Audiobooks

The Marriage Plot

2012, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Fiction, Women /

I received a free review copy of Jeffrey Eugenides The Marriage Plot AGES ago. So long ago that I can’t even remember how long ago it was. And we’ve been listening to it for months. A month ago I jokingly said we may NEVER finish listening to it and then yesterday TW said “this is the last disc” and I almost drove the car off of the road because I was so surprised. The last disc? Really? Yippeee!

So why did it take so long to finish this one? No idea. I thought it was just because it’s a really long book but now that I’ve looked at the listing on Amazon and see that it was only 416 page – I’m surprised, I thought it would be easily 600 pages and wouldn’t have blinked at 750. But just over 400? Ugh.

I liked the narrator’s voice and I found Madeleine and Mitchell’s stories interesting.  I found myself chuckling quite often and rolling my eyes from time to time, as well. I really like nothing better than a Eugenides book for his super smart, thinky sentences – pretension included. But, and this is the but that made it take months to finish, I found myself easily distracted and disconnected from the characters. One minute I was super interested in what was happening and the next I had checked out – then I’d turn off the cd and it would be weeks before I’d turn it on again.

Too much of the story revolved around the guys and what they were doing (or not doing) with Madeleine. Her own story line was all about her life as it pertained to the guys. Had she ditched Leonard (and Mitchell) after the conference where she finally decided what she wanted to do next, and gone off and done it – or gone home and really worked to make it happen, that would have been something. But no – she went home, and the story dropped her right back where she was – with no depth, no ego of her own, just a young woman in the 70s still floating along where the guys allow her to float

Still… I’d like to know what happens next to all three characters. I would hope their lives move along without each other and they never see each other again.

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Crunch

2011, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Favorites /

We’ve been listening to Crunch, in the car, for weeks – and it’s been a lot of fun. It’s also made both of us wish we had bicycles. We might just have to get a couple for Christmas. (Not that we can ride them at Christmas. Gah! But at least we’ll be prepared when the gas stops flowing…)

There was one tiny little problem with Crunch – the kids were too good. Even when they were fighting with each other (which was rare) they were just too perfect.

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Plain Kate

2011, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Cybil Challenge, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Young Adult /

Plain Kate is on the Cybils shortlist in the YA Science Fiction/Fantasy category…. And with that, I take a sigh of relief. Because the ending of this book… wah! While listening, I thought it was middle grade SciFi/Fantasy and that bit seemed a bit much.  (It involves cats… and knives… and blood… and fire… and it was rough….)

Anyway, about the book itself, it started a little slowly but once Plain Kate had moved to her father’s stall and Linay arrived, things moved more quickly.  The biggest problem with the book, for me, is that Kate didn’t connect the dots more quickly. This lack of understanding made it seem like it was middle grade rather than YA. I cannot imagine a teenager alive who would not have rolled her eyes at Kate’s inability to figure out WHO Linay was. It was almost painful. Kate wasn’t stupid and she should have figured it out much, much earlier.

Other than that… enjoyed it quite a bit.

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The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party

2011, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction, Women /

We love to listen to The Ladies #1 Detective Agency books on audio – and the timing of BlogHer Food ’11 and the latest book in the series, The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party was perfect. Until we hit the mountains of NC – when the disc started to skip.

TW cleaned the disk as best she could and put it in again – still skipping a little but we kept trying to listen to it until it skipped a lot. TW tried to clean the disk again but it was no use. We had to give up close to the end of the second to last disk. It was very sad.

When we got home, I used one of those disk cleaner thingies to clean all of the disks and kept my fingers crossed as we tried again. It worked! Well it still skipped a little on the last disk but not enough to worry about – and we made it all of the way through.

Thank goodness because the marriage of Grace and Phuti is important and we needed to know what happened to the shoes… and the tiny white van…  and the horrible person who harmed the good Botswana cattle!

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Catacombs

2011, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Favorites, Sci Fi and Fantasy /

A couple of weeks ago, Prince J went to the library with us. The audio books I had reserved for him weren’t yet available so he surfed the shelves himself and picked out a couple of things to listen to. I popped over to the new audio release shelf and Catacombs caught my eye. I handed it to the Prince. He looked at it and promptly put it back on the shelf. Huh. It sounded exactly like a Prince J book to me. So I picked it up and checked it out.

We immediately put Disc one into the cd player in the car and started listening… within a few minutes, Prince J had decided that he might, in fact, like this book. I think he will – TW and I certainly did.

It’s apparently the second book in a series – and TW says she read the first one in print. I did not – so I need to go back and read it. And, I guess I should reserve book one on audio for the Prince.

If you like Anne McAffrey’s Acorna series – you’ll like this series.

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Double Dipping Challenges

2011, Adoption Reading Challenge, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Cybil Challenge, Favorites, Fiction /

The only thing I knew about Betti on the High Wire was that it was a middle grade fiction book from the Cybils Shortlist. Bonus! It’s also about adoption, which means it is the first book I’ve read in Jenna’s Adoption Reading Challenge. Extra Bonus! It was good.

