Dave Eggers' "The Circle": Audiobook Review

When I found this at my library online, I wondered why the queue for copies put me at #163. I had wanted to read this since I saw the first chapter excerpted in the NYT Magazine back near its 2013 publication. I dimly recalled that many scoffed at its Silicon Valley speculation, but it intrigued me.

I chose it as I'd liked Dion Graham's entertaining audio reading of a Neil DeGrasse Tyson book. He brings to "The Circle" a range of California-speak techies, as well as some international types. He's adept at conveying Mae Holland's voice and indirect first-person interior monologues, as the events are told from her perspective. As the fresh new hire, we see through her eyes and ears the ambitious projects of a firm that has in the near-future become the one-stop shop for goods, transactions, and socializing. The rapid transition from a do-good company to a benign surveillance operation appears convincing, given the acceleration towards relentless glad-handing, monetization, and capitalizing on one's own "brand." The pace becomes nearly inhuman, as those in The Circle seeks its "completion."

Dave Eggers takes his time over these 13.5 hours as heard here, and his careful explanation of how this corporation combines the earnest wish to possess all knowledge for of course the betterment of all, the corporate drive for perfection, the demand for ubiquity, and eventually the perceived will of the informed populace works well to keep you wondering what's next for Mae and her fevered peers.

As she says late on, "you're surrounded--by friends!" Privacy turns suspect, for what do honest folks mean to keep from the scrutiny of billions of "watchers" online? Rank has its privileges, Sharing is caring, why should what people do be left private? The common good is perceived to depend upon data-mining of all that humans have done or witnessed. Transparency. Is there any opt-out left?

For 12.5 hours, this set-up won me over. The problem is that the last hour of the audio, the last portion of the narrative, has the protagonist in my opinion making a decision that while not totally out of character seems churlish and childish. This may show her flaw. But the events that wrap up this, reminiscent of parts of "Brave New World"'s dramatized divide as debated between the Savage and the technocracy, seem to hurry along plot points, It also compresses some characters into foreshortened depictions not in line with earlier depth. I ended this wondering if there's a sequel. I'd like to find out a lot more. For now, not having any idea of the fact there's a 2017 series starting up, I may prefer to hide that visual depiction away, and choose my own depictions. Eggers writes this with clear details, as if he's preparing for a screenplay, and it translates the action and settings well.
(Amazon US 5-22-17)

Milan Kundera's "The Joke": Audiobook Review

Overall

Performance

Story

"It's not funny anymore"

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

My mind wandered a lot. I can see why as the Author's Afterword complains the earlier translations (#1-4) edited and streamlined the original. Despite Kundera's protests, it needed revision. It's far too sprawling and disjointed. It turned tedious early on and rarely engaged.

What do you think your next listen will be?

I am taking on a revisit to Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" as a reminder of quality literary fiction.

Did Richmond Hoxie do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?

He tried. He has an avuncular style similar to George Guidall. But for the females, he could not modulate his delivery much. For the protagonist, he sounded too boorish and gruff.

Was The Joke worth the listening time?

A toss-up. While it did give you an insight into Moravian folkways and music, it lacked the detailed impact of, say, how working in a mine would feel for one sentenced to a "black insignia" unarmed contingent of politically suspect comrades in early 1960s Czechoslovakia,

Any additional comments?

This confirms my unease with Milan Kundera's work. While "The Joke" by some is considered a debut (1965-7) second only to "Unforgettable Lightness of Being," I am annoyed by his seemingly slapdash manner of plot. Yes, he weighs in with the philosophical musings early in his career, but this novel frankly merited at least some of the excisions he predictably decries. The 7-part structure is promising but the results are verbose and dull. 

Alex Beam's "The Feud": Audiobook Review

Fame came to Nabokov with Lolita as it ebbed from Wilson after his brief notoriety for the then-racy Memoirs of Hecate County. The two "frenemies" wound up as such, Alex Beam reasons, when the wealthy Russian exile found his comfortable critical and financial perch far above that of the also privileged Wilson. The neediness the emigre expressed to the the literary lion, Beam concludes, had made Vladimir uneasy decades later, and Wilson's attempts to speak truth to the power that became enshrined in VN led EW to try to hold his ground, and lash out, but VN gave better than he got back.

