audiobooks

The Nightingale: How War Affects Women, How Women Affect A War

· December 22, 2015 · Book Reviews · , , , , , , , · No Comments

the nightingale

I started listening to Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale on audiobook and stopped several times this year. I would get through the first few chapters, as an older woman relays a tough childhood in France, then lose interest. I read a lot of books, I don’t really push through if they don’t capture my attention.

Recently, however, Audible named The Nightingale Audiobook of the Year, so I decided to give it another listen. And this isn’t a poor orphan story, but a war story. It’s a World War II story. And most importantly, it’s a lady story. A novel about how war affects women, and how women affect a war.

Author Hannah read about the roles of French women in the resistance during World War II, most notably Adrée de Jongh, who smuggled fallen airmen out of France through the Pyrenees mountains. She also read about women who quietly sheltered Jewish children or were forced to house German soldiers, and realized she had to tell these stories.

Her research helped her create The Nightingale‘s Vianne Mauriac, whose husband has left their small village to fight at the Front. While he’s gone, it is up to Vianne to tend to her small daughter, and find some way to survive with German soldiers who invade her home. Vianne’s younger sister, Isabelle, was rebellious before the war started. Once it begins, she is determined to join the resistance in any way she can.

Both these women will be tested in endless, exhausting ways. Isabelle flees from Paris in a gigantic, desperate swarm of refugees. Vianne’s best friend and next door neighbor is Jewish, and Vianne witnesses stricter and stricter restrictions placed upon her. I don’t often read historical fiction, but this book kept me going, equal parts horrified, intrigued, and entranced. I listened to this audiobook in the same time period that I watched Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle, and it was Nazi overload. I would not recommend it. I’m now grateful I’m not living in Nazi-occupied France or Nazi-occupied America on the daily.

My main issue with the book, as powerful as it was, is the message that women after wartime don’t talk about their tragedies and triumphs. I guess you’ll have to read the book to know what I’m referring to here, but that a mother could keep such a large secret from her son seems odd to me. I’d be interested to know how everyone else felt about this message. I wonder if Hannah absorbed this from her research, that earlier generations were simply more stoic about doing what needed to be done? Anyways, check it out! Report back with your thoughts.

Also, movie rights for this one have been picked up so… that’s exciting!

The Nightingale on Amazon.com/Powell’s.com/Indiebound.org

Review – Homeland: Phantom Pain by Glenn Gers

· November 17, 2013 · Book Reviews · , , , , , , , , , , , · One Comment

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“You are truly the worst terrorist I have ever met. With nonsense like that and your friends in the CIA. I thought you would be another spider, hiding under the rug, sneaking out to bite. I have met them, these soldiers of god. That’s not you. You’re not even a good patsy. You think too much for yourself. And you care so much about individuals! It’s all personal for you isn’t it? You’re a fucking civilian!”

Although perhaps just a small blip on the grand radar screen of the literary world, Homeland: Phantom Pain is an Audible.com release worth mentioning. Showtime and Audible came together to create this free 3o-minute audiobook, narrated by Sergeant Nicholas Brody himself, Damian Lewis. A noir glimpse into Brody’s journey between Seasons 1 and 2, Phantom Pain is a chance to see what we miss when we can only spend an hour a week with these characters.

Lewis is a fantastic narrator, which isn’t always a given when actors turn to story narration. We can’t forget Molly Ringwald’s bracing performance of The Middlesteins, in which it seemed she was gasping her way through each line almost desperate for the book to end. Lewis’s narration is understated but comes across as softer than he portrays his character on the show, and there is something irresistibly charming about him writing a letter to Carrie:  “I tried to imagine what you were doing at that very moment. All mussed up in your bed or all put together in your suit, with your ID tag clipped to the pocket.”  Lewis manages to convey emotion without distracting from the words he’s reading, which can be quite a challenge.  Narrators must walk a fine line between blasé and hokey, Lewis does it well.

The story here is poignant for both the main characters on the show, and emphasizes a bit of the love story that has been lost in this second season without getting sappy. I was skeptical of listening to this at all, even thought I downloaded it quite a while ago, as I thought a TV tie-in work of fiction would be pretty low quality. I think anyone who likes to read and watches the show will be pleasantly surprised, however. This isn’t an adventure style promo-piece, it is a great addition to the show that gives us a realistic glimpse into Brody’s struggle to come to terms with being the most wanted man in the world, traveling in foreign lands, with memorable and untrustworthy characters.

