Long Time No Read

I have been busy.

I have been so busy that they are going to have to invent a new word for this level of busyness. It includes (but is not limited to) the following things:
1. Moving. Soon. Again. (This time to my own house, though. Or, at least, to a house that the bank owns but in which they will very kindly allow me to live in exchange for most of my money.)
2. Report cards. Enough said.
3. Drama related to adolescents and education and so on.
4. Knitting. Christmas-related.
5. Christmas. (I am afraid.)
6. Marking.
7. Marking.
8. Marking.
9. Planning lessons that will engage and educate at the same time.
10 A blog for school, so the young minds which I am shaping can look on the computer for what they're supposed to do, rather than LISTEN TO THE TEACHER and then WRITE THINGS DOWN.
11. Did I mention I'm moving? Again?
12. A couple of shockingly large bills, quite unexpected.

BUT this is what I really wanted to tell you about: I have made a discovery.

Books.
On.
Tape.

(or CD. Tomato, tomahto.)

I never thought I would be a books on tape kind of gal. Reading, for me, is very much about having a book, about the feel of the paper and the look of the type and the smell of it and the heft and the actual, physical, act of reading. However, I've been spending an awful lot of time in the car, and for a while I was spending that time worrying. Worrying is something that I'm actually already pretty good at, so I really didn't need to do any more of it. I thought I'd try something new.

A few weeks ago we (that is, my colleagues and I) went to see an author speak about teaching writing. The author was David Morrell, who is most famous for writing the book that became "Rambo." One of my colleagues has read this fellow's work before (he's written something like 30 books. Dear god.) I asked what he thought, and he was a little ambiguous. "Get the recording," he advised me. "The stories are good but the writing's not great."

So I did.

I listened to all 10 cds that made up the book "The Fraternity of the Stone" which is a pretty okay thriller. It was good: there were bits that made me roll my eyes ("his sinews tightened" "his jaw hardened" and so on) and there was a very naive view of organized religion (which is probably a rant for another day), but on the whole it did the job. I was distracted from my worrying, I was caught up in the story, and it made the time pass beautifully.

I think I'm hooked. Now if I could just figure out a way to knit while I drive....