Books vs. "the Sound" radio

 Since my local radio station replaced the easy-going mellow DJ with one who laughs at his own lame jokes and whose "Humor" is akin to that "Triumph the Insult Dog"   I have given up listening to music on my morning commute.  "Uncle Joe" told interesting stories and joshed with the news guy.  Mark Thompson used to be half of Mark and Brian and I didn't like listening to him when he had to share the mike. I want music in the morning, not "hi-jinks"  His obsession with Elvis as being the 'Greatest entertainer who ever lived" is .. well.. sad.  I don't really like the evening drive time DJ's voice but she at least plays music.  I listen instead to books on tape.

I am taking this book challenge that suggests certain types of books to read.  I needed a 500 page book.  I picked "A discovery of Witches".  It was a twenty disc set and it was a trial to read.  I initially liked the book; about a historian studying in the Bodleian Library.  She's a witch from a powerful line who denies her magic.  She uncovers a mystery then meets a vampire.  They fall in love.  Somewhere in the middle of the book, it becomes "Twilight"  If I had to hear one more time about Matthew's charms, what he was wearing, how delicious his cold body felt, I was going to SCREAM.  I soldiered on through it, but don't think I will read the rest of the series.  It makes no sense.  Theoretically, they have traveled back to Elizabethan England to help Diana lean her craft and to escape from the beings in the present day who are trying to kill them.  Honestly, If I could time travel I don't think I would pick THAT time period to go back to.  One review I read stated bluntly that the heroine loses IQ points when she falls in love.  That's about right.  I think I would have liked a story more about Matthew's mother or the Bishop House, which is a living character with a mind of it's own.  Diana and Matthew and their sex life began to bother me.  They were ever-so-chaste.  How the heck DOES a vampire have sex anyway?  Don't you need blood-flow for that?  oh, yeah, the author had his heart beat once or twice an hour...  He's UNDEAD for chissakes!  Illogical, although the author wants us to believe that everything we humans ever heard about vampires is wrong and she is going to educate us in the correct history. Right.  I suppose if you can't work within the confines of accepted legend, you change the legend.  This book really challenged my "willing suspension of disbelief" inasmuch as some of it didn't even stick to the logic in this author's created universe.

I am currently listening to Ace Adkins version of the Spenser novels, a book called "Wonderland"  I don't much care for Joe Mantegna, but he was Robert B. Parker's pick for Spenser.  He apparently HATED  Robert Urich in the role.  This book qualifies for the "Book a TV show was based on", the  book series was the catalyst for "Spenser for Hire" , a show I loved until it got a bit preachy.  So I can check that one off the list as well. 

I have to read a Harold Robbins book for "A book your mother loved"   ugh. I don't know WHAT she saw in them, but she collected them.  I have a whole lot of those paperbacks that were part of her book collection.

I am trying to read, for my Book published the year I was born, Edna Ferber's Ice Palace.  I don't like it much and the language is very stilted.  I might chuck that one and try another bestseller from 1958.  I will give it another go and see if it gets any better, then I will go back to ht bestsellers of 1958 list to see if there is something I always wanted to read.  So far this book is not it.