Audiobook Archives - Page 12 of 14

The Wayside School Collection by Louis Sachar: Book Review

Wayside school is just a little different. The builder built the school sideways, so it's 30 classrooms stacked on top of each other. Mrs. Jewls's class is on the 30th floor. That makes for a long hike for her students. The students at Wayside are a little different as well. One boy has a literal compulsion to pull a girl's braids. One student sleeps all the time. Everyone calls a new kid by the wrong name and he never corrects anyone. One new kid shows up wearing a raincoat and there's a huge surprise when he takes it off. The teachers at Wayside are a little different too. The first teacher is horrible and when she disappears, the students get a teacher who is just as wacky as they are. Yes, life's a little different at Wayside, but that's the way they like it. I can remember my 4th grade teacher reading the first book to my class. We thought this was the funniest thing ever! I had high expectations going into it, and I wasn't really let down. It wasn't as funny to me now as it was to my 9-year-old self, but I can definitely see why I loved it back then. Don't get me wrong--it was still hilarious, but I found myself giggling or smiling instead of laughing out loud. I wasn't too sure about Louis Sachar as the narrator at first. He's not terribly exciting but he grew on me. He has an earnest voice that perfectly set up the crazy things these kids did in all seriousness. I felt the first book was the best but the other two were worth checking out as well. The end of the second one got waaaay weird and ended in a not-very-happy place. I was surprised. But readers…

Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie: Book Review

Minerva Dobbs is a sensible girl. She's an actuary, the man she's dating is a sensible choice, and her clothes are sensible and "slimming." But then there are her shoes. Her shoes hint at the real Min. Her shoes are fun, frivolous concoctions. One night, Min meets Calvin Morrissey in a bar. As she's heading over to introduce herself to him, she hears her just-minutes-ago-turned-ex-boyfriend make a bet with him that Cal can't get her into bed within a month. Ouch. >_< That one stings a little. But Min isn't going to take this lying down, so to speak. She decides that she can play this game as well. She'll go out with Cal, string him along and make him and the barely-ex look like fools. At least that's the plan. Cal's charm is almost impossible to resist, as are his amazing good looks. I did love this, but worst thing first. I listened to this book, and while I loved Deanna Hurst's narration, I picked up on a serious fault in the writing that I probably would have overlooked in print. I swear, every other sentence, and sometimes every sentence, ended with said. I obviously don't have anything in front of me to give a real example but it was literally this bad: "Those are great shoes," Cal said. "They're my favorites," Min said. "They might be mine too," Cal said. "Watch it, charm boy," Min said. "I'm being honest. They're great shoes," Cal said. Again, NOT a direct quote, but it might as well be. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to continue for a while there. It was driving me crazy! But it didn't take me long to get caught up enough in Cal and Min's almost-romance that I was able to overlook it.…

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot: Book Review

HeLa cells (named after the woman they came from, Henrietta Lacks) have been used for about 60 years by scientists all over the world for all kinds of cellular research. Yet very few scientists could tell you the real name of the woman the cells came from, much less anything about her. Yet somehow, Rebecca Skloot stumbled onto the cells in a high school biology class. The teacher even got Henrietta's name right. The lesson spawned a years-long fascination with HeLa cells, Henrietta Lacks herself, her family, and the ethical questions that arise from the story. This book is the product of that research. I would honestly never have picked this book up on my own, but I've heard so many good things about the audio version that I decided to give it a try. One can't listen to fluff alone! All the praise is well-deserved. There is so much to chew over here. Parts were pretty upsetting, for a lot of different reasons. Henrietta's children had a very hard life after she passed away, and as I told my husband just a bit about it, he cut me off and said, "Why do you always read books like that? Doesn't it depress you?" Yes, it does, but it also reminds me how good I have it in comparison. We all need a little attitude adjustment occasionally, and difficult books like this serve that purpose for me. Aside from the family's personal hardships, it was hard to hear about Henrietta's death. It was not by any means an easy one. And then, less personal but more relevant to most of us, there were the ethical questions raised by Henrietta's story. I know times have changed, but I was appalled by the complete disregard for the family. Privacy was barely a…

Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor: Book Review

Karou is a blue-haired high school art student, living a double life in Prague. By day she deals with her jerk of an ex-boyfriend and hangs out with her best friend Zuzana. By evening, or whenever duty calls, she does odd jobs for her secret family, a group that she calls the Chimera. They seem to exist only in their own little antechamber, accessed from portals all over our world, but not a part of it. They are all part beast and part human. Brimstone is her father figure. Karou doesn't know how she came to be with the Chimera and she doesn't remember any other family. Brimstone incessantly collects teeth from around the world. He trades wishes big and small for them. He often sends Karou out to collect for him. It's not an entirely easy job, so she has learned to watch her own back. And then one day, the angels come. What a crap ending! I have learned to hate cliffhangers! Argh! Seriously, if you're going to write a story for me, please make it a story, not just a fragment! The fact that I care should tell you that I really liked this otherwise. Hush, Hush left such a bad taste in my mouth that I had pretty much sworn off angel books. Seriously. But then one day I was browsing my library's digital catalog looking for my next audio book, and this gorgeous cover caught my eye. I'd heard good things about it in the book blog world. I went tearing over to GoodReads to see what my friends thought. Four- and five stars almost across the board! Okay, you guys haven't steered me wrong before, so I decided to break the angel ban and give this a try. I'm so glad I did! I…

Fairest by Gail Carson Levine

Aza was abandoned at an inn when she was an infant. Luckily, the innkeeper and his wife decide to adopt her as their own. Aza grows up to have an unbelievably beautiful singing voice, but she does not have a pleasing appearance, to put it nicely. Other Ayorthians value her for her voice, but they're appalled by her looks. They like beauty in every aspect of their lives and are downright offended by non-beautiful things and people. Aza, in a strange twist of fate, finds herself attending the King's marriage, where she becomes the Queen's lady-in-waiting. But Queen Ivi has her own plans for the country, and those plans might just spark a revolt. Can Aza help to save her beloved country? I can't quite make my mind up exactly what I think about this audio. I loved the full cast narration, and this book was perfectly suited to that. Sarah Naughton did a fantastic job as Aza, and I also really liked the voice of Prince Ijori. The Ayorthians are constantly singing. Constantly. Just everyday conversations will randomly have a sentence or two sung. For that reason, I think I did a little better with the audio than I would have with print. I find it frustrating to read songs in the middle of prose. (I'm looking at you, J. R. R. Tolkien. That's probably part of the reason I never finished reading The Lord of the Rings. You and your endless songs.) I love to watch musicals, so this should have worked a little better for me than it actually did, and I can't put my finger on why. The singers all did a great job. The lyrics weren't always perfectly metered, for lack of a better word. I could hear the singers trying to fit that extra…

Room by Emma Donoghue: Book Review

Five-year-old Jack has lived his entire life inside Room with his Ma. At night, Old Nick comes to visit while Jack sleeps in Wardrobe. Jack's life is strictly regimented. Breakfast, Lunch, Phys Ed, TV, and Screaming are at certain times throughout the day. In his world, there's himself, Ma, and Room and that's pretty much it. Old Nick is sort of real, but everything else is just TV. Other kids, grass, fancy toys, dads, everything. Shortly after his fifth birthday, Ma starts telling Jack stories about Outside. He thinks they're only stories like "Jack and the Beanstalk" at first, but when Ma insists that they're true, he first gets upset and then tries his best to believe her. He just can't conceive of the outside world. When Ma tells him that they have to try to escape from Room, he falls apart on her. Wow. This was tough. Emotionally, I mean. It's written from Jack's point of view, and while he's an extremely intelligent little boy, he is still only five. But realizing how small his world is, and how he and Ma came to be inside Room was nerve-wracking and exhausting. Realizing that the game that Jack calls "Screaming" is Ma's desperate way to try to draw attention to themselves and their prison is heart-breaking. Speaking of that, I thought the author did a very good job of letting Jack tell what he innocently sees while letting her adult readers figure out the darker meaning of what he doesn't understand. There's the Screaming thing, and there's the way he says something like, "Old Nick always goes to bed and then creaks it. I count it. Tonight it's 217 times." Jack doesn't understand, but readers know exactly what's happening to Ma. I'm glad that it wasn't spelled out any more…

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern: Book Review

“The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.” Two rival magicians agree to bind their students to a challenge. Hector will teach his daughter, Celia, and Alexander will teach a student of his own choosing. When the students are older, they will face each other in a challenge. The rules are never quite clear. When the venue for the challenge is finally chosen, it turns out to be The Night Circus, a new circus done entirely in black and white and where only the best performers and spectacles in the world are to be found. I think that maybe audio was not quite the right medium for me to approach this story. Don't get me wrong; I could listen to Jim Dale narrate all day, and he did a fantastic job with this. I think most of the appeal of the book is in the luscious descriptive language, and I personally can't appreciate that kind of thing quite as much in an audiobook. My favorite parts were the introductions to each section, when a new tent is described. Those were very visual and very well done. I could see them in my imagination as I was driving along January-gray roads, and I was transported to a magical circus where anything is possible. And while I enjoyed the plot, it just didn't feel like a whole lot actually happened. There was a lot of description and what action there was consisted of people muddling around trying to figure out what's going with the circus, when I as the reader already knew. That's not entirely fair, but that's how I started to feel. There are two stories alternating between different times, and I just couldn't figure out how they fit together. It's…

