Tag: audio book

Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

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Gaines, Ernest J. The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. Read by Lynn Thigpen. New York: Recorded Books, 1994.

Reason read: February is Black History month

Miss Jane Pittman could be your great-grandmother, she is that real of a character. I’m sure listening to this on audio had something to do with that perception. When 100 year old Miss Pittman tells her life story to an unidentified high school history teacher it’s as if she is sitting in your living room. Beginning when she was ten years old and freed from slavery in the deep south, she recounts her journey to leave the Louisiana plantation she has known all her life. She is looking for the white abolitionist who gave her new “free” name. All she knows is that he is somewhere in Ohio. So, to Ohio she heads. Along the way she befriends an orphan boy and encounters seemingly overwhelming obstacles. But, I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say, overcome these obstacles, she does. She raises the orphan boy as her own and even though she doesn’t make it out of Louisiana, forges a life for herself.
One point of observation is that while Miss Jane Pittman has lived a long life, you don’t hear her talk a lot about her own personal life. She would rather discuss the people around her and how they influenced her.

Quotes to quote, ‘”…America is for all of us.” he said,”and all of America is for all of us”‘ (p 115), “He wasn’t aiming to break the door in, he wanted to chop it down” (p 195), and my favorite, “And I will eat vanilla ice cream which I loves and enjoys” (p 219).

Author fact: I could have read this last month in honor of Gaines’s birth month. He was born in January.

Narrator funny: There were times when I was reminded of the actress Whoopie Goldberg when listening to Ms. Thigpen.

Book trivia: The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman was made into a movie. The release date was January 11th, 2005.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the early chapter called “African American Fiction: He Say” (p 11).

Spiderweb For Two

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Enright, Elizabeth. Spiderweb for Two: a Melendy Maze. New York: Listen & Live Audio, 2004.

Reason read: this is the last book in the series to celebrate Enright’s birth month (started in September). I have grown to really like this family. I will miss them.

Here were are, back with the Melendy family. Only in Spiderweb for Two they are less than half the family they are used to being. Father is still traveling the university circuit as a guest lecturer and Mark, Mona and Rush are away at various schools. Left behind are Randy and her brother, Oliver, with the help, Cuffy and Willy. The rest of the family hasn’t been gone a day before Randy is beside herself with boredom. She doesn’t want to play with Oliver. He’s always been the baby of the family and therefore not worth her time…until she discovers a mystery. It starts with a message in the mailbox that takes them on a winter adventure. Each message is a clue to finding another message until they have received fourteen messages and all and it is summer once again.
It’s a cute story. Oliver getting stuck in the chimney was one of my favorite parts.

Profound quote, “Vigorously running bath water always caused Randy, as it does nearly everyone, to wish to sing” (p 80). This quote made me think of Natalie Merchant’s song, “Verdi Cries” and the lyric, “I fill the bath and climb inside, singing.” Maybe there is some truth to Enright’s words.

Author fact: Oliver was the name of Enright’s youngest boy, as it was in the Melendy series.

Book trivia: the e-audio version spells “Cuffy” as “Kaffi”.

Nancy said: absolutely nothing; just listed the title.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Best for Boys and Girls” (p 21).

City and the City

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Mieville, China. The City and the City. Read by John Lee. New York: Random House, 2009.

Reason read: November is Imagination month and believe me, this book takes the imagination to the moon.

Despite the fact Tyador Borlu is investigating the murder of foreign student Mahalia Geary, the real main characters of The City and the City are the city and the city, Beszel and Ul Qoma. In order to wrap your brain around the plot you first need to understand the landscape. Each city shares essentially the same geographic space. Members of each city are trained to “ignore” the other and to perceive “their” city as different from that other one. Everything, from the clothes people wear to the architectural styles of the buildings, is seen as unique to the people within “their” city. Residents are taught to have different languages and mannerisms to further differentiate themselves; and to acknowledge the other city’s existence or “see” is called Breach. Breach is worse than murder. Residents need to learn how to “unsee” the other city or face the consequences of Breach. Only Copula Hall exists in both cities and is in fact the gateway to travel from one city to another.
But, back to the plot: murder victim Mahalia Geary was found mutilated in Borlu’s city, Beszel, but after some investigation Tyador Borlu learns she had connections to that other city, Ul Qoma. And to complicate matters, she was researching a third city, Orciny. Was her investigation getting too close to the truth? Was she murdered because she was about to expose a completely different society with nefarious activities? As Borlu gets closer to the truth he increases his chances of Breach.

As an aside, I now know why I don’t do well with fantasy and science fiction. The weird names that seem to be a staple of the genres are hard to pronounce and even harder to remember. No wonder I didn’t do well in my foreign language class.

