From Amsterdam to Betelgeuse

I somehow ended up with a dutch audiobook version of Douglas Adams' classic sci fi story, The Hitch-hiker's guide to the Galaxy. I go through periods where I will have my ipod connected to the car's hifi, and it popped up on shuffle the other day.

Familiarity with the story, and the distinctive names of the characters made it possible to actually follow what was going on, at least some of the time. I seem to remember that linguists consider the Dutch and English languages to be close cousins, which also helps.

But it was an interesting experience, and one that allowed me to interact with the story in an unusual way. It made me think.

Still, like the cartoon at the top of this post, much of it was "blah blah blah blah blah blah Arthur blah blah blah blah Zaphod blah blah blah", mixed with semi garbled familiar words and phrases, like "teleporten" for example.

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Fragments.

Funny what you remember.

I was ten years old, and had recently moved house. New house, new school. I was in either 3rd or 4th year primary school, and the teacher, who's name eludes me right now (she was a female teacher, married to a male teacher with the same surname - Mrs Veats?) was reading us a story.

It was actually just a bit of a story. She would have read the preceding bit the previous day. She would read the next bit on the day after.

This is part of what happened when you were at primary school. Teachers would read you stories. I had Jonathan Livingstone Seagull read to me when I was perhaps 8 or 9 by Mr Dolby, my teacher in my previous school in North Wales, and I can still recall the sense of wonder I got, even if I didn't really understand it in the way I would now.

Anyway, on this occasion, Mrs Veats scared the living daylights out of me, because she ended that day's segment staring at the class, round eyed, and saying, "They weren't stars at all. (dramatic pause...) They were eyes."

There is nothing else I remember of this. Just that one fragment, and until about 10 minutes ago, I'd never thought I'd be able to expand on that. But of course, these days we have free and easy access to everything that ever was thanks to the internet, and typing that one phrase in revealed that the book it comes from is called "The Owl: A Novel of Extraordinary Fantasy" By Allan Sussman.

If you're ten years old, I strongly recommend it.

Edit: Just looking further, ths one was written in 2009, so it's not the one I thought it was. Ooops.

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On the Beach

Ever read "On the Beach" by Neville Chute?

It's a scary and dark story alright.

The premise of the book is that a major war has taken place in the Northern Hemisphere, and lethal amounts of radiation are gradually moving southwards. It follows the lives of a group of people living in Southern Australia as they move towards their inevitable fate. I cried buckets when I first read it.

There are few glimmers of hope in the tale. Part of the plot involves a nuclear submarine, which has been sent as far north as it can go, to find out if the radiation is clearing at very high latitudes. Pardon the spoiler, but that hope is snuffed out.

The characters are in denial. On one level they know the end is coming, and that they can do nothing to prevent it, so they act as if the threat doesn't exist. The American submarine commander buys presents for his dead family. A woman plants flowers in her garden that she will never see bloom.

There's a huge difference between waiting for the end of life on earth,, and waiting for a bloody huge financial car crash of course, but still,

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Bicycle diaries

I think about my education sometimes. I went to the University of Chicago for a while
after the Second World War. I was a student in the Department of Anthropology. At that time, they were teaching that there was absolutely no difference between anybody. They may be teaching that still.

Another thing they taught was that nobody was ridiculous or bad or disgusting. Shortly
before my father died, he said to me, 'You know-you never wrote a story with a villain in it.' I told him that was one of the things I learned in college after the war.

Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse 5

David Byrne doesn't have a bad word to say about anybody either. Not really. Rudolph Hess and Imelda Marcos both get a sympathetic hearing. That's not to say he doesn't have a point to make, but it's all the stronger for being subtle.

As you might expect, this thing has something to do with cycling. I don't know how far I've cycled in my life, but it certainly amounts to thousands of miles. This book/audiobook is something of an incentive to me to get out there and ride.

But really the cycling is just a vehicle, if you'll excuse the pun. David Byrne had something to say about sustainability, about social justice, about Art, about History. And about music.

I've always been a reader, but lately I've developed a taste for audiobooks. I "read" while I'm driving, or while I'm surfing the internet. Occasionally, I will still read a chapter of a real book last thing at night to help me drop off to sleep, but that tends to keep my wife awake, so unless I've gone to bed before her this doesn't happen often.

The life of Pi, The Handmaid's Tale, Slaughterhouse 5. All these and more have been absorbed through my ears while I've been doing other things.

I found out about the Bicycle Diaries because I'm on David Byrne's mailing list. I actually downloaded it several months ago, but it just sat in a zipped up folder on my laptop for a while until I got round to listenng to it. There are 11 chapters including a short introduction, that cover 10 cities. Get rid of the introduction, and you have 702 megabytes of audio data - Just enough to fit on a CD.

Because it's an audiobook, and because he's an arty chap, it's more than just the spoken word. Ambient background noises add weight to the words. Darkly, as when the ominous drone of jet engines forms a backdrop to a bit about living through the Cuban missile crisis as a child. Or humerously, with disjointed and quirky music when discussing a particularly avant garde Berlin artist who's "actions" sparked outrage and eventual arrest.

I found the background stuff in the Buenos Aires chapter to be particularly interesting. There's a lot of actual music in this one, and it's turned me on to things that I'd never heard before.

