Tag Archives: Audiobook

The Falls by Joyce Carol Oates

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Synopsis:
A close look at several generations of a family living in Niagara Falls, begun by a woman widowed by suicide on her wedding day who married one of the men who helped her look for her dead husband’s body.

Review:
I don’t want to waste much time on a review of The Falls at all, because quite frankly it bored me. The characters were well-drawn, the prose thoughtful, the situations dramatic, but none of it added up to a damn story. I didn’t know why I was supposed to care about these petty, frustrating people.

I will mention that I was listening to the audiobook, and that narrator Anna Fields’s vocal range is astonishing. I would’ve given up long before if it weren’t for her skill in voicing all the different characters with such inventiveness and subtlety.

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

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Synopsis:
A 6-year-old wunderkind enters Battle School to train to defeat the aggressive, invading Buggers.

Review:
This was actually my first foray into audiobooks on the iPod. I am a huge fan of podcasts, but had yet to tackle a book during the time I spend pushing my stroller and nursing Superfast Toddler to sleep. I figured Ender’s Game was a good entrée, since I have read it before and it wasn’t terribly long, only 11 hours. Since it only took me 2 or 3 hours to actually read the thing, the inefficiency sort of bothered me at first, but I got into it really quickly.

What amazes me about Ender’s Game is how skillfully Card pulls off such an absurd premise. Ender and his cohorts are children who are capable of tremendous feats of military strategy and intellect. It’s impossible to picture–yet it totally works. Even more remarkable is how he maintains sympathy for Ender, who could’ve been totally insufferable in his excellence and achievement. Ender never fails, but you don’t hate him, because Card gets into his alienation and fears so deeply. All told, it’s a fine book for newcomers to science fiction, and definitely held up to a second read.

Listening to Reading

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Tonight I had a work read. I am really enjoying the book I’m reading for pleasure right now, and can’t wait to blog about it. Hopefully later this week. So this is an On Reading post–for more on what that means, visit my about page.

I used to love “record books” when I was a kid. James Mason reading Journey to the Center of the Earth had me dreaming of Iceland, and I nearly wore out an LP of Jean Craighead George’s Julie of the Wolves. My dad has always been into audiobooks. He does a lot of driving for work, and is a slow reader himself. Whenever we took long car rides he’d always stock up on books for us to listen to, to keep my brother and I from getting bored and killing each other. Sometimes the books were great; I have vivid memories of listening to Stephen King’s The Mist on tape on a ski trip. Other times, well… I remember my senior year in high school he took me up to visit a college in Massachusetts, a fur piece from our home in Maryland. And the book on tape he chose to bring was Richard Nixon’s autobiography. Continue reading →