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.

Nice To Come Home To

Author: Rebecca Flowers

Reader: Carrington MacDuffie

Short Review: A sweet first novel brought to life by an excellent reader. We meet Prudence Whistler as her life starts to fall apart – but it is easy to find joy in her self-discovery. Romantic and charming, a lovely ‘comfort’ book for a rainy day.

Long Review: I didn’t like Prudence (Pru to her loved ones) for fully the first quarter of the book. She was whiny, judgmental, and set in her ways. Lucky for me, I enjoyed the reader enough to stick with it and see where Flowers was headed. Somewhere before the middle of the book we start to see the real Pru. As her tidy world falls apart, it becomes clear that the version of Pru that we had been introduced to was some ideal proper version of herself. Pru as she thought she was supposed to be.

Pru finds her way the way most real people do – through some mixture of determination, despair, luck and a growing willingness to try a new path. I enjoyed the supporting cast of the story. Often I am puzzled by stories in which our protagonist seems to have only one or two friends. It always makes them seem to be living a very flat life.

I marked this as a romance, but I mean that in a classic fiction sort of way. You will figure out who she is meant to be with fairly early on, but the fun is in the journey. There is a lot of loving and supporting of loved ones in this story – lots of being patient as they struggle to determine what to do next, hoping that they don’t make you crazy before they figure it out.

MacDuffie does a lovely job with the reading. I think it a great compliment to a reader to say that he or she faded into the background. The voices were distinct enough and the overall narration clean and clear. I would cheerfully listen to other books listing MacDuffie as the reader.

I place this firmly in the ‘comfort book’ category. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Short Review: An intricate, beautiful, arguably overlong book beautifully read by a very talented narrator. This isn’t a book for everyone, but it was definitely a book for me.

Long Review: I decided to listen to this audiobook as part of 12 books in 12 months, a reading project floating out there in the blogosphere which encourages people to finally read at least a dozen of the books that have been haunting our shelves for ages. This one seemed apt, because I’d originally picked up a paper copy of Possession at the beginning of my graduate school program. At the time, I was too discouraged by how sad the protagonist’s life is at the outset. As a new grad student contemplating a transfer to a more fitting but probably less marketable program, it scared me away, and fast.

The book is very dense and incredibly detailed, and as I listened, I wavered between loving the layered detail and thinking Byatt should have edited out more and simplified the book. Possession follows a frustrated, underemployed, unpublished English Literature graduate student working on the (fictional) poet Randolph Henry Ash, who discovers some heretofore lost drafts of a letter to a woman. Roland becomes obsessed with tracking down the unnamed addressee and discovering the nature of his relationship to the woman Ash addressed. He meets Maud Bailey, a young professor and expert on the under-appreciated (and also fictional) poet Christabel LaMotte. The two contemporary academics studiously pick through letters and poems and search for lost or unknown correspondence, and end up uncovering wonderful connections between the historical writers and developing an interesting relationship of their own.

What’s fascinating about this book is how layered it is, and how much attention it pays to topics that are very dear to my heart. It delves into Breton and Scandinavian mythology, poetry, feminist theory, embroidery and knitting (though only touches of those, sadly), the nature of love, the nature of poetry, the nature of translation and retellings of myths (my nerdy heart sings!) . . . it’s so rich. One could argue that it’s too rich. Byatt gives us stories within stories within stories within stories. We get Ash and LaMotte’s letters to each other, wherein they discuss mythology and poetry. We get their original works, which are of course actually Byatt’s original works. We get so very much detail about the vagaries of modern academia, and the fights between feminist academics and “traditionalists.” It’s all just so very entwined.

Byatt was so brave to write this meta-romance. I honestly don’t know how she pulled it off. The greatest danger in works like this is that the supposed masterworks the characters are studying need to be excellent enough for the characters’ interest in them to seem just. Byatt does manage that, for the most part. As a writer and quasi-academic, I felt Byatt’s role so keenly. She wrote those pieces in a way that seemed so familiar to me. It’s odd to be a writer who works in a form and genre that is essentially lost to most readers. This book turned out to be such a fantastic outlet for many forms of the author’s creativity. I think I love it. I certainly love many aspects of it.

Virginia Leishman’s narration is one of the strongest aspects of the audiobook, and I think she truly saved the book for me. Whenever the details were too intricate or the infighting between the academics came too close to home, Leishman’s honeyed voice coaxed me back into the story. She truly has a gorgeous voice. Her diction is precise, her shifts from character to character are clear but not distracting, and her changes in accent reveal a great deal of acting and vocal skill. I will absolutely seek out more books she has narrated.

Short Review: Average paranormal romance made appealing by an excellent reader. Likely to be more enjoyable for those already invested in the Dark-Hunter series.

Long Review: If you have read other Dark-Hunter books and know who Fang and Aimee are, then you will probably enjoy this book. If you have no idea what I am talking about, I feel pretty strongly that this isn’t the right way to start this series. This book ties together snippets from many other stories earlier in the series. There are lots of characters you meet briefly – but if you have read what comes before they are old friends rather than confusing drop-ins.

Graham’s reading is what convinced me to give this book over 3 stars. I suspect it was more entertaining delivered in his voice than it would have been had I read it on paper. I have read the earlier books (all on paper actually) and have a soft spot in my heart for authors who build worlds and weave complicated stories among a great throng of characters. This is one of those stories where all the loose ends that had been left dangling in multiple other books are finally tied up in a neat bow.

I will confess that I rolled my eyes the 25th time that a character “would have it no other way” – but that said, I enjoyed the story and the reading enough that it made my commute to work fly by. I even missed my stop to change trains once! It isn’t profound, but it is fun. Sometimes I enjoy a good romance novel precisely because I feel confident in the happy ending waiting around the corner. Kenyon loves her characters and I always end up rooting for them, even if I wish that they would all stop arching their eyebrows at each other.

Jessica’s Guide to Dating on the Dark Side

Author: Beth Fantaskey
Readers: Katherine Kellgren & Jeff Woodman

Short Review: Fairly standard ‘boy meets girl, boy turns out to be vampire’ romance – but with a few twists you likely won’t expect. A pair of excellent readers, endearing characters and a fresh take on Romanian vampires make this a very enjoyable story.

Long Review: Jessica was adopted from Romania as a baby by her parents who were there studying the reclusive vampire community. It turns out that she was also betrothed to a vampire prince as an infant. Fast forward 17 years and Lucius arrives in rural Lebanon County, Pennsylvania to meet his bride.

The next thing we know, Lucius is enrolled in the local public high school with Jessica and is trying to fit in among American teenagers. Lucius is tall, dark and handsome – enjoys fine literature and soon discovers basketball. Jessica is a super-rational mathlete who loves horses and is not confident about her beauty.

One of the nice things about this story is that we have two 17 year olds, not a seventeen year old and a 150 year old. There are major challenges ahead for Lucius and Jessica. This is a coming of age story for each of them as they move along their intertwined paths.

I appreciate the choice to use two readers – Kellgren for all the portions from Jessica’s point of view and Woodman as the voice of Lucius’s letters home. This story lurked in the back of my mind between listens. Yes, I had a notion of where it might end up – but I really didn’t know how it was going to get there. There was something especially believable about this cast of characters (and yes, I know that sounds a bit silly when talking about vampires). Witty, thoughtful and fun. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Sample audio clip available.