Author fact: I read somewhere that Mieville wrote The City and the City for his dying mother since she loved police procedurals.

Book trivia: The City and the City won a Hugo award and many, many others.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter appropriately called “Travels to Imaginary Places” (p 236).

Books and Spooks

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If you have been keeping up with me, myself and moi then you know we love Halloween. Odd. Odd because we can’t watch Walking Dead or go to Fright Fest without peeing our pants. What I love about Halloween is the potential for witchcraft, darkness & something intangibly spooky, if that makes sense. I love mysteries and there is no greater mystery than death. Right? Jack-o-Laterns glowing on doorsteps. Ominous crows watching silently from the trees. Candlelight shadows wavering on the wall. Cemeteries shrouded in the fog…I love it all.
In other news, I bailed for the first time ever on a half marathon but made it home-home to put up a ceiling for my mother. And speaking of Monhegan, we almost got caught in Hurricane Matthew! Somehow we managed to get out just in time.
Having said all that, unrelatedly here are the books:

  • The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright – to continue the series started last month in honor of Enright’s birth month. Took me two days to read.
  • Merry Misogynist by Colin Cotterill – to continue the series started last May in honor of Rocket Day. Took me two days to read.
  • Texaco by Patrick Chamoiseau – in honor of magical realism month. Took me the entire month and I still didn’t finish it.
  • A Blessing on the Moon by Joseph Skibell – an audio book in honor of Halloween (this was my favorite story).
  • Drink to Yesterday by Manning Coles – in honor of Octoberfest in Germany. Another really short book.
  • The Ape and the Sushi Master by Frans de Waal – in honor of Gorilla month being in October.
  • The Aeneid by Virgil – in honor of Poetry month (celebrated in Great Britain).
  • Hush by Jacqueline Woodsen – an audio book in honor of kids. This was only three discs long.

For fun:

  • The Code of the Extraordinary Mind by Vishen Lakhiani because I saw it in a running magazine.

For LibraryThing: nada

Hush

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Woodson, Jacqueline. Hush. Read by Sisi Aisha Johnson. New York: Recorded Books, 2002.

Reason read: October is Teenage Hero Month somewhere in the world. This is a book best for teens.

Hush began with a question in Jacqueline Woodson’s head. After hearing about a story about someone entering the witness protection program she asked herself what if that happened to me? She began to imagine how someone’s entire world would be turned upside down. And what if what that someone was a pubescent child with a best friend, a family and school? Someone just barely starting to find her own identity? Meet Evie Thomas. She was born to a policeman father and a school teacher mother and with her sister started her young life in Denver, Colorado. Her name used to be Toswia Green. She had a best friend. She had a nice house to live in. She used to have security in every sense of the word. Now all of that is gone. She has to start all over with friends, with school, with a new (and tiny) apartment, with her family and herself. Evie has no idea who she is anymore.

Book trivia: Hush is appropriate for children aged 11 and up. Confessional: I was getting pretty annoyed with Evie when she kept mentioning all the material things she used to have in her old life. Gone was the spacious house and nice clothes. Her mother even became a Jehovah’s Witness so they ceased to celebrate holidays. Gone were the presents and festivities. As an adult, I understand the gravity of the situation, but had to remind myself as a child, these changes would be hard to take.

Author fact: Woodson has a website here.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Best for Teenagers” (p 24).

Blessing on the Moon

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Skibell, Joseph. A Blessing on the Moon. Read by Allen Rickman. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 2010.

Reason read: Halloween is a-coming and this is scary in a tickle your funny bone kind of way.

This is a startling Holocaust story. Right from the beginning the language grips you and grips you hard. Chaim Skibelski, a 60 year old Polish man, is shot along with hundreds of fellow Jews. He has been left to bleed out in a stinking heap. Murder doesn’t turn out to be very peaceful for Chaim. As a ghost-like entity caught between Life and The World to Come, he is condemned to roam with his former rabbi-turned-talking-crow, Rebbe. Together they are in an alternate afterlife trying to find purpose. That is the burning question. Why were they left behind? When Skibelski returns to his small Polish village he finds it overrun with non-Jews. They have moved into his house dragging their prejudices behind them.
Dear readers beware: while Skibell’s writing sometimes evokes magical imagery, the time frame is dark and tragic so definitely expect violence, destruction and decay. It is at once gory and gorgeous. The worms crawl in. The worms crawl out. Skibelski continuously bleeds from the bullet holes. His face is half missing. Corpses and his family and friends rot and stink and fall apart like a zombie movie. While listening to this on cd I was taken aback when Skibelski started to bleed from his anus. Fear not, dear readers. You get used to it. You will even learn to laugh at it.
In all honesty, I could see this as a Tim Burton film. There is sex and even humor amid the putrid. One of my favorite scenes was when Skibelski comes across a decapitated German soldier trying to kill him again. Yes, you read that right. Skibelski kicks the soldier’s head down a hill all the while arguing with the soldier about why he doesn’t need to die again. The dialogue is to die for (pun totally intended).

