Reading Week: 5

February 6, 2012 by Rieshy
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Antique heros meet Jack Reacher.

First a realization.  Reading books off my ipad is not going to be successful for me.  Not only do my small children borrow it to listen to audible books at bedtime (my prime reading time) but I cannot seem to forget that it is a computer and not a book.

Normally when I read all life ceases to exist around me.  I wouldn't notice the proverbial bomb going off. This ability, I call it a superpower, has amazed and irked my husband for years.

When I read off my ipad I become ADD.  Three lines of rhymed verse and then I wonder, "Maybe I got an amazing email- I should check." 30 minutes and no email later I know the temperature in Hong Kong and all about the new controversy on the Well Trained Mind Forums, but I'm still just 3 line of rhymed verse in.

This week I was attempting to finish The Lay of the Nibelungs on my ipad.  When I finally threw in the towel on electronic reading I started looking at copies on Amazon.  The free ibook book I have was translated by George Henry Needler in the meter of the original.  This English version comes across as sing-song.  It makes me a little sea-sick.  The original German doesn't give me that feeling- but it's  too hard for me to read.

I've ordered a translation by Burton Raffel.  It seems to combine meter with readability.  We'll see.

I'm finishing up listening to No Way Out, by Lee Childs.  It's a Jack Reacher novel, but a bit unusual in that I'm far far into it, yet no one has died.  It's nice to have a hero with amazing skills and brains, who can effortlessly do what lesser men would quail at.  In Nibelung terms- a man of mickle might.

So Reacher =  Siefried, minus the bloody end.

Important note: By the number of times Reacher is described as standing head and shoulders above the New York crowds I think Tom Cruise is pretty much disqualified from the role.

Happy Reading!

Wagner's, The Ring, is next.  I've even found free podcasts of the opera.  Should be fun.


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2 comments:

Unknown said...

So I could never read on an ipad either, and then for christmas I was given the gift of a kindle. It is awesome....there's no backlight so it doesnt hurt mine eyes, and i am not tempted to galavant from one corner of the internet to the other between chapters. You should totally get one. just saying.

Gregory Tipton said...

(sigh) Do you want the Kindle, or just another iPad?

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