This would make sense with Homeland, as with many of the TV shows as of late. As Difficult Men, a book I recently reviewed noted, TV has gone through a sort of cultural renaissance. Where it was once considered fairly low brow (and certainly, much of it still is), TV shows like Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Wire, and certainly Homeland can claim to be works of art on par with many movies or books. It would then make sense that this type of television translates more successfully into literature.

The buzz is that more of these stories are on the way… We can only hope! If you don’t have an Audible.com account and you like to read, I can’t suggest it enough. The company lets you return any audiobooks you don’t like, no questions ask. They also giveaway a lot of stuff (like this story). I double (at least) the amount of books I read by listening to audiobooks in the car, while I’m doing chores around the house, and while I’m taking walks or doing other exercise. I have a Bluetooth headset so I don’t have to worry about being connected to my phone. People often ask me how I read so much–and I do, certainly, I read a bunch. But I also listen!

Homeland:  Phantom Pain on Audible.com

Related articles

7 Audioworthy Apocalypses

· August 24, 2013 · Book Reviews · , , , , , , , , , · 2 Comments

1. The Passage by Justin Cronin, narrated by Scott Brick

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When I speak of The Passage I refer to it as “the epic apocalyptic novel The Passage” each time, as this book’s epicness can not go unmentioned even once in conversation. Scott Brick, the best audiobook narrator known to man, reads this one with the sadness of a dusty old cowboy sitting at a campfire in the middle of the night while vampires are creeping in on all sides around him. Yes, that’s right–The Passage is a vampire book! This doesn’t make it simple, though. It isn’t an action movie disguised in book form, not a vampires-are-sexy sort of book or a teens swooning sort of book. Cronin maps out each gripping and startling detail towards the fall of man and the rise of vampires, and then each step towards survival in the post-vampire world. He builds up such a detailed culture around the historical narrative of the vampire attack, it asks for genealogy and maps and wikis and other such fan-stuff. Cronin’s writing is well paced, informal, authentic, unafraid to take on big ideas and small details. Like the best authors, he describes things in a way that makes them just a bit sharper than real life.  The Passage unabridged has a listening time of almost 37 hours – it is a story that stays with you for a bit.  I recall a friend getting into my car while I was listening to this and being like “OMG is this still that same book?  That book is so long!”  Yes, yes it is.

2. Swan Song by Robert McCammon, narrated by Tom Stechschulte

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A book that starts with the line “Once upon a time, we had a love affair with fire,” is clearly a winner worth pursuing. This isn’t for the weak (is any apocalyptic listening?), as McCammon lays down a harsh and brutal future, exploring a loss of humanity among people after nuclear bombs fall and things get rough. Listening to Swan Song is like being dropped into a nightmare, and I mean that in the best way possible. Add to the epicness narrator Tom Stechschulte–he reads this book like he’s really mad about it, and it is the perfect tone to take. The unabridged audio of Swan Song clocks in at almost 35 hours–a true apocalypse takes a while.

3. The Stand by Stephen King, narrated by Grover Gardner

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Any apocalypse list is incomplete without The Stand—originally published in 1978, and now a classic of post-apocalyptic fiction. The Stand gained a larger audience with a mini-series in the 90’s, and there have been constant low murmurings of a Stand movie in the works. The unabridged audio was released last year in updated format (previously it was on tape), and the tale is the longest on the list at just under 48 hours listening time. Two days straight!

4. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, narrated by Campbell Scott

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A brief tale compared to the previous three audiobooks we’ve covered, Atwood spins a creative and enchanting story here with less of the gore of much apocalyptic fiction but all of the evil. Atwood can write about anything and make it seem wistfully romantic, and this makes Oryx and Crake all the more sinister. At about 10 hours listening time, you can knock this one out in a single night where you stay awake and force yourself to listen, concerned about the growing number of audiobooks in the world and your lack of ability to listen to them all.

