Like countless other high-school freshmen my son has been assigned TKAM. I read to my children (Yes, they're all teenagers..its my way of holding on. They enjoy it, I enjoy it.) as often as I can and so I took my son's copy and began the book for him the other night after dinner.

My other two listened in and I found myself being interrupted with questions. I love questions.

I am really enjoying re-reading this classic with my kids.

My 8th grader just had to read it. He was not a fan, though I remember not enjoying it much when I was a kid either. I read it at the same time so that I could talk to him about it and I also enjoyed it this time around.

The 13 and 14 year old version of myself really liked the book. When I had to read the book for a second time as a freshman, my father also read it with me. A couple years later I loaned my copy to a friend. He returned it with the word "How" written in front of the title. I remember thinking it was funny but was also a little irritated.

Sissy Spacek does a great reading if you have a 6 hour drive coming up.

She sounds nothing like the 19 year old who guest starred on The Walton’s.

Woodman,thanks for the head's up on the Audible. Sissy Spacek does a fine job.

I just did the exact same thing with my freshman. Was good to see it again through a wiser lens this time.

You're welcome. Spacek makes even moss hanging from trees seem alive.

Libby is the app our library is tied into. It is free. https://libbyapp.com/welcome

An overlooked audiobook is The Natural (Bernard Malamud 1952) read by Fred Berman. I had it on CD from the library but just looked it up on Libby, found it, played a sample, and it is the same one. Berman's got great voice and inflection for it.

The Master And Commander series read by PATRICK TULL are not to be missed in this lifetime. Tull read into analog (1990s) but they've been put onto CD. A Tull reading might stretch 13 discs while an identical unabridged Simon Vance reading will be 10 or 11 discs. That extra time is the wind in the rigging and the creak of the decks. Discourse between Maturin and Aubrey, as it really sounded in Patrick O'Brian's head as he wrote the books.

One of the most perfectly-read passages is when Maturin mixes up latitude and longitude. It is such a great dialogue that I was able to bring it up in a search engine; Tull nails it spot-on.

Patrick Tull (28 July 1941 – 23 September 2006) was a British stage, film and television actor.

---

C/P of passage follows, described from one of their contributors:

---

NavList: A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding

Patrick O'Brian characters discuss time and longitude
From: Ed Popko
Date: 2016 Jun 25, 02:48 -0700
I'm a great fan of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin 19th c British Naval series and I'm rereading the set (21) once again. Occasionally navigation methods are mentioned and I particularly laugh at this exchange between Captain Jack Aubrey and his ship's surgeon Stephen Maturin (who despite years sailing with Jack still knows little about what makes 19th c ships tick).

From "The Surgeon's Mate", book 7, pp. 276-278 by Patrick O'Brian, Norton press.

The setting - a mate has accidently dropped and broken the ship's chronometer. Captain Aubrey is asking to borrow Maturin's expensive personal Bregurt timepiece. Maturin does not understand why Aubrey would care about precise time and why losing the ship's chronometer is a calamity. Aubrey tries to explain the relationship of time, longitude and finding their way ...


SM 'The machine is used for finding out the latitude, I believe?'

JA 'To tell you the truth, Stephen, most people rely on the sextant for their latitude: the timekeeper is more for the other thing - east and west, you know.'

SM 'East and west of what, for all love?'

JA 'Why, of Greenwich, naturally.'

SM 'I am no great navigator - ' said Stephen.

JA 'You are too modest,' said Jack.

SM '- though I have often wondered how you mariners find your way about the dank wastes of ocean. But from what you tell me I see that for your countrymen Greenwich rather than Jerusalem is the navel of the universe - lo, Greenwich, where many a shrew is in, ha, ha - and secondly that whereas a poor man can fix his position only with regard to north and south, to up and down, his wealthy brother is secure to right and left as well. There is no doubt a logic in this, although it escapes me, just as the use of the timepiece escapes me, with it peevish insistence upon accuracy in the measurement of what is after all a most debatable concept, quite unknown, we are told, in Heaven. Tell me, is it really capable of telling you where you are, or is this just another of your naval - I must not say superstitions - like saluting the purely hypothetical crucifix on the quarterdeck?

