Look at Things and Try New Drinks

I love it when the audiobook companies release audio recordings of the classics. I have so little time to read print media these days and so very many "important" books left to read.

This spring, Simon & Schuster Audio is re-introducing several Ernest Hemingway novels and stories in audio form, including For Whom the Bell Tolls and A Farewell to Arms.

Ernest Hemingway the man, the adventurer, I find terribly dull - he's just another chauvanist hunter, like 90 percent of my male relatives.

But I'd like to read his books because his story "Hills Like White Elephants" is one of the few things I studied in college that burrowed down in my brain and clung there, even when the tide of years washed everything else away - especially quadratic equations.

Like so many writers before me, my highest goal is to achieve such powerful simplicity as Hemingway's writing in that story. The least I can do is listen to his books.