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LAST 5 RECORDS I BOUGHT; Dava Sobel

The Eye on Pop & Jazz

Saturday 02 November 1996 00:02 GMT
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Dava Sobel is an award- winning former science reporter for the New York Times. She writes frequently about science for several magazines and lives in New York.

Personally I'm not a great music listener. However, I do like ballroom dancing, so the last musical purchase I made was Frank Sinatra's Songs for Swingin' Lovers, which I bought to help me practise my foxtrot. Sinatra's voice and the big-band accompaniment are so fresh and clear despite the recording being made in the 1950s.

Apart from that, the only other thing I have bought is Peter Wolf's Longline. And I have to confess that a CD that I am listening to rather a lot is one that came with my new CD player in the car, and which I can't remember the name of.

Rather than listen to music, I actually prefer books on tape, recently buying two very different types of murder story, The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco and The Shipping News by E Annie Proulx. The Name of the Rose is an amazing, imaginative story set in a medieval castle run by Benedictine monks. I especially enjoyed The Shipping News because it shows the author's incredible command of the written word."

Dava Sobel listens to...

Songs for Swingin' Lovers, Frank Sinatra, EMI pounds 9.99

Longline, Peter Wolf,

Warner Bros pounds 16.99

The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco, Reed pounds 9.99

The Shipping News, E Annie Proulx, Simon and Schuster pounds 12.99

Dava Sobel's Longitude is the true story of John Harrison, an 18th-century genius who solved one of the greatest scientific problems of his time (4th Estate) pounds 12

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