The titular feud began as VN's massive translation-commentary on the supposedly, to Nabokov, untranslatable Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin appeared. Reviewing in the then-nascent NYRB, Wilson, an earnest devotee of Russian but a progressive who sided with the Soviets, rankled the refugee who recalled the Bolsheviks machine-gunning the ship young VN fled on. Not to mention that the Soviets did in his father. So, Beam steadily narrates (via Robert Pullar's at-first hesitant, than warming up to wit in over five hours that felt due to their detail much longer) the trajectory that lifted up VN and drove down EW, after many years of erudite friendship and intellectual banter and support

That support wavered, Beam shows, well before the Onegin fracas that consumed many of the literati of the mid-1960s. EW had little patience for the likes of Lolita; VN. Beam avers, would have had as scant interest in Patriotic Gore, Wilson's in-depth study of the Civil War. Beam introduces each protagonist, documents their alliance, and then dissects their falling out. He keeps the pace lively in spite of dense material. He employs "kiss off" twice, "kooky," and "frenemy" alongside "booted" and "contumacious" and he enjoys the wit that his subjects naturally delighted in as they conducted what VN typically if obliquely given his prickly nature early on called a "friendly" exchange. And it's fun to imagine as some playful Nabokovians do if it was all a game, with VN writing letters to the NYRB and its ilk as EW and he as him, to mock such battles conducted in these journals. Even if it's fiction. 

(Amazon US 4/21/17) 

Simon Parke's "Conversations with Leo Tolstoy": Audiobook Review

I wanted to hear about Tolstoy, as well as listen to some of his classic works, long or short. Simon Parke's Conversations with Leo Tolstoy featured in online holdings as the only choice. Part of Parke's clever series using himself as a slightly hesitant interviewer hosting great thinkers, here Andy Harrison enlivens Tolstoy in his own words. However, this encounter is long after his mid-life conversion which lured him away from literary circles as he pursued his dogged spiritual quests.

It makes me wonder about Parke with Mozart, Van Gogh, Meister Eckhardt, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Jesus. It's a pleasingly disparate set of topics that Parke, assuming the hesitant delivery of a "Very British" pundit-journalist, delves into with Leo. Not only violence, war, and pacifism, but marriage, belief, science, and vegetarianism. For the audio, Andy Harrison fulminates appropriately, as his passionate advocacy of abstention from many delights as well as cruelties characterized his later life.

He despised King Lear, too. So, while I did not get much of the literary fame and fictional achievements, I did learn in these in-depth four hours quite a lot about Tolstoy's spirit. You understand better why his family relations were so tumultuous, and why he courted great fame. (Amazon US 4/20/17)

Paul Strathern's "Dostoevsky in 90 Minutes": Audiobook Review

Robert Whitfield in the audio's 128 minutes gallops through Paul Strathern's Dostoevsky in 90 Minutes. Whitfield channels Strathern's condensation of the author's essence. Strathern. He hears rants in the less "civilized" Dostoevsky, for whom those in their late teens comprise his fan-base.

I checked this out from my library's download as it was the only audio title I could find on this writer. It opens with the famous vignette of the man facing imminent execution as part of a set-up, before he served four years in Siberia for seditious activities. That is, joining a reading group on utopian socialism. Dostoevsky was sentenced to hard labor. But out of this struggle began the impetus for his greatest works. Strathern regards them as not quite the equal perhaps of Tolstoy, the inevitable rival.

Yet for their literary intensity, their depictions of distorted ideals and tragic souls, his fiction endures. It may not be as polished as other Russian authors, but it does speak to the unleashed forces within us. This audio goes rapidly, but you get the gist of his career with excerpts from his major novels. (Amazon US 4/20/17)

David Foster Wallace's "Brief Interviews With Hideous Men": Audiobook Review

One blurb lauds the "hilarious" content herein. It's brief, compared to that bent on a harrowing evocation of the titular hideousness. On audio, there is talent applied diligently by a variety of youngish male actors. But this for four hours bogs down into a combination of raw (more ways than one) material for future dramatic monologues for auditions, and what feels, intentionally surely, the transcripts of a variety of depressed, bitter, lustful, wry, and/or erudite (as the author) case studies.

