Words In Different Delivery Systems

I am reading with my ears the book you see above. It is absolutely killing me. It's lovely and weird and the subject matter is hard- a convicted sex offender- and homelessness too.
The narrator is fantastic. Scott Shepherd. I just looked him up and he is famous for his memory. He can recite from his very own mind The Great Gatsby. When you listen to audio books, you come to find different readers who actually and really create with their voices the perfect presentation of the world of the book.
At least for me. And some narrators are so bad that it destroys the experience for me. But that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about the combination of a very fine piece of literature (to my mind, at least) with an incredibly talented reader.
For some reason, I'd never read a Russell Banks novel. Why? I do not know. I will read more. Lately it has become very obvious to me that some authors immediately let me know from the very beginning pages that I am in good hands. I do not need to worry or fret. They will deliver the story unto me and I can trust them. This is not always the case. Some authors make me fretful. They make me uncomfortable and not in a good way like having to think too much. No, it's more that I don't trust them to take me where they were aiming to go.
That is not the case with Russell Banks and Lost Memory Of Skin. 

I am in good hands. Skillful hands. Hands that have fashioned a story and a world and a place that I have entered and will not leave gladly.

I am also reading (with my eyes) another good book by another skillful author. Michael Chabon's Telegraph Avenue.

Again, I am in good hands. I am actually reading it on my Kindle. I downloaded it (uploaded it?) before we went to Dog Island and it's the first book I've read on the Kindle since I went to Mexico back in December. I do not feel comfortable reading on the Kindle. It's odd that I am completely thrilled to listen to a book but reading one on a device is uncomfortable. Maybe because listening is not the same at all as reading with eyes while the Kindle tries, sort of, to duplicate the book experience but to my mind, it does not.
Oh sure. I love the convenience. I can tote that little thing around and have it wherever I go, even if that is merely from room to room.
But it is not a book.
I try to convince myself that it is. That it is, ultimately, about words on a page. That whether paper or screen, it really makes no difference. But it does, you know. It does.
I think that probably most of us here have an almost totemic relationship with paper and ink and that is hard, if not impossible, to replace with pixels or whateverthefuck they use to make that illusion of ink upon paper on the device.
Device.
The very word conveys such a different meaning than book. 
And I am trying very hard to get over this prejudice because that's what it is- a prejudice. And I know it. But somehow it just doesn't make me as happy to think that I have a book stored on a device which yes, I'll be able to go back to whenever I want (as long as the device still works and by god, no device ever created, at least these days, is going to last as long as a book can potentially survive, which is centuries) but it does not esthetically please me the way even a paper-backed book on the shelf would.
Even though I get most of my real books from the library these days. Even though, the older I get, the less stuff and fewer objects I want in my life.
On paper (haha!) the Kindle is perfect.
But it's not ON paper, which is the problem.
And as I sit here typing this, I realize that I have completely adapted and adopted the computer for writing but I am not yet there for reading.
I think it must be a brain/neural pathways thing. Maybe. I don't know. It has something to do with the tactile pleasure of paper too and I am sure of that.

Anyway, I recommend both of these books even though I have not finished either one of them. I can safely state that you will be in good hands if you decide to enter those author-created worlds.

It is Saturday morning. I slept for approximately one thousand hours last night although I did get up and read for about an hour in the middle of all that sleeping. Can y'all be a witness for me? That when the day comes when I can no longer read, either with my ears or with my eyes, that I be taken to a state or country where euthanasia is legal and be allowed to go on? Lily and Jason were having a Whose Mom Is Crazier discussion one day and Lily won because when she was a child (and I did this with all of my children), I would have her watch the red lights for me to tell me when they changed to green so that I could read at the stoplights. So really, even if reading on the Kindle isn't the same as reading on the page, it is still reading and by god, I'm going to enjoy it to the best of my abilities. And now I'm going to go do Saturday chores and maybe work in the garden and I am going to wear a garment with big pockets so that I can put my Discman in one of them so that I can listen while I do laundry, wash dishes, sweep, pull weeds, whatever. I need to finish Lost Memory Of Skin because someone has asked for it at the library and they are waiting for me to return it and I understand that. They will just have to be patient, though, because I ain't rushing this. I am savoring it.

So that will be my day and then this evening I am going to the Opera House to wait tables and then see The Mousetrap which I hear is fabulous. It's the closing night and I'll be glad to see all those beautiful people whom I have worked with before, from kitchen to stage. And the stage is yet another way to enjoy a story. Words interpreted by my mind or an actor's voice and eventually, I'll feel compelled to do that again. To be part of a play and to lend my own voice and body to that process.

Words.

Can't get enough. They make my life so damn rich. Yours too, I'll bet. Aren't we lucky?

Yes. Yes we are.

Love...Ms. Moon