Author: Isabel Miller
Readers: Janis Ian and Jean Smart

Also available directly from Janis Ian’s webstore.

GRAMMY Award nominated for “Best Spoken Word”

Short Review: Touching lesbian love story, set in early 1800s and read beautifully. The two readers each read the portion of the story told from a single point of view. It really works.

Long Review: Originally self-published in 1969, this love story is set in the early 1800s in New England. It tells the story of the love found by Patience White (maiden aunt and painter) and Sarah Dowling (farmer’s daughter, cast in life as farmer’s son for practicality) in a world that mostly believed such a thing was neither possible nor permissible. The story alternates points of views between Patience and Sarah, to great effect. They are such different people, but you can see where their love comes from. The contrast of their backgrounds, and their expectations for their lives, make the story all the more compelling.

I don’t want to spoil the story for you, but it isn’t hard to assume from the premise that there will be plenty of challenges laid in their paths. It is a story of what it means to both fall in love and *be* in love. We are taken into the hearts of Patience and Sarah, but at the same time given a taste of what their worlds were like. What does it mean to fight for love? When is the fight too much — what is worth sacrifice and what is not?

There are so many other things I loved about this book. I loved seeing painting and color through Patience’s eyes. I loved Sarah’s practicality and straight forwardness. The supporting characters are varied and interesting, the path of the story less predictable then you might expect. The author created a vivid world that I really enjoyed visiting.

Both readers do an amazing job, each giving us a glimpse into their respective character’s mind – as well as providing easy to distinguish voices for the other members of the story. The two SoundCloud clips below give you a small taste of each of the readers and a toe in the water of the story they tell. They both made it so easy to get lost in the story. This is definitely a “find more excuses to keep listening” audio book.

Author: Jeffrey Eugenides
Reader: David Pittu
Extras: An interview with the author is included at the end of the reading.

Short Review: An dark overly dramatic story, mediocre reader and no one to root for.

Long Review: I wanted to really like this book. I loved Eugenides’s Middlesex, but this story just fell flat for me. My father always taught me that a key to good storytelling was that you had to have someone to root for. If you don’t care what happens to any of the characters, then why stick around?

Our three rotating protagonists are the three sides of a classic lovers triangle. As befits the title, there is a looming question of who gets the girl – in this case we join our story just before graduation at Brown University in the early 1980s. The paths of the lives of Madeleine, Leonard and Mitchell tangle together and around each other. We spend a lot of time with each of them as they try to find their way. This is a fairly dark book, and perhaps this review is more dour for my preference at the moment for stories in which less time is spent dwelling on peoples’ sad struggles. I do feel that Eugenides did an excellent job portraying manic depression and its impact on both the afflicted and those around them.

Some of what Eugenides was trying to do was made more clear for me during the interview included at the end of the book. This is a very ‘literary’ book, or at least was written in that tradition. What happens to the classic marriage plot of Victorian literature in a post-feminist world?

My favorite thing about the book was the way Eugenides retold the same events from more than one point of view – highlighting the misunderstandings and internal landscapes on all sides. I also enjoyed the writing itself – the description, the dialog, and the weaving of the timeline. It was just the story itself that left me cold – I didn’t care about these people. I didn’t identify with them.

The reader didn’t help. While he did have distinctive voices for each of the characters, I especially found the women’s voices to be annoying. I am struggling to find the right words to describe why – but the voice he created for Madeleine made her sound first whiny, then breathy and fake to my ear. While I might have liked this audio book slightly better with another reader, I just don’t think this was a good fit for me overall. Your mileage may vary.

Author: Roald Dahl

Reader: Eric Idle

Short Review: Dahl’s award-winning children’s book read wonderfully by Eric Idle.

Long Review: Eric Idle does a fantastic job with the book. Fantastic. He’s a man who understands humor, kids, storytelling, and his own vocal and acting abilities. I picked this up at the library expecting a nice nostalgic trip back to Dahl’s universe. I knew Idle would do a good job, but I also knew I’d read this book many times, and had it read to me, and seen a couple of film adaptations of the story. I didn’t expect to be blown away by a book that blew me away when I was 6.

I should have known that Eric Idle would knock it out of the park. His diction is great, his accents are great, and he developed distinctive voices for each character. He doesn’t hold back at all–his reading is energetic and funny and passionate in all the best ways. I laughed out loud at several points while listening (which can be problematic when you commute via public transit like I do), so I can imagine that an engaged kid would be rolling around on the floor laughing at choice moments.

