Not Desert Island Discs

I take it you're familiar with the concept?  The radio show, where the interviewer and interviewee chat for 45 minutes or so, interspersing the conversation with 8 records the interviewee has chosen to 'take' with them if they were cast away on a desert island.  The radio programme started in 1942, as part of the BBC Light Programme, to keep up the morale of the country during the war.... and it has endured to this day, with slight tinkering to the format, and only several changes of interviewer.  Only 40 people are chosen each year, so it could be seen as a higher honour than receiving something from the Queen on her birthday, or at the New Year.

How do I know this?  Because I'm listening to the audio book 'Desert Island Discs, 70 Years of Castaways'.

image from Amazon.com

I've taken to listening to audio books recently for two reasons.  Firstly, I seem to have (temporarily) lost my reading mojo - in-as-much-as I've started several books, but not made progress, and certainly haven't finished them.  There's still a big pile of books I want to read, but I can't settle down with any of them.  For some reason.  All I seem to manage at the moment are non-fiction medical confessionals. Nothing against them per se, but I'll be running out of Doctors/Medics etc soon.

Secondly, the radio is poor company on the drive to work.  The news is all depressing, war, politics, scandal, tragedy, and there's only so much radio DJs I can take....  So, deep joy, I've discovered audio-books, or books on CD.  I don't have an MP3 player, or I suppose I could download e-Audio and plug into the adaptor in my car.  Perhaps that's something for the future.

I've just devoured Jim Butcher's Blood Rites - the 6th in the Dresden Files series - about Harry Dresden, Chicago's only wizard private investigator.  I've been shelving these books, and read the blurb, and thought 'hmm, sounds intriguing'.  But they're quite thick books, and with my lost mojo at the moment I've not dared borrow one - when I do read I tend to read quite slowly, so doubt my ability to finish it in the alloted 3 weeks.  I'd be useless in a book club/reading group for the same reason.

image from Amazon.com

I didn't mean to start The Dresden Files in the middle of the series, but that was the only audio book in the whole of the county, so that's where it started for me.  I've since been to Amazon to order the first of the series.... and we'll see where I go from there.

I'd picked up a couple of audio books in the Oxfam Charity Shop in Witney - they've a good music/disc section at the back, and I thought I'd give it a try.  I started with Gervase Phinn - Head over Heels in the Dales - there's a whole series of them, memoirs of a school inspector, quite drole.

image from Amazon.com

and then went onto

image from Amazon.com

which was a very enjoyable story:

London, 1806 - William Thornhill, happily wedded to his childhood sweetheart Sal, is a waterman on the River Thames. Life is tough but bearable until William makes a mistake, a bad mistake for which he and his family are made to pay dearly. His sentence: to be transported to New South Wales for the term of his natural life. Soon Thornhill, a man no better or worse than most, has to make the most difficult decision of his life . . . The Secret River is a universal and timeless story of love, identity and belonging

Being a Radio 4 listener for the last 30 years, I've often had my own go at compiling my list of 8 discs to take to my desert island...  and the choices can change as the mood takes me.  Today's list comprises:

Heroes - David Bowie
Piece of my Heart - Janis Joplin
Bigmouth Strikes Again - The Smiths
How I wrote 'Elastic Man' - The Fall
One Day Like This - Elbow
Ring of Fire - Johnny Cash
Chuck E's in Love - Rickie Lee Jones
She's a Star - James

But don't quote me on that.

Keepin' it real, don't 'cha know?

Kat :)