Audio, Re-reading favorites from LOONNG time ago, other ramblings on life

Those of you who have been around awhile and who have great memories will recall that I only started listening to audio books a couple of years ago. And I've enjoyed it. Oddly enough, my kids have gotten hooked and we listen in the car. Which means that I'm getting to enjoy children's books, too. And that led me to wonder if I could re-read old favorites from when I was a tween and teen.

I loved the WRINKLE IN TIME series but when I saw it available last year, it was read by the author. I listened to some snippets and I just didn't like the voice. My limited experience is that it's the rare author who can successfully read his/her work on a commercial level. Fair? No. Accurate? Possibly not -- the sample isn't large enough for good stats LOL. At any rate, our little library had a copy of A WRINKLE IN TIME read by Barbara Caruso (sp?) and I've just begun listening to it. I've also borrowed two unabridged versions of ANNE OF GREEN GABLES -- I wanted to know which narrator was best, so when I saw both at the library, I got both.

I'm kind of excited about re-reading old favorites in a new format. I'd probably still rather curl up on the couch and read to myself from a print copy but I'm not at the point in my life where I can do it. So, this is a little luxury for me. Like having milk chocolate b/c I can't get to the only store in the region that sells the dark chocolate. It's still chocolate, just not my first choice LOL.

Back to the ANNE OF GREEN GABLES thing and ramblings in general. There have been at least a couple of blog entries asking about scenes or lines from books that stick in your memory and there's one from RILLA OF INGLESIDE that has always stuck with me -- it's when one of the neighbor boys is telling what happened at school that day and all the other kids were wanting to beat up the Kaiser for starting the war (WWI) and he wanted to make the Kaiser a good man b/c then he'd understand how horrible he'd been and that would make him feel worser than anything. Another telling point about Montgomery's writing in general is also from that book -- when the 2nd son is killed in the war and how hard I cried for Anne and my best friend (a guy) was just shocked. "But I've known Anne for x number of years!" (30 or 40 years -- however old she was in that book minus the 10 years old she was at the beginning of the first). And my friend was going, "She's not a real person and you're not anywhere old enough to have known ANYONE for x number of years." Well, it sure felt like I had to me! Those characters are real to me. I totally understand how authors can think that their characters exist out there somewhere b/c as a reader I sure do and I only spend hours (in real time) with these people, not the weeks or months or years that an author spends with them.

Do you remember the episode from Star Trek: The Next Generation (I think it was called The Inner Light) in which Picard is zapped by a thing that they're examining on their ship monitors and he lives a whole life on this other planet -- he remembers his past but he's stuck on this planet so then he goes on to marry and have kids and grow old but in the end, this contraption out in space only had him unconcious and living that life for 25 minutes? That's kind of how it is with me and really good books -- it might be 2-4 hours of reading time but the really good ones make you feel like it's been the several days or weeks or months or years spend with the people in the book.

Okay, so that's enough rambling for now. Hope everyone has a good weekend.

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