Madeleine L'Engle, R.I.P.

One of my favorite authors from my formative years, Madeleine L'Engle, has died.

It's funny, in reading the article about her, I had to stop and take a breath at this passage:

Keith Call, special collections assistant at Wheaton College in Illinois, which has a collection of L'Engle's papers, said he considers her the female counterpart of science fiction author Ray Bradbury because people loved her personally as much as they loved her books.

I admit, she and Bradbury were my first science fiction authors. And one never completely gets over first love.

I read the whole series of Murry family books, even asking the local library to order a few for me through the interlibrary exchange system (my first forays into asking for things not on the shelf) after I discovered all they had were the first three, and I even attempted to pore over her essays on Christianity and spirituality. Unfortunately, I was still too wet behind the ears to gain much, then, from the nonfiction.

Her work has always been provocative and evocative. Either one is truly rare in today's publishing market. I am truly sorry to hear that she is now gone.

books books books books movin' up an' down....

oops. that's not how the poem goes. But it is a bit of a description of my house, and it's got me following Dean Barnett as he posted at Hugh Hewitt's blog. I went over to Library Thing, as he suggested, and found myself engrossed for several hours, trying to enter my library into their database... Sadly, I have not yet even made a hiccup of a dent in the list I need to enter.

This is the problem with being a compulsive verbivore.

Still, if you have a library (and, you probably do), check out this site. It's way cool!


Afterthought: I'm going to have to ask for a lifetime membership for my birthday. The free account only allows you to enter 200 titles. That doesn't even cover what's in the bathroom, at home.

I gotta get more shelves, or stop going to auctions.

And, on the topic of books...

While visiting the Anchoress's blog, I found myself led to this test:

What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm You're probably in the final stages of a Ph.D. or otherwise finding a way to make your living out of reading. You are one of the literati. Other people's grammatical mistakes make you insane.
Dedicated Reader
Book Snob
Literate Good Citizen
Non-Reader
Fad Reader
What Kind of Reader Are You? Create Your Own Quiz

How could they possibly say that bit, about other people's grammatical mistakes? Insane? I? It is to laugh! Bwahahahahaha!

Are audiobooks the same as reading?

Ann Althouse asks the question, "Are you tiresome enough to say that listening to audiobooks is not reading?"

I will admit that I am. Audiobooks are as useful as actual reading, but reading is one of those things in which there is an eye-mind-spirit interface, just as studying any other of the visual arts must be. Listening to audiobooks is certainly closely linked to reading... it's a method of absorbing the information an author presents. In many ways, it's better -- hands free, eyes free... you can "read" an audiobook while driving without worrying about flipping pages or flipping the car.

On the other hand, I've tried a few books on tape, over the years. Some do very well, in abridged form (it's how I like my Dickens and Crichton) or in unabridged (can't abide a chopped-up Louis L'Amour or Anne Lamott). And the readers are usually an asset to the work of art presented. Hey, I loved involving myself in Readers' Theatre in my school days. I understand the thrill of storytelling.

But sometimes, I want to take a book at my own pace. I want to be able to savor the really beautifully-written passages, cradling a turn of phrase for a gentle moment before moving to the next. I want to be able to race through the parts which call for haste, either by virtue of great, exciting language or by dint of their being disposable. When another person reads to you, and that person is not mommy or daddy, it's nigh impossible to say, "can we go a little faster through these woods, please?" Fast-forwarding a tape may force me to miss a kernel of beauty in the midst of the chaff, as well. But I read fairly rapidly -- far more rapidly than I type or speak (ant I can chatter rather proficiently -- ask my exes). When I worked in a book store an hour from my apartment, I could easily read a 250-page novel on the way to work, then another on the way home, were I so inclined (and I was so, most days). An audiobook might take me half the week to finish. I'm not patient when it comes to my lovely dust-covered tomes.

Call me a glutton for eyefood. There are far too many lovely books out there in this wide world for me to want to delay gratification more than occasionally.

Perhaps I ought to start listening to audiobooks while I read paper-paged ones?