In the Headphones

I've finished listening to the audio book of Anna Karenina. As a knitter, I particularly liked how Tolstoy had the women in the story take up their knitting in stressful moments. One character even knits as she's in the mist of labor before the birth of her child. Can you imagine? Most of us know that knitting needles are allowed on airplanes these days, but what about the delivery room?

Now I'm listening to the granddaddy of science fiction stories, The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells. It's been fun to see how last summer's completely modernized and Americanized movie adaptation actually has many nods to the original novel. The version I'm listening to is narrated by Alexander Spencer. He sounds like a very stiff-upper-lipped British man, but that's quite appropriate for this late 19th century English novel.

tags: audio books