I reserved this one on audio and Prince J listened to it first. He wasn’t overly impressed but then again, his taste runs more toward Dexter. Elly listened to it and she liked it – except she didn’t like Lucy. Elly has very little time or patience for first graders.

Betti was Babo when she lived in a burned out circus camp with “Auntie Moo” and a bunch of “leftover kids” in a war torn country that Railsback never names. She was found wandering around the burned out camp when she was a toddler. Nobody really knows how old she is or exactly what happened to her circus parents but… odds are high, they were casualties of the war that’s raged in her country for years.

Americans come to the camp to meet the orphan children – and they generally adopt babies. Or pretty children. Not broken children like Babo, who has a broken eye and missing toes. They also don’t adopt broken children like Babo’s friend George, who is missing an arm. This is fine with Babo because she does not want to be adopted. She wants to stay in her circus camp and wait for her mother, the tallest woman in the world with a tail, and her father, the green alligator man with bumpy skin, to come back for her.

But Babo is adopted – and so is George. And they travel to the same city in the US, together but without an adult. George adapts pretty happily. Babo, who becomes Betti, does not. She wants to go home. She tries to be “bad” so the Buckworth’s will realize they made a mistake. But of course, she isn’t bad at all – and the Buckworth’s are a good family who work very hard to help her make her way.

There are the normal rough moments when Betti, whose English is good, gets confused about things like “free food at the grocery store” – or when the kids at day camp make fun of Betti (and George) —  or when both Betti and George are terrified by the fireworks on Fourth of July. And the moment when Betti realizes that her parents are dead… that’s hard.

Excellent storytelling. Excellent character development. So many children without families – in war torn countries and our own.

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The Elegance of the Hedgehog

2011, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction /

I’m so glad I reserved The Elegance of the Hedgehog on audio. In written form, I’d have skimmed through the long philosophical passages and I might even have given up on the book altogether. But on audio… on audio, it was wonderful. And not just because one of the characters was a quirky combination of all three of the small children. Get this one on audio and be prepared to think deep thoughts or just chuckle at the insanity of, well, everything.

By the way, I hated the end. I didn’t want a fairy tale ending but I didn’t want THAT either but the “dry cleaner truck” was brilliant.

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Fever 1793

2011, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Favorites, Fiction, Young Adult /

After we finished listening to Forge, I decided to grab Fever 1793 on audio since we’ve never read it – and because I was amused that Matty Cook was the main character. She was briefly mentioned in Forge when Mrs Cook had to return home to help her daughter in law with new baby Matilda Cook.

I was disappointed that Mrs Cook from Forge had already passed away before Fever 1793 took place but it was nice to see King George the parrot again – however briefly.

I liked the book a good bit. I liked Matty. I liked Eliza. I’m very glad I did not live in America in 1793 – yellow fever was (is!) horrible!

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Forge

2011, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Favorites, Young Adult /

Yay! Our first audio book of 2011 – we started it in 2010 and finished it today. Forge is the second book in Laurie Halse Anderson’s Seeds of America series. We listened to Chains a few months ago and while we didn’t love, love, LOVE it – we liked it. I figure we’ll read along until we decide we don’t like them at all. After listening to Forge, we aren’t anywhere near that point. We liked Forge much better than we liked Chains. Curzon is a good character – and his storytelling and thinking process is stronger than Isabel’s was in the first book. Or, maybe the storytelling was tighter? Halse Anderson found her way and simply improved? I don’t know what it was but it was excellent and I’m dying for a book three.

When I went off looking for book three, I saw Fever 17 – I believe I read that but am not 100% sure and since the main character is mentioned in very brief passing, in an amusing way, towards the end of Forge, I decided to go ahead and reserve this one on audio while we wait for book three. I think we’ll be amused by it.

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The Dead Tossed Waves

2010, Audiobooks, Books in Bed, Sci Fi and Fantasy, Young Adult /

I thought TW might kill me when she realized I reserved book two in the Forest of Hands and Teeth series… she really didn’t love the first book. But – as we listened to Dead Tossed Waves on audio, she was the one most likely to turn off the radio and turn on the CD. Maybe it helped that the reader was different? And the story was about Mary’s daughter and not Mary? Then again – the  writing was the same. Imagine a YA book about Zombies aka the Unconsecrated aka the Mudo written by Rebecca… yea. It’s like that. Wonderfully written but OMG you just want to shake her and say get on with it already. Stop with the flowery writing and the over-thinking, over-writing and just tell the story already. When the writing gets in the way of the story, it’s a problem and that’s what happens in all of Carrie Ryan’s work.

That doesn’t stop me from reserving book three though. The next one appears to be about Catcher and Annah… and the cover has another dead-looking girl on the front (misleading since the main characters don’t ever seem to die or even become unconsecrated…)

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