mandarine

To the day. My thoughts go to readers living downunder.

Went into the garden to clear the picnic table (we’d been having a ‘party’). Thought ambient light looked weird. Looked up. Ran to fetch camera. Congratulated myself. Wanted to share.

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I have just finished ‘reading’ Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn in three days, by way of an mp3 audio-book freely dowloaded from loudlit.org. I reckon I enjoyed it mightily good, I did. I was a little bothered at first with the southerner accent the narrator chose to use, and with the way he made the runaway slave Jim sound a bit like Jar-Jar Binks. But by and by I got used to it, and although I still suspect those accents were somewhat fake (like Glenn Close’s and Liv Tyler’s in Altman’s Cookie’s Fortune — which is one of my most favouritest movies), they blended in the landscape and contributed to the whole atmosphere. I am generally not a fan of linear scenarios, but in this case, the linear narration was perfectly suited to the linear flow of the Mississippi river.

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I am on vacation. This time I decided I would not take books along with me: just audio-books in my mp3 player. Although I had already relied on audio-books for my bicycle commuting time, I had never taken them seriously enough to bring them as my only holiday reading. This week, I have ‘read’ Michael Connelly’s ‘The Lincoln Lawyer‘, which is a 21st century version of Roman Noir à la LA Confidential. Next week’s read: I am downloading Huckleberry Finn while I am writing this.

I will tell you more when I come back, but this one week was a revelation of sorts. Audio-books are a completely new reading experience:

• It is easier to enjoy the language
• The pace is much slower: it is like walking instead of flying
• I cannot read faster when there is more suspense
• I can read in many circumstances where a book is inappropriate: on a bus inching up its way up a mountain on a winding road, I can read without feeling nausea, and I can still watch the landscape; at night in a sleeping-car, I can read while lying awake, without bothering fellow travelers with the light; on a beach, when the sun makes it impossible to read from white paper, etc…
• I can still read while doing something else (something that does not require too much concentration): cooking, packing, waiting for other family members to be ready for whatever we will be doing today, …

Today, I found LibriVox, and I am really contemplating volunteering as a reader to contribute. If you know some French, you might be able to hear me read a book to you in a near future.

Easy question: who is it for?
Hard question: where was is taken?

I took this picture ten years ago in Dinan (Britanny). I bet the house is still standing.

I am in awe of really old houses, and this one beats them all. My own house (at least the center part) is probably as old as this one, but nowhere as good-looking. Apart from the occasional ghost, living in an old house is a truly wonderful experience. The old stones exsude serenity and timelessness. When I know my house has been standing for close to four centuries, I can really quit worrying that I may be late in my restoration project.

I’ll be leaving on vacation in 30 minutes. Hiking and sightseeing. I am not sure I can stay away from an internet connection for the two whole weeks, though, so you’re bound to hear from me. In any case, I have arranged for nice photographs to appear here every few days even if I am not around.

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Commenting a recent article where I wrote about treating people more like animals (i.e. as irrational beings), Emily pointed out the fact that too many people believe animals have no feelings. If you are one of these people, please stick with treating people like people.

Why is it that humans often believe animals have no feelings? Are we stupid enough that we apply the same reasoning in this domain as when we were kids and believed spiders did not mind having their legs plucked because we did not hear them scream? Probably. Just because a cat cannot moan does not mean it feels no pain when it is sick. Just because a dog does not sob all day in the couch, looking blankly at the TV set and using up two full boxes of tissues does not mean it does not feel depressed. Just because a cow cannot say ‘I violently object to having my newborn taken away so that you can continue to milk me!’ does not mean she is indifferent to being separated from her calf.

As a matter of fact, I believe exactly the contrary. [more]