Tag: Jonathan Davis

The Oxford Murders

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Martinez, Guillermo. The Oxford Murders. Translated by Sonia Soto. Read by Jonathan Davis. Blackstone Audio, 2007.

Reason read: April is Mathematics, Science & Technology month. This would fall into the math category.

The mathematics behind a serial killer. This is one of those murder mysteries where the clues don’t add up to the crime. When an elderly woman is found dead everyone presumes a family member committed the crime for the money. The woman was going to die of cancer anyway. Someone just couldn’t wait for the inheritance. But, enter world renowned logician Arthur Seldom, author on the mathematics of serial killers, who describes a note left for him indicating this murder is only the first one. There will be more. The curious thing is each subsequent murder victim was already dying of an ailment and every death is accompanied by a strange series of mathematical symbols. It’s up to an Argentine math student (loosely based on the author) to crack the case.

My favorite part of the book – Seldom explaining how to hide a crime.

Author fact: Martinez has written a bunch of other stuff but only The Oxford Murders is on my Challenge list.

Narrator trivia: Jonathan Davis uses great accents to differentiate the characters. He is so much fun I have decided to actively seek out other audio books he has narrated.

Book trivia: The Oxford Murders was made into a movie in 2008.

Nancy said: Nancy called this book a “cerebral puzzle that always makes me wish I were smarter than I am” (p 171).

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Oxford: Mysteries” (p 171).

Chosen

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Potok, Chaim. The Chosen. Read by Jonathan Davis. New York: Recorded Books, 2003.

Reason read: May is American Jewish Heritage month.

Danny Saunders and Rueven Malter shouldn’t be friends. For starters, Danny almost blinded Reuven with a line drive straight to the head during a “friendly” baseball game in 10th grade. They have always been on opposite sides of the Jewish faith as well. Danny is a practicing Hasidic Jew and Rueven is a practicing secular Jew. They dress differently, they interpret the Talmud differently, their relationships with their fathers is vastly different. Yet, they become the best of friends. Despite their seemingly strong friendship as they get older they learn their differences have the potential to sabotage any relationship, no matter how strong.
There is such a push me-pull me element to The Chosen. As both boys come of age and are more aware of the political world around them their interests take them on different journeys. When you finish The Chosen you will see one defining consistency, forgiveness.

Author fact: Potok started writing when he was 16 years old.

Book trivia: even though this is a book appropriate for ages 12 and up, every adult should read this.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust from two different chapters, the first being “The Jewish-American Experience” (p 134) and the second, “Good Reads Decade by Decade: 1960s” (p 178).

Battle Cry of Freedom

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McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom. Read by Jonathan Davis. New York: Recorded Books, 2007.

Reason read: I am cheating a little with the reading of this book. It’s in two volumes and over 900 pages long. There is no way I can finish a 900 book in 30 days so I’m stretching it a little: in May I’m reading it in honor of May 26th, 1865 being the day conditions of surrender were offered to E. Kirby Smith. In June I am reading it in honor of June 2nd, 1865, the day Smith officially accepted those conditions. Another reason for May: the first officer was killed on May 24th 1861. Another reason for the May-June reading: the battle of the Pines took place from May 31 to June 1st, 1862.

Every single time I start to write a review for Battle Cry for Freedom I come up with the same damned word – “comprehensive”. It seems as if everyone and their brother uses this same word when writing a review. I guess it’s an appropriate word because it definitely fits. Said another way: if the era, the climate of the times before, during and after the Civil War was an inanimate object it’s as if McPherson studied it from every possible angle; getting on his knees, using a ladder to stand over it, circling around and around it to describe every little thing he sees, careful to leave not a single observation out. The end result is a comprehensive (there’s that word again) view of what our fledgling country looked like. You’ll meet Fire Eaters, Know Nothings, Butternuts, Copperheads, Knights of the Golden Circle, Whigs and the Free Soil Party in addition to the usual suspects like Robert E. Lee, Harriet Tubman, Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis and John Brown, just to name a few. You’ll see the country from an early economic and sociological standpoint. Industry and religion find their way into patriotism and what it meant to be independent.

