What is the Meaning of It, Watson?

"What is the meaning of it, Watson?... What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever." -Sherlock Holmes, in The Cardboad Box, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

It Is Always 1895

I've been a Sherlockian since I was a child, but over the last year my interest has been renewed, I don't know exactly why. I rewatched the entire Granada tv series (which aired from 1984 to 1994), was given The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, edited by Leslie Klinger, for Christmas (I already owned The Annotated Sherlock Holmes, edited by William S. Baring-Gould), attended a meeting of the Red Circle Society of Washington D.C., and bought a subscription to The Baker Street Journal.

Vincent Starrett said it best: "Shall they not always live in Baker Street? Are they not there this moment? Outside, the hansoms rattle through the rain, and Moriarty plans his latest devilry. Within, the sea coal flames upon the hearth and Holmes and Watson take their well-won ease....So they still live for all that love them well: in a romantic chamber of the heart, in a nostalgic country of the mind, where it is always 1895."

And in sonnet form:

221B

Here dwell together still two men of note
Who never lived and so can never die:
How very near they seem, yet how remote
That age before the world went all awry.
But still the game’s afoot for those with ears
Attuned to catch the distant view-halloo:
England is England yet, for all our fears–
Only those things the heart believes are true.

A yellow fog swirls past the window-pane
As night descends upon this fabled street:
A lonely hansom splashes through the rain,
The ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet.
Here, though the world explode, these two survive,
And it is always eighteen ninety-five.

– Vincent Starrett

Unwept, Unhonored and Unsung

The last line of this excerpt from "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" by Sir Walter Scott has jangling around in my head recently. I couldn't remember what it was from. At last, the Google has come to my rescue. Here it is:

Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored , and unsung.

The Year of Recorded Books, pt. 2

April 9, 2008.

The Center Cannot Hold, My Journey Through Madness, Elyn R. Saks, 2007, narrated by Alma Cuervo.  This is the memoir of a remarkable intelligent and well-educated woman and her harrowing life with chronic schizophrenia.  I'm sorry to say that I found her so unsympathetic that I couldn't stand this book.  In fact I don't know why I made myself listen to the whole thing.

You Don't Love Me Yet, Jonathan Lethem, 2007, narrated by Jonathan Lethem.  The first Lethem novel I've read from the point of view of a female character.  Totally fascinating and original, as one expects from Lethem, about rock and roll, sex, and the nature of creativity (if I'm not going to far with that one) - what's to criticize?  I guess I will say it although I hate too - I want to trust Lethem more than myself.  But.  Our main characters is patently a fantasy female created by a man.  I want to give Lethem props for writing what feels like a bold book about a woman, but he's not able to get out of that box.  She writes rock songs, which she really cribs from listening to a creative man on the phone, forms a rock band, falls in love a lot and has a lot of sex with unattractive but interestingly artistic men.  The book tries to be /about/ this, or at least be arch or knowing about this, even as it does this, but that is what it does.  It was definitely a turn on to hear Lethem in his own voice describe sex scenes in my ear but I was left feeling a little dirty and disappointed.   Oh god, Jonathan, forgive me.  

April 17, 2008.  

The Trustee from the Toolroom - have already blogged about this one.   What a great book.

April 30, 2008.

The Bishop and the Beggar Girl of St. Germain, "A Father Blackie Ryan Mystery", Andrew M. Greeley, 2001.  Read by George Guidall.  A mystery set in Paris, narrated by the amateur detective, a Catholic priest from Boston.  A young priest disappears under mysterious circumstances - spoiler alert-- he turns out to have been a woman.  Not only did I find this book incredibly annoying in all other respects, especially in the simultaneously unbelievable and unsympathetic characters - even its cavalier-while-pretending-to-be-reverent treatment of the Catholic Church got under my skin.  How is this part of a succesful series?  Who reads these books?  Among other problems they seem suited neither to people who like or dislike the Catholic Church, and that's got to cover about everybody.  As a side note, George Guidall is second only to the great Frank Muller as a narrator. 

May 8, 2008

Tears of the Giraffe, No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency book 2, Alexander McCall Smith, 2000, read by Lisette Lecat.  I listened The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (book 1) read by the same narrator while in Cameroon.  These two books are very simple (in a great way) and note perfect.  Here is an example of a female lead character created flawlessly by a male author.  They are the story of Precious Ramotswae, a seemingly ordinary Botswanan who sets up a detective agency.  She solves a series of mysteries, which are connected in sometimes subtle and sometimes obvious ways, in a way reminiscent of Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple as opposed to Sherlock Holmes - character observation and intuition rather than forensic science or subtle deduction.  As in the Holmes canon, much of the pleasure is derived from repetitive, loving descriptions of the main characters and their home.  The stories are not only the most lovely character portraits but also a subtle, graceful tribute to the nation of Botswana and to African women and people.  The narrator is superb and perfectly suited to the books.  Almost too good to be true, I always feel as if McCall Smith is almost pulling one over on me.  (That said I read one of the Sunday Philosophy Club series, probably the eponymous first one, circa 2006, by the same author - centered around an amateur female detective in Edinburgh- and hated it, finding the characters unsympathetic and unbelievable.)