Halfway, #46 does reach an apex of ingenuity. The metaphorical and moral connections between Viktor Frankl's suffering endured that produced his Man's Search for Meaning and the assault perpetrated with a Jack Daniel's bottle on a teen victim ensure that no reader or listener will ever think of that Holocaust memoir-treatise the same from now on. Yet, as with the content overall, the ending's not surprising. These sound, as DFW intended I assume, as character studies of the dark side. But, as with a surfeit of crime fiction, true or imagined, the consumer may be weary too early.

There's an exhaustive determination to record betrayals, rapes, defecation, disgust, hatred, ennui, resentment, and doomed power-plays, and manipulation, in sex and other exchanges turned violent. It's surely what you see is what you get, but this is not a series of themes I care to return to. David Foster Wallace possesses insight, verisimilitude, and intelligence. But the degree to which he forces himself and then us to listen to these revelations batters you down. "His eyes were holes in the world" is how one woman sums up her attacker, tellingly for these blunt themes. (Amazon US 4-17-17)

Ivan Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons": Audiobook Review

"
I liked Anthony Heald's nuanced dramatization of the easily stereotyped Elmer Gantry a few years ago, when I was listening to Sinclair Lewis adaptations after making my way through his major novels. I assume Ivan Turgenev was in a way the Lewis of his day, half a century earlier, in sending up social mores and what a hundred years after Fathers and Sons was called "the generation gap."

This eight-hour reading of this 1862 work shows off Heald's ability to make characters brusque (Bazarov has a touch of blustering John Wayne to me), timid (most of the women regardless of class), bumptious (Arkady and his father Nikolai too), or flustered (Pavel among others). He also pays attention to the arguments advanced by the rude nihilist, and those of the Kirsanov brothers in reply: at one point the blunt doctor-to-be is chided as being among "four and a half" such angry young men.

In the narrative, both men face the opposition of the nobles and the upper class to their bold rejection of tradition and religion. Turgenev skims past these divisions, preferring to elaborate the psychological tensions as well as highlight the natural beauties apparent to one who in his earlier "hunting sketches" drew the plight of the suffering forward, as contrasted with the angst of graduates.

As my first exposure to Turgenev, this proved an engaging effort. I can see why Henry James praised his control of the narrative, and why Joseph Conrad would be attracted to its dissection of ideals. I'm not sure if it's risible that Bazarov for all his boasts of poverty--"my grandfather ploughed the land" visits his parents' home and mentions to Arkady that B's family only had fifteen (or was it twenty-two in another telling?) serfs. I suppose destitution was relative; I'd like to know Turgenev's take on it all.

As well as what "she's been through fire and water" and as a wag adds "all the brass instruments" means. While a bit may be lost in translation--Heald used the uncredited public domain Constance Garnett rendering while I followed along in the copyright-free 1948 Richard Hare version---this remains a valuable look at the up-and-coming tensions that would in half-a-century tear Russia apart. (Amazon US 4/14/17: Favorite quote from a nihilist: "Death's an old story, but new for each person.")

Emmanuel Carrere's "My Life as a Russian Novel": Audiobook Review

 
I am reviewing the Audible version read by the always elegant Simon Vance. The audiobook's performance, as usual by Vance, is excellent. He relates the erotic content with verve, and the emotional trajectories with sensitivity. He captures Sophie's tone as well as an array of Russian men.

As for this first entry of what has become a growing shelf of "nonfictional novels" by Emmanuel Carrere, the benefits and drawbacks of this format emerge. You feel the difficulties Carrere puts "himself" in, but you also note his privilege, his holidays to Corsica and the coast at will, and despite his claims of working as a writer, the elevated position he has as the son of the esteemed "perpetual secretary" of the Academie Francaise. While his difficulties in love will find a reception among any who have dealt with passion, desire, frustration, and betrayal, whether this immersion into what seems like a description transcribed in "real time" weighs down the book past its halfway mark. It's all quite "French" as well as Russian.

