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Chapter Twelve:

The Trumpet of the Swan: 12 A Rescue

Chapter Eleven:

The Trumpet of the Swan: 11 Camp Kookooskoos

Chapter Ten:

The Trumpet of the Swan: 10 Money Trouble

I’ve been recording a few chapters of Music Talks with Children by Thomas Tapper, a group project at librivox. It’s lovely. From the Preface:

The purpose is to suggest a few of the many aspects which music may have even to the mind of a child. If these chapters, or whatever may be logically suggested by them, be actually used as the basis of simple Talks with children, music may become to them more than drill and study. They should know it as an art, full of beauty and of dignity; full of pure thought and abounding in joy.

One of the chapters, entitled “Music and Reading”, begins: “A beautiful thing in life is the friendship for books.”

Ahh yes, yes it is. The author mentions the pleasure of reading the letters and biographies of the great composers, but I think mainly he wanted to talk about how much he loves books in general! Good books “present beautiful pictures to us truthfully, or they present truth to us beautifully.”

If you read good books you will have in every volume you get something well worth owning. You should bestow upon it as much care as you would want any other good friend to receive. And if it has contributed help or pleasure to you it is surely worth an abiding place. A fine pleasure will come from a good book even after we are quite done with it. As we see it in years after it has been read there comes back to one a remembrance of all the old pleasures, and with it a sense of thankfulness for so pleasant a friendship. Hence any book that has given us joy or peace or comfort is well worth not only good care, but a place for always; as a worthy bit of property.

And that is why I have too many books. They are my friends and have earned “an abiding place” on my shelves.

I’ll let you know when this audiobook is finished and ready for download, but in the meantime if you want an audiobook about music you might enjoy this series of Thomas Tapper’s little biographies of great composers for children:
https://librivox.org/stories-of-great-composers-for-children-by-thomas-tapper/

Sorry, fell behind due to illness and depression. I’ll post three chapters now to catch up with my podcast feed:

The Trumpet of the Swan: 07 School Days
The Trumpet of the Swan: 08 Love
The Trumpet of the Swan: 09 The Trumpet

Off to Montana, banana, banana!

The Trumpet of the Swan: 06 Off to Montana

Sick again. Jeebus. So far I wouldn’t categorize it as anything worse than a cold: scratchy throat, bad cough, congestion, general crappiness. Let’s hope it doesn’t get any worse. SIGH.

The Trumpet of the Swan: 05 Louis

The Trumpet of the Swan: 04 The Cygnets

The Trumpet of the Swan: 03 A Visitor

Forgot to say — I’ll be posting Trumpet of the Swan chapters here automatically on M/W/F, the same day that they show up in my podcast feed, just to keep things in sync.

The Trumpet of the Swan: 02 The Pond

I recorded the first eleven chapters of E.B. White’s classic “The Trumpet of the Swan” a few years ago but never finished it for some reason. But now I will! I recorded another four chapters a few days ago — they’re short and make a nice change from 45 minutes of Mordor! E.B. White’s prose is simple, elegant, and extremely fun to read aloud. (He is the “White” of Strunk and White’s “Elements of Style”, a book everyone should own.)

Anyhow — I hope you like this lovely story!

The Trumpet of the Swan: 01 Sam

Chapter 9; the last chapter. I’ve been working on The Lord of the Rings for about 12 years; I started recording it for Henry, my little Tolkien junkie who is all grown up now, and finished it for my crowd of loyal listeners who so often send me the kindest emails and comments! It’s hard to believe that it’s over.

“It’s an ill wind as blows nobody no good, as I always say. And All’s well as ends Better!”

Return of the King Bk 2: 09 The Grey Havens

Second half of Chapter 8:

Return of the King Bk 2: 08-2 The Scouring of the Shire, Part 2

Chapter 8 is a very long chapter, so here’s the first half:

Return of the King Bk 2: 08-1 The Scouring of the Shire, Part 1

A few weeks ago, while reading David Eagleman’s excellent “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain,” I had a very odd experience.

I was reading this passage:

“In 1976, the American psychologist Julian Jaynes proposed that until late in the second millennium B.C.E., humans had no introspective consciousness, and that instead their minds were essentially divided into two, with their left hemispheres following the commands from their right hemispheres. These commands, in the form of auditory hallucinations, were interpreted as voices from the gods. About three thousand years ago, Jaynes suggests, this division of labor between the right and left hemispheres began to break down.”

And suddenly, seemingly from nowhere, I had huge red blinking text in my head (I won’t make it red and blinking here, just bold):

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

My brain was shouting that phrase at me, over and over:

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.

So I sat there for a minute wondering what on earth that phrase was doing in my head… and then it hit me. That’s a title I remember seeing among my dad’s books when I was very small (I was 6 for most of 1976). I remember that I didn’t understand all of the words in the title, but it was such an interesting-sounding phrase. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. So rhythmic, so thumpy, so chewy.

So I googled it and, boom, that’s the title of a book by Julian Jaynes about his controversial bicameralism theory:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)

So, since the text I was reading didn’t actually contain that phrase and I hadn’t read Jaynes’s book and didn’t have any real idea what it was about, my unconscious mind took the author’s name (which I don’t consciously remember but must have seen on the book jacket) and the terms “break down” and “consciousness”, added them up, and gave me the correct answer to a question I didn’t even ask.

And the passage which started that chain of events was in a book about neuroscience and the astonishing complexity and dexterity of the unconscious mind.

“Almost the entirety of what happens in your mental life is not under your conscious control, and the truth is that it’s better this way.”

The human brain. Man. I am so often struck by the AMAZING things our brains will do, things that we take completely for granted.

Barliman Butterbur and Bill the Pony :)

Return of the King Bk 2: 07 Homeward Bound

Out of doubt, out of dark, to the day’s rising
he rode singing in the sun, sword unsheathing.

Return of the King Bk 2: 06 Many Partings

Another new recording for you, yay!

Return of the King Bk 2: 05 The Steward and the King

Something from the archives! I think I recorded it in 2003 or 2004 as a
Christmas present for Henry.

The Bad Beginning, by Lemony Snicket

The Bad Beginning: Chapter 01
The Bad Beginning: Chapter 02
The Bad Beginning: Chapter 03
The Bad Beginning: Chapter 04
The Bad Beginning: Chapter 05
The Bad Beginning: Chapter 06
The Bad Beginning: Chapter 07
The Bad Beginning: Chapter 08
The Bad Beginning: Chapter 09
The Bad Beginning: Chapter 10
The Bad Beginning: Chapter 11
The Bad Beginning: Chapter 12
The Bad Beginning: Chapter 13