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.

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.”

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. 

Join Me For a Don Quixote Readathon

It is time for another reading of  El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. I just acquired an audio edition of the Edith Grossman translation (read by George Guidall, one of my favorite audiobooks readers) and it is finally time to dust it off and listen. Yes, I am reading in English. I have never had the patience to read dense prose in Spanish. But I will have a Spanish edition nearby, just in case. 

 

I have jumped on the Don Quixote bandwagon. It is one of the best books I have ever read. In its day, it was boundary breaker. Nobody had every written like this, especially not in Spain, where one had to be so careful of what one was saying lest one be hauled before the Inquisition. So much of what we take for granted today, was new ground for readers. Ostensibly, the book was written to discredit books of chivalry, the Harlequin Romance novels of the 15th and 16th centuries. In truth, discrediting books of chivalry was just the jumping off point for critiquing so much more; speaking through the mind and mouth of a crazy person was just a way of getting passed the censor. Yes, the censors. Every book that was published in Spain had to be approved by the Inquisition before it could be published.

 

If you are reading along with me or when you finally decide that you are going to read it, please do yourself a favor: forget Man of La Mancha; forget what you think you know about the story; forget what you may have seen on TV or in the movies. Go into the reading of it with a blank slate. What you are reading was a new kind of storytelling. The artifices of plot and story arc, setting, character development are new ideas still being defined. The borderlines between fact and fiction are fluid; in fact, in Spanish the word for "story" and the word for "history" are one and the same, historia. This is what the novel looked like in its infancy; it was still learning. 

Villa in Italy

By Elizabeth Edmondson (Nicolette McKenzie)

(c) 2006

Delightful! A 'country house' mystery with no bodies and a happy ending. Just what I needed.

In the end, this turned out to be a solid 3 and half star read -- right where it should have landed.  I am sure that I will be back for more books by Ms Edmondson. 

Okay! I Get It!: How to Hide and Empire

by Daniel Immerwahr (read by Luis Moreno)

Maybe I am just cranky but I don't think I can read this through to the end. I get the point, I just don't need the supporting evidence and the gory details. I agree that:

• there is more to US history than can fit into a couple of years of high school American History classes
• there is more in our history to be ashamed about than there is to be proud of
• we have to stop sweeping our mistakes under the rug and own up to the idea that we are not the goody-goody, holier than thou nation that we have been brought up to believe we are
• we have a long history of treating non-white peoples and cultures -- Black, Asian, Native American -- as not worthy of citizenship in our country
• we are imperialist, whether we accept the idea or not
• it is time to talk more openly about the mistakes of our past and start understanding how they have shaped the nation that we are today
• we aren't any better than any other imperialistic national on this planet --and in some ways we are even worse
   

I am not saying that this is a bad book; I am just saying that I am not up to the read. Based on what I have read, 3 stars. I give the guy credit for talking in no uncertain terms about the very dark side of history.

DNF after about 4 hours.

Book Haul: Audible 2 for 1 Sale

Usually the Audible 2 for 1 sales run for a couple of weeks. The current sale started in May and will end in a week; the choices changed every few weeks. There were some good choices in the pile, but I already owned them. I bought these instead. Some I chose to get some variety into my reading and to try something a out of my normal range of reading. 

The Clockmaker's Daughter was meh. Murder at Melrose Court was such a hoot that I've read the second already and have the third in my Wish List. The rest are TBR.

 Over the course of the sale, I picked up...

 

 

 

 

   

 

   

 

   

 

   

 

   

 

 

Okay, I have credits to burn, so bring on the next sale.

 

Shopping the Audible 2 for 1 Sale

Audible must have heard my complaints because there are new titles in the the sale bin -- and this time there was something worth buying. I bought four titles! which consider what a picky reader I am is a huge haul. I am making it harder and harder for me to spend my credits these days because with a thousand titles already in my library, I probably don't have to add a single new title and will still have plenty to keep my brain occupied for the rest of my life, so what I buy these days has to be something that I really want to read and re-read.

