A headline release introducing an important classic for Ukemi Audiobooks often prompts a look at other titles by the same author. This is the case with these three titles.
Karl Popper’s works are not the easiest to absorb, it must be said, but there is no doubt of his enduring influence on 20th century thought. This was clearly evidenced by the response to our release of The Myth of the Framework, and we have followed it with another Popper classic: Conjectures and Refutations – The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. This is another collection of essays including The Rationality of Scientific Revolutions, The Moral Responsibility of the Scientist and The Myth of the Framework which gives the collection its title. As always with Popper, he reverts to the clear logic of maths from time to time which is a challenge for the audiobook medium…and in order to support the listening experience, again a pdf is available: a string of equations can test even the most acute concentration! Once more, Popper’s arguments are presented in the steady and clear manner maintained by Martyn Swain.
There can be no greater difference than a switch to the early fiction of Robert Musil – known principally for the 20th masterpiece The Man Without Qualities. The Ukemi recording made by John Telfer has been welcomed widely. Musil’s first novel, The Confusions of Young Master Törless, dating from 1906, signalled the writer’s talent, and is, in its inimitable way, equally uncompromising. It is a bildungsroman set in an Austrian upper class boarding school in which the pupils are testing themselves, their ideas, their behaviours and life to the limits. And at times those limits are harsh! Jamie Parker gives a spirited, energetic reading.
The third Ukemi release transports us to the other end of man’s journey. In The Reveries of the Solitary Walker, Jean-Jacques Rousseau reflects on life and his experiences as he sets off on ten walks. Though of course a prominent and public figure, Rousseau’s life had its challenges, and (at least in this philosophical setting) he ruminates on times past and, occasionally, the present. It is not so well known as his major works – The Social Contract or Emile – but The Reveries offers personal reflections with a very different tone to Confessions. Rousseau wrote it at the end of his life and in fact the tenth Walk is unfinished. The Reveries was published posthumously and it continues to be admired for its style as well as its content.