Carrere over nearly nine hours hearing his plaints grows, after a promising start investigating "the last soldier of WWII" in a desolate Russian town, tedious for a listener. Simon Vance's talent keeps the listener steadily aware, but despite his skill, the material becomes interminable. Carrere integrates true to the title his detailed ups and downs in love with Sophie, but as the narrative progresses past his own search for his Georgian-born grandfather in the former Soviet Union, it becomes experimental. Sophie becomes the recipient of an overly clever paean from her lover, and while this is "novel" in a different way I have not found in any other fiction or fact, it serves to extend the complaints of Carrere himself.

It's difficult to feel sorry for him. The climactic scene back in the Russian town is expressed powerfully. But then the denouement unravels as Carrere packs more revelations in, and the book seems to fight its own ending. Maybe it does not want to die either. The Russians often seem as props for his own egotistical compulsions to make a film, to write about this to further his career, and the writer-as-writer and filmmaker-making-a-film setups have long outworn their welcome. Carrere does not appear to be aware of this, except when he admits in an aside near the conclusion: "If this was a novel..." One finishes this due to the dexterity of Simon Vance more than the text from Emmanuel Carrere.

All the same, his brief statements about the Gospels and the setting he shows of Russia, however limited in this ca. 2002-2006 span, makes me wonder about the subsequent installments in what seems to be a successful genre for Carrere of integrating his life into the lives of others. So, that is some measure of success. Carrere himself comes off as preening, but there's no denying his "way with words" and his narrative ambition. (Amazon US 4/7/17)

Christopher Hitchens' "Catch-22: A Memoir": Audiobook Review

Despite his persistent mumble, his habit of gulping whole paragraphs, the elegant prose style of Christopher Hitchens graces this very uneven memoir. So does his erudition. For a "pamphleteer" so dubbed in prep school turns out both a formidable rhetorician and a principled pragmatist. Given the flack which he faced most heavily when he rose to the defense of the Iraq war(s) on moral grounds, Hitchens presents his own rational argument, as many more herein, with gravitas leavened by wit. 

This memoir follows the conventional pattern of formative years, for roughly half its span. By the end of the 1970s, when Hitchens relocates semi-permanently, for he is always a nomad, in first Manhattan and then Washington D.C., it spins off into miniature essays. Salman Rushdie and Edward Said comprise the two most noted of his friends, but as with his best friend Martin Amis and their common (Hitchens corrects us on the illogic of a Dickensian "mutual") friend Ian McEwan, his character studies are skillful. He seems to have read all and met all, and like some Zelig-figure, he is there in the crucial year of '68, at the perfect age of 19, to watch the emergence of his beloved (?) Left

While I will deduct points earned for his delivery, when volumes rise and fall, gaps open, and sentences sink into his collar rather than the microphone, the hours spent vicariously in his company proved rewarding. He tells anecdotes galore. The word games with his learned colleagues, the turn of a curdled adjectival trajectory, the sudden aside (a favorite: the only Federal agency he'd be tempted to run is ATF [Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms). He loves his adopted country, and his post-9/11 analysis reminds readers fifteen-plus years since of the mendacious blame cast on its victims from all nations. 

As an immigrant himself, Hitchens ideally places himself between England and America as a critic. I'd have liked more on some at first seemingly tangential figures he limns, especially Paul Wolfowitz and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. More on the evils of Henry Kissinger and the "noxious" Bill Clinton would have added value. However, I assume he's covered both in his abundant journalism. Coming before naturally and sadly his powerful coda Mortality, and after his giant "greatest hits volume, what, three collecting a vast store of polemic, critique, and recollection, Arguably, this shows the "late" late Hitchens as at the age of sixty, he looked back at his participation in so much of recent importance. 