May 13, 2008

Cry, the Beloved Country, Alan Paton, 1948, read by Maggie Soboil.  I took a copy of this book with me when I went to South Africa and never read it.  I was blown away when I listened to it.  A deserved and heart-breaking classic about a black country priest in South Africa who travels to the big city when his son dies; he finds his son's mistress and son and rescues them. The narrator had the most beautiful South African accent and did a perfect job.  Apparently a more popular version is read by Michael York, a man whom I loved in Cabaret but who ranks a my least favorite audiobooks narrator of all time, having botched The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  

The Year of Recorded Books, pt. 1

Here are all the books I rented from Recorded Books, starting with the date I rented them.  Will split this into multiple entries or it will get too long.

Jan. 23, 2008.

Mariel of Redwall, book 4 of the Redwall series by Brian Jacques, 1991

Salamandastron, book 5 of the Redwall series, 1992.  Both books narrated by Brian Jacques and read by a full cast.  The Redwall books are a real pleasure and the series of audiobooks narrated by Jacques and a full cast which includes his son add another layer of enjoyment.  My favorite parts are that all the songs are sung with instruments.  I loved the Redwall books as a kid and my parents took me a Jacques book signing once.  He speaks with a thick British accent and also as if he has a potato in his mouth, and is a born storyteller, the perfect narrator for his books.

My Sister's Keeper, Jodi Picoult, 2004, narrated by .  I got this book because a friend wanted me to read it.  Unfortunately, it's a strong contender for My Least Favorite Novel of All Time.  I wouldn't read another by this unfortunately prolific and bestselling author if you paid me.  The story is told from multiple first person perspectives and narrated by various readers, a cutesy device that didn't really pay off for me, although I suppose it helps one keep track of which character is talking.  But if the book is well written and interesting, why would you need help with this?  Anyway, it's the story of a girl who is born with some sort of fatal disease.  Her parents have their second child genetically engineered to be a donor to keep the first one alive; a third child is neglected.  The story focuses on the emotional problems of the three, as teenagers, as well as their parents and some lawyers who get involved when the donor child takes the parents to court for forcing her to donate.  The lawyers, coincidentally, were in love as teenagers and had a horrible breakup from which neither has recovered; they are reunited due to the case, as if the primary plot weren't annoying enough.  Every single event, plot twist, backflash and character is hideously contrived and cliched, though not quite so much as the prose style.   

 

Motherless Brooklyn, Jonathan Lethem, 1999, narrated by Frank Muller.  I started this book while waiting for the plane to take me to Philadelphia for the first leg of our trip to Cameroon for our Peace Corps service, and reread it later in Cameroon.  It was originally recommended to me by my dad, who got me into Lethem, one of my favorite writers.  It's a fantastic novel though to flawed by to be Great, narrated by Lionel Essrog, and orphan with Tourette's who works for a detective agency run by a small time mobster, his patron Frank Minna.  The first chapter - in which Lionel eats six White Castle burgers while on a stakeout - is unforgettable.  (And also stirs up an unbearable longing for White Castles.)  The amazing Tourette's studded narration is amazing and makes this book a must-read (God help me with this book-review-speak) and Lethem's apparent vendetta against Zen buddhism is also good for a sympathetic laugh; I only hope it wouldn't hurt Leonard Cohen's feelings too much.  Sort of an homage to the classical noir detective novel, really its own thing.  

March 18, 2008

Mossflower, book 2 in the Redwall series by Brian Jacques, 1988

The Bellmaker, book 7 in the Redwall series, 1994, both read by Brian Jacques and a full cast

I listened to both of these while driving to Williamsburg, Virginia for a long weekend with my mom.  I enjoyed these too, but four was enough for me take a break from Redwall for a good long while.  The series is good but you can tell he was making his living cranking out one a year; Redwall was the best and after a while they get quite repetitive.

  

Audiobooks

I learned to love audiobooks from my parents.  When I was little, they owned a collection of radio dramas on tape which they may have had since before I was born, most of which I believe were produced by a company called The Mind's Eye.  I can't find most of these online, but I remember what the covers of the tapes looked like and most matched.

The Hobbit, definitely the Mind's Eye, came out in 1979.

The Wind in the Willows

Emma

The Hound of the Baskervilles

The Adventure of the Six Napoleons

There may have been more but those are all I can remember at the moment.  

I believe the actor who did Toad's voice also did the voice of Stapleton, which I found cool but distracting.  I think there was more actor overlap as well.

Anyway I absolutely loved these tapes.  I literally wore the Hobbit out.  I can still here the voices of the narrator and the actors when I read those books and stories.   Just as I listen to audiobooks while cleaning the house today,  I would listen to them while I cleaned my room, which is probably something I learned from my father.

