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Audiobook squee: I finally convinced Shoemom to let me get those Classic Bob & Ray CDs! Featuring all the McCarthy parody skits and a cameo appearance by Ray's oldest son (aged about three)! Plus lots of other cool early stuff! Reason for yay!
...I'm not that obsessed, really I'm not. It's just that, with these guys, there's so much stuff you tend to find yourself constantly reading skit titles and going "Oooh, that looks like a must-have..."
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Other audio goodness: My most recent Audible.com purchase is Innocent Traitor: A Novel of Lady Jane Grey by Allison Weir. I thought it'd be fun to tackle a book I hadn't read yet, except inasmuch as I own most of Weir's non-fiction takes on Tudor history, and enjoy them quite a lot. Few people living can have a more intimate knowledge of Tudor minutiae than Weir; it'd be impossible to reach that point, I should think, and not start compulsively popping out potboilers.
There has anyway always been something distinctly novel-esque about her scholarship, and if it thus far seems that there's something rather too scholarly about her novel - something a little disconcerting about hearing Henry's attempts in bed with Catherine Parr narrated in the same tone used elsewhere to describe Elizabeth's palace fittings - well, I may not be the best judge. I am very pleased with the precision she brings to it all, and the effortless way she sketches character because of it, but the true dramatic validity of the material has long since given way to familiarity.
In fact I sometimes think wistfully how nice it would be to approach sixteenth-century-themed fiction cold, as they say. Without knowing, not only how it all comes out, but all the wonderful rich twists and turns on the way.
Sigh. I bet all historians are science-fiction fans by default. And all engineers read Tolkien.
...I'm not that obsessed, really I'm not. It's just that, with these guys, there's so much stuff you tend to find yourself constantly reading skit titles and going "Oooh, that looks like a must-have..."
**********************************************
Other audio goodness: My most recent Audible.com purchase is Innocent Traitor: A Novel of Lady Jane Grey by Allison Weir. I thought it'd be fun to tackle a book I hadn't read yet, except inasmuch as I own most of Weir's non-fiction takes on Tudor history, and enjoy them quite a lot. Few people living can have a more intimate knowledge of Tudor minutiae than Weir; it'd be impossible to reach that point, I should think, and not start compulsively popping out potboilers.
There has anyway always been something distinctly novel-esque about her scholarship, and if it thus far seems that there's something rather too scholarly about her novel - something a little disconcerting about hearing Henry's attempts in bed with Catherine Parr narrated in the same tone used elsewhere to describe Elizabeth's palace fittings - well, I may not be the best judge. I am very pleased with the precision she brings to it all, and the effortless way she sketches character because of it, but the true dramatic validity of the material has long since given way to familiarity.
In fact I sometimes think wistfully how nice it would be to approach sixteenth-century-themed fiction cold, as they say. Without knowing, not only how it all comes out, but all the wonderful rich twists and turns on the way.
Sigh. I bet all historians are science-fiction fans by default. And all engineers read Tolkien.
