Audiobooks an alternative way to soak up books

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/12/2019 (2366 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I endured a classic Manitoban experience last week. I’d driven to Virden for a matinee performance of “Elf,” a riotous and ridiculous Christmas musical. All was well and good until the drive home. Then, in the falling darkness, a medley of rain, snow and general slush gooped down from the sky, slicking the highway to treacherous sludge.

I was less frustrated with the fear of death than I was with the tedium. What would normally be a 45-minute drive slithered to well over an hour. I’m restless and impatient, and this was seriously cramping my evening.

Of course there’s a silver lining, and a library tie-in. Once I got over my initial ire, I turned on “Blood, Bones & Butter,” an audiobook by New York chef Gabrielle Hamilton. I was at the point in the memoir where Hamilton describes her annual trip to Italy with her in-laws.

Seaside villas and motorcycle rides through Rome formed a pleasant counter-balance to the Manitoba driving experience, even though Hamilton’s marriage was clearly on the rocks. More substantive, however, were Hamilton’s portrayals of food and cooking as communication. Her mother-in-law spoke no English, and Hamilton spoke no Italian. The first several summers together, their relationship depended on a shared ability to prepare food.

I personally have a utilitarian outlook on food. I like my food healthy and tasty, but there my thoughts on the matter end. In Hamilton’s prose, however, food takes on an artistic, communal, almost transcendent quality. As I inched along the Trans-Canada Highway in the slippery dark, I could practically feel my brain cells expanding.

“Blood, Bones & Butter” came on the heels of another food-related book I’d finished recently: “Eat Like a Fish,” by Bren Smith. Also a memoir, Smith recounts his journey from rough-and-tumble commercial fisherman to seaweed farmer. That’s right: he farms kelp off the coast of New York. Apparently seaweeds (or “sea greens”) have the potential to solve many of the world’s food shortages.

Again, the appeal of this book was not that it spoke to my foodie soul (I’m not a foodie), or that it ignited my environmentalist sensibilities (although it did). As with “Blood, Bones & Butter,” “Eat Like a Fish” expanded my thinking in directions it hadn’t previously been flexed. How does the commercial fishing economy work? Why do we assume fish and crustaceans are the go-to foods of the ocean? How does it feel to be drawn, as deeply and inextricably as Smith is, to a life on the sea?

The real library-plug is that I checked out both these audiobooks from eLibraries Manitoba, the digital library that complements the physical one housed here on Rosser Avenue.

It’s a curious feature of public libraries that as they become more digital, accessible from anywhere via a smartphone, the physicality of the library building is also becoming more important. Libraries used to be static book-holding zones. We’re now working to reinvent ourselves, leveraging library spaces for programs, public meetings and non-conventional learning.

One of the most adorable developments to this end is the interactive play space we’ve recently created in the southeast corner of the library. Funded by donations from the Nowatzki family, the yellow-painted alcove consists of an oval alphabet carpet, a flock of “chairs” that look like happy descendants of Ogopogo, and wall panels with all kinds of buttons, dials and sliding pieces for kids to play with.

What does a play area have to do with driving home from Virden? Admittedly, nothing very direct. What I’m trying to say is: Manitoba winters are long and grim. If the weather keeps you at home (or on the highway), remember the library exists in your pocket as well as on Rosser. If, on the other hand, the weather inspires you to find somewhere — anywhere! — bigger than your living room to play, hopefully, we can help there too.

I did make it home alive. I celebrated my survival with a hot bath, and by downloading a fresh brace of audiobooks. You never know the next time you’ll be stuck somewhere uninspiring and need to feed your brain.