2020 Reading List

 

October, 2020

YTD: Count 168 and 1639 Hours  

Goal for the year: 100 books and 1500 hours

 

 

 

 

The Chinese Orange Mystery -- NEW70

Mr. Lincoln's High Tech War -- NEW71

Summer Lightning -- NEW72   DNF (unintelligible narrator)

The Passage of Power -- Re-read  20 for '20

The Mysterious Affair at Styles -- Re-read

The Corinthian -- Re-read

Crowned and Dangerous -- NEW73

Rumpole of the Bailey -- NEW74

Death of a Prankster -- NEW75

Death of a Greedy Woman -- NEW76

Death of a Traveling Man -- NEW77

Howards End -- NEW78 -- DNF

The Gate Keeper -- NEW79

The Dutch Shoe Mystery -- NEW80

The Year 1000 -- NEW81

Death on the Nile -- Re-read

Cotillion -- Re-read

Crossfire -- Re-read

Dead Cert -- Re-read

MTD: Count 19 and Hours 169

Foxglove Summer

 

by Ben Aaronvitch (read by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith)

First published on Booklikes, June, 2019

 

 

 

I had been saving this TBR item for a chance to play it in BL-opoly and have finally gotten my chance. I burned the midnight oil listening to it last night and just could not put it down. This might be the fifth book in the series but it is the second book that I have read. No matter. I will eventually get to all of them, as long as they are read by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith (who is now on my list of "you can read me the phone book" audio narrators).

As many of you already know, I'm an fully addicted to audio books, which is good since actual eyeballing page after page puts me to sleep (and so does long distance driving now, too, but that is another conversation) and you can't read very much if your eyes are closed. So reading for me has taken on a new dimension--and sadly, taken away others (like the ability to go back and re-read a particular passage or even to book mark it).  I have become very attuned to the narrators. Good narration makes a good book even better and bad narrators have to be ignored for the sake of getting through much loved stories.

I think that part of the reason that I am so enamored of this series is because of the narrator. You have to understand that my internal narrator speaks with one voice no matter who wrote the book and no matter where the book is set and that voice has is now  a bastardized mix of Philadelphia (where I grew up)  and Boston (where I have lived for the last 40-some odd years) speak -- two very clearly distinct  but very clearly Yankee accents. I can't tell you what a difference listening to a Brit read a book written by a Brit makes. It adds another dimension to the story, that I can't conjure up on my own.

But not all narrators are equal and a good narrator who has excellent command over multiple regional accents, especially those regional British accents that are full of glottal stops, and who can move from one accent to another seamlessly has a price beyond pearls. Holdbrook-Smith is one of them. In fact, I can't wait to finish this screed and get back to listening.

But I do have to talk about the book itself, don't I? Fun series with a serious tone. Police procedural and paranormal fantasy rolled into one. Maybe that is why I am enjoying it. Do not think Terry Pratchett. There is not much to joke about when the first part of the book is about the unexplained disappearance of two pre-teens. Still, the topic is taken up without the gut-wrenching terror and suspense that some author find indispensable (otherwise, I would have DNFed it long before I got to this point of even writing about it because I just don't enjoy graphically explicit gratuitous violence). And, now I must get back to reading this book.

AC Centenary: December, 2020 Side-Read Poll

 

The preliminary poll has closed. It is tie and there will be a run off. Since I dislike the narrator for the Heyer mysteries, I will be voting for the Ngaio Marsh title just as soon as the poll opens.

The following are available on AudibleUSA. Only the Marsh title is in the Audible Plus catalog:

 

Tied up in Tinsel,

A Christmas Party/Envious Casca, 

Thou Shell of Death, 

An English Murder, 

Santa Klaus Murder

 

Only 66 Reading Days

 ...until the ball drops in Times Squares. 

 

 

I have only 

 

 

books to go.

Favorite Narrators -- and Least Favorite

 

YOU can read me the phone book

First and foremost, the GiGis  -- the two most prolific of audiobook readers. There is a reason they get all those gigs.

• George Guidall
• Grover Gardner

And then the rest of the best, they bring the stories to life without taking them over

• Kobna Holdbrook-Smith (reads Rivers of London series)
  
  
  
• Lisette Lecat 
• The late great Edward Hermann
• Tony Britton
• Davina Porter
• Simon Prebble
• Scott Brick
• Barbara Rosenblat
• Wil Wheaton (yes, of Star Trek fame)

 

The ones I avoid

• Ulli Birve (terrible pacing; reads Heyer mysteries)
• Elizabeth Klett (American with limited arsenal of British accents)
• William Dufris -- whiny females
• John Wells -- terrible at voices; not bad at straight reading
• Lorna Raver -- makes a 40 year old woman sound like a doddering old woman
• Authors, other than actors, reading their own books, even if they are professional public speakers
  

What makes a good narrator

I have been listen to books almost exclusively for the past 15 years and in that period of time I have read/listened to close to a thousand different productions. I now have a fairly idea of what I think makes a good narrator -- or at least what I hope for when I listen.

