Beau Geste

Long ago, before July 2004, I rented books through Books on Tape. They would send me boxes of tapes or Cd's, I would listen and share with my friend Tom, then one of us would send the tapes back in those boxes. It was perfect for me. I never owned any books that I had to shelve or take to Goodwill. But then they went out of the book leasing business. They directed us to Audible.

With Audible, you buy the digital book that is downloaded to your computer. You can listen at your computer or create your own Cd's. Or you can do what I did at that time. I bought an IPod Nano and started my downloading career. In four years I have read hundreds of books. I was just looking at my Audible Library. There are 669 items or segments. A few books have six segments. A few books have only one segment. All of those segments have been loaded on my little Nano which is then stuffed into my pocket or attached to my car's tape deck. But on Monday, I began to sense a disturbance in my life force. The Nano was playing the wrong book when I clicked on an item. Then it thought it was always being recharged when it never was being recharged. When I did recharge it, it wasn't healthy enough to take more than a sip of the current. So, while I was at work on Wednesday, I ordered a replacement. The old Nano still doesn't know that it is about to be decommissioned. The new one is smaller and cuter. Isn't that always the way.

The last book that I read on the old Nano was Beau Geste. In a beautiful gesture, it worked hard to let me finish it, even though it thought I was reading The Portrait of a Lady. Geste was made into a movie with Gary Cooper as the beautiful Michael Geste. There are no pictures of the book. I think it must be out of print. The book was written in 1924 by P.C. Wren. Wren says that he was once in the French Foreign Legion, but there no record of that. What he did do was spend a great deal of time in the part of India that is now Pakistan. He certainly knew a more exotic life than most Englishmen of his time.

Most of the book takes place in England. Three brothers are caught up in the theft of a blue jewel, stolen from their beloved benefactor. All three flee to the foreign legion and Saharan Africa. It starts as a mystery and the mystery is only resolved in the last few pages. The book is well written and I enjoyed most of it. The commandant of the fort they are assigned to is dreadfully cruel. I find it very hard to listen to brutality, even when written by a genteel Englishman. Skipping ahead is difficult when you can't see the words on the page. But the volume control still worked okay on the old Nano, so I could enjoy the book.

My new Nano arrives today. It is 8gb instead of 2gb. I may get to put all my podcasts and music on the Nano with my 11 books. Yippee. This is all good, because next Thursday I am going to Vermont and New Hampshire. I'm going alone, so there will be a need for lots of stuff to listen to.