BOOK REVIEW: Audible.com

I recently was given a gift (credit) of 12 audio books at audible.com and an ipod mini, both of which I have since become obsessed with. As a kid once on a trip east to visit my mother's father, he and my mother and I had set to drive from Ohio (where he lived) thru Tennessee (for some reason I cannot remember). His less than two-year-old Buick (he always traded them in for an identical new one at the end of their sophomore year) had stopped in a rest stop where I was surprised to find a standing wire carousel filled with books on tape. My mom bought me my first a story called FUP by Jim Dodge, a magically potent novella that I still admire to this day, and from that moment on I was an avid listener of text. Some books that I have recently entertained were two (guilty trifles) by Dan Brown, Angels & Demons, and The Da Vinci Code. I heard them out of chronological order and I feel that the Da Vinci Code was the stronger. Both place the character of a Harvard symbologist (a reluctant modern day Indiana Jones) Robert Langdon (who will be played in the up-coming film by the inappropriately self-cast Tom Hanks, who is no Harrison Ford at 40). Angels & Demons' plot revolves around the sci-fi conceit that a physicist/priest who has recreated the big bang in his laboratory and had also created a highly volatile amount of anti-matter which was then stolen by members of an ancient anti-catholic brotherhood called the illuminati who threaten to use it to destroy Vatican city, Rome. A tense 24 hours unfold as Langdon uses his obscure knowledge of art and symbolism to decipher the clues left by the antagonistic Illuminati. What is most captivating about this book is the way Brown uses facts about art and religion to encourage the reader to believe in a 'conspiracy theory' style plot. However I think he does this even much more convincingly in The Da Vinci Code.

Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates by Tom Robbins is another book, which I recently listened to. I identified so strongly with the conceit of this book that I would have to say it is among my most admired. The way in which the author/narrator/protagonist are so obsessed with the etymology of language, hedonism, and left field divinity, makes me feel like someone finally understands me.

Books, check ‘em out!!!