As I write this, my primary laptop is on the fritz and my new MP3 player hasn’t arrived yet. So I’m making do with a Win98 machine and library books on tape. I feel like I’m living like an animal, a twentieth century animal.
It’s shocking just how much of the happiness I’ve experienced over the last eight years has not been due to any improvements in my personal lifestyle so much as improvements in technology. Or perhaps it’s just that with podcasts like EscapePod and "The Red Panda" constantly whispering in my ear, I don’t have time to think about how little my lifestyle has improved.
At any rate, it’s vitally important to have something to listen to while I’m at work, slaving away with the pies and the cookie doughs, or I’m stuck in the agony of my own thoughts.
So here’s a partial list of the library books on tape and CD that we’ve been burning through.
Shrub: The short but happy political life of George W. Bush
by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose
This was published just before Dubya proved how awful America really was at heart back in 2000. It’s read by Molly Ivins herself, as there is no human being who could have matched her sarcastic Texas drawl as she brings her dry wit to the many questionable dealings of the smallest Bush during the Vietnam War and his so-called entrepreneurial days. I remember listening to this during the early days of the war in Iraq and being surprised at just how blatantly Dubya was paid off by his daddy’s rich friends in failed business venture after failed business venture. It was a good review of why the last eight years were such a bad idea that could have been avoided. And it was good to hear Molly Ivins voice again. We miss you, Molly.
Geronimo: A biography
by Alexander B. Adams
Apparently as much as Geronimo hated the Americans, he really seriously hated the Mexicans. After reading about his long life of cultural misunderstandings, double-crosses, and bloody guerrilla warfare in the desert wastes of the South West, it was good to see that at the end of it all everyone learned how to get along and just be friends. Just kidding, Geronimo was imprisoned and forced to live his last days as a public freak.
Undead and Unappreciated
by Mary Janice Davidson
read by Nancy Wu
I appear to be listening to this series in reverse order. There’s lots of vampires and shopping, and coy references to Minneapolis suburbs that none of my co-workers understood. Nancy Wu’s voice is particularly shrill and annoying, which fits the narrative character perfectly. As chick lit, there’s many interesting cultural insights to be gained from this book. For instance, chicks worry about matching their bras to their panties, something that I’ve never worried about for an instance.
Battlefield Earth
by L. Ron Hubbard
read by Roddy McDowall
Amazingly, this book was even worse than the movie. There are no battlefields. The last half of the book is a bunch of Scotsmen (!), in kilts no less, dickering with alien bankers over the fate of the Earth’s mortgage. I wish to God I was making that up. Roddy McDowall goes all out though, with a Groundskeeper Willie Scottish accent and gruff alien voices for the Psychlos.
Valhalla Rising
by Clive Cussler
If there’s any fictional character more manly than Dirk Pitt, government scuba diver, I want to know who it is. By now, we have a pretty good idea how a Dirk Pitt novel is set up. There’s a flashback to a historical shipwreck, then a modern shipwreck, then Dirk Pitt scuba dives his way into a villainous lair, he teams up with his Italian buddy to murder scads of henchmen, somebody comments about how colorful Pitt’s eyes are, there’s a wildly improbable action sequence, followed by an even more improbable one, they dive a shipwreck, and then the villain dies. The way to differentiate this novel from the ones with the Antarctic Nazis or the Chinese immigrants on the Mississippi, is by the Fokker Tri-plane dogfight over Manhattan. The best part of Valhalla Rising is where they explained that the villain was so bad because he was trying to get the price of oil up over $100 a barrel. And part of his crazy plan was to blow up the World Trade Center. How improbable can a book get, sheesh.
