People of the Audio Book

So instead of writing for 6-7 hours today as planned, I’ve only just snuck in a single submission.

Ah well, so it goes. With reading print, computer work and watching TV off the menu, and not being up for much in the way of outings, I grabbed my iPod, which is chock full of audio books, and tottered out into the backyard. Reclining on the Xmas swing, with a cat or two for company, I finished listening to the last couple of hours of People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks, a truly brilliant, fictional account of the Sarajevo Haggadah. I love Geraldine's work and how she’s not bogged down in one time, place or theme. Each novel is different. She moves through history (in this particular novel, she moves steadily backwards through the centuries) and makes the people come alive, gives us the good, the flawed and the very, very evil of human nature and the low-down on the political machinations of each era, and amazingly, she does all this without leaving the reader feeling that the world might actually be better off without the lot of us.

In between these bursts of fiction, taking the recommended ear breaks every 30-40 minutes so I don’t end up as a deaf old woman in my dotage, I napped, patted cats, or pottered in the garden, doing a spot of wonky leaf-sweeping and pot plant tidying up, making an effort to enjoy the unscheduled break even though I could clearly hear my keyboard calling out for me...

Anyway, on days like this, thank goodness for audio books, with their dulcet tones delivering stories to people who, for whatever reason, don’t read print, or can’t read print.