(no subject)

[wshaffer]

I slept about 14 hours last night/this morning, and feel like I've ascended several rungs up the evolutionary ladder. Whoo. The only good thing about sleep deprivation is how good you feel when you get rid of it.

I had lunch and coffee with Daniel, paid all our outstanding bills, updated our car insurance policies (by way of my insurance company's utterly spiffy new web site), rented a car for our forthcoming jaunt to south Florida for my grandfather's 90th birthday party, and transferred my latest batch of Big Finish Doctor Who audio plays into iTunes for iPod listening.

I've become quite enamored of the audio play recently. I've long enjoyed audio books as a way of passing the time while I exercise, but most books aren't written with the intent of being read aloud, and it sometimes shows. Whereas audio plays are designed to be listened to. Audio plays are also a wonderful medium for science fiction, because their ability to depict truly weird and alien stuff is limited only by the ingenuity of the sound designer. Though sometimes you get writers who don't trust their sound designers nearly enough - I've heard otherwise good audio plays marred a bit by writers who insisted on having characters pointlessly narrate their own actions.

I do find it interesting that the audio play has essentially vanished from American popular culture, while it seems to be (relatively) alive and well in Britain. I've been trying to locate other sources of audio drama besides Big Finish, and I haven't managed to find much. Audible.com has a small selection of British radio, mostly comedies, and the BBC 7 homepage lets you stream current and recent broadcasts over the internet. (Science fiction buffs should definitely check out BBC7, as they've got a fair amount of SF in their broadcast schedule, including a short program dedicated to analyzing* each week's episode of Heroes as it is broadcast on BBC 2.)

Of course, Big Finish has several hundred hours worth of audio that I haven't listened to, and they're making more all the time, so I can't realistically worry about running out. (I should note that if any of y'all in North America are thinking of giving Big Finish a whirl, it's much cheaper to order their audios from Who North America than from Big Finish's own site.)

Anyway, it's lovely to be home and to be just taking care of the little routine chores of everyday life.

*I keep looking at that phrase and thinking it really ought to be "a short programme dedicated to analysing". British spelling. Oy.

Comments

[dsmoen.livejournal.com]

Pema Chodron's books are quite wonderful on audio. They sound like they were transcribed from the lecture rather than read aloud after writing.

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

Thanks - I'll have to check those out.

Audiobooks

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think the audio play has entirely died out in america it's alive and kicking! I read a great New York Times article about it: http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70615F93E5B0C718CDDA10894DF404482
and I think the UK is worse for the type of snobbery discussed in the article. That said I've been listening to some great stuff from the BBC - they're digging out a lot of material from their archives which stretch back forever. FANTASTIC! :-D

Re: Audiobooks

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

Interesting article - I do think there are differences between the experience of reading a book in print and listening to it on audio, but they're subtle. When I first started listening to audio books, I wouldn't listen to fiction unless I'd already read the book in print, but now I just choose my audio on the basis of whether or not it's enjoyable to listen to.

[sbuchler.livejournal.com]

Try books written before 1900 - mostly they were expected to be read out loud :-) (well, fiction was anyway - reading Newton is still going to be a challenge... but then he intentionally wrote to be difficult to understand ;-) )

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

If I ever come across an audiobook of Principia Mathematica, I am so buying it. Just because.

Good point on stuff written before 1900 - I love Alexandre Dumas in audio, though it's surprisingly difficult to find unabridged versions of his stuff. (That's my form of audiobook snobbery - I can't stand abridged versions, and try not to buy them.)

[sbuchler.livejournal.com]

Me too - The only abriged audio book I have was a gift... but the book "Me Talk Pretty Someday" was such fun that my snobbery has not convinced me to get rid of it... :-)

I've been listening to a lot of the classic children's litrature lately - Secret Garden, A Little Princess, Little Women, the Anne of Green Gables series, and of course Jane Austen. I've really enjoyed them all! If you'd like the readers' names for any of these, lemme know and I'll look it up for you :-)