Invisible Hand

Moseyed on over to the library website yesterday and discovered that both audiobooks of Richard Adams’s Watership Down were checked out! Drat and damnation! What to do, what to do?

Fortunately, a few months ago, I made a list of the half-dozen or so unread books I own that had companion audiobooks out and available at my local libraries. Two were at a library I pass on the way home from work. They were –

Time Enough for Love, by Robert Heinlein

The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck

Argh. What to do, what to do.

This whole read-along-with-a-book-while-listening-to-the-audio-version works best with epics, I’ve discovered. Watership Down would have been superbly epic. Certainly Steinbeck’s work is epic. And I enjoy him as a writer (seek him out on that list of Hundred Best Reads over to the left there). But …

Two things. First, even though Grapes is undoubtedly an epic tale, it’s also kind of a dreary one, no? I mean, I don’t know if I’m being paranoid here, but I can actually envision Future Me and family living a similar lifestyle as the Joads do, especially if more economic illiterates continue to occupy the White House. So that’s depressing, and I’m not sure an active and somewhat negative imagination as mine needs that right about now.

And second, I’ve really been enjoying my recent string of quick science fiction reads.

Yeah, I know that Heinlein’s novel is extremely long. But might that also make it “epic”? (Note: I have no knowledge of the book’s plot, characters, etc.) I also have problems with Heinlein’s non-juvenile works – I particularly find his amorality objectionable. However, the dude was a superior writer, part of the triumvirate of Greatest Science Fiction Writers Who Ever Wrote. So I think I owe him a fair reading. There. That’s settled. The Invisible Hand has thrust Time Enough for Love out to me, and I shall partake.

If anything derails this project, rest assured I will complain immediately to your willing ear.