Best parts: learning that some military maneuvers were so successful they are still taught in military schools to this day. I also enjoyed reading about how women went from being wives who were just supposed to comfort their returned from battle husbands to respected nurses on the battlefield (thanks to Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton, to name two).

Book trivia: Battle Cry won a Pulitzer.

Lines I liked, “The United States has usually prepared for its wars after getting into them” (p 312). Yup. This quote gave me a chuckle since I just finished walking 60 miles for Just ‘Cause, “Few of these southern soldiers had made a one-day march of twenty miles…(p 406).

Author fact: McPherson is an professor emeritus of U.S. History at Princeton. As an aside, my grandfather graduated from Princeton and gave me a stuffed leopard he insist I name after his alma mater. I wonder if I still have “Princeton” somewhere?

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the super straightforward chapter called “Civil War Nonfiction” (p 58). Duh.

Drown

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Diaz, Junot. Drown. Read by Jonathan Davis. Westminster, MD: Books on Tape, 2007.

Here’s the thing. Anything you read by Diaz is going to feel like heavy drinking in a rough-around-the-edges bar; the kind of place where it’s too dark to see; where the soles of your shoes are sticky-stuck to the floor and there is the obsessively constant need to wipe your hands and mouth. Diaz has that conversational, lean in and listen way of talking that sounds slightly conspiratorial but always brutally honest. While the stories change direction and voice, the messages of culture, society, family, tradition and passion do not. Powerful characters are matched only by their fierce loves and tragic losses. Their triumphs and travesties are spilled across the page with a “so what?” wild abandon. It’s as if you are elbow to elbow with Diaz as he whispers to you lush stories from his childhood, his coming of age, his entire history. Every story is intensely personal. But, But! But, all the while you are aware that this bar, these stories – this is his turf and you are not safe without him there. You need him to keep talking.

Reason read: supposed to be read in honor of the Merengue Festival that takes place sometime in late July/early August but as a series of short stories, read in honor of June’s national short story status.

Book trivia: Here’s what kept me up at night – the story of the kid whose face was half chewed off by a pig. You meet his tormentors, children who don’t understand the need for him to wear a mask. But then later, you meet the poor child and it rattles you to the core.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Cavorting Through the Caribbean: Dominican Republic” (p 54).

Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

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Diaz, Junot. The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Diaz. New York: Riverhead Books, 2007.

From the very first pages of The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (which I will from now on refer to as “Wondrous” because the title is too long), you are sucked in. The narrator goes on and on about “fuku” curse and the superstition of it all. It’s amusing and chilling all at once. All the while, you are hoping fuku doesn’t set its sights on you. But if it does, you also hope to have a little zafa (counterspell) hanging around.

When we first meet Oscar, he is seven years old and the year is 1974. He is the “GhettoNerd at the End of the World” trying to have two girlfriends at once. The story switches gears for chapter two (1982 – 1985). Oscar’s sister, Lola takes over the story in first person. She is a feisty runaway girl with typical teenage angst. From there, the narratives keep changing. Each voice tells a new story (just wait until you get to the story of Lola and Oscar’s mother, Belicia from 1955 to 1962). Through the generations, all the while the fuku is circling this doomed family. The writing of Wondrous is rich and enveloping. You cannot help but get completely drawn into the lives of every character.

Favorite lines (and there are a few), “The talkback blew the fuck up” (p 6), “You don’t know the hold our mothers have on us, even the ones that are never around. You don’t know what it’s like to grow up with a mother who never said a positive thing in her life, not about her children, not about the world, who has always been suspicious, always tearing you down and splitting your dreams straight down the seams” (p 55-56), and “Even at the end she refused to show me anything close to love” (p 208).

Reason read: New Jersey became a state on December 18, 1787.

Author fact: Junot also wrote Drown which is also on my list.

Book trivia: Pearl recommended listening to the audio of The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao so I did both. I listened to the audio to and from work and read 10-15 pages on my lunch break. Also, Wondrous won a Pulitzer.

Audio trivia: The audio is read by Jonathan Davis and an unknown female…unless Davis does an extraordinary job sounding like a woman?

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Cavorting Through the Caribbean” (p 54).