JA 'If you have exact Greenwich time aboard - if you carry it with you - you can fix your longitude exactly by accurate observation of the local noon, to say nothing of occultations of the finer points. I have a pair of Arnolds at home - how I wish I had brought 'em - that only gained twenty seconds from Plymouth to Bermuda. In these waters that would tell you where you were, east of west, to within three miles or so. Oh, the lunarians may say what they please, but a well-tempered chronometer is the sweetest thing! Suppose you were riding along, with your watch set to Greenwich time in your pocket, and suppose you happened to take a noon observation and found that the sun southed at five minutes after twelve, you would know that you were almost exactly on the meridian of Winchester, without having to search for a finger-post. And the same applies to the sea, where finger-posts are tolerably uncommon.'

SM 'Heavens, Jack, what things you tell me. And I dare say this would answer for let us say Dublin and Galway?'

JA 'I should not care to affirm anything about Ireland, where people have the strangest notion of time; but at sea, I do assure you, it answers very well. That is why I should like to borrow your watch.'



Ed Popko

Thank you twice Woodman. Free is excellent and I look forward to hearing those classics read to me.

quote:

Originally posted by Woodman:
You're welcome. Spacek makes even moss hanging from trees seem alive.

Great book. I listened to it a year or two ago and you are right, Sissy Spackek does a great job. I am going to follow up on the other titles you mentioned. Thanks!

I’ve three library cards registered to my Libby profile. The libraries themselves frown at this but Libby cares not. Each library has their own collection. Tempe AZ has the largest of the three.

Sometimes I’ll listen to a book right through and other times will return after a day, go back into another, rotate among 2-4 titles. Libby keeps track of it. Even months later.

Artemis, by Andy Weir, is expertly performed by Rosario Dawson.

Starship Troopers, Heinlein, is read really well by Lloyd James.

Michael Beck reads Grisham as God intended. Sycamore Row was a favorite but I loved them all.

Destiny, Texas - by Brett Cogburn, fantastic! Four narrators on that one.

My Tags list is about a dozen. Nothing on Holds, but I have waited weeks for some titles. It also keeps track of what you have checked out. So if you find the same book again in a search it’ll tell you when you had it, how long, etc.

The movie TKAM stars Gregory Peck. Last night I watched the movie Moby Dick starring Gegory Peck, directed by John Huston. If your family is interested in history then this is an excellent movie, and very good otherwise. The touchstone is the Bible which is fundamental to our history.

The biblical associations bring to mind True Grit by Charles Portis. The book True Grit is better than movies, which are both good. Maybe give it a pre-read for the confrontations. Really True Grit is a masterpiece of dialect.

Continuing 'old school' and English teacher recommended from forty years ago, William Saroyan's 'Human Comedy' and 'My Name is Aram'; and Leo Rosten's Hyman Kaplan books.

quote:

Originally posted by Woodman:

The Master And Commander series read by PATRICK TULL are not to be missed
Ed Popko

What I remember best about that series of books is when Captain Jack was trying to explain sailing windward and a lee shore and using the weevils on the table that had come out of the bread to demonstrate... and the doc's reply was that you should always choose "the lesser of two weevils."

It's interesting to see the book experience a recent re-emergence given current events as I've heard it mentioned a few times recently.

I've seen the movie a couple times but have yet to make the time to read it.

I live in a very Republican county and even here they don't teach "To Kill a Mockingbird" or "Huckleberry Finn" anymore for the usual reasons.

quote:

Originally posted by Lefty Sig:
I live in a very Republican county and even here they don't teach "To Kill a Mockingbird" or "Huckleberry Finn" anymore for the usual reasons.

To everyone's diminishment.