It's Finally Finished

Today I finished listening to the recorded book Washington: A Life, by Ron Chernow. I know I have blogged about this book before.

The book, in hardback print form, is 817 pages long. This does not include the Acknowledgments and Notes! After purchasing the book, I found it very difficult for me to read. The print is small and the volume is heavy. My usual compensation for my visual problems when dealing with small print is to close my central-vision-damaged left eye and hold the book quite close to my right eye. This works except in the case of a heavy book--my hands get very tired trying to hold the book in position.

But it was an interesting, well-written book.

So I purchased the Audible version for my Kindle Fire. The recording is 42 hours long; therefore, I listened to it in bits and pieces. It took a long time (I read and/or listened to many other books during that period also), but today I finished it!

Despite the fact that it happened over 200 years ago and I knew about it already, I found myself feeling very sad and very frustrated as I read about George Washington's final illness. He was 67, still strong and very active. With today's medicine he'd have been given a good round of antibiotics and been up and about in no time. Unfortunately, medicine was still in a very primitive state in Washington's day, and many of the common practices were based on ignorance and superstition. Washington was bled so much that it is estimated he was drained of half his entire blood supply. His doctors simply did not know what else to do, so they kept doing the wrong thing over and over. And so he died. Listening to it, I wanted to reach through time and yank those doctors away from him, with their gory bloodletting tools and basins!

There is such a vast amount of information in this book that I'm sure it could be read/listened to several times to absorb most of it. But, I will admit, that, as interesting as it was, I will probably wait awhile before delving into it again!

Now that I have finished the book, I would still highly recommend it.

Where Am I? When Am I?

I have been reading my way through winter. Sometimes the reading is by Audible books, which are great when my vision is less than stellar, the print is too small in the book, or my eyes are too tired. But the result is the same. I get to spend time in other places, with other people, and in other times.

As anyone who reads my blog, or who has more than a passing acquaintance with me, knows, I am a true Bookaholic.

My primary reading/listening for the past couple of weeks has been the re-read of the Brother Cadfael series by Ellis Peters. I have the complete series in book form, but the print in some of the books is very small. So I invested in one of the books from Audible, and enjoyed that format. Since I can't afford the whole series as recorded books right now, for the rest I have been reading despite the print size. This involves taking off my glasses, holding the book quite close to my face, and closing my left eye (its compromised central vision creates a blurring or double vision effect when reading small print). But despite this, I quickly get lost in the story and in the atmosphere created by the very talented author.

I have not, however, been reading only Brother Cadfael. I take breaks with other literature. I am listening to my thick biography of George Washington, and with him learning how the first government of the United States as a federal republic was worked out, and the great financial difficulties the Washingtons had gone through. With my granddaughter I am reading aloud a three-book alternate universe fantasy series by Shirley Rousseau Murphy on my Kindle. I also listen sometimes to the recording of one of the Outlander series books (author, Diana Gabaldon). I've read all the Outlander books, but, again, listening to the very well done recordings is a different experience.

When I have been deep into a book, and then must put it down/turn it off to do something else, I emerge for a moment a bit off-center. Making the transition back to 21st Century USA from 12th century England, or 18th century America, or the alternate universe of Nightpool, takes just a moment.

I know I can't be the only one who does this! To me this is the hallmark of a good writer--to transport the reader so thoroughly into another time and place that the reader emerges blinking in confusion to rejoin his/her own world.

Electronic Glitch; or, Why I Didn't Get Much Done

As I mentioned in a previous post, here, I've been listening to the book about George Washington on my Kindle Fire with the Audible app. This book takes 42 hours to listen to. My plan is to listen when I am doing something that requires hands but not brains, so I can concentrate on the book while getting something else, like folding laundry, done.

Yesterday I started listening while eating my breakfast. When I was ready to move on to something else, I tried to turn off the book and the Kindle. Oops! The Kindle goes into power saving mode while a recording is playing; the screen goes blank, but the recording still plays. The Kindle Fire has only one button on it, the On/Off power button. Everything else is touchscreen. To bring the picture back and manage the Fire, you tap the power button.

Well, I tapped. I pushed. I held it down. A lot. And the picture never came back. With a blank screen, you cannot do anything. So the narrator kept talking. I didn't want to just walk away and leave him talking while I was missing a lot of the book. That would mean that if I ever got the Fire working properly again I'd have to try to find where I last listened--not so easy on such a long book.

When electronic gadgets develop a glitch, the cure is often to turn it off, then turn it back on and it resets itself. But I couldn't turn the Fire off. My solution? Well, the battery had to run down eventually--automatic off!

I really didn't have anything terribly pressing to do, so I just kept listening. I printed out some photos, started some laundry, and played a lot of computer solitaire. I also was very drawn into the account of the early phases of the Revolutionary War. Then, in the middle of the story of the horrible winter in Valley Forge, which was helping me understand why it was so bad, the battery finally ran down. The Fire turned off. I recharged it and, sure enough, it now works fine.

What caused the problem? I have no idea. As far as I am concerned all electronic things work by magic anyway! And, now, it is magically working properly again.

George and Martha

Quite some time ago I came across a review of the book Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow. I was interested, so ordered the book. The book arrived, all 817 narrative pages of it (plus many more pages of notes and references). I started reading the book, but soon gave up--not because it is dull. To the contrary, I was finding it very interesting. The probelem, for me is that it is 817 pages of very fine print. As I have mentioned previously, I have certain vision challenges. Because of that, reading this book was very difficult for me.

I should have ordered it in Kindle format, where I can control print size. I ordered the actual book, because I knew it had pages of illlustrations (photos of paintings of many of the important people of the time) and the illustrtions would not be good on my Kindle. (I do now have a Kindle Fire which does better on photos, etc., but the Fire had not come out yet when I ordered this book.)

Recently, I subscribed to Audible.com. One day I thought about my unread book about Washington and checked in Audible to see if they had it. To my delight, they did. So now I am working on listening to the book, which is very well read--and I can flip to the illustrations section in the actual book when someone's name comes up. The recording is almost 42 hours long, so I'll be working on it for quite a while!

Today a name came up of a person who is not in the book's illustrations, and I turned to the internet to see what I could find. Well, I found him and that led to looking up others. Soon I was reading an article about Martha Washington. There was a picture of her as a young woman that had been made with facial age regression software. It is the same technique used to age photos of missing children, only doing a regression. She was quite a lovely young woman. Records still exist of orders she placed for clothing. From them we know she was barely five feet tall and very slender in her youth. The idea of George marrying an older, stout, widow for her money is one conjured up much later (though she definitely was a wealthy widow). Martha and George were both 27 when they wed, though she was eight months older than George.

Thinking about George and Martha Washington reminded me of another George and Martha.  Many years ago my parents had a pair of geese that they named George and Martha. They got a lot of enjoyment out of watching those two. My parents' backyard was fenced and sheltered on two sides by thick poplars and on one side by the house. On only one side, by an alley, could anyone easily see though the fence into the backyard. Alas, some busybody, who could in no way have been bothered by George and Martha, reported to the city that my parents were harboring illegal livestock in the city. They were forced to find another home for their geese.

It's sort of ironic that the geese had to go--today deer frequently can be seen in that yard. All around town yards are visited by squirrels, rabbits, skunks, deer, and antelope. But George and Martha were illegal immigrants!