Chronicles: Volume One

Recently being on a biography kick, I started listening to Bob Dylan's Chronicles on audiobook. It would have been nice if Dylan had read it himself, but Nick Landrum still gives it a folksy charm.

And it is utterly charming. Bob (or Robert Allen, as I learned is his true name in the book, and Robert Allen Zimmerman, I just learned through Wikipedia) is the small town boy who goes to the big city and makes it to the big time through hard work, lucky connections, and sheer willpower. The name-dropping is staggering, but not always the names you would expect, as Bob talks about Gorgeous George, Tiny Tim, and Harry Belafonte. His early years in New York were hard, with Dylan leading an impoverished, hand-to-mouth existence, yet he seems to be having a good time with everyone around him, amused by each other's eccentricities, with not a trace of drug-induced debauchery in sight (at least as far as I've gotten, but I haven't listened as far as Woodstock yet).

Bob seems to have never forgot a face or name, as well as remembering every book he's ever read, and comes across as quite the intellectual. He can turn a phrase. In fact, as Wikipedia tells me, perhaps he can turn other people's phrases as well, as he was accused extensively of plagiarism in this work. It's a shame if it's true, particularly if the criticism led him to never finishing Volume Two. I suspect there's still more Bob Dylan than Mark Twain in this book, and I really would like to hear what comes next.

[Update: Interesting, how I expected more wildness from just living in Woodstock, because of the reputation of its most famous concert. It's interesting learning from Dylan about his influences, how he works on songs, and how he collaborates with others. I found it comical how, as a 20-year old drifter musician, he just couldn't understand why this one mother didn't like how he was dating her 17-year old daughter and taking her back to his apartment all the time. Not even a "in hindsight, I can see how I'd feel the same now that I'm a parent." A lot is glossed over, but the most frustrating omission, for me, is the one-sentence casual mention of his time working in the Traveling Wilburys. C'mon, Bob...I'd never even heard of your Oh Mercy album you spend one-third the memoir talking about, and that's all we get on the landmark album we got just a year earlier?]

Singularity Sky

I'm so Old School, I know Charles Stross as "the guy who wrote the good monsters in the Fiend Folio" rather than a novelist. In fact, I've never read a novel of his before -- and I guess I still haven't, since I'm technically listening to this novel.

This was his first novel, from 2003 (though I didn't know that when I picked it out). I'm halfway done now and...well, at one point about a third of the way through I was ready to ditch the rest. I get what he's doing -- showing us that, even in a post-singularity world, people are still people -- they cuss, they think about sex, they kill each other over stupid stuff. It's just ...not much fun, or not the kind of fun I expect from science fiction.

Now, a lot of the other details are what I consider the "fun" in science fiction -- Stross is great at "tech jargon," or, putting super science into dialog form, whether it's short, familiar names for big hi-tech items, or mundane orders involving this big-tech that military technicians might spout off. When world-building, not every author thinks down to the tiny details like that.

There is a lot of backstory to absorb here, but I never felt like I was getting an info dump. A lot that is only eluded to in earlier chapters is never fully revealed until an interlude chapter almost halfway through.

I feel absorbed enough in the story now that I'll probably finish it. Our two main characters seem trapped in an impossible situation where they are somewhere between hours and weeks away from getting killed in a poorly planned military strike against a far more powerful alien force, and I haven't figured out myself how they can get out of it.

The narrator does a good job of differentiating voices, some better than others. Rachel has two distinct voices, which threw me for a short while, but since she began the book disguised, maybe it made sense to distinguish her like that.

Travels with Charley in Search of America

I was looking for an audiobook that didn't mention killing or romance on the cover and settled on this one. I have read no John Steinbeck since high school and figured it was time I found out what the Of Mice and Men author was up to later in life.

The packaging generously refers to Steinbeck as "middle-aged" when he wrote this in '62, but make no mistake -- he was 60 when he wrote this and most definitely a grumpy old man. Feeling he doesn't know America anymore (wisely recognizing that success puts celebrities into bubbles where they no longer interact with normal people), he ditched his identity and went on a road trip to circle the mainland United States, saying good-bye to his wife, but taking his dog along with him (because, you know, it's the 1960s and these are manly priorities).

In typical grumpy old man fashion, Steinbeck seems to interact with every one and every place with the same preconceived notions he started with. Towards the end, I hear him say a few times "I have never been against progress, BUT--". And some of his ideas are pretty dated now. He talks a lot about the escalating nuclear tensions of the Cold War, and waxes long about how mobile homes are going to be the next big thing for the middle class. But he's also funny, and usually guffaw-out-loud-type funny.

I think the biggest delight was hearing Gary Sinise read it. He nails Steinbeck's grumpy old man perfectly, but also becomes a host of other characters, displaying a range he's never been allowed to show in movies. 

Transcription

Based on a true story, Transcription is about an English operation in 1940 to root out fifth columnists by recruiting them to report to a fake German spy. But rather than focus on the professional spies, Kate Atkinson was more interested in re-inventing the forgotten girl/s who typed the transcripts of those recorded meetings.

18-year old Juliet Armstrong's coming-of-age story at the beginning of WWII, her assimilation into spydom, and the fascinating relationship between a sexually curious Juliet and her closeted gay boss (constantly in danger of being discovered as both a spy and a gay man), makes for an engrossing story. Juliet has a remarkable inner voice that keeps a refreshing innocence to it (like her game of rhyming words to help remember them), and yet she's smart enough to see the insanity around her for what it is and mocks it with a grownup sarcasm. Better still is the audiobook version of Juliet, brilliantly read by Fenella Woolgar, who brings an incredible range of voices, including the same characters voiced at up to three different ages.

You see, the 1940 story is a near-perfect story, worth the read or listen for that alone. However, just before it can get to Juliet's horrible secret (it is a grizzly secret, and not Juliet's only secret either, it turns out), the story gets stuck in 1950 with an older Juliet working for the BBC. This is a weaker story than the first one. It delays the end of the 1940 story, which only gets teased to us in bits and pieces as 1950 Juliet recalls it. This stretching things out with a second story accounts for nearly half the book, but if you can get through the 1950 part, there is a mostly satisfying conclusion awaiting you (or, if listening to the audiobook, just enjoy discs 1-5 and 9).