Audible Books

My iPod, of course, has totally changed my life, even though I was not born, as today's American babies are, with over 1,000 songs already on their iPods.  (Source:  The Onion)  Also, even though I began with songs and just this week was singing  "Sal ti Laik Siti" along with the African heroine in The Book of Mormon, I use my iPods for Audible books more than for songs.  Now I "devour" books through my ears instead of with a pen on paper, underlining and talking back in the margins.  I thought it would be interesting to see what books I got from Audible in 2011.  Here's the beginning of the end.

The Science of Fear by Daniel Gardner.  Jonathan suggested this for the Jo-Mama Book Club, but it seemed so much like Being Wrong, The Invisible Gorilla, and How We Decide that we're reading Room instead. ( I also started the Spanish translation of Room with Javier yesterday.)

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Explained by Paramhansa Yogananda--Read for the Sufi section of the Intro to Islam class and found out that it's all spiritual...Who'd have thought?
Poems of the Orient, including those of Rumi, Sa'di, Hafiz
Rumi:  Poet of Divine Ecstasy read or talked about by Coleman Barks
Rumi discussed by Andrew Harvey
The Ecsttic Soul by Coleman Barks

So...as you can see, I made some choices for Sufism even if I didn't become a whirling dervish.  (Let it be known, though, that Teresa Fiorentini once gave me a pair of earrings with whirling dervishes because, she aid, they made her think of me.)

Then, more in the popular vein, I read 1Q34 by Haruki Murakami (as translated by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel)

That had more to do with Annie Billon, who was reading it, than with my sabbatical courses, but here we get back on track, with Comparative Religions:


The City of God by Saint Augustine.  (I didn't really listen to all 6 parts.)


Confessions by Saint Augustine
St. Augustine by Robert O'Connell

The Book of Mormon :  A Very Short Introduction by Terry L. Givens (not the Broadway musical)
A Passage to India by E.M. Forster (because Forster has Hindus and Muslims--Mohammadans)
Hinduism by Dr. Gregory Kozlowski

Then, for Western Culture and Values:


The Aeneid by Virgil (translation by...)
Mysteries of the Middle Ages by Thomas Cahill
Metamorphoses by Ovid (didn't listen to it all)
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
The Iliad by Homer (read by Susan Sarandon, Stanley Lombardo)
The Odyssey by Homer (translated by Robert FGagles)
Gilgamesh translated (?) by Stephen Mitchell

for my Politics and Government of the Middle East class:


Palestine:  Peace Not Apartheid by Jimmy Carter


Then, for the Jo-Mama Book Club,

Netherland by Joseph O'Neill (one of my favoirte books f the year)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (read in honor of Mom, who loved it)
(More later--I'm going in descending chronological order)



The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman/Heather Lind (I didn't listen to all of this.)

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom (because Bob Milling mentioned it in context to my letters about Mom)

Swamplandia by Karen Russell (I'm coming back to this now, January 12)
Picasso by Arianna Strassinopoulos Huffington
Picasso's War (Guernica)  by Russell Martin
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (diddn't listen to it all)
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (not a recent book but one I loved)
The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason (no recollection of this at all!)
Green Mansions by W.H. Hudson
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan (need to listen again)
Bathazar, Mount Olive, Clea, and Justine by Lawrence Durrell.
Exclusive Interview Jim Atlas with Daniel Mendelsohn on Lawrence Durrell

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
The New Yorker latest Eisodes including those with Andy Borowitz and Bruce McCall
Teach Me Joyeux Noel by Judy R. Mahoney (What was that?)
The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand (no recollection)
French Lessons by Ellen Sussman (purple prose)
The Marketplace of Ideas Louis Menand
Bossypants by Tina Fey (I enjoyed this once I got past the silly title)
Room by Emma Donoghu  (One of the most gripping books; Suzy liked it, too, and Jonathan and I are making it the next focus of the Jo-Mama Book Club
 One day by David Nicholls (another book-of-the month for our club)
Packing for Mars by Mary Roach


Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky  (what I read because Jan's Significant Other, Lurline, was reading it when we were in Berlin)


A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Private Life by Jane Smiley
In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson (no recollection!)
Rapid German Earworms Learning (Good intentions)
Learn German--Level 2:  Absolute Beginner (Road to Hell)
Boots on the Ground by Dusk by Mary Tillman (because I thought The Tillman Story was the best movie of the last year)
Being Wrong by Kathryn Schulz (I cited this when I was serving on a jury)

A Crack in the Edge of the World by Simon Winchester (can't remember)
The Bostonians by Henry James
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff (I really liked this)
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (I'd forgotten that 2011 was the year I took the whole thing on!)
Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier
Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
My Reading Life by Pat Conroy
The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman