Three Cups of Tea

Three cups of tea: one man's mission to fight terrorism and build nations-- one school at a time / Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin; read by Patrick Lawlor.— [Old Saybrook] : Tantor Media, 2006.

11 sound discs (ca. 13.5 hr.) ; digital ; 4 3/4 in.

ISBN: 1400102510

Compact discs

Unabridged edition

1. Girls' schools -- Pakistan. 2. Girls' schools -- Afghanistan. 3. Humanitarian assistance, American -- Pakistan. 4. Humanitarian assistance, American -- Afghanistan.

371.822

Following an unsuccessful attempt to scale K2, the world’s second highest peak, a dispirited and disoriented mountaineer got lost during his decent. After a night alone in the Karakoram of northern Pakistan Greg Mortenson was found by a local guide and put on the right path down towards human habitation, but he lost his way again and arrived exhausted in the small village of Korphe in Baltistan the remote and beautiful area of north-east Pakistan where he was taken in by the inhabitants and nursed back to health.

Shocked when he found the village children scratching arithmetic problems in the ground, because they could not afford a school or a teacher he vowed to return and build them a school. Back in the United States he worked a nurse and hand typed hundreds of fundraising requests, before the local copy shop owner, a Pakistani, offered to teach him word processing. Eventually he caught the attention of irascible silicon chip developer Jean Hoerni, who funded the Korphe school on the condition that Mortenson send him a picture when it was done. So successful was the school that Hoerni started the Central Asia Institute to carry on the work of school building, and appointed Mortenson its director.

In addition to its hopeful message of education, especially educating girls, in this remote part of the world, it’s an exciting tale of mountaineering, political maneuvering to squelch a fatwa, kidnapping and blazing machinegun battles between rival opium smugglers. Lawlor does an admirable job of giving voice to the excitement. Tantor Media is also to be commended for adding end of the disc announcements in another voice—a great help to listeners who are simultaneously maneuvering motor vehicles.

Paradise

Paradise / by Toni Morrison; performed by Lynne Thigpen.— Prince Frederick: Recorded Books, p1999.

12 sound discs (14 hrs.) : digital ; 4 3/4 in.

ISBN: 0788737287

1. African Americans -- Oklahoma -- Fiction. 2. City and town life – Fiction. 3. Oklahoma – Fiction.

After the end of the Second World War, the returning veterans of Hope, Oklahoma decide to take their families and move together. They plan to start a new town, and leave behind the failures of the dustbowl, just as their forefathers had trekked from Mississippi and Louisiana to leave behind slavery and start a new life as freedmen. Burned deep in their memory and the memory of their children is the bitter rejection that they faced along the way. Rejection because of the darkness of their skin, all the more bitter because it came from other newly liberated African Americans of a lighter complexion.

In the new town of Ruby the veterans and their families built a prosperous, if isolated, town on the bedrock of family, church and community. So why three decades later were their children questioning and rejecting these values? Where had this contagion entered their peaceful utopia?

A few miles up the road was the Convent. It wasn’t really a convent, it was a former school for American Indian children run by nuns, but the last nun had died their years ago, and the Indian children had left years before that. Now there was only an odd assortment of women living in the old building, women who had drifted there because they didn’t fit in. They were fleeing unhappy and abusive relationships, and they ending up just a few miles outside of Ruby.

Sometimes a resident of Ruby, needing to escape the strictures of small town life, would end up coming to the Convent. Could the Convent be the source of the contagion? A few men from Ruby think so, and they plan to do something about it.

Morrison’s probes the tensions between men and women, order and freedom, personal reputation and reality, between races, and between generations. Her fluid prose—matched by Thigpen’s smooth mellow narration—does not shy away from harsh scenes of physical and emotional brutality, nor does it fail to portray the redemptive love of friendship and compassion. This is a rich and brilliant book; it is a literary masterpiece.

