Adventures in Reading and Writing

My friend and I went to Millennium Park yesterday where they were broadcasting chapter 1 from The Adventures of Augie March. There were maybe a dozen more people there besides us and the guy who was watering the lawn. The seats were gated off until halfway through the reading. And I noticed that the event isn't listed on the One Book, One Chicago events page, although I could swear it was there initially because I know I read about this somewhere. So it was kind of like a secret, and those who did show up got a free book! (A great gift idea in these difficult economic times!)

Still, we enjoyed our private reading of Augie over the world-class sound system at the Pritzker Pavilion. One benefit of audiobooks is not stumbling over difficult pronunciations or foreign words because someone else is reading them for you. That would come in handy for anything by Stieg Larsson, for instance (AudioFile audiobook review: THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST By Stieg Larsson, Read by Simon Vance).

I also took at stab at writing a flash fiction piece for the contest One Book, One Chicago is hosting. If nothing else, it was a good writing exercise. When you only have 750 words to tell a story, you better be sure every word counts. It helped me look at my writing (and editing) in a different light and will be helpful for longer projects.