Author fact: Skibell has his own website here.

Book trivia: The audio version is read by Allen Rickman and he does a fabulous job. His comedic timing is perfect and I loved the voice of the crow.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter obviously called “Magical Realism” (p 148).

Aught to be October

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October is…another half marathon. Maybe another trip to Monhegan (not sure yet thanks to it being hurricane season) but what I’m sure about is definitely reading more, more, more books!

  • Texaco by Patrick Chamoiseau – in honor of magical realism month
  • The Merry Misogynist by Colin Cotterill – to continue the series started in May in honor of Laos Rocket Day
  • A Blessing on the Moon by Joseph Skibell (AB) – in honor of Halloween
  • Toast to Tomorrow by Manning Coles – in honor of October being the best time to visit Germany. Note: just found out this is the second Tommy Hambledon book in the series so you will probably see A Drink to Yesterday before A Toast to Tomorrow.
  • Ape and the Sushi Master by Frans de Waal – in honor of October being Gorilla Month
  • The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright – to “continue” the series started in September in honor of Enright’s birth month (yes, another series read slightly out of order).

For fun:

  • The Code of the Extraordinary Mind by Vishen Lakhiani. Don’t ask.

If there is time I would like to add Aeneid by Virgil in honor of Great Britain’s poetry month.

 

September Slipped Away

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September was a cool month. On the 10th I ran a half marathon (2:10:16), was able to get to Monhegan (and introduce the island to some new people), and get to a lot of reading:

  1. Curse of the Pogo Stick by Colin Cotterill
  2. Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng
  3. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
  4. Consul’s Wife by W.T. Tyler
  5. Tears of Autumn by Charles McCarry (AB)
  6. Life and Death of Edwin Mullhouse by Steven Millhauser
  7. Four-Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright
  8. Best Game Ever by Mark Bowden
  9. The Trial by Franz Kafka
  10. Which Side Are You On? by Elaine Harger (ER)
  11. Which Side Are You On? by George Ella Lyon (for fun)

AB = Audio book
ER = Early review

Tear of Autumn

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McCarry, Charles. The Tears of Autumn. Read by Stefan Rudnicki. Oregon: Blackstone Audio, 2005.

Reason read: Cold War ended in September.

Paul Christopher is back; Christopher, the the cool-as-a-cucumber, jet-setting, incorruptible CIA secret agent. This time he is trying to convince his superiors he knows who killed John F. Kennedy and why. But, is this a story of revenge or not? When Vietnam’s president, Ngo Dinh Diem, is assassinated Christopher can’t help but think there is a connection when JFK is murdered just three weeks later in Texas. Was Oswald just a switch someone far-reaching flicked on? Christopher seeks the truth and along the way puts the people he cares about in danger (especially a love interest, of course). While the plot is predictable and the characters, typecast, I enjoyed Christopher’s next adventure.

Author fact: McCarry also wrote The Last Supper and Shelley’s Heart both of which are on my list.

Book trivia: this is part of a seven-book series but I don’t think you would be missing anything if you didn’t read them one right after the other or out of order.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Cold War Spy Fiction” (p 61).

August Behind Me

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August was…the final push to move back into the new library space. People who used to work there won’t recognize it. August was also the finishing of the deck and patio. It looks awesome. Sidelined by injury I only ran 60.86 miles this month. But. But! But, here are the books:

  • Anarchy and Old Dogs by Colin Cotterill
  • Dogs of Riga by Henning Mankell (AB)
  • Lost City of Z by David Grann
  • The High and the Mighty by Ernest Gann
  • If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
  • Children in the Woods by Frederick Busch
  • Flora’s Suitcase by Dalia Rabinovich
  • ADDED: Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
  • ADDED: Dorothy Gutzeit: Be True and Serve by Dorothy Gutzeit (ER)

My favorite was Dogs of Riga followed by Anarchy and Old Dogs.

Murder of Roger Ackroyd

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Christie, Agatha. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Read by Robin Bailey. Kingston, RI: BBC Audiobook America, 1987.

Reason read: Christie’s birth month and I had just finished a book following Christies’s footsteps, 8:55 to Baghdad by Andrew Eames.

