Those 25-minute commutes to various places in different directions every day add up. I was thrilled when my son got old enough to enjoy audio books with me. Now my daughter is old enough to ask for music in the car at the same time as he’s asking for his book… I hear the sounds of doom. Music in the car is more work for me – one book will last us for hours and checks out for three weeks, where a single CD is done in a day and only goes out for a week. I need a stack of them to make it through the week. Or, you know, I could bring my mp3 player. But then I’d only be listening to my own music, and what fun would that be?

The Rough Guide to English Folk. According to the back copy, English folk music has been experiencing resurgence. Hooray! This disc features a wide variety of modern English folk musicians, from instrumental to vocal and from traditional interpretations to folk-rock. I had only heard of one of the artists on this album, Kathryn Tickell, whom I was fortunate enough to see live in front of, I believe, a Maddy Prior concert years ago. This album was a hit with everyone listening to it. I loved the range of songs – the foot-tapping rhythms of Kathryn Tickell’s Northumbrian pipes, the dense male harmonies, the ballads based on fairy tales and wars current and remembered. I’m going to look into getting more from Emily Portman, whose “Tongue-Tied”, a haunting ballad retelling of the tale of the Wild Swans (but with ravens instead of swans) that went through my head for days. The six-year-old boy, forced to listen to music rather than our book (the thrilling Septimus Heap book 6 – Darke), liked it after all and said it reminded him of Pennsic. And the toddler is still asking for it, and was singing the tunes even after the car was turned off.

Cross-posted to http://library-mama.dreamwidth.org and http://sapphireone.livejournal.com .