Audiobook. The beautiful language of Edith Wharton is ideal for an audiobook; along with the other qualities of her books, they just sound lovely. I wanted to read Edith Wharton after reading The Master (see previous post) which is based on the life of Henry James. Although she corresponded with Henry James, she did not appear in Toibin’s book. Newland Archer is engaged to May Welland...
A perfect audiobook — the characters are very appealing and the plot flows along brightly through letters. It's set just after World War II when people did communicate by mail. And sometimes several letters a day were exchanged, so they could be very like dialogue. Has there been an epistolary novel using email yet? During the war, the Channel Islands were occupied...
Audiobook. This is an uncommonly appealing book. Once again Jhumpa Lahiri tells stories of characters she clearly loves. She tells us about their shortcomings without making us dislike them and we are not left with a discouraging view of humankind. The title Unaccustomed Earth comes from a quote by Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Custom House, to the effect that human nature...
Sarah Vowell turns her attention to the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony; she distinguishes them from the pilgrims of the Mayflower who arrived in 1620, while the former arrived in 1630 on the Arbella. She says, The theological differences between the Puritans on the Mayflower and Puritans on the Arbella are small; try negligible to the point of nit-picky. I will also say that readers...
Audiobook. The story of a year in a village visited by the plague in the 17th century doesn't sound like a pleasant one. When the pastor talks the village into shutting itself off from the rest of the world to keep from spreading the death, you know it will not be fun. (There actually was a village in Derbyshire where villagers did not flee, but shut themselves in.) The earthy...
Audiobook. The subtitle gives you a good idea about this book: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music. It is the true story of a talented musician struck down with schizophrenia when he was a young man at Julliard in the early 70s. When the author, a columnist for the L.A. Times, encounters him, he had been living on the very mean streets for 30 years. Over...
Audiobook. I listened to an abridged version of the book, read by the author. He does have an amazing and unique background — the Kansas grandparents made their way to Hawaii after World War II, his mother married a Kenyan and then an Indonesian, his father was persistent enough to find a college in the US that would not charge him tuition. Quite a story. In Dreams from My Father Obama...
Audiobook. Such a beautiful, gentle book. The characters in these stories may have a hard life or in some way be foolish or ridiculous, but they or their circumstances are moderated. I love the description of the young family visiting India from America who are thoughtless and childlike, but also display kindness and a true, if fleeting interest in others. My favorite...
Audiobook. Esme is a 60-year resident of an asylum in Edinburgh who is turned out when the asylum closes; the administrators contact the only remaining family member, a 30ish woman named Iris, who did not know of Esme’s existence. The initial horror we learn is that Esme is the sane one; at 16 she was “spirited” and unfortunately that was sometimes enough to...
Audiobook. What an amazing character Joseph Needham was. He was born in 1900, became a scientist, and lived at Cambridge. He married another scientist and while they were devoted partners their whole lives, he was so enamored of women, a single partner was not enough. He fell in love with a Chinese woman who was studying there and he took up the Chinese language. As the title has it, he fell...