Ulysses

I place Ulysses by James Joyce in the category of really hard books to read so I have some tips on how you can read it.
I stopped and started this book a lot until I understood that there were no quotation marks and just a hyphen to mark when a speech begins.  But even that breakthrough didn't help a lot with the reading of my book.  So I decided to try listening to it instead.  My first attempt did not go very well, and I found that I needed to read along with the recording because some things weren't very clear.  That is when I put it aside for a while.  It was not until I found what I think is the perfect recording of Ulysses that I gave it another go and I will tell you why this version was of so much use to me... it was a full cast of Irish actors who did the job!  With different voices helping to differentiate lines and a copy of the book as well, I was able to successfully read and understand James Joyce's Ulysses! 

Once my technical issues were dealt away with I was able to focus on what the book was about.
In a nutshell, it is basically an account of Leopold Bloom as he lives through a twenty four hour period in Dublin.  Stephen Dedalus who I am already familiar with from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, is a secondary character (but more prominent than the rest).

What is also to be understood about Ulysses is that it is meant to be an odyssey of the mind (many passages being the stream-of-consciousness of not only Dedalus and Bloom but other lesser characters).  Listening and reading at the same time really helped to keep track of these switches from dialogue to what I can only describe as musings.  The episodes are named after characters from Homer's Odyssey (though the content of each section is only vaguely parallel to each other).   It was fun to spot the connections!  What I wasn't too keen on is the idea that Stephen was meant to be Telemachus and Bloom was Odysseus (ugh!).  While fascinated with these connections and what Joyce did with these characters I am still the purist when it comes to the Odyssey and I didn't like either Dedalus or Bloom at all to be connected with some of my favourites.
However, it was an odyssey-like experience reading this book, and I can safely say that I will attempt it again at a later date to see what else I can see (or what I had missed) in a second reading.  Listening and reading felt a lot like binge-watching a show, I was exhausted after each episode. It wasn't an easy, comfortable read, but I am glad I made the attempt.

Great Tunes to Read by...

First up is Ozric Tentatcles’ Paper Monkeys.  This instrumental music was absolutely perfect to listen to while reading the Winston Science Fiction Series.  Their futuristic sounds magically enhanced my spacey reading experience.

Bernard Haitink with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra’s  Tchaikovsky: The Symphonies was vital in my reading of Android Karenina, even with it’s crazy “quirky” sub plots, was really the only way to go, I don’t think I can ever read Tolstoy without Pyotr Ilyich’s music in the background.  It was weird, in a fanatic way, you can’t help loving the Quirk.
                                                
Read some Scandianvian crime fiction this year?  Adrian Lux and The Swedish House Mafia were listened to a great deal while I read Steig Larsson’s Millenium trilogy.

The Icelandic post rock group Sigur Ros was very apt for Quentin Bates’ Icelandic mysteries,

 Finland’s Husky Rescue for Lucifer’s Tears by James Thompson.  It was a cultural learning experience for me to sample all at once, the differences in each Scandinavian country and their music as well as their literature.

Swedish folk rock group Junip kept me company for many other books read this year, as well as the Scottish electronica group Boards of Canada.

  I value electronica in many ways, but having it enhance my reading experience drives me to seek out more from this wonderful genre. 
The cool, mellow music of Kurt Vile was also used to great advantage.  This music is so relaxed that I think you could read practically anything and it would be an easy going peaceful experience.

 Steven Wilson’s album this year covered all of the rest.  While it is hard to pick just one particular favourite amongst all the music I listen to, I do like to choose him very often as great music to read by. Not just this particualr album, every album of his is a sublime experience, to read by, eat by, drive by,  whatever you want to do!

All the Pleasures of Time and Leisure

Since owning my own laptop I have been introduced to the joys of electronic books, and since I also have a huge selection of music on there as well I have been combining the two for a couple of years now.    It just makes more sense (to me) to combine the two (because there just isn't enough time in a day to do either separately)  though I know that most people do not like to do this claiming that the music or the reading would be too distracting of the other.    I beg to differ.    Admittedly, before I even considered doing such things, there was always music in my head... like my life has it's own soundtrack, wherever I go and whatever I do, if it's just walking early in the morning and watching the sun come up, driving along the highway to and from Terrace (a very beautiful drive any time of the year), working, cleaning, quilting, writing.  It's never really quiet in my head, so I've never had any problems incorporating the two.

Before I even had my laptop I noticed the enhancement of my pleasure  of listening while reading,  my first experience being some Heinlein juveniles, whilst listening to the Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robot.   The Rolling Stones were never so good as when I was listening over and over again to Aproaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon.  
I strongly recommend reading some thrilling space opera to the music of The Flaming Lips as their genre, while being stated as alternative is really space music of the finest calibre.


Next to make a great impression was a selection of space music from Hearts of Space, a radio program out of Berkeley, California featuring the best of electronic and classical music with a spacey theme.  One such piece resonated with me while reading book two of Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet (a truly sad story of love and pain in Mormon America).  Adagio to Silence  was so invocative, I could not help but be overwhelmed with sorrow and compassion for the protagonists of this side story with a perfect selection of Mahler, Kitaro, Messiaen, Landowski, Stearns and Tempel.    Have a look at their website... there is lots there to enjoy.  Hearts of Space

 The pairing of Tanya Huff's Blood Books with the last two albums by U.N.K.L.E Where Did the Night Fall and Another Night Out.   A terrific co-operation of Sleepy Sun, Katrina Ford, Gavin Smith, The Black Angels,  Autolux, Gavin Clark and the awesomeness of U.N.K.L.E.    Perfection!


Another  truly significant  and well mated couple is The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov joined with Dmitri Shostakovich's neo-classical string quartets.    I don't think I could ever separate the two now from each other, both being so integral to the power of the story each tell.
Master is a very creepy,  sinister book with a fascinating story within a story within yet another story.   I stongly recommend using this combination of music to story.












This year's serendiptious pairing was The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick being well met with the French electronica band Air's soundtrack  to the Georges Méliès film  Le Voyage Dans Le Lune (the album having the same name).

 As you can see there are quite a lot of choices out there for this kind of reading, and I promise to share some of those perfect combinations that I manage to stumble upon while working through my collections of books and music.  Of course, in the future we will have holographic novels which will have all the senses engaged whilst reading/watching  the story... so this concept really isn't that far off eh?