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Wolf Hall + Running + Downton Abbey 2x03
Oct. 3rd, 2011 10:40 amLong post is long—sorry!
So, I listened to all 24 hours of Wolf Hall and I loved every minute of it. Mostly I listened in the car (I drive a lot—mostly 10-15 minute trips from pillar to post) but some while I was running.
(and so, strangely, the novel was good for my fitness level, between my new Vibram five fingers, which look like this:
And kind of make me resemble this:
But make running less painful for me than it ever has been before (though, sadly, no faster)—anyway, between the shoes and the narrative, I actually wanted to run!)
It’s a kind of strange experience to listen to narrative as you run, though. The novel has some very sad parts, and I happened to listen to those as I was running during the last heat of the summer. So there I was slogging along in my blue shoes, pouring sweat and crying. I’ve been listening to Regeneration for the past few days, and I’m sure my face is fixed in a permanent sympathetic grimace.
I’m an aural person at the best of times, and I think in some ways it’s easier for me to process and remember books I hear than books I read. Also, of course, listening is slower. So I found that I had a greater awareness of the novel’s technical achievements than I think I would have done if I’d read (all 600 pp. of) it.
Which of course my book group had not interest in talking about , so I’m just going to go on about it for a minute now, feel free to scroll by.
( rambling about Wolf Hall )
So then I wrote a little Downton Abbey snippet last week about WWI war wounds. And that made me want to re-read Pat Barker’s Regeneration. But, things being as they are, that means re-listening. Anyway, the novel completely holds up (it came out in 1991), though I expect it wouldn’t be everyone’s first choice for what to listen to in the car. It may, however, have spoiled my enjoyment of Downton Abbey. Because really, talk about two different perspectives about what was going on in the north of England in 1916! In Regeneration, women in service are telling off their employers right and left and going to work in the munitions factories—just for example.
( spoilers for Downton Abbey 2x03 )
So, I listened to all 24 hours of Wolf Hall and I loved every minute of it. Mostly I listened in the car (I drive a lot—mostly 10-15 minute trips from pillar to post) but some while I was running.
(and so, strangely, the novel was good for my fitness level, between my new Vibram five fingers, which look like this:
And kind of make me resemble this:
But make running less painful for me than it ever has been before (though, sadly, no faster)—anyway, between the shoes and the narrative, I actually wanted to run!)
It’s a kind of strange experience to listen to narrative as you run, though. The novel has some very sad parts, and I happened to listen to those as I was running during the last heat of the summer. So there I was slogging along in my blue shoes, pouring sweat and crying. I’ve been listening to Regeneration for the past few days, and I’m sure my face is fixed in a permanent sympathetic grimace.
I’m an aural person at the best of times, and I think in some ways it’s easier for me to process and remember books I hear than books I read. Also, of course, listening is slower. So I found that I had a greater awareness of the novel’s technical achievements than I think I would have done if I’d read (all 600 pp. of) it.
Which of course my book group had not interest in talking about , so I’m just going to go on about it for a minute now, feel free to scroll by.
( rambling about Wolf Hall )
So then I wrote a little Downton Abbey snippet last week about WWI war wounds. And that made me want to re-read Pat Barker’s Regeneration. But, things being as they are, that means re-listening. Anyway, the novel completely holds up (it came out in 1991), though I expect it wouldn’t be everyone’s first choice for what to listen to in the car. It may, however, have spoiled my enjoyment of Downton Abbey. Because really, talk about two different perspectives about what was going on in the north of England in 1916! In Regeneration, women in service are telling off their employers right and left and going to work in the munitions factories—just for example.
( spoilers for Downton Abbey 2x03 )