Instead of marriages or children (both of which barely register, as the domestic side remains discreet), the fascinating journey he takes to visit the homelands of the suddenly revealed Jewish (assimilated so well that it vanished into his upbringing) maternal side moves the listener. Coupled with the dramatic story of his mother, which I leave you to discover, this exploration of his occluded identity resonates. Especially for such a vehement scold of the "Torah-toting land thieves." (I quote from a perhaps paraphrasing recall of my own. In spite of Hitch-22's many flaws, this remains recommended

Liza Knapp's "The Giants of Russian Literature": Audiobook Review

 

I checked this out [in The Modern Scholar series at over seven hours total] via my library to hear, as an introduction to the big four, Turgenev and Chekhov as well as Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. I've read some of the latter two, along with a few stories by Chekhov. Liza Knapp, from Columbia U., addresses us as she might her beginning students. She takes the theme, crediting both Woody Allen and E.M. Forster's "Aspects of the Novel," to emphasize the existential themes of love and death in the four. Her delivery is acceptable, but she hesitates a lot in her speech patterns, halting sometimes at odd moments in her sentences.

She aroused my curiosity about the comparatively lesser appreciated (at least in renown abroad today) "Fathers and Sons" as an exemplar of a well-crafted fictional creation of the same century that found the novel so perfected in Britain. Frankly, while Turgenev does not sound that exciting, I was interested to learn that he influenced the Irish writer William Trevor, who made his "Reading Turgenev" novella in "Two Lives" on this inspiration. I'd have liked more from Knapp on the wider impact of Turgenev, as he is now eclipsed by the three admirers who followed him.

Dostoevsky's dramatic life follows, and Knapp refers us to his biographer Joseph Frank for more detail. She takes "Notes from the Underground" with its carping narrator as a harbinger of what so many after him next century would harp upon. (A star deducted as the "Notes" lecture is not a half-hour as the rest of the main ones, but it cuts off mid-sentence at under thirteen minutes.) She reminds us how these later 19th c. works only found translation via Constance Garnett (and the Maudes) at the start of the 20th c. among English-language audiences then creating quite an effect. "Crime and Punishment" gains center stage here as the set-text. Similarly, Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" dominates that next section.

Finally, Chekhov in a few stories shows his own background; as with the previous three, Knapp guides us as to how each came from a class system that left a firm mark on their outlooks and attitudes. I found it surprising that Chekhov professed (like a man between wife and mistress) going back and forth between his medical profession and his writing avocation when he got bored with the charms of one and then the other.

In conclusion, Knapp suggests that the answer tor the meaning of life may lie in the love that carries us on in the face of inevitable death. She credits the four Russian giants as pioneering the Big Questions in fictional form which have preoccupied so many of us, writers or readers, since. (Amazon US 3-27-17)

"V for Vendetta": Audiobook Review

"The inch of integrity"

Would you consider the audio edition of V for Vendetta to be better than the print version?

You need to read the graphic novel first. Then the film, Then this. All 3 merit respect. They all adapt their chosen medium well. While anyone will turn to the Alan Moore-David Lloyd ur-text, I approve of all three versions as worthy. They elaborate the story for each format.

What did you like best about this story?

Steve Moore's novelization allows you to "see" in the mind's eye images that compliment the original source written by (here uncredited by his request) Alan Moore and the cinematic adaptation of the Wachowksy Brothers' script.Themes are deepened at nine hours that the film could not suggest, and I was pleased how intelligently composed was the novelization. It can stand on its own as a deserving representative of the source. It's smart and it's moving. Anarchism at its best. 

Which scene was your favorite?

Evie's enlightenment. No spoilers, but Simon Vance delivers this tale with deft and subtle readings of the dramatized text. He's the perfect "British" voice to convey irony and emotion.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I found, listening to this the week of the Westminster Bridge attack in London near the very Parliament of this narrative, eerie similarities. And the way a demagogue exploits the fears of a populace, naturally, is not only akin to the way totalitarian and fascist regimes operate. The 20th chapter delves into the rise of the ruling class well in this dystopia, and it remains both prescient and wise. It takes a side, but it is fair to the opponents even as it condemns. It is a sophisticated morality tale, and it is not the facile depiction of an avenger, but a careful study of opposition, and the price it costs more than one key character, dramatically.

Any additional comments?

