Reading on my vacation

Taking a few days off from worK. Car travel is perfect for reading. When I was young I would have trouble reading in the car. Did I just will myself to be able to read in a car, or did I just outgrow it? I get a lot of my reading done in the car. Listening to audio-tapes helps tremendously. I recommend starting a difficult book with the audio version. I find that I can then go to the written version after a couple of tapes. And finish it with both. I have done that lately. I did that with The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields. And Slaughterhouse-Five. The audio version I listened to was read by the actor Ethan Hawke. The fantasy version of the bombing of Dresden. I know I will have to read it over again to better understand it. Haven't read Science Fiction in a very long time. The Planet of the Apes by Pierre Bulle, translated from the French may have been the only one I read. Did I read The Cat From Outer Space or do I just think I did? I'm going back 40 years so my memory is a little fuzzy. After I saw the movie on the planet of the apes, then I read the book. I must have been fourteen. I read Gone With the Wind a few times in that same era. I was disappointed by the movie. I think I like to see the movie first and then read the book. That reminds me, I did pick up the DVD on The Weight of Water and it sat on my shelf. Guess I was afraid to watch it. Was it going to be too scary? So I brought the book home from the library. It didn't end at all like I thought it would. Haven't seen the movie yet, but I am sure the movie version is very different. That book has stayed with me. Strong sense of place, taking place on the coast of Maine. The characters are living on a boat, five people cramped in. The story transfers between the past and present. The main protagonist is photographing an island in the ocean where a double murder had taken place. The suspense the reader feels is the impending murder in the present time. This book was written by Anita Shreve, the first I've read by her.

Garrison Keillor has written a history of radio in St. Paul Minneapolis. He ought to know, he was in radio for many years, recreating the glory days on his own A Prairie Home Companion starting in 1974. But this book is a little more racy than his typical home show so that made it all the more fun. Poking fun at the locals and the stars on radio, he exposes all their humaness and weaknesses. You have to like Frank White, the naive young man who stars his career in radio, and grows wise to the older generation. He learns when to stand on his own feet and branch out into the world of television in the early 50's. Garrison's own voice on the book on tape is pitch perfect, his droll sense of humor matching the story. A hit.