10:43 PM — Books on Tape I've gotten to listening to books on tape this past year. I rarely reread physical books, and I'm pretty certain I'll never re-listen to these. If anyone would be interested owning or borrowing any of the books-on-tape listed below, shoot me an email (zandperl-at-care2-dot-com) and I'd send it to you in exchange for something, or COD. Also, if you know of a trade-in program that isn't a scam, I'd be interested in that. Summaries are my own. Unless otherwise indicated, all are on tapes played once only and rewound to the beginning. For each of the below, I paid roughly $5 each.

• Clarke, Arthur C., and Baxter, Stephen. The Light of Other Days. Abridged. $13 list. A hard hearted business-man exploits his estranged physicist son and the son's journalist romantic interest to create mini-black holes to view any point in space time. (Keep your ears open for the revelation about the Crucifixion.) Science is relatively sound, but the character interactions are slightly lacking. Cliche epilogue.



• Stephenson, Neal. The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. Abridged. $25 list. A nanotech engineer from a neo-Victorian enclave / independent state writes / programs a supercomputer story book / primer for a Lord's daughter, steals a copy for his own daughter, but it falls into the hands of a girl from the ghetto. The multiple storylines are woven together well.


• Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash. Abridged. $25 list. A cyberpunk story in a future where America's hold on the world market is Mafia-run pizza delivery. The main character is a hacker with real-life samurai pizza delivery skills who learns about a designer drug (Snow Crash) that only affects hackers. It's a rare treat to find a book with a strong secondary character of the opposite gender of the protagonist, and yet have no romantic interest between the two. Compares well to the original novel.

I'm also working on The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, original BBC production. Douglas Adams produced the first two "installments" of the series as this radio broadcast BEFORE he wrote the novel trilogy with five books and a short story. (And the movie came after that.) Books 3-5 have since also been radio broadcast, but they are not original. H2G2 will be available for loan only to people I know in person. If you wanted to buy a copy yourself, it's only available through the BBC website, for GBP 16 (~$27) plus shipping.  ¶ permalink | 2 musings