The storyline takes care to not glorify any deaths or sufferings. Not an easy feat. There is no exploitative violence or sabotage, The Guy Fawkes echoes resonate. And we see how V's message inspires not only the expected dissidents, but others who are surprised to hear it. (Audible US 3/25/17) 

Jay Garfield's "The Meaning of Life": Audiobook Review

"More spontaneous, less calculating"

If you could sum up The Meaning of Life: Perspectives from the World's Great Intellectual Traditions in three words, what would they be?

Let things go

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Meaning of Life: Perspectives from the World's Great Intellectual Traditions?

John Lame Deer from the Lakota tradition tells a story of "green frog skin" that relates to our commodity fetishism powerfully. His ancestors conjure up a scene at Custer's last stand which remains vivid and disturbing, This resonated with many thinkers throughout this series.

What does Professor Jay L. Garfield bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

He has a tendency to lisp or mumble, his New Yorker accent provides a professorial, intellectual ambiance, and his jokes fall as flat before the microphone as they may to his students. But he's a noted scholar in Eastern religions and philosophy. Hearing him enables those of us outside an Ivy League seminar to ponder many wise men (and women in the background, alas) from thousands of years. He likes what he teaches, and this comes across

If you could give The Meaning of Life: Perspectives from the World's Great Intellectual Traditions a new subtitle, what would it be?

Eastern as well as Western perspectives

Any additional comments?

Ultimately, impermanence and our miniscule place in space and time diminish our self-inflated egos. Rather than resisting our decline, we would do better to confront our death, so as to live a life bent more on helping others, easing their pain, and minimizing the harm we cause others. This course is not aimed at the divine so much as the human context. For that humanism, and the emphasis on lessening our heavy footprints upon the earth, it's worth it. (To Amazon Audible 8-16-16)

Herman Melville's "Redburn": Audiobook Review

"A leisurely if perplexing voyage "
What did you like best about Redburn? What did you like least?
I liked the hints of the themes Melville would elaborate in Moby Dick. The start was promising, if heavily "based on a true story" and I presume heavily autobiographical. The Famine emigrants in Liverpool and at sea gain some attention, perhaps notable in fiction of this mid-19th c. era. But I disliked the "Harry" diversion and the latter part of the story weakened the plot. It reminded me of how Huck Finn also falls apart after a strong start, a few decades later.

If you’ve listened to books by Herman Melville before, how does this one compare?
I have not heard any (yet).

What aspect of Kirby Heyborne’s performance would you have changed?
I liked Kirby Heyborne dramatizing David Mitchell's own "heavily autobiographical" coming-of-age Black Swan Green. So I purchased this on that strength. But Kirby H. mispronounces hillocks, shillelagh, Lothario, Hecate, indefatigable, and over and over tarpaulin, to name but a few words he surely should have known, or checked. My [three-star] rating reflects this shortcoming.

Was Redburn worth the listening time?
It unfolds more slowly than any other audiobook I can recall outside of, say, the dense Thomas Sowell treatise on Marxism. Not unpleasant, and I fell asleep (with the timer) many nights as I listened to segments. Melville does put you at sea with him vividly. Despite the clunky plot, this is mostly worthwhile. I assume it's not the highest-ranked among his canon.

Any additional comments?
It's a strain to hear the perorations to Carlo the Italian organ-grinder boy (yes, that's him) as well as the paeans to the "girlish figure" of the narrator's pal and bosom (?) buddy Harry. Their relationship and his backstory are occluded, but scholars now must have devoted feverish scrutiny to what Melville's alluding to. But the novel "goes south" and never returns. (Audible US 3-18-17)

John Irving's "A Prayer for Owen Meany": Audiobook Review

"The crack of the bat"

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

As the novel is so long, I found it more background than foreground for much of the duration. John Irving likes spinning a yarn, yet this could have been edited and streamlined.

Would you recommend A Prayer for Owen Meany to your friends? Why or why not?

Probably not. It's a considerable investment of time for a plot that while delving into character, does not keep a momentum that demands you stop listening. It does not bore, but it can drone. The lack of necessary action and much digression slows the pace down.

What does Joe Barrett bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

I liked his folksy touch. Not only for the New England setting, but for the sky-pilot awkwardness of the Rev. Dudley Wiggin and the rapid-fire snark of Major Rowe. I wished the novel had given Joe Barrett more of a range to work with, as he shows talent in this genre.