Specifically, Juana Molina's music jumped out and bit me. I want to hear more.

Here's one of her songs.



For more information, or to get hold of either the book or the audiobook, visit David Byrne's site, HERE.

FIRST LINES QUIZ!

As you'd expect, from such an erudite and educated person of taste and breeding as myself, I have bookcases (with books) and some of them are fairly well known. So here's a quiz, of first lines of books culled from my bookshelves...

See how you get on without Googling.

1. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
1984, George Orwell, Jim Bliss
2. What's it going to be then, eh?
A clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess, Jim Bliss
3. Sophie Amundsen was on her way home from school. Sophie's World, Jostein Gaarder, Larry T
   
4. When Mr Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.The Fellowship of the Ring, JRR Tolkien, Jim Bliss
5. .Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around it's outer walls. Titus Groan, Mervyn Peake, Larry T.
   
6. We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.
7. We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.
Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, Hunter S Thompson, Jim Bliss
8. There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. Jane Ayre, Charlotte Bronte, Larry T.
   
9. All this happened, more or less. Slaughterhouse 5, Kurt vonnegut, Jim Bliss
10. When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, Jim Bliss
11. Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living.
12. It was a pleasure to burn.Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, Jim Bliss
13. Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded yellow sun. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams, Jim Bliss
14. My suffering left me sad and gloomy.
15. It was 7 minutes after midnight.
16. The house was named "The Cave"
17. I was set down from the carrier's cart at the age of three; and there with a sense of bewilderment and terror my life in the village began. Cider With Rosia, Laurie Lee, Brenda
18. The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home.The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Graham, Jim Bliss
19. "They made a silly mistake, though" the Professor of History said, and his smile, as Dixon watched, gradually sank beneath the surface of his features at the memory.
20. The Primroses were over.
21. It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him. Catch 22, Joseph Heller, Jim Bliss
22. I am a large man, with big butcher's hands, great oak thighs, rock-jawed head, and massive, thick-lens glasses. The Dice Man, Luke Rhinehart, Jim Bliss
23. The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way towards the lagoon. Lord of the Flies, William Golding, Jim BLiss
24. Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down the road and this moocow that was coming down the road met a nicens little boy called baby tuckoo
25. For a week Mr R Childan had been anxiously watching the mail. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K Dick, Jim Bliss
    

Books

I've always been a reader, ever since I was a small child. My mum reckons I could read upside down when I was six years old. I put that down to being left handed. Or possibly to being upside down.

I do want to use this space to post a brief review or crit of whatever it is I happen to be reading right now. That's not as straightforward as it should be though, because for me, reading books isn't a strictly linear finish-one-start-another process. Nor are all of the books made of paper and ink. For example, I've been listening to a couple of audiobooks lately. They are "The Handmaid's tale" by Margaret Attwood, "The Life of Pi" by Yann Martell, and "Transition" by Iain (M) Banks. They typically form part of my driving soundtrack, particularly if I'm on a long journey, and I'm alone in the car.

What "Real" books get read depends on where I am and what I'm doing. Beside my bed I have a stack of books. Actually, "stack" gives too much of a sense of order. Beside my bed I have a jumble of books. Some read, some partly read. Some waiting to be read. I can't even say what they all are off the top of my head. I have just finished "Lord Foul's Bane", the first part of the first trilogy of Thomas Covenant, by Steven Donaldson. This is something I read about 20 years ago. I feel the same way about it now as I did then.

Donaldson handles the fantasy elements really well, although his protagonist is frequently infuriating. The bits of the book that are set in the "real" world are horribly stilted. They grate enormously, and I had to force my way through the first couple of chapters until Covenant stood atop Kevin's Watch, with his legs turning to jelly with vertigo and disorientation. It's got a lot in common with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, in that it's a black and white struggle between good and evil. And it's got a ring of power in it. And a map, which bears some resemblence to Middle Earth. There are places in Donaldon's Land that could be seen as analogues to locations in Middle Earth. Andelain is Lorien. Gravin Threndor/Mount Thunder is Mount Doom. the Characters too are of a familiar type. Lord Foul is Sauron. Lord Mhoram is the Hero Figure. Aragorn, but more complex. Covenant himself saves the book from being a straightforward monomyth.

I suppose I should read part 2 now, but I have other books that I want to get my teeth into. Jared Diamond's "The Third Chimpanzee" is gathering dust waiting for me to read it. George Monbiot's "Captive State" lies half read and ignored. I got very bored with it, I must admit. It is a few years old now, and the issues are well known to me. I've also got a book about space exploration winging it's way across the Atlantic as I type. I'd expect that to be here within a week or so.

There's also the toilet book.

Traditionally, in our lavvy, we have reading material that can be perused for brief satisfying periods of just a few minutes. One good one was an art book called "The Art of Looking Sideways". A recent one was a series of short essays and newspaper columns by Sandi Toksvig. It had it's moments but I wouldn't eat laxatives just so that I could go read it or anything.

Currently, Douglas Adams' "The restaurant at the end of the Universe" resides in the bathroom. I've read it to bits, and whatever random page I open it up at, it's too familiar, but I haven't got round to returning it to the bookshelf yet.

Fortunately, there's also a book of Calvin and Hobbes cartoon strips to read. Now they're excellent. I find myself linering far longer than I need to.