Listening Notes and a Few Other Things

Katharine McMahon's The Alchemist's Daughter was an immensely satisfying read, or in this case I should say listen, as I downloaded the audio book onto my MP3 player.  I eagerly looked forward to my daily walks in order to listen to another installment of the story, which is set in the early 18th century during England's Age of Reason.  The woman who read the book had an excellent voice for narrating this story, which is told from the point of view of a young woman raised in the countryside by her father, a natural philosopher and alchemist.

An only child, Emilie Selden, had a solitary upbringing.  She  yearns to know more about her French mother, who died in childbirth, but her father, John, was always rather secretive to her on that subject.  Instead he raises her to be a scientist in her own right.  Not entirely devoid of affection, she's more of an assistant and student to her father however.  It comes as a shock to him then, when she first meets two eligible young men.  He doesn't expect her to be quite so tempted by the opposite sex.

The first, Reverend Shales, also a natural philosopher, though one who  has serious doubts about alchemy, is welcomed into the Selden home.  When a spark flies between the two Emilie's father puts a stop to Shales's visits.  Being an honorable man, Shales leaves well enough alone and returns to his work in the village.  Robert Aislabie, however, sweeps in bringing with him the exoticism of London, which Emilie dreams of.  Aislabie has come as a businessman and would-be novice scientist.  He's hoping to discover safer ways to transport materials in his ships and he's heard of John Selden's famous experiments with fire and air (and perhaps also of his lovely daughter).  What he comes away with is Emilie's heart.

When Emilie becomes pregnant with Aislabie's baby, she shocks her father by returning to London with Aislabie and thereby breaking his heart.  Aislabie is not at all what he seems, and despite Emilie's intellectual prowess, she is lacking in most social skills when it comes to proper society and men in general.  Although she doesn't yet know it, Emilie is also not at all what she seems to be either.  And the story is in good part about Emilie's education of the broader world, and not just scientific.

The story moves along at a nice pace and the characters are well developed, especially Emilie Selden.  McMahon describes the period lavishly from Society's upper crust parlors to the stinking, dirty streets of London and all the characters that populate them.  It's not just the picturesque details that make the story colorful, but the scientific ideas and the social turmoil that swirled about in people's thoughts and actions.  I'm looking forward to reading (or maybe even listening) to more of McMahon's work.  I even mooched a copy of The Alchemist's Daughter to read later.   

I chose something completely different to listen to next, Laura Lippman's What the Dead Know a contemporary thriller of sorts, a story of two young girls who went to the mall one afternoon, both disappearing.  Many years later one of them turns up with a false identity and closed lips about what happened that day many years ago.  The story is engrossing, though I'm finding that some of the voices the narrator uses can be a little grating.  I'm far enough into the story, however, to want to find out just what happened that fateful day! 

On a side note, I have finally gotten my new computer up and running.

The good: I now have a nice large flat screen monitor.  I can actually see full web pages instead of having to scroll to the right to finish reading something!  I've loaded almost all my old programs and I think everything is working.  And pages are loading much faster and I feel like I can have multiple things going at once.  I'm a very good multitasker given the chance.  I also have IE6 again (though I had gotten very used to and liked those tabs on IE7), which means I can once again use the HP photo software that I loved and had to uninstall as it did Not get along with IE7.

The bad: Some of my documents that I've saved I cannot open now because I have Office 2007 (and they were created on Office 2003), though I should be able to get those worked out.  I'm not sure about the documents (cross stitch charts!) that were created on an older version of Adobe Acrobat.  I now have version 9, which might be the newest version?  That is going to take some finagling.  And I've discovered that the set of speakers that I had planned to use from my old computer are not adequate for the my new one.  Even turning up every sound control to the limit, I can barely get anything to come out of the speakers.  So I had to go and order a speaker to attach to my monitor after all.  Live and learn.

The Ugly: I have this great new computer with a dual quad core, and lots of space and memory that runs nice and fast yet I still cannot open those little streaming videos.  One of the things I was so looking forward to was being able to watch videos online.  One part of the equation is good hardware, the other I thought I already had--Broadband internet.  It seems I only have sort of fast internet (256 Kbps) and I need something faster to stream videos.  Sigh.  Can you watch videos?  I can generally see them, but they pause constantly to load, which totally breaks up the flow.  To watch a Netflix video I had to let it load for about half an hour and then thought I could watch it straight through, but it only played for a while then kept stopping telling me my internet connection had slowed or stopped.  Very disappointing.  So now do I go up the scale a notch and pay for slightly faster internet (even though you are paying for a certain speed it may be 15% slower due to other reasons beyond  your control, which seems like a rip off to me).  I don't want to pay really.  I've lived this long without all the extra bells and whistles, maybe I should just content myself with fast surfing.  I probably wouldn't have gotten quite such a fancy computer then.  But I still want to watch videos.  For the time being I will just wait and see how it goes and enjoy everything else I can do.

