Saturday, April 9, 2011

Reading (?) in the Car

     Ok, so I didn't actually pick up that dangerous habit.  I have however finished the entirety of Seven Years in Tibet in spurts during my commute to and from work for the past few weeks.  A while back I was at a thrift store, and to my great joy I discovered, or re-discovered I suppose, books on tape.  Given that my car is a particularly old and junky piece and still has an old selectively-functioning tape deck, I decided that rather than listening to the same five songs on the radio for an hour of my life every day, I would pick up a few of these inexpensive bits of nostalgia (yes, cassette tapes are nostalgic for me) and expand the literary region of my mind that has recently gone into atrophy due to a severe lack of me-time.
      I'd recommend reading the book if you're at all interested in Tibetan culture or history or religion.  It was fascinating, and written in a style to which I am not at all accustomed - long, narrative prose with no dialogue at all.  It seemed odd at first, but after a few minutes of puzzled distraction, I settled nicely into the story and was transported to the unforgiving mountains of Tibet and the windswept plateau on which the capital of Lhasa sits. 
     I'm excited to start my next set of tapes - Medieval Jewish philosophy of Maimonides.  Light reading, as always.
    

1 comment:

  1. haha- glad you found something productive to do on your commute. Libraries tend have lots of books on tape too- in case you want to save some $.

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