My father is an addictive audiobook listener, and he does it primarily when he does housework, when he drives and when he does "projects" - which for him includes a range of activities including home improvement, construction, carpentry, art, and arts and crafts.  I think maybe he first really got into listening to books on tape at the same time he got into counted cross stitch, sometime in the early eighties when I was a small child, and boy are these two activities certainly made for each other.  He probably discovered that he could get books on tape from the public library, of which he was an avid customer.   He was big into putting books and books on tape "on hold" - the primary advantage being that they would ship the books from other libraries in the system to your local library, so you had a wider selection of what you could get, and you could preselect using the computerized card catalogue.  I think there was a limit to how many books on tape you could have out at a time, so he had a careful system of finishing a book on tape just in time to turn in and pick up the on waiting; this often involved listening to the end of a story sitting in the car in the library parking lot.  

All or most of the books on tape in the library system were produced by Recorded Books, the best of the audiobook companies, still in business today.  All their books are unabridged - my father, like me, will not abide an abridged book on tape -- and they employed the man who is commonly recognized as the greatest audiobook narrator of all time, as well as being my father's favorite, Frank Muller.   (Muller was in a motorcycle accident in 2001 and was so severely injured that he stopped narrating; he died in 2008.)  

My dad primarly used a walkman for listening to the books on tape and was constantly wearing them out; as he discovered, the tape for a book on tape has much longer tape on it than a musical tape and will more quickly kill the motor on a cassette player.  I can remember him often having to take a tape itself apart, tiny screws and all, to fix the tape itself when it got stuck or tangled. He seems like the only man in the world who have attempted this - with a tape owned by the library, no less-- much less succeeded, which he always did.  He would even use a walkman while driving, which drove my mother crazy; I think he may have been pulled over for it by the local cops more than once.  (My father was frequently pulled over the by the cops when I was a kid for various reasons, usually speeding, but never so far as I know got a ticket; he had a gift for dealing with policemen.)  My mother also insists that the constant walkman use caused him to suffer permanent hearing loss and she would nag him about it.  I think she eventually succeeded in getting him to switch to a boombox and the car cassette player most of the time.  

So I'm sure I got the idea from him, and maybe because I'm his daughter and we have extremely similar personalities, I too obsessively listen to audiobooks.  Actually I don't understand why everybody doesn't; it turns the drudgery of long car trips, the commute to work, and housework into pleasure, and also, I think there are few pleasures greater, if any, than being read to.  When I was in college, I would listen to books on tape when I cleaned my tiny dorm room; in the Peace Corps I would listen to the very occasional one I could get my hands on when washing our clothes by hand.  When Nate and I got back to America and moved into our first apartment, we were across the street from Beatley, Alexandria, Virginia's central public library, so I was able to rent books on tape easily - by that time they had become books on CD.  I don't think I used the CD walkman from my teenagerhood much; I switched to a small CD walkman Nate bought me, and we had a CD player in our car (a wedding present from a friend who worked at Crutchfield, and we received few better).   Then we moved to D.C. and I signed up to get audiobooks through the mail from Recorded Books.  I started with the two a month plan but that proved grossly inadequate so I switched to four-at-a-time.   Now that era, too, is at an end; I finally have an iphone, the sleak modern version of my father's walkman; there is no tiny motor, no yards of tape for it to turn.  I'm cancelling my account with Recorded Books in favor of getting my audiobooks in MP3 format from audible.com.  No more finishing the story in the parking lot of the post office.   There are two drawbacks; audible books are still a bit expensive for my taste, although the selection is magnificent and the books are always at hand; and boy, that iphone doesn't hold its charge.

Ordeal

Ordeal, by Nevil Shute, published in Britain under the title What Happened to the Corbetts, 1939.  I couldn't get into this book when I started reading it but then listened to it on Recorded Books, read by Ian Stuart, was able to get into it and loved it.  

(I have much more patience with a book, even a book that's bad all the way through, if it's an audiobook.  When I was a kid I would force myself to finish a book once I had started reading it no matter what, which lead me to waste a lot of my childhood - I think because I had more faith in books.  If someone published it, it must be worthwhile!  Now I have more faith in myself and less in the publishing industry, so I've learned to be able to let go and stop reading a book if I don't like it.  My time also seems a lot more precious now that I'm an adult.  Audiobooks I'm more willing to put up with because I'm always doing something else (usually housecleaning or driving) while I'm listening, and I think the entertainment factor of having someone read it out loud makes it more bearable.  Also.. there's almost always something else to read at hand if I don't like a book, but I might be stuck with only one audiobook; better a bad one than nothing to listen to.  That's somewhat changed now thanks to my iphone, but more on that later.)  

Anyway, Ordeal was a book that Shute wrote right before WWII, in which he predicted what it would be like when the Germans bombed England, with such amazing accuracy that I don't think you would guess it was science fiction rather than a historical account of the war unless someone told you.  It's the account of an ordinary middle class family - father, mother, two young children and an infant -- who have to leave their bombed out house and town and end up sailing their small yacht to France so that the mother and children can take a ship to Canada and safety and so that the father can enlist.  That's it, that's the whole story, and it's told in the typical, beautiful, uniqe understated Shute way; a story of ordinary people who become heroes while remaining themselves under extraorindary circumstances.  Good lord, how the typical language of book reviews fails to express what a book is really like!  Well, it's an awesome book and Ian Stuart does a pretty good job narrating except for not even trying to do the little girl's voice justice.