The Sweet Potato Queens’ First Big-Ass Novel by Jill Conner Browne: Book Review

Jill Conner Browne writes a fictional account of how the Sweet Potato Queens came into being and how they truly became queens through some terrible decisions and heartbreak. I absolutely loved the first section of this book. It was sheer perfection I tell you. It starts when the queens are in high school and haven't really figured out that they're queens yet. They are always being looked down upon by the high school beauty queen, a bitch if ever there was one. I was shrieking with laughter and doing a corny little fist pump all alone in my car by the time this section ended. "You tell her, Queens!" I was repeating the last few sentences of that chapter to anyone who would listen for days, complete with my best Southern drawl. That was by far my favorite part. The Queens seem determined to make every mistake it is possible to make when it comes to love. There were still definitely some funny parts, but I had gotten so attached to these characters in that first chapter that I just wanted everything to go right for them. But I think Browne's ultimate message is that we are all Queens, no matter what horrendously bad decision we have made in our lives. We just need to pick ourselves back up, dust off our crowns, and start singing "Tiny Bubbles" again. I am torn between recommending the print or audio versions. I listened to the audio, read by Browne herself, and had a blast listening to her. I am definitely a Southern girl, but up here in the Southern Appalachians, we have more of a twang, and Browne definitely has a drawl. I could listen to her talk all day, I swear. No matter the slight differences in accents, I think that…

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson: Book Review

Dr. Montague, a researcher into paranormal activity, has rented the fabled Hill House for the summer. The house has a reputation for being haunted. Very few people have managed to stay in it for more than a night. In order to sort of help the house do its worst, he invites people to stay with him who have had paranormal experiences. The only two who take him up on his offer are Theodora and Eleanor. Luke, the future heir to the house, also comes along. It does not take long for the house to show what it's made of. I think this might have been ruined for me by the narrator. The book is in third person, but is told from Eleanor's point of view. Why on earth did someone choose to have a man narrate? For the right book, he would be fine, and he did what he could with this. An older man with a deep voice is just not the right person to lead us down Eleanor's thoughts when she's so very--weak, maybe? No, uncertain is the better word. She's uncertain of her place in the world, in the house, in the group. She's also a dreamer who has a tenuous grasp on reality at best. The narrator definitely needed to be a young woman. Eleanor herself is something else. Her thoughts get to be a little disturbing. She's definitely an unreliable sort-of-narrator. I never really knew what was happening in the real world and what was only happening in her head. For that matter, I never knew what she was actually doing. Aside from that, I think I expected more of a horror angle. Sure, the house does get up to some crazy things, but nothing as bad as what I expected. I don't feel like…

Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris: Book Review

I tried, but I give up. The first story, "Santa Land Diaries," was great. Sedaris's tale of working as a Macy's department store elf is hilarious! Those people who inevitably make the news every Black Friday by pepper spraying and punching their fellow shoppers? I think they all go to Macy's at Christmas. Sedaris writes about them with his usual biting wit. My favorite scene had to be when he gets fed up with this awful Santa who keeps making him sing Christmas carols with the kids. Sedaris sings "Away in a Manger" in Billie Holiday style. I have never heard anything like it in my life, but it is absolutely perfect. You have to listen to the audio for that alone! I was cracking up alone in my car! There are a few poignant moments as well, especially from one Santa who likes to remind people what Christmas is really all about. One of the local theaters does a stage production of this story every year, and my husband and I have always been curious about it. We will definitely be going to see it next year. Oh, but then. The second story, "Season's Greetings to Our Family and Friends," was horrible. Absolutely horrible. It's supposed to be a spoof of a Christmas letter gone horribly wrong. Something's gone horribly wrong alright--Sedaris's attempt at fiction. I kept listening, thinking it had to get better, but it just kept getting worse and worse. Disturbing only starts to cover it. I wish I could scrub that half-hour listen out of my brain. For real. This one was told from a woman's point of view, so it's read by David's sister, Amy Sedaris. I have to admit the tone and reading were absolutely perfect for the story, but it set my teeth…