The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

Readers: Bernadette Dunne, Katie MacNichol, and Mark Bramhall

Short Review: This is a great book, but the audio version has a flaw that really annoyed me. I want a re-cut, just for me, sans music. I doubt I’ll get it.

Under the Dome by Stephen King

Reader:Raul Esparza

Short Review: A beautiful autumn day in the small town of Chester’s Mill, Maine is interrupted by a clear impenetrable dome which cuts it off from the outside world. Our story carries us along to meet a broad cast of local characters. Great reader and a captivating (but long) story.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Reader: Carolyn McCormick

Short Review: Creative, captivating and intense young-adult drama with a strong 16-year-old female protagonist and set in a brutal far-future. Decent reader, but I kept wishing for a bit more emotion in her reading. That said, the story was so captivating that I couldn’t stop listening!

The Precipice by Ben Bova (The Asteroid Wars)

Readers: Scott Brick, Amanda Karr, Christian Noble, Karesa McElheny and Stefan Rudnicki (with a cameo by Theodore Bikel)

Short Review: Well-woven story set in a not-too-distant-future full of corporate intrigue and environmental chaos, both on earth and in colonized outer space. The amazing readers bring our cast of characters to life – I highly recommend it and am scheming for when I can start the next book in the sequence.

Local Custom by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

Reader: Michael Shanks

Short Review: Star crossed lovers set in an intricately woven universe including space ships, elements of magic and linguistics. The reader needed someone to insist on better pacing in an otherwise very solid performance.

Anathem by Neal Stephenson

Reader: Oliver Wyman, Tavia Gilbert, William Dufris, Neal Stephenson

Short Review: A pretty good but overly long book from one of my favorite authors, read less-than-ideally. This alternate future tale depicts a world where the intellectual elite are forcibly cloistered in pseudo-monastic communities around the world where they’re free to think and learn but denied access to many technologies and to “saecular,” (i.e., non-intellectual) society. The protagonist Fraa Erasmus is layered and likeable, but the book could stand to lose a couple of hundred pages and the narration isn’t as good as it should be. In this instance, I think I would have preferred the paper book to the audio book.

Going Postal by Terry Pratchett

Reader: Stephen Briggs

Short Review: Another very entertaining Discworld novel read wonderfully by Stephen Briggs. This story follows forcible-reformed former con-artist Moist von Lipwig (a.k.a. Albert Spangler) as he attempts to reform the Ankh-Morpork post office at the behest of Lord Vetinari. The story teems with great characters, intrigue, technomancy, bureaucracy, golems, ponzi schemes, small gods, mail, stamps, secret societies, and a pirate.

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon

Reader: Peter Riegert

Extra features: The audiobook includes an interview with Michael Chabon about his inspiration for the book, his favorite books and genres, and his writing process.

Short Review: Chabon’s Hugo and Nebula award-winning alternate history of a world without Israel but with a temporary Jewish homeland in Sitka, Alaska. Hard-boiled detective Meyer Landsman investigates the murder of a junkie chess-player with his partner and cousin Berko Shemets, a half-Tlingit, half-Jewish cop who is a good father, a good Jew, and a good partner trying to save Landsman from himself. As the case progresses, more and more connections to organized crime, shady US government machinations, separatist Orthodox communities, and zealotry reveal themselves. Riegert is an ideal reader, comfortable with accents, Yiddish, noir, and sadness.

Fragile Things: Stories Fictions and Wonders by Neil Gaiman

Read by: Neil Gaiman

Short Review: A solid book of short stories read beautifully by the author.

The Host: A Novel by Stephenie Meyer

The Host: A Novel
Author: Stephenie Meyer
Reader: Kate Reading

Short Review: Meyer’s first foray into sci-fi is very satisfying. Officially an adult novel (in contrast with the young adult label applied to the Twilight series) The Host explores a post-invasion world from the perspective of one of the invaders. It is well written, well read and is still haunting me weeks after I finished listening.

Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams

Mostly Harmless Author: Douglas Adams Reader: Martin Freeman Short Review: A good reading of my least favorite book in the series. Long Review: The disappearance of Fenchurch, the appearance of Random, the multiple Trillians–it’s all too much, and too dark to fit well into the series. Adams himself was open about his disappointment in the […]

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish Author: Douglas Adams Reader: Martin Freeman Short Review: Another decent reading of a book I love, which suffers by comparison to the Stephen Frye reading of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Long Review: Er, fourth verse, same as the second? Thankfully, no. I love this series, […]