Tag Archives: audio

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond

Posted by melydia on May 1, 2012 None comments

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond (unabridged audiobook read by Doug Ordunio; 16 hrs 21 min on 13 discs): This book aims to answer the question of why Eurasia became such a world power and dominated other nations. The historical (and racist) answer was that there was some inherent difference in the people of those lands, but this book goes into explicit detail on why this is clearly not the case. Rather, it boils down to a large number of factors dealing with crop and livestock domestication, climate, and geographic accessibility. There’s a lot of truly englightening information gathered here, but the text is quite dense, and quite difficult to digest quickly. It’s not a casual beach read, but certainly well worth picking up.

A note on the audio: This is a difficult book to earread, as the narrator is very monotone and yet also puts emphasis on unexpected words. Having to decipher the words through the jarring inflection made it much harder to digest the already dense information. If you want to read this one, stick with the paper version.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris

Posted by melydia on April 20, 2012 2 comments

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris (unabridged audiobook read by David Sedaris, Elaine Stritch, Dylan Baker and Sian Phillips; 3 hrs on 3 discs): These stories are kind of…awful. Not like poorly written – they’re quite well done, as far as that goes – but like, um, awful. Violent and mean-spirited and horrifying and depressing and generally unpleasant. I honestly am not even sure how many of them were supposed to be funny, something I’ve never had difficulty discerning with any of Sedaris’s nonfiction. The limerick at the end of “The Sick Rat and the Healthy Rat” got a bit of a chuckle out of me, but in general I did not enjoy this collection at all.

A note on the audio: Despite the stories not being my cup of tea, all four narrators were brilliant. I was especially glad to hear Baker, as I’d enjoyed his reading of another book ages ago. Funny how if you listen to enough audiobooks you start remembering readers.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Evermore by Alyson Noel

Posted by melydia on April 6, 2012 1 comments

Evermore by Alyson Noel (unabridged audiobook read by Katie Schorr; 8 hours on 7 discs): After surviving the car crash that killed the rest of her family, 16-year-old Ever gains the abilities to hear thoughts and see auras. Damen is the ridiculously hot new guy in school who catches Ever’s attention when she discovers he alone is immune to her telepathy. Comparisons to Twilight are inevitable, but unlike Bella, Ever has both a soul and a backbone. She doesn’t let Damen or anyone else walk all over her, and she genuinely cares about her family and friends. I had fun with this one, amused by some of the teenage silliness and intrigued by the speculations on immortality and reincarnation. In fact, Damen and Ever’s relationship was possibly the least interesting part. My favorite character was Riley, Ever’s dead little sister who still visits almost every day. I don’t know that I’ll necessarily read the rest of the series, for fear that it will focus too narrowly on the OMG-eternal wuv between Ever and Damen, but I definitely enjoyed this story.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Atonement by Ian McEwan

Posted by melydia on April 3, 2012 2 comments

Atonement by Ian McEwan (unabridged audiobook read by Jill Tanner; 14 hours on 12 discs): I wanted, so desperately, to like this novel. But the fact of the matter is that I found it tremendously tedious. Though the back cover blurb talks of young Briony’s mistaken accusation regarding her cousin’s sexual assault and its horrible consequences, this event does not actually happen until about halfway through the book. The plot is buried in page after page of literary navel-gazing, and the “twist” ending put me off so much that I wondered why I’d wasted all that time getting there. I suspect the movie is tidier, assuming it leaves out such thrilling passages as Briony pondering the possibility of her not being the star of everyone else’s life story while watching her finger bend back and forth. The writing itself was fine – the description quite vivid, the language very, er, literary – but I found the whole thing tiresome and I frankly can’t understand why so many rave about this lengthy piece of rambling blather.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Spenser Collection: Volume II: Back Story and Widow’s Walk by Robert B. Parker

Posted by melydia on March 23, 2012 None comments

The Spenser Collection: Volume II: Back Story and Widow’s Walk by Robert B. Parker: (unabridged audiobook read by Joe Mantegna): This is sort of a silly way of doing things, as Widow’s Walk came out a year before Back Story and very clearly happens earlier in time, and yet appears on the latter half of this audiobook. Luckily, I was warned to listen to discs six through ten first, so I was not confused. In Widow’s Walk, a lawyer friend hires Spenser to help prove the innocense of a woman accused of murdering her husband. In Back Story, Spenser is hired to solve a 28-year-old murder and soon discovers the trail went cold due to a massive cover-up. And you know, I really enjoyed these. Spenser – and his friend Hawk even moreso – is absolutely hilarious. Mantegna was clearly having a ball. It took me a while to get used to his cadence but once I did, I had a great time. The random asides and interjections amused the heck out of me. Even better, though there’s a long series of Spenser novels, I never once felt like I needed to have read any of the previous books.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Luminous Airplanes by Paul La Farge

Posted by melydia on March 9, 2012 None comments

Luminous Airplanes by Paul La Farge (unabridged audiobook read by Charles Carroll; 8.25 hrs on 7 discs): A 30-year-old man returns from what sounds a little like the Burning Man festival to learn that his grandfather has died and he missed the funeral. It’s the end of the 20th century and the internet bubble has burst. Facing dwindling employment in San Francisco, he journeys to the tiny town of Thebes, NY, to clean out his late grandfather’s house, where he spent his summers growing up. While he’s there he runs into childhood friends, reminisces about San Francisco of the mid-1990s, goes on about a strange homeless man named Swan, obsessively tries to dig up every scrap of information about the father who died before he was born, and generally lazes about. And that’s about it.