5. Odds Against Tomorrow by Nathaniel Rich, narrated by Kirby Heyborne

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So far we’ve covered the classics–the biggest vampire epic novel of recent history, a really long and creepy book from the eighties, and The Stand by Stephen King.  Odds Against Tomorrow is the new kid here. Rich has written an apocalypse for today’s thinking man, for Wall Street Bankers, for capitalist America. He’s written this book for everyone who keeps working even after their office fire alarm goes off. This book is funny, weird, and dark. It approaches apocalypse from a totally different angle, and different is good. Odds Against Tomorrow is also a lesser time investment at 10 hours listening time.

6. 14 by Peter Clines, narrated by Ray Porter

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Peter Clines is another fairly new author, but he is here to stay.  This man is serious about his end of the world.  This book is what Chris Matthews is constantly calling everyone on The Bachelor/Bachelorette–a “fan favorite.”  I discovered 14 by looking at reviews of another book on Audible.com, and someone had posted “This book is great but if you have to pick one book right now get 14!  Get this one later!” The urgency convinced me. 14 is another creative apocalypse, very outside the box. A sort of steampunk-ish Clue game of our world’s end. Some people may argue that this doesn’t even qualify as apocalyptic fiction and I would say those people may be right, but check it out anyways. One thing I think is really funny, another author gave this book a blurb that says “A riveting apocalyptic mystery in the style of LOST.”  The TV show?  I think this book has more in common with… books. Again, its a shorty – almost 13 hours.

7. Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank, narrated by Will Patton

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That’s right, we’re taking it back. Way back. Alas, Babylon wasn’t the first post-apocalyptic novel (it was originally published in 1959), but it is a quick beautiful read that still has relevance today. Will Patton does a great job narrating, as he sounds smooth like a song, but sad like he knows the bombs have destroyed most of America. Patton clearly knows how to do apocalypse, he was in the movie Armageddon and he currently stars in the alien-apocalypse TV series Falling Skies. He is an expert at experiencing apocalypse. Some novels seem racist, sexist, simple, or just poorly written as time plods on but Alas Babylon maintains its original power.  It is a read-in-highschool novel, as it should be.  For those of us who didn’t get to this one in school, the audiobook clocks in at just over 11 hours.

Review – The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout.

· August 3, 2013 · Book Reviews · , , , , , , , , , · No Comments

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Yes, I gave The Sociopath Next Door a chance despite its fairly cringeworthy cover and title.  Being a huge lover of mystery fiction, I do find myself drawn to explanations of the icy cold killers and the master manipulators among us.  I discovered this book via Jon Ronson’s The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry, a fabulous audiobook that I highly recommend.  Audible.com noticed my interest in the so-called Madness Industry and recommended I give The Sociopath Next Door a shot.

Martha Stout does a great job of not only explaining what makes a sociopath different, but discussing what bonds most of us as humans together.  She talks about empathy as a human sense that sociopaths seem to lack.  I found most interesting her digressions into the psychology of empathy – how most humans make horrible soldiers and fail to fire their guns at the enemy unless directly ordered to, etc.

The pitch of Dr. Stout’s book is that sociopaths are rampant among us – there are more of them out there, she says, than there are schizophrenics or certain types of cancer sufferers.  We are mainly just unaware of this specific disorder as it isn’t discussed or is more debatable in the mainstream.  I’m not too concerned about meeting sociopaths in my day to day life or how to wrangle with them on the daily, but I did find Dr. Stout’s examinations of and extrapolations from the human psyche to be interesting and well worth a read.

The Sociopath Next Door at Powell’s Books

Review – Love, Life, and Elephants: An African Love Story by Daphne Sheldrick.

· August 2, 2013 · Book Reviews · , , , , , , , , , , · 4 Comments

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I’m going to be real, I gave up on this book after dragging myself through 11 hours of the 14 hour long audiobook. My breaking point came when – shocker! – the millionth animal struggling to survive under Daphne’s care, or trying to survive in the wild after leaving her care, dies.

I love animals, and I want to love people’s heart-warming stories of living with animals. I like the idea of these stories. I like my own life, lived with two cats. I worked at the Humane Society and fell under the spell of fluffy unfortunates on the daily. But here’s the deal: I can’t get through these books. The quirky Enslaved by Ducks by Bob Tarte, the kitschily titled book about the PTSD dude with a dog, this dame’s adventures interfering with wildlife after her people (she greatly regrets) fail to colonize Africa. I find these books sweet and mildly irritating and vaguely un-notable. I think Daphne’s descriptions and view of the jungle as enchanting and full of delight is beautifully expressed, and I’d love for her to write a fiction novel that focuses more on people and events in that sort of rare environment – I’d find that intriguing.

