Here's how addicted I've become to audiobooks:
I finished listening to Chaim Potok's The Chosen on Wednesday. In the evening, I visited Audible to download two new books (the final Aubrey-Maturin novel and the Lewis and Clark book, Undaunted Courage). I transferred these to my iPod.
Instead of listening to either of these, yesterday morning I began listening to the new Stephen Mitchell translation of Gilgamesh again. (I read the book once earlier this year and audited it once — it's fantastic.) I listened to Gilgamesh on my way to work. When I left to make sales calls, I continued listening to Gilgamesh as I drove through Canby, Oregon City, Damascus, Boring, Sandy. Then, as I entered Sandy, as Gilgamesh and Enkidu killed the Bull of Heaven, my iPod's battery died.
Woe!
I still had a couple hours of driving left. What was I to do?
After making my sales call in Sandy, I stopped at the town's public library. I was desperate for an audiobook, but all the library had was bestsellers from Tony Hillerman, Sue Grafton, Tim Lahaye, etc. Nothing that interested me. In resignation, I grabbed The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency off the shelf. "This is probably going to suck," I thought. "It looks dumb, and it's been way too popular to be any good."
Within five minutes of listening, I knew I was wrong. This book isn't what I had expected at all.
In the evening, Kris and I made breakfast for Tiffany and for Jenn and the kids. We made waffles, eggs, and bacon. Emma didn't like any of it, but she did like the Jolly Ranchers. She had a dinner of Jolly Ranchers.
Afterward, Harrison and I played chess. I was wary. How well did he know the rules? What sort of skill level did he possess? Ten years ago, when I was playing regularly in chess tournaments, it was not uncommon to be matched against an eight-year-old. I never lost to a kid, but it wasn't as easy to win as you might think.
Harrison seemed to know most of the rules, including pawn promotion, so I asked him if he knew about castling. "Not really," he said. "I don't know how to do it, but the computer does it." I tried to explain the basic conditions required for castling. He seemed to understand (mostly). Then I tried to explain en passant. That was Too Much. In retrospect, I shouldn't have even brought it up: in the hundreds (thousands?) of chess games I've played, I've never seen the rule invoked even once.
So, Harrison and I played chess, ignoring the en passant rule. (Ironically, a situation did arise where I might have used the rule, but for the sake of clarity, I just ignored it.) Hank has a fair grasp of the game. He understands how most of the pieces move, though the knight baffles him. (He knows the knight moves in an L-shape, but the L-shapes he uses are random, and he's not patient enough to listen to an explanation. I'm sure he'll get it soon, though.) He even has an elementary grasp of tactics. Most impressively, at one point he saw that he had skewered both my bishops with his rook. Not bad for a six year old.
As we played, I was puzzled as to how to proceed. This was the first time I'd played chess with a kid learning the game. I didn't know how to handle it. I knew that I wasn't going to play down to him; it would only hinder his ability to learn the game if I didn't play correctly. But how much should I help him?
Though he knows the rules, Hank has no real sense as to the objectives of the game. He understands on some level that the goal is to mate his opponent's king, but he doesn't play like he understands it. His only aim is to capture pieces. He has no sense of the relative value of pieces, so he's perfectly content trading his queen for my pawn. Should I teach him that a rook is more valuable than a bishop?
He also has a tendency to focus on one piece, moving it over and over again. If I were actually coaching him on the game, I would institute a rule: "move a piece once and then do not move it again for five turns", which is a variation on the chess maxim that, in the opening, a piece should only be moved once. It's a fundamental concept to grasp when learning the game. But I wasn't coaching Harrison, I was just playing a friendly game with him.
In true Hank fashion, he has no patience. He wasn't able to take even a moment to look where I had moved, or to think about what his move might mean. (For example, he's happy to just throw away his queen.) I don't think these ideas are beyond him, but I also don't know how much time to spend trying to teach them to him. They're useful if he actually wants to play chess at some point, but they're not useful if he's just killing time.
I don't mean to make it sound like I wasn't patient. I was. I took time to point out to Harrison the various considerations for each of the moves he made. I didn't belabor any points, or even hint at strategy, but simply prompted him to examine each move he made and its obvious consequences. Most of all, I had fun, and think Hank did too.
I did teach Harrison how to resign, which he did eventually. We started a second game, but ultimately abandoned it to watch an episode of The Muppet Show.
"I've seen this before," Harrison told me as I started the DVD.
"No," I said, "no you haven't. I can pretty much guarantee it." He seemed puzzled. "Harrison, you're only just beginning to learn that there are so many things in this world that you cannot possibly have seen them all, you cannot possibly know them all. Nobody can." He had no response to that.
We sat back and watched Kermit's nephew, Robin, sing:
Halfway Down the Stairs
by A. A. MilneHalfway down the stairs
Is a stair where I sit:
There isn't any other stair quite like it.
I'm not at the bottom,
I'm not at the top:
So this is the stair where I always stop.Halfway up the stairs
Isn't up, and isn't down.
It isn't in the nursery, it isn't in the town:
And all sorts of funny thoughts
Run round my head:
"It isn't really anywhere! It's somewhere else instead!"
"J.D.?" Harrison said.
"Yes, Harrison."
"Where is halfway down the stairs?"
Ah, my little Harrison. He had an excellent evening wading into the wonderful waters of abstract thought.
On this day at foldedspace.org
2004 — I Dreamed Once More of Berma On the cruise, I waw able to take a bite out of Within a Budding Grove, the second of Marcel Proust's seven-volume novel.
2003 — Looking for Bugs In which Monday Night Football begins. In which Hank is distraught because he can't ride his bike. In which Pepe and I look for bugs.
From another audiobook addict: Commuting from Corvallis to Salem every day got me addicted. I have also enjoyed reading (but haven't listened to) the Ladies Detective Agency books (all of them), but I didn't care for Smith's series on the boring Portugese linguistics expert. What got me hooked on audio was the Harry Potter series. Jim Dale does an excellent job with the voices of the characters.
You said you "audited" a book. Is that "common usage" or are you coining a new word? Being relatively new to audiobooks, I'm curious. By the way, when I went to purchase the latest H.P. audiobook, the salesclerk asked me if they were good, and then added, "and you can talk to people about the book as if you had actually read it!" I don't think she meant any insult by that (I didn't take umbrage, anyway). The person from whom I borrowed the first five H.P. audiobooks is blind and "consumes" most of his reading material through audiobooks. Braille books are pretty cumbersome (11x11 1/2 inches, and 5 times as many pages as a regular book, on average).
Not that I'm going to give up print. But I like a good story, told at the pace of speech. When reading, I tend to skip over the details when I'm anxious to get on with the plot. Food for thought.