What are we listening to? (audiobooks)

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by melmac

Recently finished Black Eyed Susans by Julia Heaberlin and I really enjoyed it
It's been a while since I've listened to a stand alone or a new author so it was really nice to meet new characters. I preferred the young Tessa to the old one. I thought it was well written and engaging she had obviously done some good research on forensic techniques and memory recovery. I will definitely read the author again.

Glad you enjoyed it. I have since listened to Heaberlin's two earlier novels: Lie Still and Playing Dead. They were good but it was a bit hard to keep track of all the characters--in print, I would have been paging back repeatedly to refresh my memory about who was who. The narrator for Playing Dead--Madeleine Lambert--was especially good. I cared less for Rebecca Gibel's narration of Lie Still; she went so broadly comic with one wacky character that it became jarring and distracting.

[orlok]

Recently started The Return of the Discontinued Man (Burton & Swinburne #5) by Mark Hodder. Springheeled Jack is back!

Spoiler:

This is the alternative history/time travel/steampunk saga of Sir Richard Burton's escapades in a world where a man from the future returns to the Victorian age to stop his ancestor making an assassination attempt on the Queen and clear his family name, and who inadvertently causes the attempt to become successful. Weird and wonderful. Volume #5 continues the story.

[Catlady]

I listened to Gilly MacMillan's The Perfect Girl (British title: Butterfly in the Dark), narrated by Penelope Rawlins and Dugald Bruce-Lockhart. The girl/butterfly of the title is a teenager who is trying to rebuild her life after having been convicted of killing three people in a car accident and serving a year in a juvenile facility. Then her mother is killed.

From that premise, I was expecting the story to follow a different path from the one the author actually took, which turned out to be more thought-provoking and less formulaic than it might have been.

MacMillan's previous book, What She Knew (British title: Burnt Paper Sky; why oh why do they have to tinker with titles?), with the same two narrators, was also good.

There seem to be more British than American authors writing the kind of books I've come to enjoy most--domestic situations, psychological suspense, female protagonist, family secrets and lies.

[CRussel]

Finished reading The Murder of Mary Russell, the latest in the series by Laurie King, narrated by Jenny Sterlin and Susan Lyons.

This latest book in the Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series is quite a departure from some of the recent books. Mrs. Hudson is a central character throughout, as we learn her back story. The story jumps back and forth between "current" and the earlier days of Mrs. Hudson. This made it a bit slow and confusing early, but I quickly got past that and was finding excuses to take a drive so I could listen to it. The narration is good, and makes it easy to distinguish characters, though I wouldn't call it outstanding. But all in all, an excellent read.

[BenG]

Listening to Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow who won a Pulitzer for his biography of Washington. Very listenable with a decent narrator about a fascinating character. It's going slowly because I'm still listening to the cast album of Hamilton (which also won a Pulitzer) more than the audiobook.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by BenG

Listening to Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow who won a Pulitzer for his biography of Washington. Very listenable with a decent narrator about a fascinating character. It's going slowly because I'm still listening to the cast album of Hamilton (which also won a Pulitzer) more than the audiobook.

Fascinating book. I have it in hardback and ebook.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by BenG

Listening to Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow who won a Pulitzer for his biography of Washington. Very listenable with a decent narrator about a fascinating character. It's going slowly because I'm still listening to the cast album of Hamilton (which also won a Pulitzer) more than the audiobook.

I want to listen to Chernow's book, but I don't think I can face all that time with Scott Brick!

As for the cast album, I've tried to listen, but ... no.

Too bad, as I am an admirer of old Alex.

[Catlady]

First real clunker of the year: Dark Rooms, by Lili Anolik, narrated by Eileen Stevens. I got this from the library; otherwise I'd be sorely tempted to ask for a refund.

It's a shame, because the writer clearly has some talent and the narration was good, but the story was sordid and the characters were unlikable or amoral at best, monstrous at worst. The ugly aspects weren't sensationalized, but mostly simply accepted.

Spoiler:

• Incest! Adultery! Suicide! Drugs! Sex! And angst! Lots and lots and LOTS of angst!
  
• Aspiring photographer finds her daughter shot in the gut, and believing she's dead, Mom runs home not to call 911, but to get her camera and take pictures first! Some of them do come out rather shaky, because Mom was crying, but she did get a good one for her upcoming exhibition. (And we'll gloss over the fact that daughter dear was only mostly dead at the time.)
  
• Daughter who is the product of an adulterous affair begins sleeping with the guy she doesn't know is her half brother; the daughter's biological parents know but don't say anything because the half siblings are using birth control. So, no worries!
  
• Girl is raped and impregnated while passed out, doesn't know who did it, but after she finds out who the guy was and he "explains"--she looked just like her dead sister, and he couldn't help himself--they eventually begin a relationship.
  
• Everyone seems to be using drugs (these are high school kids), but, hey, it's OK unless it's heroin.
  
• The whole exercise of finding out what happened to the dead girl turned out to be pointless.

Additionally the story often included flashbacks; these were interesting and enlightening at first, but later such scenes interfered with the pacing. There were also too many dreamlike/imaginary scenes. I'm really at a loss to know just what reaction the author was going for, but I doubt it was annoyance at having wasted a dozen hours.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Catlady

It's a shame, because the writer clearly has some talent and the narration was good, but the story was sordid and the characters were unlikable or amoral at best, monstrous at worst. The ugly aspects weren't sensationalized, but mostly simply accepted.

The Sopranos, Grand Theft Auto, Gangsta Rap -- that sort of stuff is in vogue apparently.
Not my cup of tea.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by ApK

The Sopranos, Grand Theft Auto, Gangsta Rap -- that sort of stuff is in vogue apparently.
Not my cup of tea.

Not familiar with any of those except by reputation, but they seem to be hard-edged and dark, and I can deal with that--I like noir, for example--but Dark Rooms just didn't seem to have a moral center.

Maybe the problem was that there was no ethical judgment or larger sense of what was right or wrong--from any character. Everyone seemed only to act/react to what affected them personally--a lot of unlikable characters behaving badly.

[WT Sharpe]

Just finished The Girl Who Wrote in Silk by Kelli Estes and narrated by Emily Woo Zeller. This is the story of two Seattle women; one who lived a hard life in an earlier and more brutal era — the days of the Chinese Exclusion Act — and the other a modern woman who accidentally discovers a sleeve of silk upon which the first woman had recorded her family history; a history not learned in high school history texts, and one that threatens to destroy everything her own family holds dear. This book kept me riveted as it masterfully switched back and forth between the two eras and wove their destinies together. There were some predictable outcomes in the subplots, but the way the author had of making the characters come alive made me care for what happened to these people, and made the journey well worth the trip. Highly recommended and timely.

[AkiraReader]

STEELHEART by Brandon Sanderson! Very enjoyable book, just finished. Moved onto FireFight.

[Tarana]

I am just starting Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein, a BOM in one of my groups.

[Catlady]

Latest listen: Beside Myself, by Ann Morgan, narrated by Lisa Coleman. Here, young twin girls decide to change places as a lark; then the twin who's always been overshadowed by her sibling refuses to change back, and the girls' lives take markedly different paths.

This is, I think, the first book in which I encountered a second-person narrative, which alternates with a third-person narrative. It worked for this tale; in fact, I didn't consciously notice the second person until I was several hours into the story--it just fit here.

Bottom line: a well-written and well-performed book.

[WT Sharpe]

Just started Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story by Jewel, with narration by Jewel. It's her autobiography.



Things in my future are ahead of me now for the first time also, which is a good thing, as they were causing all kind of screw-ups with my schedule when they were behind me.