Since you ask,
Moby Dick.
This is at least my third time with it.

Oh, and not only is the muppet version the best adaptation,
it is also, far and away, Tim Curry's best movie.

Canada by Richard Ford.

Audiobooks are something I've never quite been able to get into... But reading one of the Deverry books by Katharine Kerr at the moment.

I'm reading Art and Fear by Bayles and Orland for my writing development. City of Lost Souls by Cassandra Claire at night and listening to Between Shades of Grey in my car to and from work.

I recently finished listening to Tim Curry reading Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne. I want more stories narrated by Tim Curry. He's a delight to listen to. The story, while classic, struck me as altogether less exciting than I'd expected. Not disappointing exactly, but in the hands of a lesser narrator, I might have given up.

Now I've just started listening to All's Quiet on the Western Front. I'm finding that classic audio books make the commute a bit more bearable. Gives me a way to catch up on classics I missed out on reading in my youth, and makes what I previously considered "dead" time productive. I'm a firm believer that exposure to good reading helps us learn, if only intuitively, better craft for our writing. Since February I've listened to six audio books and am on my seventh now. If I can manage about one a month, that's an extra dozen novels to consume every year. From where I stand (or sit as the case may be while driving) that's a fine thing.

I finished DRACULA the other night and now I'm either going to read VARNEY THE VAMPIRE, or A DIVINE COMEDY.

Not sure. I downloaded a pile of classic books a while back. Books I always wanted to read, but could never find.

Have you ever had the chance to listen to the Alien Voices productions of classic old SF works? These are the audio dramas put together by Leonard Nimoy and John de Lancie, with many cast members drawn from the various Trek incarnations. They're really great fun. I saw them doing an audio performance on PBS some years ago and picked most of them up shortly thereafter. (I didn't care nearly as much for the coy "Spock vs. Q" but the classic stuff is nicely done.)

If you ever come across a narrator named Josephine Bailey, she's incredible. I listend to Libba Bray's "A Great and Terrible Beauty," which has four main teenage girls in Victorian England and scads of supporting characters. I could tell which character was "speaking" even when the character wasn't identified, by the variation the narrator put into their voices. It was amazing. She's also done "The Secret Garden," which is where I first discovered her.

Listening to the audiobook of THE JADE OGRE by Will Murray. It's one of the new Doc Savage adventures he's been writing. Due to the cliffhanging nature of the book I've been listening to one chapter a night before bed.

I'm reading the dead tree version of KNIGHT OF THE BLAZING SUN by Josh Reynolds

Manuscripts. I feel like that's all I read these days! But I love the ones I'm working on. And I just read Little Bee. It was great.

I'm just finishing Alexander McCall Smith's The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection. To anticipate any question regarding what I think of it, it is the 13th in the The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, and I have listened to greedily consumed all of the first twelve! If I wasn't impressed, I would be listening to this one.

The reader, Lisette Lecatt, does an excellent job of preforming the Botswanan accent, as well as switching to the occasional British and in this book, an American visitor.

The book is filled with the beauty of Botswana (a land-locked country); it/their traditions, culture, respect for one another, and the indications of the changes as the old generation succumbs to the in-roads of the more modern.



Alexander McCall Smith

Sis gave me Simon Schama's new book of essays, Scribble Scribble Scribble for my birthday, and as I was on a flight today I started it... looks good.

And I picked up a second-hand 1970s book on Australian Christmases on the weekend, so that's next :)

I'm looking forward to Alastair Reynolds's Blue Remembered Earth along with the flotilla of Year's Best SF anthologies edited by Dozois, Hartwell, and the Solaris collection if they do a fourth volume.