Tell Me a Story

     Do kids ask adults to tell them stories these days?  I have a feeling that they are too busy staring into phones, or playing games on those same phones, to listen to some old head tell a PG narrative.
     I wanted to hear yarns when I was a child.  My parents were no good at spinning tales.  I think the Great Depression made them unimaginative.  My grandparents didn't talk fantasy (again, not much imagination), but they did share memories.  Being that they were born in the early 1890's, their stories were interesting because they occurred before TV, transistor radios, and rocket ships. I heard about Hainesport School at the turn of the 20th century and my grandfather's duty as a stretcher bearer during the 1918 influenza pandemic.  I also heard about electricity coming to town, installation of indoor plumbing, and the new kitchen sink and cabinets that my grandfather installed when he felt guilty after buying himself a boat.
     Bedtime stories didn't happened at my house.  I was a night owl child.  Conversation or reading would have been of no use in lulling me off.  I would have demanded conversation into the wee hours, or I would have read until dawn.
     I'm still a night owl, but I have recently discovered that a bedtime story works better than Ambien.  Thank you, Kindle Fire.  I borrow an audio book from the library that looks uninteresting. I turn on the Kindle at bedtime and set the sleep timer for 30 minutes.  Invariably, I drift off in about 15 minutes.
     Sometimes the stories aren't as boring as expected.  When that happens, I back track to the last part I remember, so I can eventually hear the entire book.  I have plowed through a bunch of audio books.  I play them during any task that doesn't make a racket.  Here are the latest:

Mort(e) by Robert Repino - Ants mutate.  They figure out how to cause human extinction and turn animals into high functioning beings.  War ensues.  A pet cat named Sebastian becomes a war hero named Mort(e).  His postwar hunt for his best friend, a dog named Sheba, leads him to a colony of humans who have saved themselves by orbiting the earth.  Mort(e) is the humans' messiah, Sheba's savior, and the ants' can of whoop-ass.  Science fiction is so dumb.

High Society: The Life of Grace Kelly by Donald Spotto - Mr. Spotto had, over many years, unprecedented access to Grace  Kelly.  He waited 25 years after her death to write her biography. The book does not flatter her parents.  Her career is examined in great detail and praised to high heaven.  I suppose everybody knew that marrying the prince was no bed of roses.

Zig Zag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal by Ben Macintyre - Eddie Chapman was a double agent during World War II.  In the end, his loyalty lay with the British side. This was an interesting story about spying during WW2, but more so, it was a fascinating look at a criminal, conman, and philanderer.  After the war, Eddie's life remained the stuff of tabloid reporting.

The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story by Diane Ackerman - During World War II, Jan Zabinski, the zookeeper at the Warsaw Zoo, along with his wife Antonia, saved about 300 Jews by hiding them in their home and in the animal cages.

Elvis Presley: The Man, the Life, the Legend by Pamela Clarke Keogh - Same old, same old. Elvis was polite, he loved his mama, his desire to become a serious actor was thwarted, he was a prisoner of his celebrity, he took lots of pills.  Yet, after reading this book, I would stop at Graceland if ever I were in Memphis.