Did A Prayer for Owen Meany inspire you to do anything?

Not really. Perhaps reflect again on the folly of Vietnam. It did not convince me of the central moral lesson about Owen's intervention and his calling. But Irving sure tried.

Any additional comments?

The "strangulated falsetto" of Owen is demanding for the speaker and the listener. I admired technically Barrett's ability to switch in and out of it so adroitly. And it will stick with you! (Audible 11/2/16)

George Saunders' "Lincoln in the Bardo": Audiobook Review

"The American Book of the Dead"

If you could sum up Lincoln in the Bardo in three words, what would they be?

Disorienting. Deceptive. Daunting.

Who was your favorite character and why?

I liked the Reverend. While his role is less distinctive than the twinned main tellers, he takes longer to be noticed. But, halfway on, his appearance and the reason for it become evident. This displays nimbly Saunders' skill at delaying information until it's truly needed in fiction.

Have you listened to any of the narrators' other performances before? How does this one compare?

As so many narrate this (166), I can only refer to the main two tellers, Nick Offerman and David Sedaris. The hearty, but measured, turns of the former and the soft, sibilant delivery of the latter grace this collection of voices well, and they are particularly remarkable for their tone.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Many, especially Ch. 37. The beauty of the language may sound cliched, but the manner in which Saunders conjures up the poignant and the perverse makes for quite the combination.

Any additional comments?

I'd read the novel first. Hearing this without some preparation may discourage the faint of heart explorer of one of the most complex narrations ever attempted by a major modern writer. Considering the dreck that wins awards and shoves aside works of merit like this on the shelves, the recent attention earned by George Saunders is an encouraging harbinger. (Audible US 3/6/17)

Tom Wolfe's "The Bonfire of the Vanities": Audiobook Review

Overall

Performance

Story

"You turn into a cipher"

Would you listen to The Bonfire of the Vanities again? Why?

Probably not, but I liked Joe Barrett's reading. It enlivened a book I read when it came out, thirty years ago. But I don't need to visit this story a third time.

Would you recommend The Bonfire of the Vanities to your friends? Why or why not?

For a period piece, a morality tale pre-Internet and social media, it remains a valuable dramatization of the pressure of what the 'flak catchers' Tom Wolfe profiled endured two decades later in the Bronx. This time, it's the legal profession, not the (other) bureaucrats.

What does Joe Barrett bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Having enjoyed his reading of John Irving's "A Prayer for Owen Meany," Barrett here can show off his range of voices and accents as he has many more characters to work with. While the "haw haw haws" on Wolfe's page still grate to the ear here, the verve and pathos Joe Barrett brings to the protagonist, Sherman McCoy, deepens the novel and message.

If you could rename The Bonfire of the Vanities, what would you call it?

"Pin the WASP to the wall"--a phrase used by Sherman's persecutors

Any additional comments?

Ch, 22, a descent from the Dickensian satire into Dantean depths, is harrowing and very well told. One of the longer chapters, but the book generally moves along well. Despite dinner party chat in real time, and those Tom Wolfe elaborations of sartorial and decorative detail. (Audible US 3/5/17)

Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene": Audiobook Review

"The immortal replicator"

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Yes, if he or she had some patience for biology and some curiosity about genetics in detail. It rewards the careful listener, and while not a light read, it is accessible and stimulating.

What did you like best about this story?

The eleventh chapter on memes is exciting. Perhaps the best-known of the sections, although I am not sure Dawkins back in the mid-70s anticipated this via the Internet.

Which scene was your favorite?

I liked discussions, embryonic given their later expansion into The God Delusion, of snippets of how religious beliefs were found erroneous or risible. Agree or not, this is memorable.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

The fact that we lack any grand purpose other than to serve as vehicles for the immortal replicator. While Schopenhauer was never cited, this force that drives us to reproduce despite the consequences and drain on our resources and time is a sobering perspective.

Any additional comments?