Science fiction classics

Science fiction classics / Radio Spirits.— Cedar Knolls, NJ : Radio Spirits, 2004.

10 sound discs (10 hrs.) : digital ; 4 3/4 in. + 1 booklet (32 p. : ill. ports. ; 12 cm.)

(Legends of Radio)

Contents: Dimension X (6-24-50): Destination Moon / Robert A. Heinlein -- Dimension X (6-17-51): Pebble In The Sky / Isaac Asimov -- Lux Radio Theatre (1-4-54): The Day The Earth Stood Still / Harry Bates -- Shadow (2-29-48): The Man Who Was Death / Alfred Bester -- Dimension X (05-13-50): Almost Human / Robert Bloch -- X-Minus One (2-5-56): There Will Come Soft Rains ; Zero Hour / Ray Bradbury -- Quiet Please (11-07-48): Adam And The Darkest Day / Wyllis Cooper -- X-Minus One (3-7-56): Gun For Dinosaur / L. Sprague De Camp -- X-Minus One (10-10-56): Colony / Philip K. Dick -- Exploring tomorrow (1958): Speak no more / Gordon R. Dickson -- CBS Radio Workshop (7-21-57): Green hills of earth / Robert A. Heinlein -- X-Minus One (3-28-56): Pail of air / Fritz Leiber -- Lights Out (2-16-43): Oxychloride X / Arch Oboler -- X-Minus One (3-6-57): Seventh victim / Robert Sheckley -- Exploring Tomorrow (3-58): No way out / Robert Silverberg -- X-Minus One (2-22-56): Junkyard / Clifford D. Simak -- X-Minus One (7-3-56): Mr. Costello, Hero / Theodore Sturgeon -- Lux Radio Theatre (2-8-55): War of the worlds / H.G. Wells – Science fiction classics (booklet) / by Anthony Tollin.

ISBN: 1570196966

1. Science fiction radio programs—United States.

791.4475

This is an impressive compilation of American science fiction radio programs from the 1950s. Three of them, “Destination Moon,” “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” and The War of the Worlds,” are adaptations of the motion pictures of the same title and vintage, but of most of them are adaptations of the stories of prominent authors of the time: Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Alfred Bester, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, L. Sprague De Camp, Philip K. Dick, Gordon R. Dickson, Fritz Leiber, Clifford D. Simak, Robert Silverberg, and Theodore Sturgeon. There are also a few written originally for radio. An excellent accompanying booklet explains the emergence of the genre and then a program-by-program profile of the authors, with their portraits and a cast list.

Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow murders

Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow murders / by John Mortimer; read by Bill Wallis.— Auburn : Audio Partners ; p2005, c2004.

5 sound discs (5 hr., 57 min.) : digital ; 4 3/4 in.

Unabridged

Compact discs

ISBN: 1572704748

1. Attorney and client – Fiction. 2. Legal stories. 3. London (England) – Fiction. 4. Mystery fiction. 5. Rumpole, Horace (Fictitious character) -- Fiction. 6. Trials (Murder) – Fiction.

823.914

When Horace Rumpole discovers that no one in his firm knows of his most famous case, the Penge Bungalow murders, he decides that it’s time to write his memoirs, before the world forgets one of the most shocking criminal cases to be tried in the Old Bailey in the 1950s. Two R.A.F. veterans shot dead at point blank range with a captured German pistol in their homes in the London suburb of Penge and the chief suspect is the young son of one of pilots. Although a very junior member of the firm, Rumpole rises for the defense, aided, behind the scenes, by the very determined and clever daughter of his boss. He also has a chance to defend a member of the Timpson clan for the first time.

Loyal followers of the series will be delight that after decades of allusions to this case, the cornerstone of Rumpole’s reputation is finally revealed. Mortimer’s wit and balanced plot construction are as delightful as ever and, delightfully performed by reader Bill Wallis.