I also do find a bit of her cultural belief system the elephant (ha! obvious pun there) in the room. At one point she talks of how she fears a one vote per one person system for an independent Kenya, stating this would give Africans a majority vote over whites. The concept of someone publicly believing Africans should receive less of a vote than white settlers based on skin color is so offensive/racist it made me question if I should have purchased the book at all. On a more debatable thought level than every human being equal to one vote, her husband devotes himself to ending poaching in their area only to be confronted with ideas of overpopulation and arguments for culling. I wonder if this “we know best” attitude of cultural interference is healthy for anyone – the wildlife they have decided needs saving, the indigenous people whose ways of life they have decided to interfere with, etc.

Interestingly enough, when I posted my review of this book on Goodreads and read the other reviews I discovered another reviewer had taken these non-discussed issues, as well as his personal relationship with Daphne Sheldrick, and written a book called, aptly enough, The Elephants in the Room: An Excavation. It was written by Martin Rowe, is launching in September from Lantern Books, and I’m sure it will be an interesting read.

As a final note, this is another book I listened to on audio, and it was read by the author.  This rarely works and always disappoints me.  Daphne Sheldrick is now an older woman, telling the stories of a younger one.  It was harder for me to get over the older voice – like I was being told a bedtime story of a yesteryear, the bygone days that I’m sure Sheldrick pines for.  I think a younger narrator may have suited the story better.

Love, Life, and Elephants on Barnes & Noble.com

Review – The Dinner: A Novel by Herman Koch.

· July 1, 2013 · Book Reviews · , , , , , , , , · No Comments

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This was a novel of beautifully slow pacing. A husband and wife out to a painfully slow, grotesquely upscale dinner which they admit dreading from the morning of. The drinks, the appetizers, the meal, the desserts, and all the life in between. The novel matched the meal in time – dragging in a way that was purposeful and neat. The lines that finished each chapter were crisp and the chapters themselves were timed beautifully, each chapter ending with a cut that left an absence, a statement in itself with the words unsaid.

I listened to the audio version of this book, narrated by Clive Mantel, and he took the time with the story that it deserved. Each time he spat out the family name I felt all the emotions boiled up underneath “Lohman”, I heard the contempt broiling up in way that is hard to do in a narration without sounding overdone.

I was surprised to read other reviews that compared this to Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. Every book I’ve read since Gone Girl has been published, there’s a required comparison. I don’t see too many similarities. I would compare this to the film There Will Be Blood by Paul Thomas Anderson, for its slow crawl through the story, and its emphasis on family, social expectations, and violence. Or another comparison here, without giving too much away of either book, would be to Defending Jacob by William Landay.

I loved this book and it helped me get through several loads of laundry and many commutes. If you dislike a book that drifts before it reaches its conclusion, however, I’d skip it.

The Dinner on Audible.com

Why hello there!

· June 30, 2013 · Musings of a different nature · , , , , , , , , , · 2 Comments

I’m a lover of books. I can’t stop reading them, telling people (who aren’t asking) about them, buying them, selling them, browsing them, adding them to wishlists, checking them off my lists, reading reviews of them, listening to them. I’m creating this little site to share my love with you – the good, the bad, and the ugly.

I mainly read mystery (currently Broken Harbor by Tana French, just finished Red Dragon by Thomas Harris), popular fiction (on my to-read shelf: the first four Game of Thrones novels by George R. R. Martin), literary fiction (trawling through 2666 by Roberto Bolano, just started and then sort of put off Swamplandia! by Karen Russell, listening to The Dinner by Herman Koch), memoir (currently in the middle of In the Body of the World by Eve Ensler), and non-fiction and essays (on the to-read shelf: The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, and currently in the middle of How to Be Alone by Johnathan Franzen). Oh, and I love a good science fiction or speculative fiction story but for some reason these aren’t in my spotlight right now.

This site will be full of reviews that I won’t insist to be unbiased, chock full of my own opinions. I like to take into account our current cultural climate while considering the medium and the message of the books I read.

All for now.

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