York Underwood

Reading & Listening

Revisado: 03-07-25

To read Kushner is to give her a voice in your head pieced together from the style and tone of her prose. To listen is to be given her voice.

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Instructive and Delightful

Revisado: 02-16-24

A collection of essays both instructive, delightful, and, occassionally, terrifying, spoken by the man himSelf.

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Alan has got to try stand-up!

Revisado: 01-07-24

During the Christmas break here in Iceland, I found myself stuck out in the countryside, about 70 km west of Akureyri, in a small summerhouse. As you can guess from the name, it was not particularly suited for winter.

With no internet, no hot water, and 3 small JBL portable speakers—but no charging cable!—I had only my iPhone 11 Pro Max with charging cord for company.

The JBLs were at various stages of charge: two dots, one dot, and four dots out of a possible five. With a full charge lasting roughly 4 hours on medium to medium loud volume, I figured we had about 7 Hrs and 51 minutes of play time, between the 3 JBLs, before the whole summerhouse fell radio silent, leaving me to my thoughts in the dark Icelandic winter night or day as the sun doesn’t really rise.

The lack of service left me with very limited listening options: I had accidently downloaded or “make available offline”-ed Adele’s debut studio album “19”. Then, of course, there was this spectacular epic “Big Beacon” with a running time just under 8 hours that might just work with the expected battery life of my JBLs (combined).

However, I did start with a little listen to Adele and 4 hours and 27 minutes later I had drained my 3 JBLs—over three hours less running time than I predicted. This can be explained by my insistence that Adele’s always be played at full blast snd linking my JBLs in parallel to create a kind of “Adele everywhere” surround sound experience.

Luckily, I had completely forgot about the internal speaker of my iPhone 11 Pro Max, so I was able to listen to Big Beacon seven times in a row before being rescued by the regional snow clearing service.

It was a joy from the first moment. I was forced to hold the phone to me ear because of pocket crumb induced speaker damage and this made the ecperience even more intimate—like I was having a nearly 60 hours conversation with the man himself, Alan Partridge.

I am forever grateful for this wonderful audiobook. What could have been a tedious stretch, snowed in at a summerhouse by myself over Christmas, became instead, a rollicking goodtime—like being snowed in at a summerhouse over Christmas with a famous person who only speaks to you in the same 8 hours of prepared material, repeated again and again, and-dare I say?—more moving each time.

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esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

A slightly juvenile rendition of an interesting life.

Revisado: 12-22-23

Cliches, pop psychology, childhood trauma—very little sex or rocket science. But if you ever miss a metaphor, don’t worry! Isaacson will point it out, that yes, this is a metaphor.

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