Alas, this book is pretty tremendously boring. For a while I was blaming the reader, whose repetitive cadence was awkward and unnatural, but I really think that’s only part of the problem. The bigger issue is that I simply could not sympathize with any of the characters. I don’t have daddy issues; I’ve never abandoned my family; I’m not a nymphomaniac; I think going through somebody else’s things is great fun; I don’t do drugs; I am not in a doomsday cult. In short, I did not care. I listened to the whole thing anyway, hoping that the plot would show up in the end. It didn’t.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

Posted by melydia on February 21, 2012 None comments

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (unabridged audiobook read by Mandy Siegfried; 5 hrs on 4 discs): After calling the cops at a party full of underaged drinkers, Melinda begins ninth grade as the school pariah, all her former friends having abandoned her. Little do they know Melinda hides a horrible pain. Though I guessed Melinda’s secret early on, the gradual revealing of all the details was still just as harrowing. As she deals with being friendless and afraid she begins to find herself through art and gardening. I found Melinda’s voice to be quite realistic, quite reminiscent of my own high school experience (minus the trauma and truancy, that is). She’s both funny and tragic, detached but still wanting to belong. I was completely engrossed in her journey. Next I need to see the film. I hear Kristen Stewart is actually really good in it, which actually doesn’t surprise me, considering I’ve already nicknamed her Twitchy McStutters. Perfect for someone who barely speaks.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Posted by melydia on February 3, 2012 1 comments

The Help by Kathryn Stockett (unabridged audiobook read by Jenna Lamia, Bahni Turpin, Octavia Spencer, and Cassandra Campbell; 18 hrs on 15 discs): Aibileen and Minny are housemaids in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi, who work for old friends of Skeeter (whose real name is Eugenia, but pretty much no one calls her that). Skeeter is the only one of her friends who didn’t drop out of college to get married, and is now back home after graduation, trying to figure out what to do with herself. She longs to be a writer, and with a little encouragement from a woman at a large New York publishing firm, she decides to write a book. She’s unsure of a topic until her friend Hilly’s “Home Help Bathroom Initiative,” encouraging all white families to get a separate “colored” bathroom installed in their homes for the help. According to Hilly, African Americans are genetically different from whites and carry special diseases. The idea that the very same person who cooks your food and cleans your bathroom would be so dirty as to require their own little stall out in the garage just baffles my mind. The double standard doesn’t end there, though. The white ladies of the Junior League regularly raise money to help “the poor colored children of Africa” and yet turn their noses up at the idea of helping the poor colored kids of Jackson. In secret, Skeeter and Aibileen write a book about life from the point of view of the help, conducting interviews with numerous maids around the city, all the while knowing about the very real danger if the wrong people find out. Meanwhile, Minny is dealing with a tarnished reputation due to her lying former boss (Hilly), an abusive husband, and the strange secretiveness of her new employer, Celia. This book is touching, maddening, hilarious, sad, and ultimately uplifting. Now I want a sequel. I want to know what happens to Minny, Aibileen, and Skeeter. I want to know how Mae Mobley turns out when she grows up. In short, this was an excellent book and completely unforgettable. Highly recommended.

A note on the audio: Unfortunately I have no idea which actress voiced which sections, so I’ll have to refer to them by their character names: Skeeter, Minny, Aibileen, and The Narrator. They were all so excellent, but I was especially impressed at how well they did at sounding like each other: Aibileen did a passable Skeeter and they all managed to give the same inflection to Celia. Aibileen’s voice for Mae Mobley as she got older was impressive as well. Skeeter wasn’t so good at Aibileen or Minny, but I loved her Mrs. Stein. The Narrator would have been fine on her own, but was so overshadowed by the others that her section stuck out a bit. All in all a great audio production.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

Posted by melydia on January 31, 2012 None comments

The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly (unabridged audiobook read by Steven Crossley; 11 hrs on 10 discs): 12-year-old David mourns his dead mother, resents his new stepmother and baby half-brother, and suddenly finds that books have begun whispering to him. One night he journeys to a strange land, a land of fairy tales and dreams. But these aren’t your modern, Disney-fied fairy tales. These are the old cautionary fables, full of monsters and violence. I spent much of the first part of this book wondering why it hadn’t been made into a movie, but once David enters the other land, there is more than a little bit of disturbing, violent imagery. Even so, it’s a captivating story, full of classic motifs and new characters, scary monsters and thrilling adventure. Not one I’ll soon forget.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Audiobook Recap 2011

Posted by melydia on January 2, 2012 None comments

I participated in two audiobook reading challenges in 2011, and I think I did fairly well, all told.

Books listened to: 34 (plus the last bit of Spook by Mary Roach and the first bit of The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly)

Total discs: 309 (though I did listen to a few on mp3)

Total time: 16 days, 13 hours, 29 minutes (aka 397 hours, 29 minutes). Most of that was in my car.

Male/Female Authors: 23/11

Male/Female Readers: 20/19

Shortest: Dream Angus by Alexander McCall Smith at 3 hours.

Longest: I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb at 32 hours, 15 minutes.

Full list: here

I don’t think I’ll be getting any awards, though as far as I can tell I’ve earned the “obsessed” and “singing it from the mountaintops” badges. I was so close to the highest badge on Bewitched Bookworks, but oh well. I would have made it had I driven to Illinois this summer instead of flown, but my busted ankle changed my life in a lot of ways.

You may have noticed that I didn’t mention which books I liked best or least. That’s just too hard. I really enjoyed the Hunger Games trilogy by Collins, the Uglies series by Westerfeld, and of course everything by Gaiman and Funke and Hill. Most of the readers were excellent, with extra props to Corine Montbertrand and the cast of The Help in particular.

I won’t be signing up for any challenges this year. I’m tired, man! But I wish everyone the best of luck in whatever challenges they pursue in 2012. Happy New Reading Year! :D

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