A good narrator does not click, clack, snort, swallow, sniff, smack or hiss.

A good narrator knows how to properly phrase a sentence, knows where to pause and where to breath. Pacing is important. When it is a great narrator, it is so natural that you don't even know it is happening.

A good narrator makes age appropriate choices for voice characterizations. A 40 years old woman should not sound as if she is on her death bed.

A good narrator must know how to pronounce "dour" -- and it does not rhyme with "sour." Pronunciation is important and I am not just taking about the words that we learned to read before we ever heard them used in a sentence -- like respite, antipodes, debacle. Narrators need to do their homework. They need to know how to properly pronounce every single proper noun in the book they are reading and if they don't know, they need to look it up. A constant barrage of mispronounced words detracts from the reading experience.

But, it is not enough to get the technical stuff right --and that is what separates a good narrator from a great narrator --

A good narrator does not intrude into the narrative but carries it along as if he or she isn't even there. A good narrator may be an actor but there is a big difference between sitting behind a mic and being on stage in front of audience. George Guidall pointed out in a 2017 NYT interview that you have to have "an emotional underpinning." and that "there’s a rhythm to speech in terms of what’s implied. If it’s raining in the book, there’s got to be something about the voice that evokes the rain.”

On Reading in Translation

 If translating is necessary in order for me to read a book, I would much rather read the most recent translation than one that was written a century ago (unless a contemporary translation is available). My rational is that since the author was writing in the most up-to-date version of his language, at least I should be reading a version of the translation that reflects the most up-to-date version of the language I am reading in -- with the hope that the translator is working to find the joy and playfulness and love of language and story telling that the original represents.  

 

Howards End

 

 

.  

 

 E.M. Forster (1910)  Narrated by Nadia May -- DNF 2/3rd of the way thru.

 

A classic and beautifully written but sometimes you just have to be in the right mood for such sagas. I just am not invested in the characters and have little patience right now for their story. We will mark this one as DNF, proclaim that "Life's Too Short" and move on quickly and quietly to another book.

Deliciously Noir

 

 

Double Indemnity

by James M. Cain (1936); narrated by James Naughton (2005)

 

An amuse-bouche. I sat up until the wee hours listening--and the book is just over 3 hours. I did not want to put it down even though it was a re-read.

It all unravels so delightfully in a short, well-paced yet perfectly structured story. In a flash we go from simple insurance sale to murder plot and everything is just so delightfully black, without being gruesome. Except for the innocent virgin, every single character is not what he appears to be, has a secret, has a hidden agenda, is not quite  honorable. Sociopaths and psychopaths, all.

And then the ending, that leaves us hanging  -- or does it? Do they or don't they? Does he or doesn't he? Does she or doesn't she? Yes, well discussing it would just be one huge spoiler.

 

Originally posted on Booklikes  17 June 2019

 

The Circular Staircase (Updated)

by Mary Roberts Rinehart,  (published 1908),  narrator Lorna Raver (published 2010)

I loved it and hated it at the same time. 

 

I picked this one up because it was one of the choices for a side-read for The Agatha Christie Centenary Read group that I am part of -- and because it is free for me with my Audible membership.

Would I recommend it? Yes, it is a bit of literary history. But not necessarily this audio version. It wasn't until I read the reviews on Audible that I figured out what bothered me about the read. It wasn't the story; it was the narrator. The vocal characterization that she chose for the protagonist -- and this is a first person narrative, so we hear the voice 90% of the time -- made her sound like she was in her eighties (or even older), when she was actually only in her 40s. I realized only after I finished that I had let the vocal interpretation control my interpretation of the story. 

Besides the facts that this is Mary Roberts Rinehart first book of a long career and pre-dates the publication of Ms. Christie's first book by 12 years, the other historical bit about the book is that it introduces a new approach to story telling that has been labeled "Had I But Known." It is a kind of foreshadowing that holds back information from both the reader and other characters. It works well in mysteries --if done right. Among other things, it is a way of prolonging the story. Overused in a tale, it can come across as too melodramatic -- which is what I thought as I read the book. 