Comments

[Katherine]

This has been on my nightstand for a while, so I'm glad you enjoyed it (I haveone of Katherine McMahon's other books, The Rose of Sebastopol, on my nightstand right now).

[Kate S.]

I loved Laura Lippman's "What the Dead Know." I think that I must have found the reader's voices annoying as well though, as I remember that I started out listening to an audiobook version but switched to a regular book half way through and read the rest for myself.

[litlove]

Hmmm, that sounds like a very good book indeed, and one I'll look out for over here. So glad you are almost there with the new computer. I wish I could help you but I'm rubbish with technology. We can watch videos on the computer here and we have broadband, but even so, on some days they stop and start in the middle and get very frustrating. Good luck - I do hope you find an answer!

[Dorothy W.]

I hope you get the computer troubles worked out finally -- I'm not much help there ... The Alchemist's Daughter sounds like a lot of fun -- I think I'd like reading about the time period!

[Danielle]

Katherine--I've got that book as well. It seems she has a few other books out as well that I hope get published over here eventually.
Kate--It's the policemen's voices that get me. Do people in Baltimore talk with a southernish accents? Still, the story is absorbing, so I do my best to ignore the more annoying voices. I'm really curious how Heather managed to get by on her own and find out what happened to her sister.
Litlove--The McMahon book was really entertaining. I'm actually looking forward to reading it even though I listened to it first. I wonder how much I missed listening to the story. And the computer is working great--only the streaming video is a disappointment. The short videos need to constantly stop and load--very annoying. I guess I'll have to watch them on the university's public computers, which seem to have much faster internet!
Dorothy--I think things should run smoothly here on out with the computer. I wish I was a bit more knowledgeable with technical things, but I'm happy otherwise! The 18th century is really fascinating to read about. I had heard mixed things about this book, but I really enjoyed it!

[Courtney]

I loved What the Dead Know but I read it...I think the changes in voice would be difficult to listen to as an audiobook. I have another book of hers from the library that I'm anxious to begin, Another Thing to Fall, I think is the title...

[Stefanie]

Glad your new computer is up and running. Sorry the streaming doesn't work. Unfortunately internet providers have begun making people pay for the really fast connections. In my area both Qwest and Comcast have tiered pricing. Makes me very mad. Good luck getting the bugs worked out!

[Danielle]

Courtney--I think I wouldn't normally have picked up her books to read, though I do glance at them sometimes, but after listening to this audio book I may have to check out her other titles. And it is the Southtern and Mexican accents that sort of grate on me as I can tell it is just someone trying to do them and not actually someone from either place--if that makes sense.
Stefanie--I have Qwest, and I just discovered that tiered pricing!! I thought Broadband was simply broadband. That's stinky that they do that!! I plan on just sticking with what I have for now and appreciating how fast everything else works--like loading photos. It was taking me upwards of a half an hour to move photos from my digital camera to the computer, cropping them and then saving them to drop into my posts. It was painfully slow!! Now it takes literally minutes! Very sweet! So despite my whining there are most definitely many other upsides to all this! :)

[Tara]

Both of these books sound very good - I've been curious about the Lippman. Glad to hear the computer is working - what a relief.

[Danielle]

Tara--It is so nice to come home and turn on the computer and it only takes about a minute. Before I would have to start it and then go off and do something else as it booted itself up. Everything is much smoother--so I am very happy. And the Lippman is really good. I can't decide if I like the main character--I feel like I should be sympathethic to her, but I'm not quite sure about her...

[iliana]

I'm so glad your new computer is up & running!

I've got both the McMahon & Lippman books on my shelves. I tried reading the Lippman book at one point but couldn't get into it - I think though I just wasn't in the mood. Looking forward to your review of it!

[Danielle]

Iliana--Yay for the new computer! I always looked at Lippman's books, but I never felt like buying them. I'm really enjoying the audio book, though. I may have to look at her other books, too.