Three were Great Courses titles, which I really enjoy listening to. I am slowly working my way into areas of history that I haven't explored before--and being a lazy reader, the Great Courses spoon feed it. :

 

 

And the fourth was a novel, the only one whose Audible reviews did not turn me off completely to even trying the author:

 

I'm happy that they added some Great Courses this time because otherwise my credits would have stayed in my pocket for another day. 

The Hardest Job in the World: The American Presidency

written and narrated by John Dickerson


I don't tend to read books about current events; I like to read about events well after the fact, when the historians and commentators have had a chance to put things into perspective. However, it is the rare occasion when my son, the presidential trivia buff, tells us that we have to read a book. So I read it -- and I am going to have to read it again because Dickerson has packed so much into a relatively short amount of space  -- 16 hours/650pp -- that it is going to take me at least two passes to soak it all in.

 

Author John Dickerson is a television news commentator who has lived in and covered the Washington beat his entire life (not that I have every seen him on TV or follow his reporting-- or most other news reporters, for that matter). He has done his homework. This isn't just an opinion piece without citations; this is a well thought out essay full of examples and quotations from presidents and historians. It is a balanced analysis; presidents have their good moments and their bad moments. They get some things right and some things wrong -- even the unpopular presidents. But the American presidency is suffering --and has been for a while -- and Dickerson delves into the topic with much insight for the American voters and international spectators.

 

If you have any interest in the American Presidency, this title should be on your shelf.

 

Four and half stars.

Tarzan of the Apes

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Tarzan was written over a hundred years ago (1912) -- and it shows. It was written as pulp fiction, a magazine serial. But still, it is a classic-- especially if you consider that the brand kept the author in clover for the next four decades. Tarzan books sold -- and so did the movies and the TV show. Can't tell you how many Tarzan movies we watched on the TV when we got home from school -- back in the days when we had three channels to choose from and at 4pm, it was movie time . Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller was my favorite. But, I digress.

I had to keep reminding myself that to read this book, I must suspend disbelief -- and keep it suspended. I'm not good at that and here I am reading a book that starts with an unbelievable premise and just goes from there. But, 100 years later and people are still reading it and literary critics are still studying it and talking about.

Rating: 3 and half stars

Preparing for the BL-pocalypse: Audiobook Edition

Desperately seeking a truly audiobook-friendly cataloging site...

                    

Catch-22: When importing from a database, LT and GR only care about the ISBN. No ISBN, no import. BUT, Audible does not provide ASINs, let alone ISBN, in any of its product description and, with a few rare exceptions, Amazon provides only  ASINs.

I spent the last week whipping my BL datebase into shape. I exported it to a spreadsheet. I added all of the titles I was unable to add in the first place because the titles were not in the BL catalog. I corrected all of the titles that has been added as hard copies when I could not find the digital edition. I scanned for duplicates, removed all library loans and even removed all commas. My DB is now as ready as it is going to be (except for some missing indexing numbers for titles that I own but are no longer on the market). I have now spent all of the time I am going to spend on cleaning and repairing; from here on out, it will be new additions only. And I do feel a buying spree coming on!

My not quite pristine DB contains 1085 records, of which  990 are Audible audiobooks. When I fed my database -- indexing numbers only, since that is all the import applets on the websites look at -- to the websites to import,  Goodreads was able to add 124 titles to my library and LibraryThing, 138 titles. That is not an acceptable success rate. Ninety percent of my DB was left on the cutting room floor.

Audible does a pretty job of organizing a bookshelf for members but it has its problems -- and yes, I said pretty, pleasing to the eye but not necessarily usable. No list view. No ability to navigate to a specific page in the list. No ability to export. No ability to keep track of multiple reads, etc., etc.



For me the quest is over. The thought of adding 1000 titles manually, one title at a time, to any new database when I already have that information neatly arranged in a DB that the websites won't accept is the deciding factor. Until a website comes along that recognizes ASINs and will import 99% of what I own, I will keep my own catalog on a spreadsheet on my hard-drive. It is already up and running with over a thousand entries already in place.  It won't be as pretty but it won't be as frustrating or as time consuming as trying to make my round peg fit into the square hole.