The Bad Beginning (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 1)
Author: Lemony Snicket
Read by: Tim Curry
Audio Book Extras: Interview of Lemony Snicket by Leonard C. Marcus
Short Review: Tim Curry! Lemony Snicket! Creepy and dark, yet strangely endearing. And you get to hear an interview with the ever elusive Mr. Snicket.
Long Review: Yes, this is technically a children’s book - but even if you are over 10 (or over 20 for that matter), don’t let that stop you. I read this book before I listened to it - and I definitely preferred having Tim Curry read it to me. For those who haven’t come across this series before, it is about the Baudelaire orphans and their terrible trials and tribulations after the death of their parents. But these are no ordinary orphans - they are clever and they never give up. That is a good thing, because there is no end in sight for their troubles.
Rather than steering clear of challenging words, Snicket’s narrator provides definitions along the way. The flavor of the story is gothic and dark (with the guarantee of no happy ending from the very first sentence) - but the combination of Tim Curry’s voice and Lemony Snicket’s storytelling make this one a very tasty treat indeed.
that Krakauer himself has received. I’m certainly no expert on climbing, Everest, the 
. Most of her books are set in and among an Ojibwe tribe in North Dakota. This time around, however, she follows the life of Fidelis Waldvogel, a German butcher, singer, and veteran who immigrates to the US to build a life for his family. Delphine Watzka, daughter of the town drunk, becomes enmeshed in the Waldvogel family while trying to sort out her complex relationships with her sodden father and her perplexing Ojibwe partner Cyprian Lazarre. The book explores questions of love, sexual identity, parenthood, duty, loyalty, genealogy, war, friendship, forgiveness . . . all concepts that resurface in Erdrich’s books.
, this is a sequel. I hadn’t read the first book but still loved this one. For the record, the character that I ended up loving most was the one I was sort of annoyed with when I first met her. I bet it happens to you too. I also loved the interview with the author at the end. I like hearing author’s voices and learning tidbits about their creative process.
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Lolita
Author: Vladimir Nabokov
Read by: Jeremy Irons
Short Review: Nabokov’s beautifully-written, disturbing story of a pedophile’s love for a young girl, read by the inimitable Jeremy Irons.
Long Review: Lolita is, of course, a classic. But an uncomfortable one. Humbert Humbert is quite the anti-hero: charming, brilliant, self-effacing and at the same time a disgusting, manipulative, immoral creep. The novel is a farce which uses Poe’s
Annabel Lee as a jumping-off point to explain a terribly destructive fetish disguised with a pretty poetic bow.
The book relies on H.H.’s command of language and allusion to make the disgusting palpable. Casting Irons as the reader, and thus in the role he played in the film
directed by Adrian Lyne, was a master stroke. H.H. narrates the novel, of course, and not just anyone can read that part convincingly. Jeremy Irons does. His voice is wonderful, his diction is precise, and he oozes the old-world breeding and education the role requires.
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