Audiobook. Binx Bolling is the narrator of this novel published in 1960; he tells us in a most charming way about his life and views. He is a successful 30 year old man who lives in Gentilly, a suburb of New Orleans, chosen for its ordinariness. It is a pleasure to carry out the duties of a citizen and to receive in return a receipt or a neat styrene card with one's name...
Audiobook. This story of an elderly British major who cultivates his reputation as a curmudgeon is of course about the exposure of the Major as the most modern and kindly of men. He, almost alone in the village, appreciates the Pakistanis, born and grown up in Britain, as neighbors and friends. While not inclined to tell near strangers or even good friends the intimacies of...
Audiobook. First, I must say it’s unusual that a book set in the 1850s in Oregon City and California was chosen for the shortlist of the Man Booker Prize. But who could resist a story about two brothers named Sisters, especially two brothers who are hired killers and speak formal, if awkward, English. The narrator is Eli, the “warm-hearted” brother. One commenter on the blog...
Audiobook. I was vaguely familiar with the name Clyde Edgerton before I listened to this book, and on the basis of that and the enthusiasm of the Amazon commenters, I downloaded it. The fact that I listened to the whole thing tells me I am easily amused. It's set in the South in the early 1960s and told in the voice of a young woman named Raney who marries a college...
Audiobook. The chef of Prune, a 30-seat restaurant in the East Village, has written a compelling biography. She remembers her childhood as idyllic, if unconventional and chaotic; the divorce of her parents when she was 13 was traumatic. As the youngest of 5 children, she was most vulnerable and naturally least able to fend for herself. In the small town where the family had...
Audiobook. This is the tale of an appealing character, a doctor who works in the lab of a pharmaceutical company in Minnesota. Marina Singh agrees to go deep into the Amazon jungle to find out how her colleague died and to complete his task. He was sent to determine how the uncommunicative Dr. Swenson coming along with research on the fertility drug that would make the company fantastically...
Audiobook. Starting from one unadorned fact, that a Native American graduated from Harvard in 1665, Geraldine Brooks has spun a complex and satisfying story. The story is told by Bethia, daughter of an enlightened minister who cares for the tribe on their island. Bethia, as a young girl, befriends an Indian of her own age who shows her the best place to catch mussels and...
Audiobook. I was expecting one of those interesting "how strange it is to be immersed in a totally foreign culture" books, but Peter Hessler's account of his two years working for the Peace Corp in a remote part of Sichuan province in 1996-98 is much more than that. Yes, there are the funny bits about how he enjoyed teaching English to students who chose their own English...
Audiobook. When Jennifer was 10 we traveled to Europe and spent a week in the Alhambra near Grenada. I had read this book and urged Jen to read it too. She was reluctant until we arrived, then she was transfixed by it and I enjoyed listening to again all these years later. In 1829 Washington Irving, in his words, "made a rambling expedition from Seville to...
Audiobook. Sarah Vowell does it again — history with her wry observations. This time she writes about Hawai'i from the arrival of 14 missionaries on the Thaddeus in 1820 to the overthrow by their descendents of the Hawai'ian royalty. She mentions food she encountered, including the loco moco, a hamburger patty topped with gravy and a fried egg, "a dish," she...