I don’t have kids, but I wouldn’t hesitate to play this for my nieces or nephew, who range in age from 5 though 12. There are a couple of words in the book that some parents may not want their children to hear–“ass” is used to refer to human anatomy at one point, and I’m sure some other words passed my notice. The book has received some sharp criticism over the years both for long sections describing the Bucket family’s poverty and for the depiction of bratty kids who receive strange punishments. I happen to think such criticisms are silly and give children too little credit for their strength, sensitivity, and abilities to reason and think in the abstract. You may want to take my opinion with a grain of salt, however, since I’m the type of liberal Auntie who almost always comes down in favor of a child’s autonomy and freedom. I am an Auntie who grew up with a bookshelf full of Dahl, Seuss, Tolkein, Sendak, L’Engle, and the like, afterall, so I guess it’s to be expected.

 Translator: Seamus Heaney
 Reader: George Guidall

 Short Review: Heaney’s excellent translation read well, though not perfectly, by Guidall.

 Long Review: You know already whether or not you want to listed to Beowulf as an audiobook. There are those of us who perk right up at the thought of listening to epic poetry read aloud, and those who go out of their way to avoid such theatrics. I, obviously, am in the former camp. I can think of nothing better to listen to than epic poetry. Frankly. I think the existence of epic poetry is one of the only arguments proving our species is worth keeping around. Beowulf matters, and I make sure to read it every few years. I’ve read multiple translations, and listened to parts of it recited by a number of poets and translators and actors. I love the epic, and I think Heaney’s translation is masterful.

I was sad to find that Guidall’s narration fell so flat for me. Guidall is a well-respected audio book narrator, and I expected a bit more from him. His narration is clear enough and well-paced, and his diction is good. But the words don’t sizzle in his mouth, and they should. He doesn’t declaim as a bard would. I am, perhaps, very hard to please in this particular case, but I know I’d be happier if Derek Jacobi, Philip Pullman, or Campbell Scott had read it. Still and all, it’s not bad. It’s just not as great as it should be.

The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus

Author: Margaret Atwood

Reader: Laural Merlington

Short Review: Margaret Atwood’s retelling of a portion of The Odyssey in Penelope’s voice, her contribution to the Canongate Myth Series, read by Laurel Merlington.

Long Review: I am a mythology nut. A buff. A, well, obsessive kook. I know this. I’m fine with this. And when I learned that I had missed the bus–that this series of books was underway and that it kicked off without me–I felt like I had caught someone kicking my dog.

Atwood, of course, retells Penelope’s story with a wonderful feminist twist. Atwood’s Penelope stands up for the maids, and criticizes her wayward husband and disingenuous suitors. She argues that her supposed beauty has long since faded, and that all of the men in the story are arguing over her for entirely unromantic reasons.

Laurel Merlington’s narration is engaging, sharp, and humorous. Her method of voicing the chorus is a bit shrill at times, but that seems fitting considering the messages they carry.

This was a good listen–I burned through it in an afternoon of puttering around my studio, and immediately missed my Ancient Greek companions. I look forward to listening to more audio books from the Canongate Myth Series.

Short Review: A beautifully-read version of a book I don’t actually like very much.

Long Review: Robertson Dean has a fantastic voice, and he portrays the different characters distinctly. I’d rather listen to the book than read it on paper. Having listened to the book, I’ll go out of my way to find more books narrated by Dean.

There are certainly some things about the story I like, but I’ve always found Cooper tiresome. I would strangle Natty Bumppo if I had to travel with him. Prattle prattle condescend prattle. Uncas, Chingachgook, and Cora strike me as the real heroes of the story. Cooper rambles far too much. He needed an editor. It could have been a great book had he had a good editor.

Go ahead, stone me to death.

Housekeeping: A Novel

Author: Marilynne Robinson

Read by: Becket Royce

Short Review: Robinson’s prize-winning, gorgeous, intricate novel about women and the fragility of family, and of sanity, and the need to create and maintain a sense of home, no matter what happens. It is read well, if not perfectly, by Beckett Royce.

Long Review: I love this novel. I’m not the only one–it was nominated for a Pulitzer and won the PEN/Hemingway Award when it was published in 1980. Robinson is immensely talented, and the characters she creates are intricate and engaging and often surprising. My heart ached for Ruthie and Lucille and Sylvie, and their shattered family in their cruel town. Robinson writes with an intricacy and specificity that I find breath-taking. I love the book on paper, so was interested to hear it as an audio book.

Beckett Royce has a good voice, and is a clear reader. But she had a vocal habit that grated on me. There is a way some people pause when they speak that they probably intend as a display of earnestness, but to my ear sounds false. Royce used it a lot as she read. And since she is essentially playing Ruthie as the reader for this book, it bothered me because Ruthie is reticent and not one to play at earnestness. Maybe I just love the book too much to hear it in someone else’s voice, rather than in the voice I imagine for Ruthie.

That said, I think books like this one–books that follow a single, engaging narrator, are some of the best candidates to become audio books. Maybe I’m,the only one who will find fault with Royce’s performance. I’d certainly be interested to hear other people’s reaction to her reading.

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.