As I drive around on errands, I automatically listen to an audiobook or a Great Course (quite a lot cheaper on Audible). Audible.com was purchased recently by Amazon and they have begun trying to get customers to buy both the Kindle version and the audiobook version of the same story. They are quite proud of the Whispersync service that tries to enable perfect jumping from the Kindle spot in the book to the same point in the narration. I don't use that service since I share my Kindle archives with other family members and we might be confused.
Being a member of Audible.com gives me two audio books a month for $23, a very good price. There are times when I don't get around to listening to two books a month but I have them waiting, both in the library on the site and in iTunes that I play through an iPod.
Recently, I began listening to the wonderful language and casual ideas P.G. Wodehouse threw out in his 1915 book of 100 years ago, listed on Audible as "Something Fresh." Audible.com offers the book narrated by Jonathan Cecil, who should be the default required narrator for anything British, except that he is deceased. The language is just what I love, just what gives me a chuckle and another.
Among the compensations of advancing age is a wholesome pessimism, which, though it takes the fine edge off of whatever triumphs may come to us, has the admirable effect of preventing Fate from working off on us any of those gold bricks, coins with strings attached, and unhatched chickens, at which ardent youth snatches with such enthusiasm, to its subsequent disappointment. As we emerge from the twenties we grow into a habit of mind that looks askance at Fate bearing gifts. We miss, perhaps, the occasional prize, but we also avoid leaping light-heartedly into traps.
Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville) (2011-03-24). Something New (p. 99). . Kindle Edition.
Who would think to write "wholesome pessimism"?
Note that the quote says nothing about the story or the characters or the plot. Like Mozart's music, some of the best parts are the quiet transitions that lie between the features. I admit this is quite a transition that actually amounts to a feature of importance.
I could not find the book in Kindle. I lowered myself to ordering it in paper, that stuff from squashed, cooked trees. Handy stuff but not as compact as an electronic file in a Kindle or iPad reading app. Wanting to quote some of the charming wording, I began again pestering the Amazon site, my paper copy and my brain. Then, searching out who this reluctant publisher dragging his feet on the business of converting to an easily searched Kindle version, I noticed the information one finds on the reverse of the title page in a well-made book, "published in 1915 as Something New." I jumped to my computer and not only is the book right there in the Kindle store but it is free! You know, like me, it's considered old and of no consequence. Grab it today before they change the price.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
