Audiobook Reviews – Page 38 – Booklog for Charlotte

January 10, 2010

Fingerprints of God by Barbara Bradley Hagerty

January 10, 2010

10January

Audiobook. The former NPR reporter explores her research for the science of spirituality. She lets us know right away that she grew up in a Christian Science home and her grandmother was a widely known practitioner. It was when she was miserable with a cold that she abandoned Christian Science for Tylenol, but her faith is always in evidence in this book. She writes about her interviews with...

December 10, 2009

The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey

December 10, 2009

10December

Audiobook. Another Reading Matters recommendation. A wonderfully told story of the life of a man looking back on his life as his memory is overcome by Alzheimer's disease. The loss of occasional words, then reliable memories, eventually his ability to recognize his closest friends and family is a significant part of this story. More important is that we learn about...

November 25, 2009

Traveling with Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor

November 25, 2009

25November

Audiobook. This audiobook, read by the mother and daughter authors, was loaned to me by Mary Susan. I had read Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees years ago and liked it. And this one was quite pleasing too. It begins with a trip to Greece the two took together just as Ann was finishing college and continues through Sue’s decision to begin writing fiction, a trip to France...

November 2, 2009

Breath by Tim Winton

November 2, 2009

02November

Audiobook. This is one of those books that you are sad to have finished. The story is told by Bruce Pike, looking back on his adolescence in a small town in Western Australia. He is befriended by a daredevil kid called Loonie (an accurate name) who introduces him to the thrill of danger. They take up surfing, and eventually are taken under the wing of an older surfer...

October 28, 2009

My Kind of Place by Susan Orlean

October 28, 2009

28October

Audiobook. This is a collection of essays about places visited or extraordinary activities. For example, she writes about Midland, Texas during Bush’s campaign for the 2000 election. (Someone pronounced George W a fine fellow who never made a dime.) And she explores the world of the animal horder, specifically a woman who had countless tigers in New Jersey. After a battle that took...

October 5, 2009

Cloudstreet by Tim Winton

October 5, 2009

05October

Audiobook. Last book in the Oz trip preparation series. Cloudstreet is set in Perth, the most isolated city in the world, near the end of WWII. Two families in economic straits move into a huge ramshackle house on Cloud Street. The Pickles family has gambling and drinking problems; the Lamb family is all about hard work. Their 20 years of soap opera dramas, separately and together, are winningly...

September 26, 2009

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

September 26, 2009

26September

Audiobook. This book, and the narrator Michael Page, were recommended by my friend Jim. It was a great suggestion; this gave me many hours of happy walking and painting. Of course you have to love the dear Pip and the good hearted Joe, but what fun are all the characters. Uncle Pumblechook. Mr. Wopsle who moves to London and becomes an unsuccessful, but...

September 23, 2009

The Last Judgment by Iain Pears

September 23, 2009

23September

Audiobook. A very enjoyable book to listen to, this is a police procedural set in Europe. Well, one member of the duo is a police woman in the art theft division of the Italian police force in Rome and the other is her partner, an English art dealer. They tear around Europe with almost no money trying to untangle a complicated murder that is connected to an art theft. The...

September 16, 2009

In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson

September 16, 2009

16September

Audiobook. What a fun book to listen to! It was such a treat to hear Bryson reading his book, telling of his enthusiasm for Australia as he recounts his extended visits. He is of course very funny, giving us such important phrases as, "mad as cut snakes," meaning crazy, a description he uses to describe people in Queensland. And he has the anecdotes to prove...

August 23, 2009

Memento Mori by Muriel Spark

August 23, 2009

23August

Audiobook. A wonderfully fun book to listen to. A group of folks in their 70s and 80s begin to receive anonymous phone calls reminding them they will die. Some shrug off the news; others are terrified. But mostly we hear about their many foibles, including affairs which began in 1907, blackmailing schemes, plots by companion/servants to inherit. One old fellow...

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