This is the Great American Novel. Go read it. Right now! Go on . . . go!
Archive for April, 2009
THE CORRECTIONS by Jonathan Franzen
Posted in All-Time Fave Audiobooks on April 2, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME by Mark Haddon
Posted in All-Time Fave Audiobooks on April 2, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
What an incredible character study — the charming narrator is sweet and funny and maddening all at the same time, and as the story developed my heart was breaking for his troubled parents. I was nervous at first that this book would be extremely sad or intense but I found it delightful to listen to [...]
SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS by Marisha Pessl
Posted in All-Time Fave Audiobooks on April 2, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
A hyper-literate coming-of-age story that turns into a mystery about halfway through. The audiobook version was a bit cumbersome to listen to, because the reader read each footnote aloud, but in a way that just heightened the fun and suspense.
ORYX AND CRAKE by Margaret Atwood, read by Campbell Scott
Posted in Honorable Mention Audiobooks on April 2, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
A typical post-apocalyptic story about the last man on earth. Haunting when read aloud, I loved Campbell Scott as the narrative voice of this compelling story. I still hear the call in my head . . . “snowman, oh snowman . . .”
WATER FOR ELEPHANTS by Sara Gruen, read by David LeDoux and John Randolph Jones
Posted in All-Time Fave Audiobooks on April 2, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I can’t say enough about how much I enjoyed this book. The narrator, Jacob, joins the circus in the early 1930’s and narrates his story both as it’s happening and from a nursing-home vantage point years later. The worlds, both the circus and the nursing home, are rich with detail and deep emotion as Jacob [...]
NEVER LET ME GO by Kazuo Ishiguro, read by Rosalyn Landor
Posted in Honorable Mention Audiobooks on April 2, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
**SPOILERS AHEAD** Kazuo Ishiguro’s NEVER LET ME GO is a story about a group of clones raised at a boarding school and intended, in their young adulthood, to be organ donors. Told as a memoir, the novel captures perfectly the way that people both accept the realities they’re presented with but also how emotion, love, [...]
POSSESSION by A. S. Byatt
Posted in Honorable Mention Audiobooks on April 2, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I’ve read this book several times, but I come back to it as a familiar friend to keep me company in a hectic and disjointed time (ie, moving). It’s a love story that follows literary scholars who uncover a secret affair between the long-dead poets they study.
TERRORIST by John Updike
Posted in Honorable Mention Audiobooks on April 2, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I enjoyed this book, although I found it slow in places and the ending bothered me. The homegrown terrorism element made it a tricky (and politically sensitive) kind of plot to end. In one respect it was typical Updike, complete with the aging-but-still-sexual New England male, but the homegrown-terrorism aspect of the piece made it [...]
THE NAMESAKE by Jhumpa Lahiri, read by Sarita Choudhury
Posted in Honorable Mention Audiobooks on April 2, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
A beautiful story about a Bengali family living outside of Boston, and followed the parents’ adjustment to life as expatriates, a world away from the place they called home, and how their children, born in the US, experienced both Bengali and American culture growing up. I enjoyed the reader, Sarita Choudhury, but most of all [...]
LOOKING FOR ALASKA by John Green
Posted in Beach Audiobooks on April 2, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
A smart outcast makes friends for the first time when he goes away to boarding school. I enjoyed this story as I listened to it, but as much as I’m a sucker for boarding school stories, this piece was the forgettable kind of fun.