Who has never heard of Hercule Poirot? He’s almost as popular as Sherlock Holmes. In The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Poirot emerges from retirement to uncover the killer of Roger Ackroyd, found with a knife in his neck. But, that is not the first death in the story. Mrs. Ferrars commits suicide after admitting she poisoned her husband.
It is easy to see why this story is such a classic. It has it all: secrets, romance, murder, suicide, blackmail, and a bevy of suspects (including a butler). The story is told from the perspective of Dr. James Settles, the doctor who was on hand to examine Roger Ackroyd’s body after the murder. He is the perfect narrator as he becomes Poirot’s right hand man and seems to be involved…in everything.

Author fact: Christie was also an avid archaeologist.

Book (audio) trivia: Robin Bailey does a great job with all the different voices.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Tricky, Tricky” (p 222).

Dogs of Riga

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Mankell, Henning. The Dogs of Riga. Read by Dick Hill. Blackstone Audio, 2006.

Reason read: Sweden is beautiful this time of year.

Kurt Wallander is back! I first met the detective in a much later book (book 7). He still drinks too much, still has trouble with relationships and still loves coffee and the opera. This time Kurt is pulled into a Latvian murder mystery. At first, the mystery is centered on two well dressed individuals found dead in a life raft. After it was determined the crime originated out of his jurisdiction Wallander assumes he is off the hook. That is, until the Riga inspector assigned to the case is also found murdered. Complicating matters is the fact Latvia is fresh from breaking ties with Russia. Suspicion runs high and corruption is rampant in Riga. Add a love interest and you get the perfect thriller.

Book trivia: It was such a bummer to learn that this is part of a series and I have started to read them out of order. This is book #2. I already read #7. I said that already.

Author fact: It was such a bummer to learn that Mankell died last year.

Audio fact: read by Dick Hill.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “The Baltic States” (p 34).

August Ahead

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My obsession with moving rocks has come to an end now that the big boys are playing in the backyard. This hopefully means I’ll scale back to just two fanatical activities: running and reading. Or reading and running. I wonder who will win out? I am in the last month of training before the half marathon, but here are the books planned for August:

  • Anarchy and Old Dogs by Colin Cotterill – to continue the series started in May in honor of Laos Rocket Day. I have been able to read other books in the series in one to two days.
  • Dogs of Riga by Henning Mankell – in honor of July being one of the best times to visit Sweden (listening as an audio book).
  • Lost City of Z: a tale of deadly obsession in the Amazon by David Grann in honor of August being the driest month in the Amazon.
  • The High and the Mighty by Ernest Gann in honor of August being Aviation month.
  • If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin in honor of Baldwin’s birth month (print & AB).
  • Children in the Woods by Frederick Busch in honor of Busch’s birth month (short stories).
  • Flora’s Suitcase by Dalia Rabinovich in honor of Columbia’s independence.

PS – on the eve of posting this I ran 7.93 miles. Why the .93? My calf/Achilles started to give me grief so I had to stop. Now I wonder if the running has a chance to catch the books?

Just July

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July was a nutty month. Lots of music: Phish three times, Warren Haynes at Tanglewood, Dead and Company twice, and Coldplay. (August is only Pearl Jam and Mieka Pauley.) We made it up to Monhegan for a week and down to CT twice. And! And. And, I moved a lot of rocks (don’t ask). For the books it was:

  • Milk in my Coffee by Eric Jerome Dickey
  • Disco for the Departed by Colin Cotterill
  • Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell (AB)
  • The Last Battle by Ryan Cornelius
  • Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle
  • The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh
  • 8:55 to Baghdad by Andrew Eames

I think, once I got used to Dickey’s style, I grew to like Milk but my favorite by far was The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh. Is it a movie? Because if it isn’t, it should be. I said that in the review as well.

Full disclosure: I had Lost Upland on my list as well. I simply ran out of time and couldn’t get to it. I’m okay with seven books for the month.

July on Deck

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July. Summertime. Lots of music (starting with you guessed it, Phish). Lots of running (hopefully all outdoors). Lots of travel, lots of play. Plenty of reading:

  • Milk in My Coffee by Eric Jerome Dickey (in honor of National Cow Appreciation Day on the 14th. I kid you not.)
  • Disco for the Departed by Colin Cotterill (#3 – to continue the series started in May in honor of Rocket Day)
  • The Last Battle by Cornelius Ryan (#3 – to continue the series started in June for D-Day)
  • Cranford (AB) by Elizabeth Gaskell (in honor of Swan Upping. If you don’t know about this day, check it out. It’s fascinating. Or you can wait for my review when I’ll explain the practice.)
  • Black Faces, White Faces by Jane Gardam (in honor of Gardam’s birth month)

As an aside, I have read the last two Cotterills in a day each, so I know I need to add at least one or two more books to the list. I’m off to the great unknown for vacation so when I get back I’ll probably have to revisit this list.

Also, I should note that I won another Early Review book from LibraryThing, but since its not here yet I won’t promise to read it. 😉