What are we listening to? (audiobooks)

[issybird]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

I really liked the book Gates of Fire, but I haven't listened to the audiobook yet.

It's sucked me in, now.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by melmac

Thanks for posting, I just picked up Black Eyed Susans as the audible daily deal($3.95)

You're welcome; I hope you like it.

[WT Sharpe]

I just finished Liespotting: Proven Techniques to Detect Deception by Pamela Meyer. This Audible selection was narrated expertly by Karen Saltus. It appeared to me to be geared more toward businesspeople than it was toward individuals who simply want to improve their people-reading skills. While that aspect isn't ignored, it's plain that the main thrust of the book is to outline methods that can be useful for managers who wish to create trust and honesty in their workplaces.

[badgoodDeb]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

I just finished Liespotting: Proven Techniques to Detect Deception by Pamela Meyer. This Audible selection was narrated expertly by Karen Saltus. It appeared to me to be geared more toward businesspeople than it was toward individuals who simply want to improve their people-reading skills. While that aspect isn't ignored, it's plain that the main thrust of the book is to outline methods that can be useful for managers who wish to create trust and honesty in their workplaces.

Ahhh, so it wouldn't have helped me to recognize my ex-husband in advance? Oh well. Water over the dam at this point.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

Ahhh, so it wouldn't have helped me to recognize my ex-husband in advance? Oh well. Water over the dam at this point.

Not sure what WT feels the difference is between 'businesspeople' and 'individuals,' but with marriage being essentially a contract negotiation, it may have helped....

ApK

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by issybird

It's sucked me in, now.

Let me know how you like it. I might have to put it in my wish list ( which is way too long)

[Rich_D]

Now that Audible finally has the Harry Potter series, I have been using one of my monthly credits on those titles. I just started Prisoner of Azkaban.

[Catlady]

After finally reading Gone Girl a few weeks back, I decided to listen to Gillian Flynn's two earlier books, Sharp Objects and Dark Places. I actually liked both of them better than Gone Girl; I'd rank Dark Places (her second novel) as the best of the three.

Flynn does a great job constructing her novels. I noticed especially in Dark Places that myriad small details that seemed to be included only to add to a certain atmosphere or to flesh out a character turn out to be important plot elements, such that when a connection was made I would think, Oh, of course! even though up to that point I didn't have a clue. I love it when an author can pull off that kind of intricate plotting.

[WT Sharpe]

Still listening to Something Wicked This Way Comes. I'm now up to chapter 42 and it's getting gooder and gooder.

[Catlady]

I listened to Sandra Brown's Mirror Image. I had been curious about Sandra Brown, wondering if her books would be too much romance for me. This one was, but not so much that I would rule out trying another title sometime.

The narrator was Dick Hill; I've liked his narration of other books, but he just didn't fit here. Even though there were mostly male characters, the protagonist was a woman and a woman's voice would have worked better.

The setup here was similar to that in Cornell Woolrich's novel I Married a Dead Man (made into one of my favorite movies, No Man of Her Own): two women are in a crash (here, a plane crash), one dies, one lives and is misidentified as the other. Here, the misidentified woman finds herself in the middle of an assassination plot aimed against her "husband," a senatorial candidate. Can anyone say Lifetime movie? But it was OK and certainly didn't pretend to be great literature.

This book seemed to be set in the present, until I was pulled up short by scenes in which characters didn't have phones and were popping tapes into VCRs and had to use snail mail rather than e-mail. Then I looked at the pub date: 1990. Eeek!

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Catlady

(made into one of my favorite movies, No Man of Her Own):

One of Stanwyck's best! Did you read the dreadful bio by Victoria Wilson? I have rarely been so disappointed in a book. I slogged through, but will give volume two a miss.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Catlady

This book seemed to be set in the present, until I was pulled up short by scenes in which characters didn't have phones and were popping tapes into VCRs and had to use snail mail rather than e-mail. Then I looked at the pub date: 1990. Eeek!

Way to make me feel old.
("Why, back in my day, missy, we had to drive to a video store to get movies...and we had to rewind 'em before we gave 'em back, or we'd get fined 4 bits!")

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by issybird

One of Stanwyck's best! Did you read the dreadful bio by Victoria Wilson? I have rarely been so disappointed in a book. I slogged through, but will give volume two a miss.

No, I haven't read the Stanwyck bio--I rarely read celebrity bios; I usually don't like knowing too much about what stars were really like when I have created my own images based on their screen and/or public personas.

I'm impressed that you knew I wasn't referring to the Carole Lombard movie with the same title! Stanwyck is wonderful in the film, but it's too bad the movie had kind of a cop-out ending, unlike Woolrich's novel.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by ApK

Way to make me feel old.
("Why, back in my day, missy, we had to drive to a video store to get a movies...and we had to rewind 'em before we gave 'em back, or we'd get fined 4 bits!")

Hey, I was there at the video store too. What got me is how I now take for granted all the incredible technology that didn't exist 25 years ago.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Catlady

I'm impressed that you knew I wasn't referring to the Carole Lombard movie with the same title! Stanwyck is wonderful in the film, but it's too bad the movie had kind of a cop-out ending, unlike Woolrich's novel.

I love them both, but this was clearly Stanwyck. For those who haven't seen her No Man of Her Own and have Prime, it's free to watch.

As for the cop-out ending, that's the Code for you.

You're all a bunch of whippersnappers! How about the days when in order to see oldies, you had to troll the listings for Million Dollar Movie and The Late, Late Show, or haul your carcass to theaters such as the Thalia?
VHS tapes, pshaw!

Topic! I've finished Gates of Fire, which is enthralling if not entirely accurate in its depiction of Spartan life, but the battle scenes are unparalleled. Moved on to The Great Hunger, by Cecil Woodham-Smith, an account of the Irish famine in the mid-19th century, read by Frederick Davidson. Yet another doorstopper that I gave up on getting the ebook, so I'm listening to the audio.