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. 

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

"The curse of sterility is on the land."

It is time to give a progress report on my read of The Voyage of the Beagle.

I am now about a third of the way through it. We have made it to Patagonia and I am really enjoying the adventure. Darwin is a keen-eyed observer who seems to be taking his wild adventure in stride. Of course, this is not a word for word sharing of his diary but a version edited by Darwin for publication--thus it is choppy in places and there are gaps. Sometimes I think I would like to be reading the unedited diaries and in other moments I am sure that 25 hours of this will be sufficient.

I would love to include a quote or two but alas, that is so hard to do when the words evaporate just as quickly as they are spoken. I was lucky to grab the quote in title. One thing I would like to quote is Darwin's description of the geology the escarpments of Patagonia. I'd quote it side by side with a Terry Pratchett comment on a similar local geology. Darwin's description was sober and scientific. Not Pratchett's: banded with so many colors of rock it looked as though some hungry god had made the all-time-record club sandwich.

Another deficiency in the audio format is the lack of visuals. There is no map and there are no illustrations. Thank goodness for Google!! I was able to find a maps. This is my favorite so far.

Darwin spends a lot of time in South America (4 years of the 5 year journey) and it is very helpful to be able to see the coming and goings plotted out on a map.He gives dates along the way but I have trouble remembering them from chapter to chapter, so I have no feeling for the passing of time as the tale progresses.

Lock-down Buddy Read: True Grit

Written by Charles Portis. Read by Donna Tartt





I'm a couple of days behind on the buddy read but when I saw all your comments, I knew that I just had to revisit the story -- and maybe even the movie, if I can find the John Wayne version on Netflix or Amazon.

This is one of the few books where I have seen the movie and read the book and am not complaining about the adaptation. Maybe because it was 40 years between seeing the movie and then reading the novel.

I don't tend to be a "deep" reader. Either I like a book or I don't and when I don't, I can't always tell you why -- nor am bothered by the fact that I can't necessarily justify my dislike. Which made it very strange that I kept asking myself if old Mattie Ross was a reliable narrator. Was her memory of events reliable? Is this really the way it happened? Or has the trauma of the events along with 25 years or more since the events have taken place scrambled her memory of what took place -- and keeping in mind that what we now understand about trauma and memory. I am still trying to decide.


I did enjoy the choice of narrator. Authors don't normally make good narrators but, wow, this author is an exception to the rule. Listening to Ms. Tartt, who was born and bred in Mississippi, do deep south is like listening to Matt Damon do Boston-Southie -- pitch-perfect and totally at home with the accent even though it is not their normal speaking voice.

Originally published on 1:58 am 22 April 2020 Booklikes