T is for terrible

T is for terrible / book by Peter McCarty; narrated by David de Vries.— [Westport, CT] : Weston Woods ; Scholastic, p2005.

1 sound disc (4 min.) : digital ; 4 3/4 in. + 1 book ([32]p. : col. ill. ; 24 cm.)

Music composed by Scotty Huff and Robert Reynolds.

Compact disc.

"Weston Woods read-along CD."

Accompanying book published: New York : H. Holt, c2004.

ISBN: 0439804760 (CD) : 080507404X (hbk.)

1. Dinosaurs --Fiction. 2. Identity --Fiction. 3. Tyrannosaurus rex --Fiction.

813.54

T. Rex tries to put a bright-eyed and positive spin on his reputation. It’s not his fault he can’t eat trees. He had a mother too and was once small and cute. He didn’t necessarily plan to grow up to be big and scary.

David de Vries does a good job of voicing the apologetic enormous carnivore, and the music by Scotty Huff and Robert Reynolds is an excellent match for McCarty's soft, shaded, color pencil illustrations in the book it accompanies.

My one hundred adventures

My one hundred adventures / Polly Horvath; read by Tai Alexandra Ricci.— New York : Listening Library, p2008.

5 sound discs (5 hr., 29 min.) : digital ; 4 3/4 in.

Unabridged.

Compact disc

ISBN: 9780739371626

1. Babysitters – Fiction. 2. Beaches – Fiction. 3. Massachusetts – Fiction. 4. Prayer – Fiction. 5. Single-parent families – Fiction. 6. Summer – Fiction.

813.54

After hearing Nellie Phipps extol the power of prayer at church, twelve-year-old Jane prays for adventures, at least a hundred of them. She also wants a sign that her prayers have been heard: a purple circle in the sky. The next Sunday she gets her sign and her first adventure. While distributing Bibles Nellie tells her to jump in the basket of an untended hot air balloon with the Bibles. Then she’s set loose to drop Bibles on anyone along her path of flight. As she ascends she looks up at the circle of the purple balloon against the blue of the sky. Jane starts to realize that adventures and adults can booth be very unpredictable and full of surprises.

Jane and her younger brothers and sisters live on the seashore with her mother an unmarried poet. She’s blackmailed into babysitting an unruly pack of children by her ne’er do well neighbor who accuses Jane of beaning her baby with a Bible. While doing this unwelcome chore she encounters three men who she has reason to think might be her father. Nellie Phipps, her preacher, continually drags her along on her New Age spiritual quests. All the adults in her life are eccentric, and making sense out of it all is a challenge for Jane, which Ricci’s somewhat raspy and exasperated vocal narration characterizes well. Horvath’s playfully imaginative story is the equal of Newbery honor winning Everything on a Waffle.

Infinity and the mind

Infinity and the mind : the science and philosophy of the infinite / Rudy Rucker.—Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2005.

xx, 342 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

(Princeton Science Library)

“Originally published by Birkhäuserin 1982”

“Expanded Princeton Science Library edition with a new preface by the author, 2005”

ISBN: 9780691121277

1. Infinite. 2. Logic, Symbolic and mathematical. 3. Set theory.

511.3

In the 1981 preface Rucker writes, “This book discusses every kind of infinity: potential and actual, mathematical and physical, the ontological and the mundane.” The main line of argument is mathematical. Rucker uses physics, philosophy and theology as illustrations and examples of mathematical concepts. He also uses mathematical formulas, diagrams and cartoon to illustrate concepts in other disciplines. The five chapters all conclude with a collection of puzzles and paradoxes. This assumes that if the reader has followed and understood the concepts so far you have another chance to exhaust your reasoning powers on these, because with infinities there are things that cannot be logically, mathematically or scientifically described fully. Rucker argues that many of the ideas about infinity are not rationally and deductive, but mystical an intuitive. This makes a book that is an active and entertaining mental wrestling match. It also makes it a stimulating, thought provoking, and potentially mind expanding read.