Can a book be done in by good buzz? I was discussing the phenomenon that is The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society with another blogger recently, and she commented that she wouldn’t touch this book with a 10-foot pole. “Everyone loves it too much!” was her comment. I’ll confess that I too get [...]
Archive for the ‘Audiobooks’ Category
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (audio)
Posted in Audiobooks, Fiction, Historical Fiction on November 9, 2009 | 6 Comments »
Wuthering Heights (audio, reread)
Posted in Audiobooks, Classics, Fiction on November 2, 2009 | 21 Comments »
This is not a love story! That’s the first thing any potential first-times reader of Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë must understand, lest they be as disappointed as I was when I first read this book as part of my English class my senior year of high school. I was expecting an epic romance that [...]
Animals Make Us Human (audio)
Posted in Audiobooks, Nonfiction on October 22, 2009 | 7 Comments »
Sometimes a poor interview can ruin a perfectly good book. I heard animal science expert Temple Grandin interviewed on NPR several years ago. The interviewer focused almost entirely on Grandin’s personal experience as an autistic person and her observations of animals. I was left with the definite impression that Grandin had come up with an oddball theory—that [...]
Comfort Me with Apples (audio)
Posted in Audiobooks, Food, Memoir on October 8, 2009 | 6 Comments »
I don’t believe I’ve ever read Gourmet magazine, but I was still sad to learn this week that the magazine was closing up shop because I was just getting acquainted with its editor, Ruth Reichl, through listening to the audio version of Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table, the second of her memoirs [...]
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (Audio)
Posted in Audiobooks, Nonfiction, Travel/ Exploration on September 28, 2009 | 11 Comments »
Savannah, Georgia, a small southern city known for its history and its hospitality, is both the setting and the subject for John Berendt’s 1994 book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. When this book was first released, it was a word-of-mouth sensation. Everyone I knew seemed to be reading it, but I let the [...]
Oryx and Crake (audio; reread)
Posted in Audiobooks, Speculative Fiction on September 10, 2009 | 9 Comments »
As a novelist, Margaret Atwood is, in my mind, two completely different writers. Sometimes she’s a writer of particularly good fiction about women and relationships (The Robber Bride and Cat’s Eye), and sometimes she’s a writer of chilling dystopian fiction (The Handmaid’s Tale). Only in the case of The Blind Assassin does she seem to straddle [...]
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (audio; reread)
Posted in Audiobooks, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Speculative Fiction on August 25, 2009 | 15 Comments »
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell by Susanna Clarke has to be one of my top-five favorite books of the last 10 years. Published in 2004, this novel presents an alternate history of the early 19th century, one in which two magicians restore magic to England. Strange and Norrell, the two magicians, use their magic to serve the English [...]
Good in Bed (audio)
Posted in Audiobooks, Contemporary, Fiction on July 18, 2009 | 3 Comments »
I read very few books that could be classified as chick lit, not because I think the genre is irretrievably bad, but because it’s too difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. I do like a nice wish-fulfillment fantasy from time to time, and good chick lit about smart women trying to cope with [...]
After Dark (Audio)
Posted in Audiobooks, Contemporary, Fiction on July 1, 2009 | 9 Comments »
A 19-year-old woman named Mari Esai sits in a Toyko Denny’s at midnight, alone, reading a book. There she would have remained had she not been interrupted by a young man named Takahashi, who remembers meeting Mari with her sister, Eri, a while back. Over the course of the night, Takahashi draws Mari out of herself.
After Dark [...]
Speaker for the Dead (audio)
Posted in Audiobooks, Fiction, Speculative Fiction on June 25, 2009 | 3 Comments »
When I read Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card years ago, I loved it, but I had no particular desire to continue the series. The story felt complete, and some friends told me the rest of the books weren’t that good anyway. However, when I checked the audiobook for Ender’s Game out of the library, [...]