The alternation of Dawkins' genial donnish tones and his partner Leila Ward's spry delivery is a great way to keep readers alert. They serve to discuss the material, with its updates for this 2011 presentation, and to show what has and has not changed in the subject since 1976. 

(Audible 11/2/16.)

Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels": Audiobook Review

"Not the children's book you think"

Where does Gulliver's Travels: A Signature Performance by David Hyde Pierce rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Near top tier. Excellent choice of narrator. David Hyde Pierce is perfectly cast and poised.

What did you like best about this story?

The upending of the first part is familiar: big meets small. Then small meets big. But the latter parts, where the mind is inflated into the arbiter of all, and then the body prolonged beyond endurance, speak better to Swift's legacy, for these issues remain relevant today.

Which scene was your favorite?

The last section with the inversion of horses as dominating humans is coruscating. It's cutting satire and it stings deeply. All the same, Jonathan Swift's compassion mixed with his disgust for human cruelty and animal dignity resonates, in ways we may me recognize more than three hundred years ago for his audience, at least those tuned into sentient creatures.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I did snicker. While the Laputan third part was less interesting than I recall from high school (imagine this book being assigned in most places now, given its NSFW content and offending sensibilities couched in a courtly high style few perhaps can now appreciate), it held up despite this slow spot, for the novel from then on reaches its horrifying climaxes.

Any additional comments?

As above lauded, the pairing of Pierce and Swift is praised. The actor brings out the wit and the pain in the pages, and he renders the difficult registers of some of the high-flown rhetoric of which Swift's a master into entertaining adventure and instructive warnings of human follies. The messages of this often diminished (!) tale remain lively and surprisingly applicable, in life-extension and in animal rights as well as servitude and inequality, today. (Audible 11/7/16)

David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks: Audiobook Review

Overall

Performance

Story

""I've seen the future, and it's hungry""

Would you consider the audio edition of The Bone Clocks to be better than the print version?

Yes, having read the novel first. The characters come alive and the prose sharpens. The plot is clearer to understand, too.

Who was your favorite character and why?

I liked Hugo Lamb. Not to spoil anything, but he bore a difficult role in the storyline. Harder to cheer him on, but his choices are understandable and add depth to the impact overall.

Which scene was your favorite?

Hard to pick, but the last chapter with the Irish encounters appealed. The accents were a nice change from the predominantly English ones and the setting deepens as it's set where the author has chosen to make his home, away from his own island.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

The scenes between Hugo and Holly are very human. Despite their differences in class and outlook, their attraction softens the harsher edges of the story, and we need to see these characters in a vulnerable predicament. This also sets up some key themes later on.

Any additional comments?

This book is imperfect, but hearing it, after you read it, is recommended. David Mitchell is a great storyteller and the performances of all six readers keep you engaged. Not a book to be heard in the background. I listened to this late each night, and this enabled full attention...

(Audible 11/21/16)

John Kennedy Toole's "A Confederacy of Dunces": Audiobook Review

 

""Oh my God!""

Where does A Confederacy of Dunces rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Up there more for the energy of the plot and the depth of characters and the skill of the telling than Barrett Whitener's performance. I grew to like it, but it has its challenges.

What did you like best about this story?

The twisted relationship with correspondent "The Minx", as well as the "Oh my God!" bursts regularly from our bloated protagonist Ignatius J. Reilly at every outrage he witnesses.

Which character – as performed by Barrett Whitener – was your favorite?

George, the prissy foil who turns confidante to Ignatius in a skillfully paced conversation that shows off the talent of John Kennedy Toole. Toole builds up both interlocutors so that the naivete of one and the conniving of the other get switched and jumbled as well as run parallel. JKT handles the tone of each of his lowlife participants deftly, from New Orleans.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

Hotdogs and Pigtails

Any additional comments?

Burma Jones is not easy to convey "live"; Whitener began the novel sounding in the omniscient narrator's voice as far too neutral and robotic. The women are shown with varying degrees of success, and the registers of different N.O.L.A. dialects and timbres is no easy task to keep moving here. The plot does go into a lot of side stories, building slowly, but the value of "A Confederacy of Dunces" rests in the care JKT takes to portray each figure. (Audible US 2/16/17)