Short and Sweet
I recently listened to an abridged version of Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything. It came on five CDs with a run time of just under six hours. The full version is three times that size, which makes sense since the printed book is 560 pages long.
I try to read or listen to a minimum of 50 books or lectures a year. Last year, I was up to 75, though a long daily commute helped that number along. My daughter, a.k.a. The Library Girl, sniffed disdainfully at my Bryson CDs. You can’t seriously expect to count this towards your total, she declared in a tone that countenanced no comeback. The way she looked at me, I might as well have downloaded a package of PinkMonkey.com notes and saved myself a trip to the library.
Naturally, I disagree. To begin with, I was interested in A Short History, first and foremost, because I enjoy Bryson’s books. This is my third, the first two being Made in America (a history of the English Language in the U.S.) and his memoir, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. My next will be one of his travelogues, probably Neither Here Nor There.
Second, the abridged version is street legal. It is published by Random House Audio, approved and narrated by Bryson himself. If it’s good enough for his goose, it’s good enough for my gander.
Finally, A Short History goes long on everything scientific, from paleontology to particle physics, from bacteria to the Big Bang. Six hours covers a lot of ground. Or space, as the case may be. Hey, just because I like Italian doesn’t mean I have to eat five pounds of Rissoto at one sitting or that I have to know the difference between arborio and canaroli.
This is all rationalizing, of course, a skill over which I have complete mastery. But then I acquired a case of Penguin Classics audio books, 10 classics – abridged! – on 45 CDs. This one is going to be a little tougher to defend.
After finally getting to Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Dana Huff at Much Madness asked why even hard core readers will persistently skip over certain classics. Books, she suggested in answer, come back to us when we are ready for them. For years, I avoided Victorian novels and, as I discovered when I finally read – and adored – Jane Eyre, the loss was mine alone. The Penguin Classics collection kind of allows me to make up for lost time. Included in the collection are Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, George Eliot’s Middlemarch, as well as my wife’s favorite, Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge. And, oh yes, Wuthering Heights.
Obviously, I am doing a grievous disservice to Dickens when I consume a massive undertaking like Great Expectations in five relatively quick gulps. But then, keeping to food analogies, if you are going to try a new genre, why not start with a sampler. A little Northanger Abbey, a taste of Oliver Twist, and for added flavor, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Not surprisingly, my daughter, her face screwed up like she just swallowed a mouthful of bitters, disagrees.
