Archive for April, 2007

This album has been a repeated play on my IPOD for several months now. I usually throw it on when I am just crossing the border from the Czech Republic into Germany. The sun is usually setting behind the mountains and for some time the only civilization I see is in the rear view mirror. “Sea Green” glides into the landscape as the first track off of Hello Waveforms the latest album from William Orbit. The rest of the tracks are a sublime progression diving emotionally deeper as the songs swim bye. Definitely, one of the better road-trip-at-night albums I have heard in a long long time, maybe even since Radiohead’s “Kid A”. Check out a homemade music video of “Sea Green”

It took me a long time to get into audio books, but my average road trip for work lasts between 6.5 – 8 hours (one way). This is valuable entertainment time but you can only listen to so much music, you can’t read, and watching movies only works if you are a kid in the back seat of a Suburban.

My first attempt at listening to audio books came on my first solo road trip into Germany, and it failed miserably because I found it tough to pay attention. It might also have been because I was trying to listen to In Cold Blood by Truman Capote and the audio quality was lacking (the quality of free). Dissapointed, I gave up on audio books thinking it was hopeless.

A few weeks later I got my hands on Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons, the precursor to The DaVinci Code. What I realized is this 1) Audio quality is everything. 2) The narator(s) is key. I was immediately engrossed and was reminded of when my dad and I used to listen to classic radio shows on AM. Some of those adventures still linger in my head. Angels & Demons brought me right back and I enjoyed every minute of those 18 hours. Since then a buddy of mine convince med to get an audible.com account, and for $22/month I get two audio books. Water for Elephants was the first one I downloaded.

Water for Elephants hits the mark as pure entertainment. David Ledoux plays the young Jacob Jankowski who has found himself tragically alone, broke, and joining the circus. Ledoux not only does a great job playing Jacob, but creates the convincing voices for all of the supporting characters throughout the book. We are flipped between the young Jacob and the ninety-three year old Jacob, and his trials and tribulations of living in a nursing home, of become old, and his struggles to get some real food.

It is a story of love, desperation, and the survival in the always dangerous Benzinni Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. Water for Elephants is a gritty adventure filled interesting twists and I would strongly recommend either the written or audio versions as they are sure to not dissapoint.