country: they do things differently there”.

However the degree of interpretation needed to read such texts is not the same as is necessary, or at least desirable when reading fiction. Much of the fiction I have hitherto consumed has been popular works (and there is nothing wrong with that) of the Tom Clancy type, or at least easy to read works such as Sherlock Holmes (for which I still have a great soft spot). It soon became clear to me that reading classic literature for enjoyment necessitates a deeper appreciation of nuance, as well as an appreciation of the story itself. In short, I was and am a beginner when it comes to reading these works.

In an effort to improve my abilities in this area, I picked up an interesting book:

It is an easy read and explains much, in top level terms, about classic literary styles and techniques. For example have you ever noticed how many literary figures succumb to either consumption or to drowning? There is a reason for that! I learned a lot, including what I don’t know! You can read a review of this book on my Goodreads profile.

It is a challenge for me. Sometimes imagery is easy to spot. In O’Neil’s wonderful play “A Long Day’s Journey into Night” the fog that frequently shrouds proceedings is akin to the mists that the main characters are fumbling through. However in many cases the imagery and message is harder to identify. Often times there is social commentary and satire built into the prose. There may be references to other classical works or the Bible (“Moby Dick” being a great example of the latter).

I am still struggling with this but it makes the reading experience so much richer and, as with most things, practice improves skills. There are so many stories, they are often deliberately rehashed and due homage paid to those that went before. I am always looking for these references and it is very fun to do so. I have a long way to go but, as always, the journey is as important as the destination.

Cutting the cord

How much TV do you really watch I wonder?

Is it worth what you pay for it?

When we moved into our home about 12 years ago, with relatively young kids, it wasn’t at all a question of whether we installed a TV service but rather: “which one?” There were a number of choices for broadcast TV but we were still in the days of Blockbuster and DVDs so streaming services were, as yet, unheard of.

We chose a satellite provider and I seem to recall the cost was around $60 a month. By this summer, that fee had grown over the years, without adding any channels, HD etc. to over $110. Here’s the rub though: we NEVER seemed to watch it. We have no interest in reality TV and/or most of the serials and miniseries. We can get news online and honestly, with the broadcast news these days, it is more and more partisan talking heads than hard news anyway.

So, after some deliberation, we cut the service. We no longer have live TV in the house and we haven’t missed it for a second. I sometimes wonder whether live sports would be worth having but it isn’t worth paying for all the other dross along with it and, frankly, most sports channels are talking heads rehashing the argument over whether Lebron or Jordan are the greatest ever.

We still have Netflix and Hulu, and that gives us more than enough but, joy of joys, there is more time for other things like socializing over a meal, playing games or, of course, reading.

There’s no judgement here. If you watch a ton of TV and get value from it, great. But paying over $100 and never watching is foolishness, at least it was for us. There are too many books to read, not enough time. TV is a time suck and most of it isn’t very good anyway!