 

 So, if you can get past the melodrama and the not quite stellar narrator, then by all means, enjoy!

 

UPDATE: There are actually five different recordings on Audible. The one I read and was so disappointed in was the freebie available in the Audible Plus Catalog and read by Lorna Raver. The other four by various readers are available for cash or credit. 

Too True

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With thanks to a BL buddy

The Chinese Orange Mystery

 

by Ellery Queen (narrated by Richard Waterhouse) 

 

Agatha Christie Centenary Celebration

October side-read, a locked room mystery

Although the project was launched in August and we have been preparing for it with Christie short stories featuring Poirot and Marple and with various side reads, the official celebration began on October 1, 2020.  Hopefully, this is my first of many posts chronicling the adventure.

 

I am not writing a review of the book; other people have done that. I have other things on my mind. This morning,  a comment on the ACCC homepage got me thinking about Ellery Queen the character and Ellery Queen the author. 

Deborah starting the ball rolling with the comment that she thought EQ was a bit of an egotist but that nonetheless she liked the book and hopes to read more of them. I agree with her except that I think he is a prig -- which is what the authors wanted us to think. But the thinking didn't end there and actually it gave me the needed prod to explore something that has been bothering me:

I didn't understand how EQ can be so utterly different  from his father and I had trouble reconciling it. If I remember correctly, the father's background was working class and down to earth, not the prep school, Ivy League, and dare I say, effete snob that EQ comes across as --or should I say,  "masquerades" as. I am sure I am missing details but I don't understand how the son of a police detective could afford to go to prep school and get an Ivy League school back in the days when there were lines that were not crossed -- Jews and Irish need not apply.  Remember the first EQ was published in 1929 -- before equal rights and equal opportunity laws were passed, before our language became so politically correct. Society was rigid. 

Finally the light bulb came on. The first thing I decided was that to a certain extent EQ is a cartoon, a big screen action hero, larger than life, a caricature -- just as is M. Poirot, when you come right down to it, so maybe here we have another connection to Christie. It really doesn't matter how, or even if, he got into prep school and then into Harvard, it only matters that he did and now he can act like the rest of suave, debonair Ivy Leaguers -- right down to the pince-nez and the lingo. In other words, EQ has arrived. He is now part of the elite.

Second, there is no getting around that in spite of a college education, EQ is meant to be a working class hero, the guy who made it out of the factories, off the beat, and into 'society' --even though he really is just hovering at the edge.  Moving up in society, breaking the class boundaries is certainly not a new theme in literature (think Don Quijote); we can all dream in the world of fiction, even if we can't actually achieve it in the real world. If you have ever thought about it, moving up involves a certain amount of masquerade -- the prep school accent, the pince-nez, the 'house boy,' the right address -- you have to look the part and you have to leave your past behind you. 

That brings me to the creators and authors of EQ: two cousins, Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee, who like so many other immigrants, had to use 'professional names' to hide the fact that they were actually Daniel Nathan and Emanuel Benjamin Lepofsky from Brooklyn. Whether they ever intended it or not, Ellery Queen had a lot in common with his creators. They weren't writing for the Manhattan socialites; they were writing for the boroughs and the Bowery. If Ellery could do, so can we.

So, now I think I get Ellery Queen the character. He's a super hero --masquerade and all.  I still think he is a bit of prig but I will enjoy giggling at his antics as I continue, over the years, to read his stories.

The Agatha Christie Centenary Celebration

 

 

One hundred years ago this month, October, 1920, Agatha Christie published her first full-length novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. In celebration of this event, a group of us on GoodReads, mostly escapees from the Booklikes, have embarked on a five and half year journey: reading all of the AC mysteries in publication order. Each month, we will read one Agatha Christie and one side-read from the Golden Age of Mysteries (pre-1970s) that is some way related to the book of the month. 

Choosing the side-read will be a group effort. Our fearless leader, whose idea this is, will give us the topic for the month; for October, it was a locked room mystery, for November, a country house mystery and for December, a Christmas setting. The group will then  propose a few titles for the read and we will vote. Our October vote was a tie, so we decided to read one in September and one in October (The Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr and The Chinese Orange Affair by Ellery Queen). Our country house read will be Thirteen Guests by J. Jefferson Farjeon.

Since you also may be looking for new titles to read, I am sharing the poll for the country house read and will continue to do so over the coming month. I am going to try to read as many of the proposed side-reads as I can borrow in audio format but will save the chosen book for the month it is to be read. I have already shared a review of The Circular Staircase and there may be more reviews to come. 

 

 

 

 

And so, let the reading begin.