booktastic

I had bad luck downloading audio books yesterday. It has been some time since I downloaded one on account of the fact that I haven’t been at work much the past couple weeks - and for most of last week I had library fines, which meant I was prohibited from making any online downloads (as if that makes any sense at all.)

Yesterday I started out listening to music while I did my data-entrying at work, but that simply wasn’t cutting it. I slept little and poorly night before last and my brain was in need of more stimulation if it was going to remain working. So in the end, I decided it was time to download a book.

My first choice was one I actually tried to download last week (but couldn’t), Death on the Air by Ngaio Marsh. She’s considered one of the great mystery writers, apparently, and I figured I ought to give her a try. I selected Death on the Air from the library’s downloads because it said this about it in the book’s description: “Death on the Air and Other Stories serves as the perfect introduction to Ngaio Marsh and her creation, Inspector Roderick Alleyn, or as a nostalgic journey for their many fans.”

This turns out to be entirely misleading. I thought I was looking at the first book in the series here - not so. It’s a book of short stories and I have no idea where in chronology it takes place. Not only that, but the first part of this book is an introduction by someone else that entirely gives away some things about the main character - things that are a total spoiler for someone who hasn’t read the series.  I am most displeased with the Chicago Public Library right now. Turns out that the actual first book of Miss Marsh’s is called A Man Lay Dead - which the ChiPubLib does not have for download. Perhaps not surprisingly.

I irately moved on. Skipping around, I found that they had a Douglas Adams book I have never read, The Salmon of Doubt, for download. I knew that this book was published posthumously, and that it was the lost Dirk Gently novel (and I had been a huge fan of Adams’s Dirk Gently books, prefering them over the Hitchhiker books to a large extent - and I loved the Hitchhiker books) . The Chicago Public Library had this to say about it: “Rescued from his beloved Macintosh, The Salmon of Doubt provides us with the opportunity to linger and frolic one last time in the uniquely entertaining and richly informative mind of Douglas Adams. For the millions of readers who expressed their grief and shock at his untimely death, this is a treasure; his final book and our last chance to see new work from an acknowledged comic genius.”

Perhaps. However, upon opening the book on the player, I had a snag… The menu was confusingly laid out and I couldn’t find the actual start of the book. I found myself listening to first an introduction by Stephen Fry (not a problem in itself, as I am rather fond of said gentleman) - and then, perplexingly, what seemed to be another introduction by Richard Dawkins (yes, that Richard Dawkins, of “You Hear Me, God? I Don’t Believe In You!” fame) - which droned on until I felt inclined to switch it off. I never did locate the actual beginning of the Adams book.

So that was my second failure of the day. I went back to the website and finally located a book by an author I was interested in reading - a book which didn’t have spoiler-laden introductions or a confusing layout, and it was the first in a series - No Graves As Yet by Anne Perry. It promises to be the first (!!) in the “World War I” series.

Well, that was all well and good. But as I got going, I found that it just wasn’t the book for me that morning. Oh, it was well-written and intriguing and all of that. But I’ve been a bit fragile for the past couple days, and I’m rather in the mood for some light entertainment; one of the last things I want to listen to is somebody dealing with the traumatic and unexpected death of his parents. Jeez. What a way to start a morning.

Discouraged, I went back to the CPL website one last time.  Finally, I found something that promised to be what I was looking for: My Man, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse. It’s been forever since I’ve read any Wodehouse - that’s just the ticket as far as light entertainment goes - and the CPL website promised that this was Wodehouse’s first Jeeves book. I couldn’t remember if I’d read My Man, Jeeves (but if I had, it has to have been somewhere in the arena of fifteen years since I did so) - so I downloaded it. I’m relatively certain now that I have read it before, but it has proven to be just the ticket for this morning. It’s light, entertaining and nobody’s parents die in a disgusting and traumatic manner. (And even if they did, in a Wodehouse book they would simply brush it off with a “Dash it, what a spot of bally bad luck!” or something like that, and then dress for dinner.)

So I spent the rest of the day listening to Wodehouse, and it was quite pleasant indeed. The only problem is that I downloaded four books yesterday - and the limit at a time is six - and they make you wait like three weeks before your “loan period” is up and you can download more - so if I finish Jeeves too fast I haven’t got a lot of leeway to find new listening material. Oh well! I guess I really should go back and decipher my way through the Salmon of Doubt menu. Perhaps that will last me until my lending period is through! — Mrs. Hall

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