The Jungle Book (and other stories)

by Rudyard Kipling

Libby audiobook 5 hours

Read by: Rebecca Burns

Published: 1894 (this version 2006)

Genre: children's fiction

I got this to have more audiobooks on my phone to listen to at one of my jobs. Children's books (especially ones I'm familiar with) allow me to be entertained while also getting my work done.

This one had The Jungle Book, The White Seal, Rikki Tikki Tavi, Toomai of the Elephants, and Her Majesty's Servants.

The reader's voice . . . no. Just no. It was almost robotic and I wondered if it was read by a machine instead of a human. I hope she never reads this blog entry because I don't want to be hurtful, but there was a definite lack of emotion and dynamics in this reading.

The superstitions and ghost stories are interwoven through the stories. There are lots of songs and poems included!  There were also lots of words I didn't understand - Russian? Indian? I missed whole parts of stories for lack of understanding. This is also a hazard with "reading" audiobooks versus print books.

The Jungle Book is similar to the Disney movie version, but different enough that I'm sorry the Disney version takes up so much space in my brain. Just the difference in Baloo's and Bagheera's relationships to Mowgli . . . very interesting!

 

It also made me wonder about the connection between The Jungle Book and Edgar Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes (published in 1912). According to Wikipedia, "Though The Jungle Book is sometimes cited as an influence on Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes, he claimed that his only inspiration was the Roman myth of Romulus and Remus.^[7] Rudyard Kipling commented that Burroughs "had 'jazzed' the motif of the Jungle Books and, I imagine, thoroughly enjoyed himself."

 

I love that Mowgli's name means little frog!

I love the story of Rikki Tikki Tavi and haven't read it in years.

I did not enjoy the story of Her Majesty's Servants at all.

I heard the name of the walrus in The White Seal as "SeaBitch" and thought it was a weird name for a male . . . until I realized it was "SeaVitch."

Kim

by Rudyard Kipling
Hennepin County Library audioCD 10.5 hours
read by Ralph Cosham
genre: historical fiction / classic literature / adventure

I don't think I would have ever read this text cover-to-cover. I was curious about this legendary Kipling story, but I struggled to finish it even in audio version. The narrator was wonderful, but the story meandered too much for me. There was a lot of it that I missed because the names and some of the ideas just didn't sink in. I think I'll just summarize here by copying from the back flap:

"Kimball O'Hara is . . . (covered by barcode) . . . streets of India. As a boy, he shows self-reliance and resourcefulness, running errands for Mahbub Ali, who works for the British Secret Service. Kim also meets a Tibetan lama who is on a quest to be freed from the Wheel of Life and becomes his disciple. Together they have wonderful adventures on the exotically colorful Grand Trunk Road through the Indian countryside. Then Kim is pulled into the great game of British imperial espionage and becomes a member of the Secret Service, even capturing documents from the enemy spies. Yet Kim is greatly attached to the lama and begins to feel the conflicting pulls between a life of contemplation and one of action."

I don't regret reading it, but it wasn't one that I enjoyed a lot. Kim, along with The Life of Pi, and one other that I read in the past year that is set in India (Ann's book club title . . . ) all give me an interesting idea of what India is like as a country and a culture.